AI Needs to Get Cheaper, Not Smarter
Sign of the times.
Photographer: Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg
Nearly 50 million Americans go to court each year without a lawyer. Low-income Americans are especially vulnerable, with most saying they “do not get any or enough legal help” for their major civil legal problems. The US ranks 107th out of 142 countries on the accessibility and affordability of civil justice, according to the World Justice Project, and 47th out of 47 high-income countries.
These numbers should be shocking. They aren’t, mostly because they’ve been roughly this bad for decades. Meanwhile, for the last several years the AI industry has been having its own conversation about lawyers: Can ChatGPT pass the bar exam? Can AI draft a contract as well as a junior associate? Can it replace a $1,000-an-hour partner at a white-shoe firm?