513: Grappling with AI as a Law Student and Lawyer (1L Summer Series)

Episode Transcript
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Lee Burgess (2) (00:02):
Welcome back to the Law School Toolbox podcast.
Today we're talking about why youshould still study in school if AI will
just be able to do the work for you.
Your Law School Toolbox hosts are AlisonMonaghan and Lee Burgess, that's me.
We're here to demystify the lawschool and early legal career
experience, so you'll be the bestlaw student and lawyer you can be.

(00:22):
We're the co-creators of the Law SchoolToolbox, the Bar Exam Toolbox, and the
career-related website CareerDicta.
Alison also runs TheGirl's Guide to Law School.
If you enjoy the show, pleaseleave a review or rating on
your favorite listening app.
And if you have any questions,don't hesitate reach out to us.
You can reach us via the contactform on LawSchoolToolbox.com,
and we'd love to hear from you.
And with that, let's get started.

Alison Monahan (00:50):
Welcome back!
Today we're talking about why, or if, youshould still study in law school if AI
will just be able to do the work for you.
Well, Lee, I'm excited to talk about this.

Lee Burgess (01:01):
We talk about AI a lot actually, I think probably
more than many people do.
But I think it's a fascinating question.
And if I was starting law school, Iwould definitely be asking myself this
question, because on one hand I seemto see an article every other day that
says that AI is going to take all ourjobs and do all of our thinking for us.
And then I read an article about how AIscrewed up something and does not have

(01:24):
the capacity to do everything for us.
So, I think these are big questionsand law students need to not put
their heads in the ground and reallythink about what is the future of AI
and how can they use AI now, maybeto make them a better law student.
But unfortunately it can'tdo everything for us.

No, I mean I would definitely be thinking seriously
about this question if I was goinginto essentially an information
profession, because I think there'resome really serious questions about
the viability of certain rolesthat have existed for a long time.

Yeah.
So maybe the first questionis: What aspects of legal
work can AI currently handle?
I feel like "currently" is such a loadedword, as we understand at the moment.
Of 2025.
Right.
And what are some of its limitations?

Well, I think it depends on who you talk to.
If you are promoting an AI forlawyers tool, I would tell you
it can do absolutely everything.
You do not need any paralegals, youdo not need any junior associates,
you can just have it do your work.
I don't think that's necessarily accurate.
I think there are aspects of legalresearch and document stuff that it

(02:31):
can help with or it can do for you.
It might make you more efficient - Ithink that's usually the goal here.
It's not to replace people, but tomake them better and make them faster.
But I think there are a lotof questions around analysis.
Even a lot of the things we've beenseeing about making up citations.
Or there was a classic one I recentlyread about, where Anthropic, which

(02:54):
of course has our new friend Claude,and their lawyers filed a brief.
And in that case it did not actuallycreate a citation that didn't exist,
but it did, I think, make up the titleof the article and the authors, even
though it linked to the right thing.
So it wasn't quite as bad as these onesyou hear about where people are just
submitting fake cases that don't exist.
But it was still not a great look,particularly in that scenario.

Yeah, I'd be really nervous using AI in my practice of law without
double checking everything, becauseit is confidently making mistakes.
It just did that to me yesterday when Iwas using it for something, until I called
it on it, and it did admit its mistakes,but it wasn't going to admit it without me

(03:38):
calling the computer on being a computer.
But I think it's important tokeep in mind what AI can do well.
If I think of the work that I woulddo in my BigLaw firm, a lot of this
cross-checking or consistency, which Ithink is a big issue in legal documents,
is like, is everything consistent?
AI is great at that, because it cansee like, did you call someone the

(04:02):
wrong name, or switch the parties,or did you mean to cite something
and not have a citation for it?
It is so much better than aperson to do all of that work.
And that is tedious work that Ithink it's pretty amazing that
a computer can do some of that.
Or summarizing large documentsor organizing large documents,
searching for things - theseare all really powerful things.

(04:23):
Where it gets a little sticky is thatwhole "thinking like a lawyer" part.
And we're not so sureit's so good at that.

Yeah, I mean if you think about things that lawyers have
been doing for a long time, using samplesfor things like responding to discovery
requests and things like that - I'msure you had to do that as a young
attorney and someone basically handedyou the forms we use for, if we agree,
if we don't agree, if we kind of agree.
And you just had to sit thereand kind of go through these.

(04:54):
But to a certain extent, some ofthat can probably be automated.
Or if you're a trust and estates lawyerand you're doing a standard will or
trust, something like that, where you'vebasically just been filling the blanks.
Or real estate contracts.I mean,the reality is lawyers haven't been
writing this stuff from scratch,hopefully, for a very long time.
I mean, whether it was on parchment orwhatever, there's always been a sample.

(05:15):
So, I think things that are kind ofrote like that, "Fill in this person's
name and give me the contract back."Or one thing I've heard people doing
is asking it for sort of unusual termsin a contract or something like that.
So, at least it's flagging things whereyou might want to take a closer look,
but you still have to take that look.
Yeah,

I did that.
I fed it a lease and I asked it tosummarize the lease and highlight
any terms that seemed out ofthe ordinary or more extreme.
And it summarized it, and then itsaid, "I would double check these
terms", which I thought was great.
I was like, "Thanks, I will double checkthose terms." And I did still read the

(05:54):
lease, but it was kind of like readingthe CliffsNotes before you read the novel.
It just made it a little bit fasterand it made sure that I paid more
attention to the parts that I was doing.
Now, mind you, this was just for me,nobody was paying me to do this work.
But it definitely helped streamlinethat work and kind of helped me feel
confident that I didn't miss something.
So, that was great.
I think the other thing is thatmany lawyers do client-facing

(06:17):
work, and that is not automated.
And a lot of attorneys are handlingpeople in really hard situations,
and that is still important.
You're still going to need togive your legal judgment on the
fly, typically, with a client.
You're still going to have towalk clients through things.
You're still going to have tonegotiate with other parties.

(06:38):
And all of that is not at thispoint able to be done by AI.

No, but I think you could get some coaching, if you know that your
sort of bedside manner is maybe a littleabrupt and you want to think of, "What
would be a more gentle way to phrasethis information that I need to convey?"
Or even to practice saying things.
I mean, you can get a lot of feedback likethat actually from some of these tools.
But yeah, you can't just send Claude into do your work for you, unfortunately.

Maybe someday, but not now.
I do love Claude, but I'm not sure thatI want that output as all of my work.
There's also that little bit of anethical problem, which is that right
now we all as licensed attorneys haveethical duties, and Claude doesn't.
So, there's that.

Yeah.
I think of it like we've saidbefore - you can think of it as
a paralegal or a legal intern.
Someone that you would have tosupervise, someone whose judgment
may or may not be great, but they'regood at certain things and you've
got to figure out the parameterswithin which you can trust them.
And that's not even mentioningthe resource use and things like
this, that we're destroying moreplanets, probably at some point,

(07:44):
just to be able to run these things.
So, also worth a consideration.

Yeah, that's true.
I've read an article that talked abouthow much waste there is by thanking AI.

Yeah.

Or saying, "please", yeah.

Yeah.
I found that sad, because I'mlike, "Thanks so much!" And it
sends me a paragraph and I'm like,"Oh, that was probably wasteful."

I know, but sometimes when it does a good job, I really want
to give it positive reinforcement.

So yeah, I think understanding kind of where you
can apply these tools in practice.
And in law schools, where we'll get to,it's really important because you can't
just turn it loose on everything andyou don't have any responsibilities.

Yeah.
So, we've touched on it a little bit,but we think about what skills will
remain uniquely human as we understandit today, even as AI advances.
So, what do you think are some of theseskills that are unique and that law
students should focus on in law school?

Well, I think for me a lot of it comes down to developing
judgment, whether that is judgmentabout how a judge is likely to rule on
something, or judgment about how youshould deliver this news that maybe
is unpleasant, or how you should aska question of a client that maybe
they're not going to be happy to answer.
All of these judgment things Ithink become even more important.

(09:00):
And a lot of that is theemotional intelligence too.
And I know this sounds like notthings you would be thinking about
in law school, but I really think alot of these skills are actually what
are going to become super critical.
And then of course, the ability toexercise judgment, in terms of what
information are you accepting from yourAI tools or anything else that kind
of meter of, "Huh, that doesn't seemright" - to me I think becomes even more

important.
What do you

think?

Yeah, I think that's true.
I also think aboutcreative problem solving.
AI can be a great brainstormer, whichis one of its, I think, positive
uses, but an experienced lawyerhas some really good gut reactions.
A good experienced lawyer has very goodgut reactions about how to solve problems,

(09:45):
and they can be pretty unique problemsthat involve a very human element to it.
This is not like a codingproblem or a data problem.
And I think that is something thatat least for now, is very unique.
Maybe you could use the AI to brainstormdifferent solutions to a problem, but
anticipating how humans are going to reactor how they're going to behave, I still

(10:07):
think that is something that experience,and as you said, judgment, still requires.

Right, because I think so much of lawyering, at
least, I would say in a trial or ina deal, transactional setting, is
really being able to read people andunderstand what they might respond to.
So sometimes, I don't know, I feel likepeople who are not lawyers want to put
maybe judges for example - they want toput them in a certain bucket and be like,
"Well, this person was appointed by X,so they're going to rule this way." But

(10:34):
that's, we all know, not really accurate.
And so, it's always interesting tosee what people are surprised by, when
some of it's not that surprising to me.
I'm like, "Yeah, that makes sense."But I'm coming at it from a different
perspective and with a differentbackground, a different understanding of
how this person might think about things.

Yeah.
And then there's the art of oral advocacy.
I mean, when we think about litigatorsand trial lawyers, their job is still
to convince a panel of jurors that theirinterpretation of the facts is correct.
Maybe AI could write some of youropening and closing, but the way that
you deliver, the way that you presentthings, the interactions you have with

(11:14):
the jurors, your personas in the courtroom- that is still very uniquely personal.
And as a daughter of a litigator, Ispent a lot of time watching different
lawyers in court, and it is a very uniqueskill and one that can be developed.
But it is something that is verypersonable, it is about the human.
And so I think if you're someone whowants to do that sort of work, that

(11:38):
work is still going to be there foryou, unless we change our judicial
system, because it's still about peoplecommunicating with people about facts.

Right.
And I think some of this is alsothe social and cultural context that
some of this stuff is happening.
I remember when I was clerking,we had a specific case, and
it was a sexual harassment andworkplace retaliation thing.
And when they picked the jury, my co-clerkand I went in, we're like, "Well, this
case is over." And the judge, who wasan older white man was like, "What are
you talking about?" We're like, "Did younot see who they put on that jury?" And

(12:07):
he is like, "What?" And we're like, "Ohmy God, you are missing so much right
now." You can use these tools to sortof brainstorm like, "How would so-and-so
respond to this type of argument perhaps?"But the reality is, these things have
been trained on certain sets of data.
They're biased in certain ways.
There's lots of stuff they don't know.
So I don't think you're necessarilygetting a full perspective of

(12:29):
all the different ways thatpeople could look at something.

Oh my gosh.
I think jury selection is a great example.
Jury selection in and of itselfis an art, not a science.
And some people are quite good at it.
Some people become consultantsand that's all that they do.
It's fascinating.
If you've never really dug intothat and you want to learn about it,
that could be a fun summer activity,because it is really fascinating.

(12:53):
And the next time you getcalled for jury duty, you should
watch how the attorneys do it.
It's fascinating.
There can be sticky notes or there canbe charts, but everybody's got a system.
Everybody's got a theory,everybody's got a system, everybody
has their favorite demographics.
It's wild.
Anyway, that is something that isvery like in the moment and in the
present, and when I think about allof this, I think the courtroom is

(13:15):
really where you don't see AI, becausethe courtroom is still about people.

Right.
And like you mentioned, jury consultants.
I was on a case with a jury consultantand they tell you all these things
and you're just like, "You have noidea, you're making this up as much
as anybody else." And we did sortof a pre-trial show, basically, for
three different sets of fake jurors.
We presented part of the case, they allsat and watched exactly the same things.
Two of the three juries came outone way, one came out the other, and

(13:44):
we could watch how they got there.
So, it's fascinating.
It's very unpredictable.

Yeah.
Although, in the case

with the judge, we were 100% correct.
A hundred percent.
It was an absolute disaster for one side.
And we're like, "This is going tobe a bloodbath, and they don't even
know it." And we knew it literallyas soon as they picked the jury.

Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I guess let's look at the future.
How do we think the legal profession...Because we can all look into the future.
How do we think the legal professionmay transform with AI, and what
new opportunities will emerge?
Because with all changesusually come opportunities.
So, I think one of the opportunitiesis if you are comfortable learning

(14:26):
these tools, you are going to be ableto possibly be better in your role.
And I think that one of the things youand I talked about, I feel like when we
met - which was a while ago now - but whenwe first started talking about doing our
own project together, we talked about howlaw school made us really good studiers.

(14:47):
We were just reallygood at learning stuff.
We had to learn how to runa business and we just read
books and learned how to do it.
We weren't perfect, we madesome mistakes, but we just kind
of were quick studies on it.
And I think that if you can take thatidea and apply it to your legal career
and have an openness about it and say,"Change is coming, things are going to

(15:07):
be different." There was a time wheneverybody still researched from books, and
then they said that LexisNexis was goingto kill the lawyer, and it didn't, right?
It just changed how you worked.
And I think that there's an opennessto this saying, "How do I understand
these tools and be the best at usingthem, one, so I don't get into ethical

(15:28):
problems, and two, so maybe I can eitherdo more work or be more efficient?" So
to me, there's an openness around it.
I don't know what the legal profession'sgoing to look like in 10 or 20 years,
but there will still probably be lawyers.
And those lawyers will need to havean openness to learn new tools.

Right.
I mean, throughout human historywe've needed to adjudicate disputes.
I mean, some people think the bots arejust going to talk to each other and sort
it all out, which may be; probably not.
People are still going to get in fightsabout things and want to negotiate things.
These are very basic,kind of human things.
But I think you're right - you can'tput your head in the sand and be like,

(16:08):
"Oh, I'm only going to go back to thebooks to research cases." No one does
that, it would take absolutely forever.
And all these tools, electronicresearch tools are obviously
evolving, and quite quickly.
But you want to understand,again, the limitations of the
tools and the power of the tools.
Maybe this is pie in the sky, buthopefully we can actually increase access

(16:31):
to justice through some of these systems.
Maybe it can open up things wherepeople can either have a lawyer that
is less costly for the same thing, ormaybe just have much better self-help
tools that actually are functional.
And this isn't stuff that people haven'tbeen thinking about and working on.
I think it just opens up new horizons.

(16:51):
And in terms of career paths,obviously there are career paths here
in all sorts of different things.
And again, we saw this happen prettyquickly with discovery and then
e-discovery, and all these things.
And suddenly there were thesepaths for people who are lawyers
or trained as lawyers to dosomething slightly different.
And I think that's actually a hugeopportunity for a lot of people if

(17:13):
they're interested in this sort of thing.
Obviously people are wondering,"How do I use this? What is it?
What does it look like?" And I thinkthere are huge opportunities there.

Yeah, I think that this idea that it could just streamline how
we do work... You and I love process.
So, if you're new to the Law SchoolToolbox, just buckle up, because
Alison and I love process and we loveoptimizing, so we are constantly asking
ourselves, is there something thatwe can streamline or optimize?Or is

(17:46):
it still something that fully needsa human to touch it at every point?
And I think access to legalservices is a really great question.
One of the time-consuming things iscollecting information, and I could see
AI being able to collect information froma potential client and sort it and put it
in some sort of a condition that a lawyercan then review and make judgements on.

(18:12):
And instead of having multiple interviews,now of course we have AI note-takers,
which can help with certain things.
But a lot of what I think is powerful isjust dealing with lots of information,
and some lawyers are really strappedbecause they can only do so much with
all the information they have to manage.
And if the computers can help youmanage the information so you can
do the uniquely lawyerly tasks thata human needs to do, you might be

(18:34):
able to serve a lot more people.
And so, it's just going to changethe way you work, but it just
might be that there's more access.
It's like there's no shortage of need inthese kinds of legal services industries.

And I think even something basic you alluded to - it
has been astonishing how quicklywe've started using the voice-to-text.
Not long ago when we were gettingtranscripts for these podcasts and
things, we had to pay a serviceand had people doing it, and
they frankly weren't that great.
And now, a computer just does itin minutes, and they're better.

(19:09):
So, if you are in the transcriptbusiness, that's a problem.
If you are a consumer oftranscripts, that's awesome.

Yeah.
And I've had some really greatexperiences with AI note-takers.
I was on a call with an attorney andthere was an AI note-taker in the meeting.
And it was very clear that shehad taken those notes and edited
them and highlighted the to-dosand circulated them, and that
would've taken a long time to do.

(19:39):
And then we all had theinformation and we could move
on, and then they've got records.
I mean, there's some really powerful stuffthat again, just saves all of this time.
I mean, I guess it was billablework, but who wants to spend
their time making meeting notes?
No one.
No one.
Who wants to

pay for that?

No.
Nobody wants to pay for that.
And no one should pay for that hourly.
No, yeah.
But it's amazing just in the timethat we've been doing this podcast,
how our podcast process has beenreally changed by tools and AI-powered
tools, to make it much easierfor us to deliver content to you.
It's a lot easier than it used to be.

So, we can do more content.

Yay!

We can do video, we can do more stuff, basically,
in the same amount of time.
And probably, frankly, withless money spent on it.

Yeah, exactly.

So, that's where the magic happens, I think, in the legal profession.
Not like, "I'm going to outsourcemyself or nobody's going to have a
job." It's like, how do you do more,do it better, and do it cheaper?
I mean, that's the holy grail right there.
Yeah, exactly.
So, if I am starting law schoolor considering law school, is
it still worth it in the AI era?

(20:46):
Do I need to study?
Do I have to learn this stuff?
I'll just answer my own question.
Great, go for it.

I think you have to ask yourself if this is the type
of world that you want to be in.
If you wanted to go into law to justmove papers around and not speak to
anybody, those jobs I think mightbe harder to come by, depending
on how all of this shakes out.
I don't know, do you think the paperpusher jobs are still going to be there?
Probably?
I don't know.
I mean, less so.

(21:14):
If I'm going to really want to sit inan office by myself and only write,
I want to be an appellate attorneyor something along those lines.
I think the high-volume practices,things like immigration, or even
employment, or car ticket stuff.
But again, maybe you can just do more.
Maybe you can make more money, becauseinstead of helping 10 people in an hour,
you're helping 50 people in an hour.

(21:35):
I mean, it's It is scalable.

You probably don't need as many people in your practice, but
if you're the person coming up with howyou're going to do this, I think it's
very viable as a career path still.
I don't know, I'm sure most people atleast have been exposed to, if not read,
the article that came around where theywere interviewing students, I think
mostly at Ivy League schools abouthow they don't do any work anymore.
And I mean, let's be fair, those peoplehave always been at these schools.

(22:03):
I went to fancy schools.
I can tell you there were definitelypeople there that did not do a lot of
work and still managed to graduate;in some cases did pretty well.
So, I don't think that's so new.
I think maybe it's a little moreextreme, because law school,
like any graduate degree, is kindof about a variety of things.
And it might be about learning andexploring something; it might just

(22:27):
be about getting a credential.

And some people are very clear (22:28):
"I just want to get the credential and
move on with my life." But that'snot so unusual, I don't think.
I don't think that's new.

No.
I mean, maybe it's easier to do.
But as we've been saying in thispodcast, you're still going to have
legal requirements, you're stillgoing to have to practice law.
It may be slightly different, but ifyou want to be a practicing lawyer,
you still have ethical obligations,you're still going to have to
understand how all this stuff works.

(22:57):
AI is, at this point, notgoing to replace that.
I just wouldn't want to be a bad lawyer.
I mean, that sounds exhausting to me.
And if you're going to spend a ton ofmoney to go to law school because AI's not
going to make law school any cheaper - so,if you're spending a lot of money going
to law school, I still think you wantto try and get something out of it if

(23:18):
you want to enter the legal profession.
Even if the legal profession is goingto change while you're there, I still
think that there's a lot to be learned.
So, will people cut corners?
Always.
But you have to ask yourselflike, why are you there?
I would learn something.

Yeah, I get it - you fell behind in a class,
you need a canned brief to catch up.
It's not like, again, anyof that is particularly new.
It's like, maybe now you ChatGPT toexplain some area of tort law that you
missed, and maybe it's right or not.
But you could also just goget a commercial outline
and the rules will be there.
It's not like you can't findinformation pretty easily.

No.
Or you could ask ChatGPT to do your courseoutline for you, but you don't know it.
You

also could just get an old student outline and it would be
probably equally good, if not better.

Yeah, and still you're not going to know it.
I think part of the deal is, the creationof these documents is how you learn stuff.
So if you just outsource all ofit, you're not really learning.
But I also think that it'simportant to think about how
AI can make law school better.
I know that you have an interestingpodcast episode with Lindsay Scola,
who's talking about AI helpingstudents with ADHD, which I think

(24:29):
that's a really interesting idea.
Do you want to say a few wordsabout what you all talked about?

Yeah.
Well, I think it's a fascinatingtopic, because she was diagnosed
late in life with ADHD, whichwas transformative for her.
And as a writer has found AI tools to beliterally transformative of her in terms
of getting started, and she was beingparalyzed by not being able to find words.
And that would totally derail her forlike two days, trying to think of the word

(24:55):
"banana" when she was thinking of "apple".
All that's just gone now.
It has made her so much more efficientin terms of getting her own ideas out.
And it's not that she's writinga book of like, "Write me a book
on AI for ADHD", push the button.
That's schlock.
We all know what that sounds like.
So, the book is actuallysuper interesting.
And it's her own thoughts, but sheobviously used AI tools to help

(25:18):
her get started and for formattingand getting stuck on not being
able to use a particular tool.
So, I think there's a lot to be saidfor using these tools in a smart
way to make your experience better.
Well, before we wrap up, I guess we shouldtalk about how legal education is actually
adapting to incorporate some of this.
I'm going to have aninteresting podcast on that.
So, I know we're talkingto a lot of people.

(25:41):
I think a lot of peoplehave interesting ideas.
What have you seen?

Yeah, I think that the idea that the law schools need to
not put their heads in the sand andrealize that this is going to be part
of legal profession is important.
I think some law schools are startingto grapple with that, or live in
reality maybe, more than others.
And I think it's interesting, Ithink it causes big questions.
Do we want to be training law studentsto just be drafting things with ChatGPT?

(26:09):
Maybe, I don't know.
But those are some big questions.
Also seems like it's not alwaysthat good at what it does.
If I had had this tool when I was inlaw school, I think about trying to pick
my note topic for my Law Review note.
And gosh, the brainstormingfor that was really hard.
I spent a lot of time.

(26:30):
And having a tool that could have assistedme in doing that and kind of helped me see
what was out there or look for holes andinformation... That's one thing that I do
often with AI, is, I feed it a bunch ofinformation and I'm like, "Where do you
see a hole?" And I think it can do thatin a way much faster than a human can.
I think that would've been very powerfuland that would've made it a bit better.

(26:54):
And maybe you can use that brainstormingas an attorney by engaging with some
of these tools - of course, keepingclient confidentiality, which is a big
issue of how do you use these toolsand protect your client information.
So, we can't ignore them, but I also thinkthat we shouldn't assume that these tools
will always be there for us and that wewon't have to still produce a certain

(27:16):
level of work, because we don't know.
We don't know what the energyconsumption realities are, access, if
things become prohibitively expensive.
We don't really know.
So, I still think that we need to knowhow to do the work, and then you can
ask AI for help to be more efficient.
Right.

Or if you're even thinking about law schools, even something like
a closed-book exam, or the bar exam.
Obviously those are all evolving, butit's hard to say that any point in the
near future, I don't really see the barexam saying, "You know what? We're just
going to let you have ChatGPT alongsideof you to help you out." That's unlikely.

Yeah.
I thought that in Lindsay's book, one ofthe things she mentioned was, when do you
realize you've reached a tipping pointwhere you're using these tools too much?
Because she was also talking about how weall have to practice doing certain things.
And I can't remember if this example cameout of her book or somewhere else, but it
was about the fact that nobody knows phonenumbers anymore, because we don't have to.

(28:13):
Right, she talked about that.
Yes, I know a couple of phone numbers.

I think I literally know one.

Yeah.

I know two.
I know my mother's, which wasmine when I was growing up.
And I know mine.

Yes, I know some of the digits of yours because weirdly
enough, you and my husband's phonenumbers are very closely aligned.

Right.
So I kind of know some of his, actually.

Yes, exactly.

They're actually sort of similar to my
boyfriend's, the whole thing.
Yeah, there's certain numbers thatkeep showing up in weird patterns.
But actually, off the top of myhead, I could give you two numbers.

Exactly.
So, that's a skill we've lost.
We used to have to memorize phone numbersand we don't have to do it anymore.
And she kind of makes the argument thatif you feel like you can't write an email
without using ChatGPT, that's a problem.
If you can't proofread somethingwithout ChatGPT, that's a problem.
And so, I think that as a lawstudent, that might be something
that you can keep in mind.

(29:02):
It's like, "Am I relying on these toolsbecause I cannot do it on my own anymore?"
I don't think you want to be that way.
I know that my kids will probablyalways have some sort of GPS-type
device as they become older.
We all have them now.
Yet, I will teach them to readsubway maps and maps, because

(29:24):
they might have a dead device.
I mean, things happen in the world andyou still need to know how to read a map.
And so, I do think it's the same idea.
It's like, how can you use thesetools to raise your level but not
to become so dependent on themthat you have no other skills?

Yeah, the mapping one is a perfect example, and
Lindsay and I talked about that.
She's like, "You can't just turn off yourbrain and stop looking out the window when
you're driving because the map is tellingyou to go a certain direction, because
you're going to drive into something."

Yeah.

Like, the road is closed, there's a lake there,
actually, it's flooded, whatever it is.
But yeah, I think there areskills that people have kind
of lost, which is unfortunate.
I mean, even the idea of going to aphysical library and being able to
find a book, I think to some people is

very confusing these days.
Oh my gosh, I just did this with mydaughter the other day where we were
deep in the Dewey Decimal system, andI realized it had been a long... And
I do get library books, but oftentimesI reserve them online and I just
walk in and they hold them for me.
I hadn't done the whole searchfor a very specific book.
And I was rusty, I'll be honest.

(30:29):
I was rusty.

Yeah, but then you also realize kind of the benefit of it.
I was also in a library recently, on ournew library kick, and you realize the
beauty of the Dewey Decimal system is thatonce you arrive at the shelf to find the
book you were specifically looking for,there are all these other related books
that you can just kind of take a look at.
Like, I just browsed thecookbook section to see if maybe

(30:52):
I wanted to get a cookbook.

I know, It's pretty cool.
So, I don't want to be a zombiethat doesn't have independent
thoughts or creativity.
And I think that I don't wantto give that all up to the bots.
And I was thinking about this whenI was traveling in Amsterdam, where
we were visiting the windmills.
And they still use thewindmills for many things.

(31:19):
They use the windmills to pump water.
Pumping water out of spaces isa big thing in the Netherlands,
because there's lots of it.

Yeah.
The Netherlands is very into theflooding, the dikes, the water.
Where the water goes is a big deal.

Moving water around is a very big deal.
I did not appreciate this,but it's a very big deal.
And they still use windmills topump water in various situations.
They still use windmills to makecertain paint colors and certain things.
They just decided that they still wantto make things this way, that this is
part of their culture or it's part of howthings have been done a very long time.

(31:52):
They don't consume fossil fuels, they'rewind powered, they're incredibly powerful.
If you've ever stood next toone of those windmills when it's
spinning, it was a little terrifying.
I was very blown away by that - ofthe power, the sheer power that the
wind generates on those windmills.
But I also realized that it was a choice.
It was a choice that they decided thatthey still wanted to use these tools.

(32:13):
And I feel like in maybe the legalprofession, and maybe as a culture, we're
going to have to start making choices.
And as a law student, you have tochoose what type of law student you
want to be, and do you want to cut allthose corners or do you want to try
and gain as many skills as you can?
Maybe be open to technology, but alsomake sure that you have a lot to offer.
And I think those are your choices,so you should think about them.

I 100% agree.
And it's not just like what typeof law student do you want to
be or what type of lawyer to be?
It's like, what kind ofperson do you want to be?
I think that's really the fundamentalquestion that comes so sharply into
focus when you have a tool that is nota person that can do a lot of things,
and it's kind of an existential dilemmaof, "What do I bring to the table here?"

(32:57):
And I think that's worth thinking about.

Yeah.
Oh well, I think that's quite aprovocative way to end this episode.
Till next time!

Till next time.
Check us out on LawSchoolToolbox.com.
And be sure to subscribe so youdon't miss our deep thoughts.

If you enjoyed this episode of the Law School Toolbox podcast, please
take a second to leave a review andrating on your favorite listening app.
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If you have any questions orcomments, please don't hesitate
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Or you can always contactus via our website contact

(33:34):
form at LawSchoolToolbox.com.
Thanks for listening, and we'll talk soon!

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