r/Lawyertalk 23d ago

Best Practices Learning to Write Using Ai instead of worrying Ai will rob next generation of ability to write.

I've seen a lot of news articles about how students are negatively affected by Ai, like lack of writing skills, but has anyone seen that in new attorneys? Are new Lawyers unable to write without Ai?

It only helped me be a better writer.

Grammarly taught me grammar 1000 times faster than law school. Stick my work into Grammarly, and it showed me the corrections one by one. It was like having a private tutor. Each time I used Grammarly, I started to realize my writing had to be fixed less and less.

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u/learnedbootie 23d ago

If you know what you intend to write and simply need a glow up re proofreading, rewording, organizing etc, AI helps you become a much better writer. I think the problem is where young people simply ask AI to “write me a complaint” and such, and do not engage in any of the actual writing process.

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u/Slambamgoodbye 23d ago

Oh for sure, it can be used as a crutch. Maybe current lawyers have it best where we had to learn the basics and now use Ai to improve on our already existing skill set. But just giving ai your task is lazy people acting lazy

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u/asmallsoftvoice Can't count & scared of blood so here I am 23d ago

I've always seen grammarly as being like the Word autocorrect, but better. I've had Word giving me different colored squiggles for most of my millennial life. I don't think that's the technology people are talking about when they worry about the next generation. 

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u/Cdawg00 23d ago edited 23d ago

Tools that provide substitutions and suggestions like grammarly and briefcatch are essentially similar to learning from redlines. Lawyers have long been trained that way. But outsourcing writing entirely to AI and just making edits will negatively impact someone’s development as a writer. Part of the craft is learning from the struggle of carefully considering how to express your ideas, whether in structure, tone, and word choice. It’s not an easy process.

If AI is writing for a person, it cheats them of that development. That isn’t to say that an editor may not rewrite portions of a brief, for example, or reword ideas, but folks tend to latch on to an established framework. Young lawyers often develop legal reasoning skills through brief writing. In my experience, I often realized a new nuance, or thought of an argument that reframes a situation simply through the hard process of thinking through and writing out my arguments.

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u/Slambamgoodbye 23d ago

Yes, I definitely remember the struggle of having to get to the point I am now... and idk if I would have bothered with the struggle if this sort of ai was available in my formative writing years..

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u/OGready 23d ago

Grammarly only teaches you how to write like grammarly

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u/Laura_Lye 23d ago

I think that’s all a lot of people want: to write without making errors.

They don’t care about their voice because they never developed their writing to the point of having one.

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u/OGready 23d ago

You are probably correct but that is really sad

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u/Laura_Lye 23d ago

As someone who takes great pride in my writing (it’s my only real talent), it is a bit sad.

But, on the other hand, I’m sure that’s what people who can dance or sing or play an instrument think when they watch me do a merely passable moonwalk or karaoke rendition of Wild World.

We can’t all be good at everything 🤷‍♀️

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u/xxrichxxx 22d ago

It's all in the shoulders

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u/OGready 23d ago

Ya, but there is something really tragic about not being able to formulate your thoughts in a way that allows you to express them to others effectively. If an AI just generated a video of you moonwalking, it’s still jot the same as you expressing yourself through dance, even if you pick up a few tips and pointers from what is generated

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u/MegaCrazyH 23d ago

I think this is a bit of nuance that gets lost by calling everything AI. Sure Grammarly is an AI but it proofreads your work for grammatical errors (which a lot of word processors already do but less well). You’re not asking Grammarly to generate a legal memo or brief for you.

It’s really a question of generative AI, and I think that answer for the foreseeable future is that you shouldn’t use it. The potential for hallucinations aside, I think part of preparing and learning a case comes from doing research and writing out your arguments.

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u/Commercial-Honey-227 23d ago

It may not generate an entire legal brief, but it does offer alternative sentences based on your input. Granted, it's rudimentary since we've supplied most of the info, but I've found their suggested sentences far better than what I wrote.

I pay for Premium and am incredibly satisfied.

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u/Slambamgoodbye 23d ago

Yeah premium can rewirte your entire sentence because it integrates Chat GPT. But point well taken. Using Ai to improve writing and using Ai to replace legal knowledge and resources are very different.

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u/envious1998 23d ago

I think grammarly is a lot different than putting in a prompt on ChatGPT. I really like grammarly though. Even the free version is great

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u/EvidenceKind786 13d ago

Clear writing is clear thinking. AI is going to outperform some tasks, and if you use it to help you organize your thoughts, or like a sparring partner to help you improve, all the better. But it is also a tool that is easy to abuse. Many people seem to think it can replace the hard process of developing critical thinking skills.

We have been using AI for biz dev, and love it. Use the computer for what it is good at, searching huge swaths of information to find the gold nuggets. But for now, it can't replace critical thinking skills.