All lawyers, including family lawyers, have to be aware of the continuing developments associated with technology and the law. Law has a reputation for being stuck in the past or slow to move, and while these perceived flaws in many cases can be a virtue, being aware of and responding to how technology develops is a critical skill for lawyers.
That is to say, AI, chatbots, generative AI and the like are an undeniable part of the landscape of the world in 2026, and ignoring them will be at a lawyer’s peril. Even if there is no adoption of the technology by your lawyer, people giving instructions to lawyers are using the technology to perform what would only recently have been considered marvels:
- Easy first-pass translation from a huge variety of languages
- Converting instructions into more confident-sounding language
- Assembling and mapping chronologies for cases with the click of a button
- Rewriting text to sound more forceful, more conciliatory or adopt any tone you think
But both clients and lawyers have to be aware of some dangers:
- Lawyers have strict professional duties and obligations both to their clients and the Courts – these cannot be farmed out to a chatbot and no assumptions can be made about the reliability of information presented by these services
- On the flip side, clients cannot assume that ChatGPT is right about its statements – very often, there is a melding of text sources from international sources and the comments are utterly misconceived, do not consider the wider picture, or focus on issues that are unproductive
- The confidence with which many AI-powered services present their material with no assurance has the potential to mislead and cause serious harm, and have no accountability – in fact, the material provided can be entirely different from one day to the next.
In short, there is potential in AI-assisted products to help streamline the work lawyers do, and the way people present information to their lawyers. But it also risks driving a gap in understanding, and a gap in accountability, between lawyers and their clients.
Talk to us today about how we see the future of legal work in family law particularly with AI and without AI – 03 9614 7111.
