Imagine that you embraced internet marketing when the internet began surfacing in the early 90s. Those lucky enough to embrace internet marketing in its infancy have flourished. The search engines reward the most mature (oldest) websites because, for their algorithms, those websites have the most authenticity and value. That was more than 30 years ago.
Today, artificial intelligence is transforming the world in much of the same way as the internet. Complex data can be analyzed and results generated in a fraction of the time that it would take for an experienced lawyer. The results for your law firm can be nothing less than transformative.
Okay, but where do you begin? Embrace artificial intelligence TODAY. This is how you get started.
A special “THANK YOU” to Michael McCready, Esq., Nancy Cavey, Esq., Thomas Tona, Esq., Sara Frasca, Michael Smith, Maddy Alger from BluShark and David Buckley, Esq. for providing much of the information and examples cited herein.
3 Steps for Creating Create a Custom ChatGPT for Your Law Firm
There are a number of different platforms for artificial intelligence, but a good starting point is ChatGPT. Sign up for the basic $20/month plan and you can create a custom ChatGPT today.
After you sign up for the basic plan, follow these 3 steps:
Step #1: Go to ChatGPT (openai.com).
Step #2: Click “Explore GPTs” on the left-sided menu.
Step #3: Click the black button “+Create” in the top right corner.
Now you are ready to create your first custom ChatGPT for your law firm.
A Conversation Between You and ChatGPT
You have to define the roles and audience when communicating with ChatGPT, e.g., “You are a legal intern and I am your supervisor.”
#1:Define Your ROLE
What is the role of the person you are asking ChatGPT to take? You might tell ChatGPT, “I am an experienced medical malpractice lawyer.” The role will dictate the result that you will get from ChatGPT.
You have to tell ChatGPT who you are.
“I am John Fisher. I am the attorney at The New York Injury & Malpractice Law Firm, P.C. Repeat to me who I am.”
Give your biography and the biography of your team:
“Kelly Gonnelly is a litigation paralegal with The New York Injury & Malpractice Law Firm, P.C.”
Upload the defendants’ motion for summary judgment and ask ChatGPT to summarize the motion:
“We represent Jane Doe. “The defendants served a motion for summary judgment based on the argument that the standard of care does not require screening for prostate cancer by family physicians. Draft an expert affidavit in response.”
Keep asking questions until you are confident that ChatGPT understands your case. This is a conversation between you and a machine. The more you engage and refine the questions, the better the answer is going to be.
“Please revise the expert affidavit and add relevant case law in New York State.”
If you don’t like what you get, ask another question. You might ask for sources, “Where did you get that information from?” Ask follow-up questions: “What questions did I not ask that I should have?”
#2:Define Your AUDIENCE
What is your audience? You might tell ChatGPT, “I am an experienced trial lawyer. Please explain this to someone with a high school education” or “Give this answer to a first-year law student.”
#3:Define Your FORMAT
Do you want the response from ChatGPT as bullet points, a narrative, or images?
#4:Define Your CONSTRAINTS
Refine your search to get exactly what you want. What constraints do you want? You might instruct ChatGPT, “Give me the answer in 250 words” or “Give me the answer in five sentences.”
“My effectiveness has increased 20 or 30-fold just in my ability to get things done quicker.”
David Buckley, Esq., Nashua, New Hampshire
This is a conversation between you and ChatGPT. You should continually narrow and limit the scope of what you want Chat GPT to do. You might ask,
- “What are the sources of where you are getting your information?
- “If I ask you a question about SmartAdvocate, what resource are you going to use?”
- “How do I attach a document in SmartAdvocate?”
Keep refining your search until you get the answer you want, e.g., “Please identify any missing information. If you are able to identify any missing information, please supply it to me” or “What did I not ask?” Ask ChatGPT to refine its answer, e.g., “That answer was okay. I’d like you to focus on this area.”
How to Train Your Custom ChatGPT
Your custom ChatGPT will search a database to respond to your queries. Unlike the internet, you will provide the data that you want your ChatGPT to use. Your custom ChatGPT will provide answers based on the database that you direct it to. “You want to segregate what database you’re using”, according to Michael McCready, Esq.
“If you do this now, you are leaps and bounds above the competition. If you are not doing this, you are not doing all that you can to help your client.”
Michael McCready, Chicago
The database consists of data that you upload into a custom ChatGPT. You have to be very careful in segregating the data that you upload to ChatGPT. You can upload data or ask ChatGPT to limit its response based on the URL that you provide. ChatGPT will go straight to the resource and provide the answer.
Ask your custom ChatGPT to limit its response to the data that you provide, e.g., Enter the URL from your firm’s policies and procedures and ask ChatGPT: “For every question that I ask, I want you to reference this and only this. Do you understand?” When ChatGPT responds, ask, “Is it accurate? Do any revisions need to be made?” Say “please” and “thank you”. You want to speak to it as though you are a supervisor.
The Possibilities are Only Limited by Your Imagination
These are a few examples of how artificial intelligence has been embraced by plaintiff’s lawyers, such as Michael McCready, Esq. in Chicago.
Example #1: User Manual for Case Management Software
You might limit the data to SmartAdvocate’s (the best case management software for plaintiff’s lawyers) User Manual. When your team members have questions about SmartAdvocate, they can ask your custom ChatGPT. This is a lot easier than searching through the Table of Contents in SmartAdvocate’s User Manual.
SmartAdvocate can translate a document into Spanish using artificial intelligence.
Example #2: Employee Handbook
You can upload your law firm’s policy handbook and ask your custom ChatGPT to base its responses on your handbook.
Example #3: Questions for Jury Selection & Cross Examination
You can upload the digital book of Nicholas Rowley, Esq.’s book, “Voir Dire and Opening Statement” and ask ChatGPT to create a series of questions for jury selection.
You might upload the digital book, “Rules of the Road” by Rick Friedman, Esq. and Patrick Malone, Esq. and ask ChatGPT, “Are you familiar with the rules of the road? Give me a cross-examination based on rules of the road methodology.”
You might upload the transcript of the deposition testimony of the defendant’s expert, and ask ChatGPT, “What are the four most important points that I should make for cross-examination?”
Example #4: Analyzing the Value of Your Case
Michael McCready, Esq. uploads the Indiana jury verdict reports into a custom ChatGPT and asks, “Tell me the highest jury verdict against State Farm Insurance in Indiana in 2024?”
Example #5: Content Creation for Your Website
Use Chat GPT to turn videos into articles for your website and every new video will become a new article for your website. Using AI Tools, you can take a long-form video and make it short form.
The benefits of using artificial intelligence for content creation on your website? The benefits of ChatGPT include:
- Dramatically increases efficiency
- Pulls on a massive amount of data
- Grammatically accurate
- Generates well-structured content
- Responses in a matter of seconds
Keep in mind that ChatGPT will not produce an article for your website in the final form. You still need to fact-check the article before you publish it on your website. If the article is low-quality content, Google will penalize you whether it is ChatGPT generated or not.
Example #6: Developing Case Frames for Trial
You might upload a digital book, “Case Framing” by Mark Mandell, Esq, and ask ChatGPT, “Give me some frames for an upcoming trial involving an emergency medicine’s failure to diagnose an epidural abscess.”
Example #7: Screening New Cases for Merit
Upload “Williams on Orthopedics” and ask ChatGPT to determine whether there was a deviation from the standard of care in an orthopedics case. “If I upload the medical records from this case, could you analyze the records and reference the above treatises to determine if the surgeon violated the standard of care?”
Upload the medical records and ask Chat GPT to evaluate merit of the case, namely, whether there were deviations from the standard of care. Do not upload medical records into ChatGPT, but if you have a custom ChatGPT you can do that.
Example #8: Finding Defects in Defense Medical Exam Reports
You might upload DME reports from the same insurance doctor and ask ChatGPT to analyze them, e.g., “I have uploaded ten defense examination reports from Doctor McCaffrey. Please point out where any two consecutive sentences are the same.”
How to Use Artificial Intelligence to Replicate Yourself
Sara Frasca and Michael Smith, owners of Point NorthEast, use personal.ai to replicate Michael Smith. Here’s how they did it. Every Tuesday, Michael coaches their team (“Tuesdays with Michael”) and they record the coaching sessions and upload the audio to personal.ai. Once the audio recordings are uploaded into the personal.ai portal, personal.ai uses the recordings to respond to questions using Michael’s voice.
“It’s almost like we’ve placed a USB port into Michael’s brain.”
Sara Frasca, Pointe Northeast
Anyone can put a question into the chat on personal.ai, such as “What do I do for a partnership dispute?” or “What do I do if an employee is underperforming?” and personal.ai responds in text and answers in Michael Smith’s voice. This does not sound like an automated voice message; in fact, you cannot tell the difference between the AI-generated audio response and an actual response from Michael Smith.
Michael McCready, Esq. uses a similar platform to greet new clients at his law firm using an AI-generated welcome video. Each video is customized with the name of the new client and a warm welcome from Michael via video. You can also use personal.ai to create onboarding videos for new team members.
How to Train Your Team to Embrace Artificial Intelligence
Show your team members how ChatGPT can make their lives easier by analyzing vast amounts of data within seconds. You might begin by uploading your firm’s policies and procedures and asking your team members to use artificial intelligence to get responses to basic questions, such as, “How much paid time off accrues per week?” or “What paid holidays do we get off this year?” Rather than scouring a handbook or your firm’s knowledge base, the answers are provided more quickly using ChatGPT.
When drafting an expert affidavit, you can ask ChatGPT to “provide samples of a medical expert’s affidavit in a medical malpractice case alleging a delay in the diagnosis of cancer.” When serving settlement documents, you might ask ChatGPT, to “provide a template for a letter for sending settlement documents to defendants’ attorneys in a wrongful death case.”
How to Get Started Using Artificial Intelligence
Get started by doing 3 things:
- Use ChatGPT to generate a legal document;
- Redraft or improve the document using ChatGPT; and
- Share your experience (jfisherlawyer@gmail.com).
Credit: Dave Woodin, Esq.
If you share your experience with me, I will forward a signed copy of my books, The Power of a System and The Law Firm of Your Dreams, with my compliments.
Artificial intelligence is not the future—it is right now. Either you are embracing artificial intelligence or your law firm will be left in the dust. Only you can make this decision.
BTW, if you’d like to watch the 1-hour video training about artificial intelligence courtesy of Michael McCready, Esq., Thomas Tona, Esq., Nancy Cavey, Esq., Michael Smith, and Sara Frasca, just send a request entitled “I want the AI video” to jfisherlawyer@gmail.com.