Ethics Hub
Scenario: A member of your team uses ChatGPT to write a summary
You are a Costs Lawyer working in a large firm. Your team is engaged in complex litigation for a major national client. The case has involved a huge amount of drafting, meetings and working long hours.
You are supervising Michael, a junior associate in your team. You have asked Michael to draft a summary as part of the case and send it to you for review.
When Michael sends you the draft, you are surprised that it contains a technical error and a few typos in American spelling. It is unlike Michael not to have spotted the error and typos. The draft is clear and concise, but is not written in Michael’s usual writing style.
You raise this with Michael. Michael says that because of the volume of work involved and tight turnaround times, he used ChatGPT to help draft the summary to speed things up. He says that he asked ChatGPT to provide sources for the information in the summary, and that he gave the summary a skim-read and thought it looked fine. However, he admits he did so in rather a rush and has not checked the sources himself.
What, if anything, should you do?
- AI can have beneficial uses, such as analysing data quickly, helping with document drafting, and summarising large amounts of information.
- However, you should always consider whether a particular AI system is appropriate for the task for which you are using it. You should ensure that you understand the benefits and risks of using AI, and that you never input confidential client information into a public generative AI system (such as ChatGPT).
- Before using AI tools, you should review your firm’s policies around the use of IT and AI tools.
- In this situation, you should remind Michael of the risks of using a public AI tool like ChatGPT. You should also remind him of the importance of independently reviewing and verifying outputs generated by any AI system, not only because of the risk that the output contains errors, but also because of his regulatory obligations. If your firm has an AI/IT use policy, you should remind Michael of this and ensure he understands his obligations under that policy.
- If you are a manager, you should remind all your staff of the risks and limitations of using AI tools – whether public or not – and their obligations under their relevant regulator’s code of conduct. If your firm has an AI or IT use policy, you should remind them of this, and ensure that they understands their obligations under that policy,
- You should consider whether it would be better for Michael to start the summary afresh, or for Michael to critically review, verify – and where necessary – correct, the summary, so that it is accurate and consistent with his own legal knowledge and experience. You should review the new version of the summary yourself for the same reasons. This aligns with your duties under Principle 4 of the Code of Conduct (provide a good standard of work to your client). You should also consider how to communicate with your client about the error and what steps have been taken to correct it.
- You should identify whether any confidential client information was inputted into ChatGPT. If it has, you should consider what steps you may need to take according to your firm’s internal data protection policies and your legal and regulatory data protection obligations. You should also consider what you need to do regarding informing your client.
- In this scenario, you should also discuss and review Michael’s workload to understand if there are mechanisms that could be used to manage the level of work more effectively and in a way that is compliant with regulatory obligations.
Principle 7.1 – You must keep the affairs of your client confidential unless disclosure is required or allowed by law or if the client consents in writing to disclosure, having had the consequences of such consent explained to them. You must ensure that your client is able, in your reasonable opinion, to give informed consent to waiving their right to confidentiality.