ChatGPT and Legal Texts
Since its release, ChatGPT has been used in various fields and its capabilities have been extensively researched. This is because such an advanced chatbot had not been previously designed. You may have become tired of seeing posts on social media and elsewhere about what you can do with ChatGPT since then.
How Does ChatGPT Work?
ChatGPT is a chatbot with a “generative pre-trained (GPT) transformer” language model, developed by processing data from the internet until 2021, according to information provided by OpenAI. It can perform a vast range of tasks that cannot be described in numerous posts without needing active access to the internet. It can process what you say and generate responses, and it can produce excellent results even if you do not provide any information.
Style of Legal Texts
As a law student, I tried to test ChatGPT’s dominance in legal texts, among other things. The responses I received were essentially correct but incomplete.
Reasoned Texts & Legal Reasoning
Court decisions are written with reasoning, which is a constitutional rule in Turkey. A sufficient and clear reasoning makes that text a true legal text. Simply telling the parties what will happen is just providing information, and it is necessary to state how this was reached. This is the case from law school exams to high court decisions. Even the most experienced professors can offer very different opinions on a matter. At the same time, all of them are different manifestations of the truth. Therefore, there is no single correct answer or way of thinking in law.
Let’s put aside the element of conscience and continue through legal reasoning. Artificial intelligence tools have not yet acquired these qualities.
Legal reasoning brings many factors with it, as I briefly mentioned. There is a unique way of thinking in the legal profession. Even the most experienced professors can offer very different opinions on a matter, and they all represent different manifestations of the truth. Therefore, there is no single correct answer or way of thinking in law.
The results I received from ChatGPT were mostly answers consisting of pure information that was taken from the internet. Therefore, while it could directly provide a response to a private law question, for example, without giving thought to how the rule is applied or how it was reached, more extensive perspectives were needed for questions such as “What is the penalty for the perpetrator in case x?” The points remained somewhat vague. My guess is that if it took a regular level exam, it would get a passing grade. They have tested this before and ChatGPT passed with an average grade on a law exam at the University of Minnesota Law School.
General Recommendations
In summary, it seems that robots with ChatGPT or similar language models cannot provide legal reasoning without fully understanding legal reasoning, unlike the general logic. Of course, this fact can also be a good answer to questions like “How much can artificial intelligence replace lawyers?”. The issue can be evaluated in terms of other different aspects as well, but I focused on the most fundamental ones.
