Keep your finger on the legal world's pulse

Last week, Dechert annonced its decision to reduce its global workforce by 5%, saying that it was "aligning staffing with levels of demand". The cuts impacted 55 attorneys and 43 business professionals. The news came just days after fellow U.S. powerhouse Cravath Swaine & Moore announced that it too was cutting associates in London, confined to its U.S. finance practice. Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft last month cut as many as 15 associates and a further 30 business professionals across its many offices, as Kirkland & Ellis too released several associates following mid-year performance reviews. An associate at a U.S. firms in London Law.com spoke to said: "You always wake up feeling 'I could be could be next'". Others pointed out that quiet associate recruitment market is contributing to the anxiety. They acknowledged that good communication from partners can be helpful when facing fear and anxiety over the possibility of losing one’s job as they will communicate what is happening.

 

Law

Legal professionals’ perspectives on generative AI runs the gamut from concerns about threats to jobs and how often the technology “hallucinates” to excitement to apply it to legal work. These are among the findings of the ChatGPT & Generative AI within Law Firms report, released by Thomson Reuters. Based on surveys conducted of law firms in the U.S., U.K., and Canada, the report found that legal professionals are aware of ChatGPT and generative AI, yet are uncertain about applying the technology. The report has earned attention on both sides of the pond. Blogger Steve Embry wasn’t surprised by the report finding that only 51% said ChatGPT and generative AI should be applied to legal work. “If a recent Thomson Reuters Report is any indication, lawyers and law firms plan to approach generative AI like they do most technology", Embry said in summary of the report in TechLaw Crossroads. Client confidentiality was another area that gave report respondents pause, as Global Legal Post Editor Victoria Basham noted.

 

Thomson Reuters

Contract lifecycle management (CLM) provider Icertis has announced a generative AI product called ExploreAI, a contract intelligence tool that leverages OpenAI’s generative AI models as well as Icertis’s own proprietary AI. Via a chat interface, ExploreAI allows users to extract insights from their contract data, summarize and translate contracts into different languages, and monitor contracts for certain obligations, among other tasks. Icertis is the latest legal tech provider in the CLM or contract review and intelligence space to release a generative AI offering. On Tuesday, U.K.-based Luminance launched a generative AI chatbot called “Ask Lumi” that allows its corporate customers to query their contracts in Microsoft Word. In April, CLM provider Ironclad also announced an AI Assist Feature that uses OpenAI’s GPT-4 model to suggest redlines, while in March, ContractPodAi launched a GPT-4-powered legal services hub called Leah. Meanwhile, Wilson Sonsini-backed CLM provider Lexion was one of the first to leverage OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 model when it launched AI Contract Assist, an addition to its Microsoft Word plugin that allows users to draft, negotiate and summarize contract terms.

 

Law.com

The Employment Law Center of Maryland has recently adopted an AI tool CoCounsel that acts as a legal assistant. Casetext, the legal AI company that developed CoCounsel, says it can do “document review, legal research memos, deposition preparation, and contract analysis in minutes.” The nonprofit law firm’s managing attorney Joseph Gibson said the firm was amazed by CoCounsel’s capabilities. Renée Hutchins, the dean of the University of Maryland Francis King Carey Law School, acknowledged the tool would help make legal work more efficient, but said that it also eliminates the human element of lawyering. She is also worried about the future generation of attorneys who won’t do routine tasks that are handed over to AI as going through documents is how budding lawyers become familiar with what may be in important documents and identify patterns. Furthermore, Hutchins raised other concerns, like giving AI confidential information, trusting the AI tool too much and getting wrong information.

 

U.S. News

A committee of lawmakers in the European Parliament has approved the EU’s AI Act, making it closer to becoming law. The European AI Act takes a risk-based approach to regulating artificial intelligence and it is the first law for AI systems in the West. China has already developed draft rules designed to manage how companies develop generative AI products like ChatGPT. The EU’s AI Act specifies requirements for developers of “foundation models” such as ChatGPT, including provisions to ensure that their training data does not violate copyright law. Dessi Savova, head of continental Europe for the tech group at law firm Clifford Chance, said that the EU rules would set a “global standard” for AI regulation. However, he added that other jurisdictions including China, the U.S. and U.K. are quickly developing their own responses.

 

CNBC

The issue of photo manipulation on social media has long been a concern for many, but with the technology now increasingly extending to videos, it raises the question of whether authorities intervene. Norway introduced a law in 2021 that requires social media media advertisers and influencers to indicate whether a photograph has been retouched. France is now going one stage further, and is in the process of demanding the same requirement, but for both photos and videos. Meanwhile, the UK is now looking at the same issue, as the government's Online Safety Bill continues to make its way through Parliament.

 

BBC News

Reuters speaks with Daniel Motaung, who is suing Facebook’s owner Meta over the working conditions he faced as a moderator for the platform. He has helped set up the first African union for content moderators whose daily job involves reviewing graphic content so social media users are spared from seeing it. “The entire (social media) business model is actually dependent on content moderation . . . It’s high time they recognise that and treat us with the respect we deserve,” he said following the union’s launch during a meeting of Facebook, TikTok and ChatGPT moderators in Nairobi.

 

Reuters

Morgan Lewis has decided to require its attorneys to physically attend the office on three set office days each week, after initially requiring only one or two office days per week. A source says that the firm originally “promised flexibility,” and seems upset that Morgan Lewis is now requiring that attorneys “adjust their schedules” to meet the demands of working from the office.

 

Above The Law

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan on Thursday rejected an effort to disqualify WilmerHale, the law firm defending JPMorgan Chase & Co against a lawsuit by women who claim they were abused by Jeffrey Epstein and that the bank aided in the late financier's sex trafficking. The judge said the firm did not have a conflict of interest because it once represented an anti-sex trafficking group that supported Courtney Wild, one of Epstein's accusers. Rakoff also found no proof Wild gave WilmerHale confidential information that was material to the JPMorgan case. The disqualification request had been made by Brad Edwards, who represents Epstein accusers in the proposed class action against JPMorgan. 

 

Reuters

Judge Robert Payne, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, has struck down federal laws that block the sale of handguns to buyers under the age of 21, ruling they violate constitutional rights to possess firearms. The ruling, which the Justice Department is expected to challenge, will not take effect until judge Payne issues his final order in the coming weeks. The ruling would not affect the 19 states that have their own laws barring handgun sales to anyone younger than 21.

 

Reuters