The legal community around the world is struggling with the emergence of new civilizations such as legal tech and AI lawyers. In some countries, Chat GPT is already being used to provide legal consultation without a lawyer, and even in Korea, some large law firms have reached a stage where they are widely promoting the fact that they use AI.
Humanity has begun to think about how to set limits in business areas through AI. Regardless of field, jobs that humans can handle on their own are beginning to disappear. Experts predict that there will be a decisive surge in AI capabilities in one to two years.
The problem is that AI is having a serious impact on the profession of lawyers, who play the role of protecting basic social values, such as the rule of law. A lawyer is a profession that protects the constitutional rights given to the people and monitors and supervises power. When power shakes the rule of law, lawyers have played the role of protecting the sound rule of law in society based on the Constitution and laws. The mission of lawyers is to defend basic human rights and realize social justice in accordance with the Attorney General's Act.
It is impossible to know whether the AI lawyer presents the optimal conclusion based on proper legal review, and furthermore, it cannot be expected that the AI lawyer will comply with the mission and professional ethics of lawyers stipulated in the Attorney General Act. We cannot rule out the risk that AI will sacrifice the rights of citizens by focusing on the pursuit of profits for private companies. If AI replaces the role of lawyers, the rule of law in our society may be reduced to being ruled by machines.
The problem of providing information that has been manipulated to suit the intentions of the questioner has also been revealed. In the United States, there was a case where a lawyer was fined around June 2023 for submitting fake precedents retrieved through Chat GPT to the court.
In particular, it should be noted that as AI is able to arbitrarily manipulate data and provide answers as shown above, it becomes difficult to verify the truth of the answer. Among the papers published in the American Medical Association's Ophthalmology Journal, there was one written on the premise that the facts claimed by AI were correct. When we asked the AI which of the two surgeries had a better outcome, the AI responded by manipulating some of the surgery result data it had entered. Because the data was so perfect, people did not notice that it was made up of manipulated information.
Currently, when a lawyer provides legal advice, after consulting with the client, the name of the lawyer who reviewed the opinion must be written and stamped on the written opinion, meaning that he or she is responsible for a specific result. This is to clarify the responsibilities and limitations of legal consultation as a lawyer. If questions about legal issues through AI become common and the existing clear indication of responsibility and inspection procedures disappear, our society will spend unnecessary energy covering up fake information created by AI, and the public will be exposed to fake information. You will end up losing your rights because of the information and the results of the AI lawyer's legal review that has been manipulated.
Humanity is facing new challenges. The Korean Bar Association will not only emphasize the negative aspects of the new wave of AI, but will enable our society to move forward on the right path of rule of law and protection of people's rights even in the new wave based on the utility of AI. When lawyers use AI, we are preparing to enact new guidelines on the use of AI so that AI provides accurate information based on correct data and holds lawyers accountable for the results.
Only those who are prepared can create new opportunities to keep pace with the emergence of new civilizations. It is time for everyone to pool their wisdom so that the emergence of AI can increase the work capabilities of individual lawyers tens or hundreds of times, while also serving as a means to protect the rule of law and protect the rights of the people.