Don't be left behind on this one!
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Adding AI Skills Increases Your Career Security
I’m sorry I haven’t been putting out regular weekly episodes lately. I’ve been very busy getting our new course done – the AI Boot Camp for Legal Professionals. It launches on January 20th, and there’s a lot to do before then.
As I’ve been developing this new course, it’s bringing back some memories when back in 2010 I was telling litigation paralegals they needed to get up to speed on eDiscovery.
Some did. 🎉
Some still haven’t. 😞
So I want to start by reminding you about something I’m constantly asking you to do: place your career security above your job security.
For those who are new listeners and don’t know what that means…
Let’s say that you’re a litigation paralegal working in a law firm that barely ever goes to trial. So you’re really good at drafting discovery, doing legal research, managing document productions, etc. But you’ve been out of school for 10 years and you’ve never seen the inside of the courtroom.
Naturally, when you see webinars on topics that you do a lot of work in – the discovery phase – you sign up. You want to be the master of the work that you do. That’s perfectly fine.
If something happens to that job – you lose that job – when you go to start applying for other positions, they all are asking for some trial experience. In the last 10 years, you’ve never even attended a training session on trial prep, let alone had any opportunity to go to trial. You’ve severely handicapped your career security by only focusing on the small area that you were specializing in.
I’ve also talked about this from an eDiscovery prospective. As a litigation paralegal, if you say “well we don’t do eDiscovery at this firm.”
If you’re operating from the career security mindset, then you still go out and learn everything you can about eDiscovery, maybe even try to get your attorney to allow you to do the next small document production electronically. They receive the PST file of emails from the client and ask you to print out all the emails or save them as PDFs that can be marked up. Instead, you tell the attorney that you’ve taken some classes on eDiscovery and you found a tool that can cut down the time it will take to do that project, and you’d like a shot at doing that.
Ultimately, if you don’t ever do that, when that job goes away and you start interviewing for other litigation paralegal positions, you’re going to be reducing your job potential and therefore, severely impacting your career security. I had a guest on the podcast a while back – Michael Quarteraro, the President of ACEDS, who said you’re not really doing litigation if you’re not doing eDiscovery.
Don’t Get Left Behind on This One!
Let’s take AI as the example.
Maybe you work at a law firm that doesn’t allow anyone to use AI yet because the firm management is still working out the kinks and setting policies. And while they do that, there’s a small beta group of people testing its use, but you’re not one of those beta users.
Don’t be that person who idly sits by waiting to be told that it’s time to start learning to use AI. Or worse yet, your firm doesn’t even have any plans to incorporate AI into the practice of law so you don’t see a need to use it at all.
What’s going to happen to your career in 5 years when you have to go find another job and you haven’t taken the time to learn much of anything about AI.
Just like 15-20 years ago, the legal professionals who didn’t embrace the technology that could allow them to more efficiently review 20 GB of records. A few years later, it then becomes 200GB of typical data. Then before you know it, the typical production is 2 Terabytes.
What’s that costing the client compared to a firm who uses the latest eDiscovery tools?
Get AHEAD of this. Get comfortable using AI.
Your attorney doesn’t have the time to learn all of the ins and outs of how it works. You have a huge opportunity here.
One way you can do that is to join me in January when the AI Boot Camp launches. But even if you don’t want to do that – get the training from somewhere. Please.
I really think this is where you’re going to be able to set yourself apart from others. Be the AI expert at your firm. Those who don’t embrace and master the use of AI will be at a competitive disadvantage. Maybe not right away in 2025, but I think we’ll definitely start seeing that competitive disadvantage by 2026 and beyond. Get ready for it now.
AI Boot Camp for Legal Professionals
Master the essential AI skills you need to thrive in today’s legal industry in just 4 weeks – without getting lost in technical jargon! Don’t let another week go by feeling uncertain about AI’s impact on your career. Take the lead and become the firm’s “go-to” AI person.
The Ethics Opinion
Which brings me to what I want to talk to you about today. ABA Formal Opinion 512. This came out in July and it is the ABA’s ethical opinion on using artificial intelligence tools in the practice of law.
If you work for a lawyer, this applies to you, regardless of your title.
The ABA had 4 areas or recommendations on the topic of AI. Areas that it wanted to bring to the attention of attorneys. So I want to bring those topics to your attention.
1️⃣ Technical Competence
This comes from the ABA’s Module Rules 1.1 in 2012 known as the technology amendments.
In it they said that a lawyer has a duty to understand the benefits AND THE RISKS associated with the technology used to deliver legal services.
Back then, it meant things like eDiscovery and trial technology, or online due diligence software tools. Now it means AI tools.
Now you might be thinking – wait a minute – my attorney is one of those ones who say print out those emails so I can read them in print. That’s not what I’m referring to. Well, it kind of is – but here’s the more important point – which applies to you as you support the attorney.
In Formal Opinion 512, the ABA said “Lawyers may ordinarily achieve the requisite level of competency by engaging in self-study, associating with another competent lawyer, or consulting with an individual who has the sufficient expertise in the relevant field.” That means you – the paralegal or legal assistant who supports that attorney!
The opinion went on from there to sat that the lawyers need not become AI experts, they just need to have an understanding of the technologies’ benefits and risks, and consult with others who are proficient in it. Yes, that’s you.
2️⃣ Client Confidentiality
This is a big one, but mostly only if you’re using an AI tool that’s not proprietary to the firm. Most of the larger firms have proprietary, internal AI tools for that reason.
Let’s say you’re working at a smaller firm that doesn’t have any restrictions on using ChatGPT. You jump in there and tell ChatGPT that you need help drafting a motion to dismiss on X issue.
If that’s all you say – then it’s garbage in and garbage out. It doesn’t know the jurisdiction or any other information except why you need a motion to dismiss. So you add in some facts. That’s good. But have you added in too many case-specific facts that could identify the client or enough facts of the case that someone could reasonably find out the identity of the client?
But here’s the bigger issue. Let’s say you’re in a larger firm with proprietary AI tools that are not sharing the information to help train the AI model. Everything is limited to internal firm information and you’re only training the firm’s AI model.
Okay, but what about the “client walls” where a conflict of interest was waived to allow the firm to represent that client?
In addition to that, what about the file clerk who works in a different department and hasn’t had any formal training on confidentiality, especially compared to attorney client privilege. Maybe they read the firm’s policy manual on Day 1, but they’re a couple years in now.
The ABA opinion specifically said “lawyers must evaluate the risk that the information will be disclosed or accessed by others INSIDE the firm who will not adequately protect the information from improper disclosure.”
Another example referenced in the ABA opinion was when one attorney inputs information INTO THE INTERNAL AI TOOL, relating to the representation, their AI tool uses information to learn, then another lawyer at the same firm later receives a response to their prompt and it reveals information in its response that is revealed to that lawyer’s client.
If your firm is not using AI yet, it’s because of complicated situations like this that they need to get a handle on. There are so many moving parts.
3️⃣ Set Internal Policies
I’m not going to go into detail on this one, because it’s more of a management issue. But I can tell you that it’s not just about setting the polices, it’s also communicating the policies internally, and externally to the clients.
They also touched on how this relates to billing, which I thought was interesting and I talked about it briefly during our Billable Hour Boot Camp’s group coaching call this month because the ABA made it pretty clear in that opinion that a lawyer must bill for their actual time, which means if you’re using AI and able to get something done in 15 minutes, that’s what you bill for. You can’t add in time for what it would have taken you if you hadn’t used AI or the cost of the AI tool or other things like that.
4️⃣ Independent Verification
The ABA didn’t have a separate subsection on this topic, but they did write about it throughout the opinion. Independent verification is a given after what we’ve heard in the news about lawyers using AI and getting called out by the court for citing fake cases.
We could have a whole separate episode on hallucinations and why that happens when you’re using AI.
For now, think about independent verification like this: If you delegate a portion of your project to another paralegal and then just turn in that paralegal’s project as your own without verifying that the work was correct, then it’s essentially the same as if you made the error yourself.
When you’re working with AI, you have to independently verify that the work is correct as if you delegated the work to AI.
That’s my take on ABA Formal Opinion 512. I would encourage you to go read it in its entirety as you start using AI tools in your work.
Meet the Author
Ann Pearson is the Founder of the Paralegal Boot Camp, and host of the Paralegals on Fire! Podcast Show, and passionate about promoting the paralegal profession.
Ann spent 20 years working as a paralegal manager and a litigation paralegal before opening the Paralegal Boot Camp in 2010.
Ann’s training programs focus on adding immediate value to a paralegal’s career and bridging the gap between what a paralegal learns in school and what they actually do on the job.
Visit the About Us Page to learn more about why Ann started the Paralegal Boot Camp.
