5 Things Lawyers Need to Know About the ABA Opinion on Generative AI

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‍DraftWise General Counsel, Tony Mauriello, and John Park, Senior Business Development Executive and attorney, leverage their legal expertise to share how DraftWise fits into the recent ABA Opinion on Gen AI – and what this means for lawyers leveraging Gen AI technology. 

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Last week, the American Bar Association (ABA) published Formal Opinion 512 - an ethics opinion providing guidance on how lawyers should consider using generative AI (“GAI”) tools to supplement their practice.

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The first wave of generative AI popularity was met with an influx of legal vendors white-labeling Chat-GPT’s basic capabilities and promoting access to unstructured public data as a means of improving the contract drafting experience. However, public data pulled from random sources not only serves little purpose for a lawyer, it imposes considerable ethical considerations. 

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In light of Formal Opinion 512, here is what lawyers need to know about the future of AI technology.

Lawyers don’t need to become Generative AI experts.

“Lawyers must have a reasonable understanding of the capabilities and limitations of the specific GAI technology that the lawyer might use. This means that lawyers should either acquire a reasonable understanding of the benefits and risks of the GAI tools that they employ in their practices or draw on the expertise of others who can provide guidance about the relevant GAI tool’s capabilities and limitations.”

With a team made up of one-fifth lawyers, DraftWise is uniquely positioned to understand the needs and pain points of attorneys. Our legal and engineering teams collaborate daily to develop and refine our products, with the shared goal of empowering our users to spend more time analyzing client issues and less time deep in the weeds of contract drafting.

The DraftWise platform provides a simple workflow that delineates where drafting language is sourced from and why it is included as a suggestion. This allows lawyers to integrate Generative AItools into their work without needing to learn how to become a prompt engineer or an AI-expert.

Here’s an example of our generative AI platform in action: An attorney who represents a large private equity client weekly receives ten NDAs to negotiate. With DraftWise, the attorney can take a first cut at redlining an NDA by comparing it to other NDAs that were successfully negotiated for the client in the past. Instead of this first draft taking hours to redline, the attorney’s first draft now takes a fraction of the time, and the attorney can focus on higher-level negotiation work for the client. 

Lawyers must recognize inherent risks: Generative AI tools are only as good as their data & infrastructure.

“If the quality, breadth, and sources of the underlying data on which a GAI tool is trained are limited or outdated or reflect biased content, the tool might produce unreliable, incomplete, or discriminatory results.”

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DraftWise’s platform was fundamentally built upon the highest quality of data application and infrastructure. The importance of underlying data is a core pillar of DraftWise’s founding team. Previously working as AI-focused engineers at Palantir, DraftWise co-founders, James Ding and Emre Ozen, translated their experience in solution-driven data excellence into building to solve for the most felt pain points in drafting contracts. 

At DraftWise, we recognize that transactional law is precedent-driven. Our platform is grounded in a law firm’s real work. This approach has differentiated us in the market and has provided our customers with solutions that are custom fit to their needs. 

Generalized solutions in today’s legal technology market source language from public tools (like Chat-GPT) that provide suggestions that lack understanding of client-specific needs and fail to account for firm-specific precedent. 

Our platform brings all of the data concerning a firm’s deals under the same roof, making it easily accessible for strategic application. This helps ensure a high level of fidelity regarding the accuracy and reliability of DraftWise’s results and output while mitigating the risk of unreliable, incomplete, or poor content.

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Generative AI does not abdicate a lawyer’s responsibilities. Lawyers still must exercise professional judgment. 

“Lawyers may not leave it to GAI tools alone to offer legal advice to clients, negotiate clients’ claims, or perform other functions that require a lawyer’s personal judgment or participation.”

DraftWise firmly believes professional discernment should remain in the hands of the lawyer.  Although our Generative AI tools were designed to streamline the practice of law for corporate attorneys, it remains imperative that attorneys fulfill their ethical obligations by personally verifying that any work product generated by Large Language Models aligns with the factual context of a client’s requirements before it is delivered. 

Our goal is to enable lawyers to perform legal work more efficiently and accurately, increasing the overall quality of legal services to clients. By making total deal history more accessible to attorneys at the time of drafting, we allow them to exercise their best judgment through increased data visibility. 

As exemplified by our latest AI capabilities, the DraftWise platform enables lawyers to leverage Generative AI as a powerful tool to exercise their legal acumen and professional judgment on behalf of clients.  

Managerial lawyers must establish clear policies regarding the use of Generative AI. 

‍“Supervisory lawyers must make reasonable efforts to ensure that the firm’s lawyers and nonlawyers comply with their professional obligations when using GAI tools.”

DraftWise works closely both with knowledge management and IT teams to establish clear guidelines and best practices. 

Specifically with the knowledge management team, we conduct in-depth training sessions and implement processes to not only educate and empower our users but also ensure compliance with any obligations pertaining to Generative AI tools. Alongside the firm's IT team, priority and focus is placed on secure data handling, privacy, confidentiality, and overall ethical use of Generative AI. 

Additionally, the DraftWise platform prioritizes user-understanding of what information is surfaced, from where it’s surfaced, and why it’s surfaced. This level of data transparency allows attorneys to ensure compliance with company and professional obligations. 

We are committed to being a trusted partner so that our customers never have to question the ethical considerations of product usage in their work.

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Generative AI is transforming client expectations.

“As GAI tools continue to develop and become more widely available, it is conceivable that lawyers will eventually have to use them to competently complete certain tasks for clients.”

Lawyers should prioritize education on the Generative AI tools relevant to their work to make an informed decision whether to leverage the capabilities of AI or to conduct their work by other means.

As Generative AI tools become more ingrained in legal workflows, it’s essential that lawyers participate in ongoing education in this area to become knowledgeable researchers, buyers, and users who understand the inherent benefits as well as the risks.

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Education is Key: Your Partner in Navigating the Evolution of Generative AI

At DraftWise, we are committed to being a trusted partner to the best attorneys in the world. Our customers can feel confident about the ethical considerations of our platform in their work because it is fundamentally built upon the highest quality of data application and infrastructure. We have approached our product roadmap, data handling, and customer education with the utmost attention to the ethical considerations and obligations of lawyers to their clients and the practice of law. 

Connect with our team to learn more about how DraftWise was purpose-built to solve everyday contracting pain points, while upholding the highest standards of data security and ethics: Talk to the team.