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AvanequePennantFirstEssay 3 - 23 May 2025 - Main.AvanequePennant
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Artificial Lawyering? | |
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< | -- By AvanequePennant - 20 Feb 2025 | >
> | -- By AvanequePennant - 23 May 2025 | | | | |
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< | The increased prominence and capabilities of artificial intelligence in society have caused anxiety in many sectors and the legal industry has not been an exception. Lawyers have used artificial intelligence to aid in legal research, case strategy, document review, and legal drafting. The most famous examples of lawyering in the age of artificial intelligence illustrate the dangers of these learning models, including the threat of “hallucination,” where lawyers have submitted briefs with citations to make up case law. | >
> | The proliferation of artificial intelligence, especially in the legal industry has led to concerns as to what the future of the legal profession looks like. Artificial intelligence refers to computational systems with the capacity to perform tasks traditionally reserved for humans. Softwares are able to understand, generate and interpret human language. For the legal profession, this has meant that tasks traditionally requiring human engagement, from document drafting to discovery processes, have been altered by the use of artificial intelligence. As these models continue to develop and become integrated into the profession, the question has been will AI replace lawyering. | | | | |
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< | While AI has the potential to promote efficiency and access, it also raises concerns about the function and future of human judgment in the legal profession. I understand major concerns about the role of AI in lawyering to fall into two main anxieties: first, that AI will replace the need for human legal expertise, and second, that AI dehumanizes the legal profession. | >
> | This essay responds to a slightly different question, however: can AI replace lawyering. Drawing upon one of the courses grounding pillars and Moglen’s legal career, I answer no. Reasons for this include the varying technicalities of how our legal system is structured as well as the value of innovation and creativity. Importantly, lawyers are not only functionaries of the legal system but also social actors whose choices and careers are embedded in and responsive to the needs, dynamics, and aspirations of the communities they engage with. Lawyers are guided by a theory of social action. Our decision to enter the profession is not an isolated or mechanical choice; rather, they are deeply rooted in broader social contexts and individual experiences. A lawyer guided by a theory of social action understands that every choice operates within a web of social meaning and consequence. AI, by contrast, operates through pattern recognition and statistical probability, lacking empathy, conscience, and the capacity to act ethically in the face of ambiguity. Although Holmes encourages us to understand the law as a system of organized predictions, lawyers must do more than predict outcomes. | | | | |
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< | The Fear That AI Will Replace Human Legal Expertise
AI-powered tools have already reshaped legal research, contract drafting, and document review. Programs like Lexis+ AI, Casetext’s CoCounsel? , and Harvey AI can analyze case law faster than human researchers, draft contracts and other legal documents based on templates, and predict case outcomes using historical legal data. This rapid automation has sparked fears that AI will make some legal jobs obsolete, particularly for entry-level associates and legal researchers. | >
> | For example, Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright suggests that one example of a theory of social action is rooted in the reality that human creativity in digitally networked environments, thrives on freedom and collaborative sharing and is stifled by propertarian control. It prioritizes the liberation of creation and center user agency. Enabled by open source developments like the GPL, and unburdened by intellectual property-based restrictions, this theory posits that individuals engage in acts of collective production not for (or not only for) profit or prestige, but because it is fundamentally human to do so. | | | | |
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< | Despite its capabilities, AI cannot (yet?) replicate the humanity and creativity central to persuasive advocacy and legal judgment. While AI can generate arguments based on precedent, it cannot develop novel legal theories or respond to unexpected courtroom dynamics. Effective lawyering requires emotional intelligence, strategy, and interpersonal persuasion, all of which are essential to achieving favorable outcomes for clients. | >
> | To see how lawyers mobilize around a theory of social action, we can look to Moglen’s representation of Phillip Zimmerman. In 1991, Zimmerman wrote Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)https://www.fortinet.com/resources/cyberglossary/pgp-encryption, a security program used to decrypt and encrypt email and authenticate email messages through digital signatures and file encryption. After the program became widely available overseas, the U.S. government began investigating Zimmerman for violating the Arms Export Control Act. The US Government has classified cryptographic software as a munition, citing its potential use for espionage and sedition. The law authorizes the President to control the import and export of defense articles and services. At the center of the criminal investigation were questions about the level of privacy that the American public should be entitled and the motivations behind government regulation in the export of cryptography. Ultimately, Zimmerman’s defense was grounded in the team’s values for publicly available, free software. Members of the defense team donated hundreds of hours to the defense because it was more than a case but rather a cause to which they were all dedicated. https://philzimmermann.com/EN/news/PRZ_case_dropped.html. Moglen explains in his article So Much for Savages: Navajo 1, Government 0 in Final Moments Navajo 1, Government 0 in Final Moments of Play of Play that “Naturally, once you grasp the mindset that has dominated the rulers of the American Empire since the end of the Second World War, this was too dangerous not to be illegal.” This understanding of the structural forces and institutional interests would have impacted the structure of Zimmerman’s representation, especially the inevitable nuances of protecting a citizen from their own government. AI is incapable of replicating not only the strategic creativity but also the passion and drive to defend the public’s right of access to free software. This direction comes from a theory of social action. Where the defense team recognized the law as a battleground for justice, AI can only see and respond to data. This difference is precisely what makes lawyering human. | | | | |
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< | The Fear That AI Dehumanizes the Legal Profession
Concerns about AI’s role in law extends beyond fears of job displacement. There is also a broader anxiety that AI will fundamentally alter the nature of legal practice by removing the human element from legal decision-making. While in the U.S. the prospect of substituting the judiciary for technology might seem like a dystopian prospect, countries like China have implemented “internet courts.” In an article entitled “Robot justice: China’s use of Internet courts,” Tara Vasdani described China's 24-hour, 7-day-a-week Internet court system where artificially created judges appear by hologram. These judges set schedules, ask litigants questions, take evidence, and issue dispositive rulings.
As we have discussed in class, the humanity of judicial discretion and reasoning is immensely valuable for case strategy. Firms provide financial incentives in pursuit of clerks who are assumed to have insight into how a judge rules. Especially when unknown factors can carry unknown weights in what a judge does, the possibility of being able to predict is valuable for crafting case strategies. While some may welcome the prospect of bright-line rules and consistent verdicts under an AI judiciary, data-driven models may not (yet?) be able to provide context-specific reasoning and fact-intensive analysis. It is unclear what role, if any, rhetorical devices emphasized in oral advocacy training would be under these data-driven models.
This draft itself could have been written by a bot, couldn't it? It has the same quality of empty abstraction, of names thrown about without actual analysis, the same inflated claims void of philosophical rigor (hedged about with '(yet?)') that characterize the prose that falls to the bottom of the stochastic parrot's cage. Yet, it was written by a human being, already unconsciously tending to imitate the slop being produced by the software that statistically imitates the behavior of the humans now imitating it....
Fake intelligence can't do lawyering. Lawyering is about the conscious understanding and interpretation of social processes based on the consilient overlapping of multiple independent approaches to social understanding. It requires exactly those qulities that conclusively distinguish human intelligence (which creates infinite understandings of what must and cannot be true about the world from tiny amounts of imperfect information) from statistical pattern-matching that uses vast amounts of information to achieve fragile guesses about what might be true, without any method for conscious reflection on the outcomes. The point of this course was to exemplify that distinction. The draft would become stronger by (1) actually explaining what "AI" is, and (2) putting itself in contact with the argument I spent 14 weeks building that explains why it is of no significance at all to the activity of lawyering.
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
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> | My desire to pursue a legal career has been driven by my experiences as an immigrant navigating a society that, while immensely beneficial to my life trajectory, has at times been hostile. My middle school experience was undergirded by the very real and haunting presence of the school to prison pipeline and the reach of the surveillance state into our schools. My own theory of social action has centered using dance, mentorship and education to leverage my knowledge and experiences to uplift minority students. My goal has been to use legal frameworks as powerful tools to disrupt systemic inequalities in education. Can AI replace me? No. As an aspiring educational law attorney, I carry first hand experiences of arbitrary expulsion, censorship efforts, lack of educational resources, and zero tolerance policy. My experiences compel me to lead with empathy and advocate with a sense of urgency. Lawyering in this context, as in the free software movement and many others, requires lived insight, pursuit of clarity amidst nuisance and a rootedness in the importance of change for the communities who have been targeted by the institutions meant to serve them. AI cannot replicate that. It cannot ground advocacy in a reality of injustice. It cannot connect and build trust with communities. It cannot craft and pursue new avenues for the law. What it lacks is precisely what lawyering demands most: to develop and mobilize around a theory of social action. |
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AvanequePennantFirstEssay 2 - 26 Apr 2025 - Main.EbenMoglen
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< | It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | Artificial Lawyering? | | | As we have discussed in class, the humanity of judicial discretion and reasoning is immensely valuable for case strategy. Firms provide financial incentives in pursuit of clerks who are assumed to have insight into how a judge rules. Especially when unknown factors can carry unknown weights in what a judge does, the possibility of being able to predict is valuable for crafting case strategies. While some may welcome the prospect of bright-line rules and consistent verdicts under an AI judiciary, data-driven models may not (yet?) be able to provide context-specific reasoning and fact-intensive analysis. It is unclear what role, if any, rhetorical devices emphasized in oral advocacy training would be under these data-driven models. | |
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This draft itself could have been written by a bot, couldn't it? It has the same quality of empty abstraction, of names thrown about without actual analysis, the same inflated claims void of philosophical rigor (hedged about with '(yet?)') that characterize the prose that falls to the bottom of the stochastic parrot's cage. Yet, it was written by a human being, already unconsciously tending to imitate the slop being produced by the software that statistically imitates the behavior of the humans now imitating it....
Fake intelligence can't do lawyering. Lawyering is about the conscious understanding and interpretation of social processes based on the consilient overlapping of multiple independent approaches to social understanding. It requires exactly those qulities that conclusively distinguish human intelligence (which creates infinite understandings of what must and cannot be true about the world from tiny amounts of imperfect information) from statistical pattern-matching that uses vast amounts of information to achieve fragile guesses about what might be true, without any method for conscious reflection on the outcomes. The point of this course was to exemplify that distinction. The draft would become stronger by (1) actually explaining what "AI" is, and (2) putting itself in contact with the argument I spent 14 weeks building that explains why it is of no significance at all to the activity of lawyering.
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You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. |
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AvanequePennantFirstEssay 1 - 20 Feb 2025 - Main.AvanequePennant
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.
Artificial Lawyering?
-- By AvanequePennant - 20 Feb 2025
The increased prominence and capabilities of artificial intelligence in society have caused anxiety in many sectors and the legal industry has not been an exception. Lawyers have used artificial intelligence to aid in legal research, case strategy, document review, and legal drafting. The most famous examples of lawyering in the age of artificial intelligence illustrate the dangers of these learning models, including the threat of “hallucination,” where lawyers have submitted briefs with citations to make up case law.
While AI has the potential to promote efficiency and access, it also raises concerns about the function and future of human judgment in the legal profession. I understand major concerns about the role of AI in lawyering to fall into two main anxieties: first, that AI will replace the need for human legal expertise, and second, that AI dehumanizes the legal profession.
The Fear That AI Will Replace Human Legal Expertise
AI-powered tools have already reshaped legal research, contract drafting, and document review. Programs like Lexis+ AI, Casetext’s CoCounsel? , and Harvey AI can analyze case law faster than human researchers, draft contracts and other legal documents based on templates, and predict case outcomes using historical legal data. This rapid automation has sparked fears that AI will make some legal jobs obsolete, particularly for entry-level associates and legal researchers.
Despite its capabilities, AI cannot (yet?) replicate the humanity and creativity central to persuasive advocacy and legal judgment. While AI can generate arguments based on precedent, it cannot develop novel legal theories or respond to unexpected courtroom dynamics. Effective lawyering requires emotional intelligence, strategy, and interpersonal persuasion, all of which are essential to achieving favorable outcomes for clients.
The Fear That AI Dehumanizes the Legal Profession
Concerns about AI’s role in law extends beyond fears of job displacement. There is also a broader anxiety that AI will fundamentally alter the nature of legal practice by removing the human element from legal decision-making. While in the U.S. the prospect of substituting the judiciary for technology might seem like a dystopian prospect, countries like China have implemented “internet courts.” In an article entitled “Robot justice: China’s use of Internet courts,” Tara Vasdani described China's 24-hour, 7-day-a-week Internet court system where artificially created judges appear by hologram. These judges set schedules, ask litigants questions, take evidence, and issue dispositive rulings.
As we have discussed in class, the humanity of judicial discretion and reasoning is immensely valuable for case strategy. Firms provide financial incentives in pursuit of clerks who are assumed to have insight into how a judge rules. Especially when unknown factors can carry unknown weights in what a judge does, the possibility of being able to predict is valuable for crafting case strategies. While some may welcome the prospect of bright-line rules and consistent verdicts under an AI judiciary, data-driven models may not (yet?) be able to provide context-specific reasoning and fact-intensive analysis. It is unclear what role, if any, rhetorical devices emphasized in oral advocacy training would be under these data-driven models.
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:
Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules for preference declarations. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of these lines. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated ALLOWTOPICVIEW list. |
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