AI Tools Help Lawyers Fight Mental Fatigue, California Bar Told

Artificial intelligence tools may help law professionals and state bars deliver legal services and cope with decision fatigue and mental health issues, the California State Bar heard Friday.

Mobile phone apps, such as ChatGPT, can help lawyers unpack their brains, allowing them the opportunity to use these tools as a companion who’s “taking some of the cognitive load, the transactional cost that is exerted on us, and removing it from our days,” said Josh Kubicki, University of Richmond law professor, during an informal presentation to trustees.

“Our cognitive load and stress peaks and it starts to deplete over the course of the day,” said Kubicki, who advises law firms on modern learning and AI. “We know this leads to poor health and mental health problems in the profession,” he said.

The “personal impact of what this technology can bring to the profession, which often suffers from cognitive exertion and overexertion, is material and tangible,” Kubicki said.

Needed Guidance

In November, the California Bar approved best practices guidance for lawyers using AI, including the call for lawyers to consider disclosing to clients the use of generative AI, as an interim step while further rules and regulations are on the table. The board is in the learning stages. “This is not the end of the conversation,” board Chairman Brandon Stallings said.

More guidance from other states “is desperately needed,” Kubicki said.

Automation can streamline activities and increase access to justice through “technology and humans really working together,” said Dorna Moini, developer of legal automation company Documate Inc. and the tool known as Gavel.

Moini said she doesn’t think the fears about automation will result in fewer lawyers “because there’s a huge portion of Americans and Californians who do not have access to legal services, sometimes critical life-and-death legal services.”

Early Stages

Most law firms are in “the kicking tires stage, with about 70% of law firms taking a serious look at it, and a relatively low percentage of law firms actually having implemented it,” said Shannon Bales, manager of litigation support at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP.

It’s the peak of the “hype cycle, the peak of inflated expectations in terms of what people think you can do and how it’s going to do that,” Bales said.

“Maybe this is a great area for the California Bar to create data sets that can be used in the testing and evaluation of technology tools,” like segregating client data, ethical duties for attorneys, technical competence, and diligence, Bales said.

“We’re kind of in a gold rush territory with a lot of the vendors who aren’t giving us” enough time to analyze and test their products while other tools are still in development, Bales said.

AI Regulation

“Our job is not to promote the use of AI. Our job is to regulate it,” said trustee Mark Toney, expressing concerns about the presentation as one sided and asking for another presentation from opponents.

AI use is controversial and the board’s role “is to understand it well enough to regulate it,” Toney said. The board’s discussions “should be on how do we protect the public from potential abuses of AI by legal practitioners.”

Bar Executive Director Leah Wilson said the intention of the presentation wasn’t to advocate for AI but “to help the board have some baseline understanding of what’s going on with AI in the legal industry. This is what you’re asked to regulate.”

There’s a difference between how a firm like Munger uses AI and how some board members who are public attorneys use it in their organizations, Wilson said. “And that gap, I fear, is exacerbating the real disparities that you have in the legal profession, because who’s becoming more efficient? It’s big law.”