Cecilia Ziniti
Nov 10, 2023
😯 Been asking lawyers - what’s your "wow moment" with generative AI? Many of them cite that GPT-4 passes the New York bar exam (a hard one) better than 90% of human takers. Amazing. But one attorney’s response this week struck me.
He's the division general counsel of a global leader in consumer goods. The company operates in 190 countries. Its products trigger an average of 1-2 new regulations each ... week.
For him, the AI "wow moment" came when he was playing with ChatGPT to draft an email and iterate on tone. Over half of his company’s 250-person legal team do not count English as their first language. These attorneys, he observed, would labor over crafting an email to headquarters. He’d see his team frustrated when the communication was more burdensome than the legal tasks. With ChatGPT, they could – as in his experiment with GPT - refine their messages efficiently and increase their impact. He’s now pioneering an AI initiative within the company.
Generalizing his story - here’s what even vanilla ChatGPT will do for legal teams:
🌐 Democratize Communication: AI levels the playing field for message delivery. Attorneys can communicate their ideas more easily, no matter their level of fluency.
⚖️ Enhance Focus on Core Legal Work: Lawyers secretly like wordsmithing, even when they know it's a time suck. AI allows them to put their expertise in the best place. Navigating new regulations, counseling clients, or working with global product development, marketing and distribution teams, for example.
💡Drive Efficiency and Innovation: If even base model GPT can enhance the legal department's efficiency by 25% on a, say, $1.5B budget, that's $375 million the company could put to new lines of business.
PS - The picture is the start of a sample prompt that achieves what this GC was looking for. Try it for your next email, and let me know what you think.
PPS - I'd also advise giving GPT a specific task after the prompt below. Something like "(1) Refine the subject line to be more impactful., (2) Enhance the opening paragraph to be engaging yet direct about the urgency of the matter. (3) Ensure that the explanation of the situation is succinct but comprehensive. (4) Clearly state the request for additional resources and specify why they are essential. (5) Let me know what data I can add to support my ask."
