David B. Wilkins on AI in the Legal Profession

CLP faculty director David B. Wilkins spoke with Harvard Law Today on how AI will impact the future of the legal profession. Speaking about access to generative AI and access to justice, he said:

If the issue is access to basic legal information, that is going to be more and more accessible through technology to more and more people. The problem is that access to basic legal information is just one step in the process of legal services. It is already possible to have an AI that fills out basic legal forms—think LegalZoom. It’s clear that the bar is not going to be able to stop this sort of access. More sophisticated, interactive analysis with an AI lawyer? That may now be on the horizon — and more controversial. One of the key challenges in all of this is going to be that access to the kinds of legal tools that AI can provide are not going to be equally available. When I talk to lawyers in the legal services community, they see the potential for AI to help their clients, but they worry that the most sophisticated tools will be in the hands of the most sophisticated, already well-resourced parties who will be able to leverage that technology to gain even further advantage.