Legal

Irish law firms examine opportunities and risks of generative AI

Legal services companies are considering how the technology could change business for clients, as well as its potential impact on their own profession

Steven Schwartz, a New York-based lawyer, faced a grilling by a judge after using ChatGPT to help with a legal brief. Picture: Steven Hirsch

Since ChatGPT launched last year, there has been increasing speculation about how large language models (LLMs) are going to change the face of the legal services industry.

Questions have included whether it could spell the end of the so-called billable hour, what it means for staffing numbers, and how private client information can be protected.

The fear of something as new as generative artificial intelligence (which allows people to create content such as text and ...