This guide compiles information on generative AI developments and tools pertinent to legal research, legal education, and legal practice. It is a work in progress and will be periodically updated with additional resources and new information on this rapidly changing area.
For more information on generative AI, please visit the Information and Educational Technology (IET) site, Aggie AI: Artificial Intelligence at UC Davis. This resource includes details on upcoming AI-related events and the latest developments in AI, both within the university and beyond. Additionally, the UC Davis Library offers a guide titled Generative Artificial Intelligence for Teaching, Research, and Learning. This guide provides insights into key frameworks, best practices, and current research to help users deepen their understanding of this emerging technology.
Generative artificial intelligence is a type of AI technology that creates content – including text, images, video, and computer code – by identifying patterns in large quantities of training data.
Generative AI tools use Large Language Models (LLMs) to process user prompts, analyzing input text and generating responses based on patterns learned from vast training data. The model breaks the prompt into tokens (words, parts of words, or characters) and uses neural networks with billions of parameters to predict the most likely next tokens.
The responses provided by LLMs are based on statistical patterns, not actual understanding or facts. This means they can produce convincing but incorrect information (sometimes called "hallucinations"), reference outdated information, or reflect biases in their training data. For these reasons, it's essential to verify the information they generate before relying on it.
As the UC Davis Center for Educational Effectiveness has noted, generative AI tools "do not understand content and can make mistakes.... [E]ducators may need to cultivate AI literacy and train students to use these tools strategically and thoughtfully."
Legal AI tools integrate various AI technologies, with new features like agentic AI beginning to emerge. To learn more about these features, visit the Mabie Law Library's Generative AI Tools and Resources for Law Students guide.
It is predicted that the rollout and development of generative AI tools will impact various industries, including legal education and legal practice. For example, according to Lexis, the generative AI tools being developed will help streamline certain tasks such as composing legal briefs and client memos, conducting due diligence and producing complex analyses from troves of documents.
In June 2024, the American Bar Association’s Task Force on Law and Artificial Intelligence released the results of its AI and Legal Education Survey, which gathered insights from 29 law school administrators and faculty on the integration of artificial intelligence into legal education.
In August 2024, the Task Force released another report examining the impact of AI on the legal profession, focusing on issues such as legal ethics, access to justice, AI’s role in court systems, legal education, and strategies for risk management and governance, among others.
Despite the promises these AI tools offer to legal practice, they also raise significant ethical considerations for law students and practitioners. These considerations, along with others, are discussed in greater detail in the Risks and Ethical Considerations in Using Gen AI section of the Generative AI Tools and Resources for Law Students guide.
Since OpenAI's ChatGPT launch in November 2022, legal vendors like Lexis and Westlaw, along with several startups, have introduced generative AI tools aimed at streamlining legal practice and addressing common AI pitfalls like hallucinations and biases. Some of these tools use proprietary legal content and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to enhance AI responses by retrieving relevant information from trusted knowledge bases. Yet, a June 2024 study from Stanford University revealed that Lexis and Westlaw's tools hallucinated results more often than their marketing suggested, highlighting a gap between vendor promises and actual reliability.
For more information on evaluating and selecting GenAI tools, additional studies on legal AI tools, and prompting fundamentals, please refer to the Evaluating and Using Generative AI Tools section of the Generative AI Tools and Resources for Law Students guide.