Cynthia Cwik, one of the co-editors of the book published Friday and vice chair of the ABA Task Force on Law and AI, told Law360 Pulse that the book proposal was submitted to the ABA Science and Technology Law Section and ABA Publishing about a year ago.
After that, authors submitted their entries in December or January, and editing was finished in May, she said. Cwik and her co-editors, Christopher Suarez, partner at Steptoe LLP, and Lucy Thomson, founding principal at Livingston PLLC, spent hundreds of hours editing the book for publication.
"We thought it was an appropriate time to work on a comprehensive book on AI and the law in order to provide a resource to attorneys to help them navigate these very important and quickly developing legal issues concerning AI," Cwik said.
Cwik spoke with Law360 Pulse about her responsibilities as co-editor of the book — "Artificial Intelligence: Legal Issues, Policy, and Practical Strategies" — and key takeaways from it. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
What were your responsibilities as book editor?
Our first responsibility was to identify what we thought were the most important issues to include in the book, and then to find leading experts in AI and the law who were willing to work with us to write these chapters under the very demanding deadlines we had. And then we had to work with ABA Publishing to come up with our schedule for reviewing and providing feedback on the draft and having the authors then make revisions.
Did you have a vetting process, or how did you decide who would be the best person to write about each issue?
Because of our work with the ABA and on these issues, we already had the benefit of knowing many people who had expertise in this area. We were able to actually turn to several people who had been selected by ABA President Mary Smith to work on this task force on law and AI. There are several special advisers to that task force who are contributors, as are other members of the task force. Also, the ABA section on science and technology law has been sponsoring a national institute on AI and robotics every year since 2020. And we were able to use some of the contributors, speakers and panelists from the national institute programs on AI and robotics.
What was the most challenging part about editing this book?
The most challenging part was making sure that we met the deadlines from ABA Publishing to ensure that the book would be published in a timely way. We had some very tight deadlines for authors to respond to comments from the editors, and our authors are very busy professionals with lots of other commitments. So it was challenging to clearly communicate with all of our authors about these tight deadlines, and then to ensure compliance with them. And the task was made even more challenging because developments with regard to AI are happening so quickly, and the authors wanted to ensure that their submissions were as current as possible and reflected important updates.
Why should attorneys read this book?
AI is having a very significant impact on the legal profession, and it's critical that attorneys have an understanding of what AI is, what it can do, what it can't do — at least for now — and what precautions are necessary when using AI, such as measures to ensure that client confidentiality is preserved.
What can attorneys expect when reading this book?
This book should provide attorneys with an excellent overview of some of the most important legal issues regarding AI. It contains reflections and chapters by more than 40 preeminent AI and legal experts. We selected authors from different backgrounds, including in-house legal departments, private practice, nonprofits, academia, government, the judiciary and business. And we also recognize that an interdisciplinary approach is important. So we've also included perspectives of authors from nonlegal backgrounds, including a professor of data science and philosophy and a professor of electrical engineering and computer science.
We give an overview of key AI concepts to help those who don't have a background in AI. We address some overarching legal issues including AI governance and ethics with regard to practitioners. We have various discussions about AI and law practice management, including the use of digital assistants, AI use cases for lawyers and ethical use of AI. We discuss AI in the courts and how AI can be used to close the justice gap. We discuss certain specific types of legal issues with regard to AI, including intellectual property issues and the impact of AI and employment law. We cover AI risks including cybersecurity, privacy and national security. And then we talk about using AI from the perspective of practitioners in Europe. We also take a look at the long-term future of AI.
What are some interesting takeaways from the book?
I think important takeaways include that AI is here to stay, and it's going to affect the legal profession in profound ways. Although there certainly are challenges with using AI in a responsible and ethical manner, it's important to keep in mind that there are very significant opportunities for AI to improve certain aspects of the practice of law. For example, AI can help solve one of the most pressing problems facing our legal system, which is the large number of people who are not able to afford a lawyer and must try to navigate the legal system on their own. As authors in the book acknowledge, it's been reported that 92% of Americans get insufficient legal help with their civil justice problems. And these are problems that affect very significant aspects of their lives, such as their families, their ability to have shelter and their livelihoods. And AI has the potential to help us come up with transformative solutions to the access to justice crisis and provide litigants with new tools to help them to better understand the legal system, including the legal processes and how best to respond.
Legal education also is changing to reflect the important role that AI will play in the practice of law when current law school graduates enter the legal profession. For example, in the book, there's a chapter that discusses how the content of law school courses is already changing to account for new technological advances with AI and how generative AI has the potential to enable law school clinics to process more cases and empower law students to learn how to use this new technology more effectively.
And one other very important takeaway is that attorneys need to recognize that their practices and their relationships with clients are changing. Your clients are going to expect you to be knowledgeable about AI and how you can use it to increase your productivity and efficiency. For example, Ivan Fong, the general counsel of Medtronic, discusses in his chapter in the book the emergence of digital legal assistants. These are tools that are trained on data sets relevant to the law and designed to help legal professionals perform tasks previously done by humans. These digital legal assistants can interact with humans using ordinary language, and they can analyze and condense large volumes of information and draft legal documents.
In the chapter by Ford's general counsel, Steven Croley, he discusses generative AI's powerful predictive capacities. Generative AI does not merely perform a task faster than in a house lawyer, but it's capable of predictive calculations beyond a human's capabilities, such as predicting the probabilities of a claim or lawsuit when prompted to consider different variables such as the location, demographics, and specific product and marketing conditions. So the bottom line is that clients will expect attorneys to know how to use AI tools and to use them appropriately to increase productivity and lower costs.
And finally, as former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said, "A better educated legal profession can play a fundamental role in enabling our country to harvest the benefits of AI while defining and enforcing appropriate guardrails."
--Editing by Rich Mills.
Update: This article was updated to include the names of the other co-editors who worked on the ABA's new book.
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