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4 www.canadianlawyermag.com UPFRONT NEWS ANALYSIS THE LEGAL profession is not known for racing to the vanguard of technological innovation, especially when the technology – such as predictive tools that can research and write faster than any lawyer – is seen by some as a sign of their future obsolescence. In a report earlier this year, Goldman Sachs predicted that generative AI could automate 44 percent of legal tasks in the US. But as the saying, quickly becoming a research. While some of these tools quickly accomplish tasks that would formerly have gone to an articling student, Gluckstein says the technology has not compelled him to shed employees. It has allowed those employees to focus on other tasks and move timelines up. "My intention was to use the technology to essentially make us more productive," he says. "Instead of wasting time with the Steven Schwartz, a lawyer in New York City, recently used ChatGPT for legal research and cited several cases the AI had simply made up in a legal brief. Schwartz was representing an airline passenger who had been struck on the knee with a serving cart during a flight. The airline said the limitations period had expired and the court should dismiss the case. Schwartz returned with six cases supporting the position that the plaintiff had filed the lawsuit on time. The defendant could not find them, and the judge concluded they were "bogus." Hallucinations are one risk posed by generative AI. Others include lack of nuance and privacy, says Gary Sangha, founder of the legal tech companies Intelligize and LexCheck. As for the hallucinations, "the whole point of these chatbots is they're designed to keep "My intention was to use the technology to essentially make us more productive" Charles Gluckstein, Gluckstein Lawyers Generative AI in law New artificial intelligence tools are changing the legal profession and, with proper guardrails, mean lawyers could do more for clients in less time for less money, writes Aidan Macnab building blocks of an analysis of a project, we can now get to more projects, more often, and get that analysis and those answers done much more quickly. "We should be turning over the cases more quickly, getting our clients answers more responsibly, and able to handle more volume of projects through the use of technology, so one person eventually will be handling double what they could handle before, in terms of their decision-making power." It is important, of course, how this technology is used. cliché, goes: AI will not replace lawyers; lawyers who use AI will replace lawyers who do not. "At some point, it's going to be irresponsible not to use it," says Scott Stevenson, co-founder of Spellbook. His software uses generative AI to help lawyers draft and review documents. Charles Gluckstein runs a prominent personal injury law firm in Toronto, and he says he uses generative AI in three ways: to summarize medical records, automate project management, and perform legal