If it works, will we trust AI as a legal thinker?

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5072765

Generative AI and the Future of Legal Scholarship

Since ChatGPT's release in November 2022, legal scholars have grappled with generative AI's implications for the law, lawyers, and legal education. Articles have examined the technology's potential to transform the delivery of legal services, explored the attendant legal ethics concerns, identified legal and regulatory issues arising from generative AI’s widespread use, and discussed the impact of the technology on teaching and learning in law school.

By late 2024, generative AI has become so sophisticated that legal scholars now need to consider a new set of issues that relate to a core feature of the law professor's work: the production of legal scholarship itself.

To demonstrate the growing ability of generative AI to yield new insights and draft sophisticated scholarly text, the rest of this piece contains a new theory of legal scholarship drafted exclusively by ChatGPT. In other words, the article simultaneously articulates the way in which legal scholarship will change due to AI and uses the technology itself to demonstrate the point.

The entire piece, except for the epilogue, was created by ChatGPT (OpenAI o1) in December 2024. The full transcript of the prompts and outputs is available here, https://chatgpt.com/share/676cc449-af50-8002-9145-efbfdf8ebb02, but every word of the article was drafted by generative AI. Moreover, there was no effort to generate multiple responses and then publish the best ones, though ChatGPT had to be prompted in one instance to rewrite a section in narrative form rather than as an outline.

The methodology for generating the piece was intentionally simple and started with the following prompt:

"Develop a novel conception of the future of legal scholarship that rivals some of the leading conceptions of legal scholarship. The new conception should integrate developments in generative AI and explain how scholars might use it. It should end with a series of questions that legal scholars and law schools will need to address in light of this new conception."

After ChatGPT provided an extensive overview of its response, it was asked to generate each section of the piece using text “suitable for submission to a highly selective law review.” The first such prompt asked only for a draft of the introduction. The introduction identified four parts to the article, so ChatGPT was then asked to draft Parts I, II, III and IV in separate prompts until the entire piece was completed. Because of output limits that restrict how much content can be generated in response to a single prompt, each section of the article is relatively brief. A much more thorough version of the article could have been generated if ChatGPT had been prompted to create each sub-part of the article separately rather prompting it to produce entire parts all at once.

The epilogue offers my own reflections on the resulting draft, which (in my view) demonstrates the creativity and linguistic sophistication of a competent legal scholar. Of course, as with any competent piece of scholarship, the article has gaps and flaws. In other words, it is far from perfect. But then again, very few pieces of legal scholarship are otherwise. Rather than focusing on these flaws, scholars should consider the profound implications of these new tools for the scholarly enterprise. I discuss some of those implications in the epilogue, but apropos of the theme of the piece, generative AI has some useful ideas for us to consider in this regard. 

AI is coming. Are we ready?

https://researchportal.vub.be/en/publications/specific-laws-governing-use-of-ai-in-criminal-procedure-and-atten

Specific Laws Governing Use of Ai in Criminal Procedure and Attentive Criminal Judges: American Songbook for Global Listeners

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used in the criminal justice system to support human decision-making at various stages of the proceedings. Despite heavy criticism on AI’s opacity, complexity, non-contestability or unfair discrimination, such AI-implementations are often favoured, in light of alleged accuracy, effectiveness or efficiency in the overall decision-making process. After briefly recalling some key functions of AI in criminal procedures, the paper addresses whether and the degree to which AI-uses can comply with the United States (US) Federal Rules of Evidence and the constitutional rights to due process, equal protection and privacy. Recent case law (e.g., Puloka and Arteaga) and legal initiatives, such as the 2024 AI Policy and California’s 2024 Rules of Court, are also discussed. This paper ends with five important take-homes for global readers and regulators intending to introduce AI into their jurisdictions.

The rules, they keep a changing…

https://databreaches.net/2025/01/04/new-york-modifies-data-breach-law-heading-into-2025/

New York Modifies Data Breach Law Heading Into 2025

Liisa M. Thomas and Kathryn Smith of Sheppard Mullin write:

As 2024 came to a close, New York Gov. Hochul signed two bills (A8872A and S2376B) amending New York’s data breach law. The modifications change both what constitutes personal information under the law, as well as modifying notification timing. The notice modification is now in effect; the change to the definition of personal information does not take effect until March 21, 2025.

As amended, companies will now have 30 days from discovery of a breach to notify impacted individuals. Previously, the law required notice to individuals “in the most expedient time possible and without reasonable delay.”

There is still an exception to the deadline for the legitimate needs of law enforcement.

The regulator to notify has also changed. Previously, businesses needed to provide notice to the NY Attorney General, the Department of State, and the Division of State Police. A fourth group has been added. Now notice must also be sent to the New York Department of Financial Services. Notification to each agency can be done via form on the New York AG website.

Read more at The National Law Review.

S2376B/A4737B  also strengthens the protections for medical data and health insurance data by adding them to the definition of personal information in identity theft:

Section 1. Subdivision 2 of section 190.77 of the penal law is amended by adding two new paragraphs d and e to read as follows:

d. “medical information” means any information regarding an individual’s medical history, mental or physical condition, or medical treatment or diagnosis by a health care professional.

e. “health insurance information” means an individual’s health insurance policy number or subscriber identification number, any unique identifier used by a health insurer to identify the individual or any information in an individual’s application and claims history, including, but not limited to, appeals history.