Abstract
AI systems are testing lawyers' professional ethics obligations of competence, confidentiality, and candor. In the legal profession, the widespread availability of AI systems presents opportunities, like improving the review of documents during the discovery stage of a lawsuit, and challenges, illustrated by the handful of high-profile incidents where lawyers submitted legal briefs in court citing and describing fictitious cases based on AI-generated output. We conducted interviews with 44 legal professionals in the U.S. to understand how attorneys are making sense of AI technology and the impacts these technologies are having on their profession, legal ethics, and legal institutions. We describe participants' experiences with AI in legal work; opportunities and barriers for AI adoption; as well as beliefs, hopes, and concerns lawyers have about potential AI-induced social change. This work extends our understanding of AI's impact on knowledge work.
Repository Citation
Matthew I. Hall, Christian Turner, Eddie A. Gomez Schieber, Nathaniel Kite, and Ari Schlesinger,
Attorneys and AI: How Lawyers Use Artificial Intelligence and Analyze Its Impacts
, 9:7 Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interaction 1-34
(2025),
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/fac_artchop/1750
Included in
Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Commons, Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons, Other Law Commons, Science and Technology Law Commons, Theory and Algorithms Commons