Canadian Lawyer

May 2024

The most widely read magazine for Canadian lawyers

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www.canadianlawyermag.com 5 Recently, the increasing threat to court litigation of phony GenAI-created evidence is the risk that commands Grossman's interest. Typically, when a client gives their lawyer a piece of evidence – an audio recording of the client's spouse verbally abusing them for a family law case, for example – there is no requirement for the lawyer to authenticate it. If courts become inundated with GenAI- produced evidence, every trial could require a forensic expert to distinguish the real from the fake, she says, which will drive up litigation costs. "But I'm starting to be concerned that as we move forward, there's going to be more of an onus on lawyers to confirm that evidence given by their own client is likely to be correct, accurate, or true," says Grossman. "That's very challenging." Grossman expects that markers will be attached to identify AI-generated content, enabling the determination of when and where the content originated. She says "It's a buyer beware sort of atmosphere right now" Maura Grossman, University of Waterloo's School of Computer Science and Osgoode Hall Law School organizations such as the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) are working to create such standards. "We are on the brink of a massive change and disruption in our industry," says Hounsell. In response to the concern that AI automation will replace lawyers, he says people often make the mistake of conflating tasks with jobs. "The fact that AI is going to eat up specific legal tasks does not necessarily mean that it's going to eat up any legal jobs if people are adequately upskilled and we begin to reimagine how to move the legal industry up the value chain," says Hounsell. "We must disaggregate these legal tasks to let AI do what it's good at and let people do what they're good at." Editor's Note: The lawyers quoted in this article are scheduled to appear at Canadian Lawyer's LegalTech Summit Canada on June 12 in Toronto. Visit canadianlawyerevents.com/legal-tech for more details. GENAI'S SEISMIC SHIFTS 90% said GenAI investment to increase over next 5 years 53% of law firms purchased GenAI tools 45% are using GenAI for legal work 47% of law firm leaders exploring new business possible due to GenAI 47% of law firm leaders expect cost reduction Source: LexisNexis survey of US law firms, corporate legal departments

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