A survey by Robin AI of 4,152 people across the US and UK found that only 30% at present would trust a legal AI tool ‘to represent them on its own’. Meanwhile, only 10% said legal services are ‘truly accessible to everyone’, and just 23% believe good quality legal services are available to the average person.
Also, respondents said they would need a 57% discount to choose a legal AI system over a human lawyer. I.e. the general public doesn’t yet really value the output – or expect to value the output – of legal AI systems. Yet, some people would still use that approach out of desperation in order to find an affordable legal provider. Although, the majority would prefer not to, if possible, for now.
In short, we have a dilemma. Most people don’t really believe lawyers can help unless they’re willing to spend a lot of money, but they don’t really trust AI to do high-value things like give legal advice on its own either. So, most people are caught between the expensive legal devil and the deep LLM sea, as one might say.
And perhaps that negative view of AI is based on using ChatGPT, or perhaps just an instinctive response after interacting online with chatbots and waiting on the phone with automated customer service lines.
The vast majority preferred either a traditional lawyer (69%) or a lawyer using AI as a support tool (27%). That said, there was more nuance when it came to what areas people trusted AI to handle that were perhaps outside what one might strictly call ‘advice’.
‘When asked what legal tasks they would feel comfortable outsourcing to AI, many were open to using it for administrative issues:
• Reviewing a rental agreement – 49%
• Writing a will – 47%
• Challenging a parking ticket – 46%
But support dropped sharply for more emotional or legally complex matters:
• Divorce – 17%
• Redundancy disputes – 17%
• Criminal defence – 11%’
Richard Robinson, CEO and Founder of Robin AI, said: ‘The legal industry needs serious reform. People want faster, cheaper legal help, but not at the expense of human judgment. We’re doubling down on building AI to work alongside lawyers, not instead of them, as a result of this survey.’
Artificial Lawyer also asked CTO Tramale Turner some additional questions about all of this:
If AI were more accurate would this change the picture?
‘Maybe, but it’s also about whether you’re using the right tool, and have been trained to use it well. I think the real lesson here is that legal AI companies have a lot more educating to do.’
If people want AI services to be cheaper, but Bar rules let only lawyers give advice, what can we do?
‘People are already getting legal advice from AI tools – that train left the station a long time ago.
At Robin we offer value to clients through managed services. That’s where qualified legal professionals use our technology to solve a given legal problem, and where our clear advice to clients is to have qualified lawyers verify the work. It’s compliant with any local legal rules, and saves our clients a lot of money.’
Will Robin do more work with Small Law?
‘We’re very open to it. We’re glad we can help level the playing field between different sized firms, and are seeing great uptake of Robin through our partnership with Dye & Durham.’
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So, what have we learned here?
To some degree this is a reinforcement of what we have seen before: that aside from really essential needs, e.g. divorce, probate, moving house, most people tend to shy away from the legal world because of its costs.
When it comes to AI, naturally most people won’t have access to legal tech tools and will at best have used something like ChatGPT. Based on previous experiences with automated ‘help’ systems (AKA companies fobbing the public off with low-cost automated voice systems and rubbish retail website chatbots), people are not too impressed with what they assume is possible in the legal world with technology.
Of course, there are more and more small law firms using AI and other tech. There are also AI-based sites such as Contend, that provides legal advice that is very carefully developed. But, it’s likely that 1) most small firms are not dropping their prices even if now they are more efficient because of AI, and 2) many people have not seen Contend, or if in US, cannot access it because of Bar rules.
As noted, most of humanity are – as ever – trapped between two extremes, and end up only using lawyers when there really is absolutely no other choice and even then they do so with reticence.
Big Law clearly is not in that market space, so what that means to such firms is unclear. Fortune 500 clients have no qualms about spending millions of $$$ on legal help, in fact, sometimes it feels like they ‘enjoy’ spending shareholder capital on $5,000 an hour lawyers.
And this is perhaps another sign of the two extremes: the excesses of Big Law and the reality for most of the Western world’s population.
For example, the UK median average salary is about £37,000 and many people across most age groups before retirement have less than £1,000 in savings at any time. (Note: these averages are skewed heavily upwards by a small number of people having very high salaries and large savings. The reality for many is actually far lower.)
The hope is that 1) AI systems can improve to the point where people without resources can depend on them, and 2) that the efficiency gains from AI that smaller firms achieve are eventually passed through to the general public leading to much lower prices – although AL is not holding its breath for that one…..
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You can find more about contract review specialists Robin AI here.