ChatGPT is the hottest new artificial intelligence (“AI”) chatbot on the ever-expanding frontier of AI applications, and it’s easy to figure out why. ChatGPT can do a lot of things, including having a conversation, writing social media posts and emails, writing a term paper, composing music, and designing logos, for example. From a legal perspective, ChatGPT can draft contracts, agreements, clauses, and more. Because of these capabilities, it’s worth exploring whether using the chatbot to draft legal documents is the smart thing to do.
What is ChatGPT exactly? ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool using artificial intelligence technology that allows a user to have human-like conversations and much more with the chatbot. It is trained to assist with a variety of tasks by using deep learning techniques to generate human-like responses to text prompts in a conversational manner. Specifically, the chatbot can answer questions, summarize long documents, generate creative writing, and perform other language tasks.
However, as an AI language model, ChatGPT has many limitations in terms of providing legal advice and drafting legal documents and contracts. Here are 20 very good reasons why a person should not rely on ChatGPT to draft legal documents, contracts, and agreements:
- Lack of Legal Expertise: ChatGPT is not a licensed lawyer and lacks the legal education, training, and expertise required to draft legal documents.
- Legal Liability: Relying on ChatGPT for legal document drafting may result in errors, omissions, and inconsistencies that could create legal liability for the user.
- Inability to Assess Legal Risk and Strategy: ChatGPT does not have the ability to evaluate the legal risks and strategy associated with a particular circumstance, transaction, or business deal.
- Limited Understanding of Local Laws: ChatGPT is probably not familiar with the nuances of local laws and regulations, which vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
- Unreliability: ChatGPT may not always be available, and its responses may be inconsistent, making it difficult to rely on it for important legal documents.
- Inability to Incorporate User-Specific Information: When drafting legal documents, ChatGPT may not be able to take into account specific details about a user's particular circumstance, business, or transaction.
- Lack of Personalized Advice: ChatGPT is not capable of providing personalized legal advice or guidance.
- Lack of Communication: ChatGPT cannot engage in two-way communication, which is essential to ensure that all parties to a legal document fully understand the terms and implications of the agreement.
- Inadequate Security: The use of ChatGPT for drafting legal documents may raise security concerns, particularly if the drafted document contains sensitive information that could be vulnerable to unwanted disclosure, hacking, or other cyber threats.
- No Human Review: ChatGPT's responses may not be reviewed by a human legal professional, which increases the risk of errors and inconsistencies.
- Limited Document Types: ChatGPT may not be able to draft all types of legal documents, such as specialized contracts or agreements.
- Inability to Address Unforeseen Issues: ChatGPT cannot address unforeseen issues that arise during the drafting process, which can result in incomplete or inadequate legal documents or worse.
- Limited Interpretation Skills: ChatGPT may not be able to interpret legal language and terminology accurately, which could lead to incorrect or ambiguous legal documents.
- No Accountability: ChatGPT does not assume any legal accountability for the accuracy or completeness of the legal documents it generates.
- No Ability to Attend Court: ChatGPT cannot appear in court on behalf of a user to argue the terms of a legal document or provide legal representation.
- Lack of Understanding of Context: ChatGPT may not be able to understand the context of a particular circumstance, transaction, or business deal, which can lead to incomplete or inadequate legal documents.
- No Empathy: ChatGPT lacks the ability to empathize with a user's situation or concerns, which is an important aspect of legal advice and guidance.
- No Familiarity with Industry Standards and Procedures: ChatGPT may not be familiar with industry-specific legal standards, practices, and procedures, which can result in inappropriate, incomplete, or inadequate legal documents.
- Limited Scope: ChatGPT's responses are limited by the available training data and information in its database, which may not reflect the most up-to-date legal developments or be comprehensive enough for drafting complex legal documents.
- Risk of Misinterpretation: ChatGPT's responses may be misinterpreted by a user, resulting in inaccurate or incomplete legal documents.
With these numerous limitations, it should be very easy to see why a user should not use or rely upon ChatGPT to draft legal documents, contracts, and agreements. There’s simply too much risk that what the chatbot writes will be incomplete, inaccurate, inappropriate, incorrect, ambiguous, or inconsistent. This is not an acceptable risk by any means.
Instead, it is infinitely wiser to rely on legal documents, contracts, and agreements prepared by a licensed attorney. But who can afford to pay a lawyer upwards of $500 per hour to draft a particular legal document? For most of us, that’s a big, fat “no.” That’s why I created Plug-n-Play Legal Templates™ and forms specifically for designers, creatives, and creative entrepreneurs. I personally drafted all of the legal templates and contracts on my website and they have been independently peer-reviewed by other lawyers. I put my 25+ years of legal experience to work for you so that there’s no need to rely on a risky chatbot to draft your important legal documents.