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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   704 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 4, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Tooting my own horn. December 1, 2022 I predicted:

My honest bet is that any student currently in their first year of Law School will be unable to compete with AI legal services by the time they graduate. Certainly not on cost. The AI didn't incur 5-6 figure loans for it's legal training.

Put another way, the AI will be as competent/capable as a first-year associate at a law firm inside 3 years.

This was before GPT4 was on the scene. Reiterated it 3 months ago

And then today I read this nice little headline:

Artificial Intelligence is now an A+ law student, study finds

If they can stop the damn thing from hallucinating caselaw and statutes, it might already be there.

But, let me admit, that if we don't see downward pressure on first-year wages or staffing reductions this year, I missed the meatiest part of the prediction.

There's the counter-argument that AI lawyers will actually stimulate demand for attorneys by making contracts way more complex. I don't buy it, but I see it.

I discussed it with a judge doing more advanced judgey things (abstract legal analysis of a case judgement as if presenting a paper at a conference) and he thought Sonnet 3.6 was a pretty decent law student, so presumably Opus 4 or indeed o3 would be lots better.

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