The primary focus of this discourse centers around the profound implications of artificial intelligence (AI) within the legal profession. I assert that while AI offers significant efficiencies, it concurrently poses a substantial risk of cognitive decline among legal practitioners. This episode delves into the seductive allure of expedited processes facilitated by AI, challenging the listener to consider the potential erosion of critical cognitive faculties and deeper analytical skills that may arise from over-reliance on technology. I present compelling evidence, notably from an MIT study, which highlights the detrimental effects of AI on cognitive engagement and memory recall. Ultimately, I encourage a balanced approach to AI utilization, emphasizing the necessity for lawyers to maintain their intuitive capabilities and strategic thinking in the pursuit of excellence within their practices.

Throughout the conversation, I elucidate the transformative potential of AI, yet I counterbalance this optimism with a cautionary perspective on its overutilization. I recount specific instances wherein my engagement with AI has yielded remarkable efficiency in tasks such as legal research and document preparation; however, I remain acutely aware of the cognitive trade-offs that accompany such conveniences. The dialogue pivots towards the implications of AI on interpersonal dynamics within the legal sphere, wherein a diminished reliance on one's cognitive abilities may engender psychological distance from colleagues and clients alike. This episode serves as a clarion call for legal practitioners to reflect critically on their integration of AI technology, ensuring that it serves as a tool for enhancement rather than a crutch that undermines their professional efficacy and mental acuity.

Takeaways:

• The advent of artificial intelligence in the legal field presents both opportunities and challenges for practitioners.
• It is imperative for lawyers to maintain their cognitive engagement to avoid reliance on AI tools.
• Cognitive decline, as evidenced by recent studies, may result from excessive dependence on artificial intelligence.
• Balancing the efficiency of AI with the necessity of independent thought is crucial for legal professionals.
• The seduction of AI's efficiency risks diminishing lawyers' strategic intuition and depth of understanding.
• Maintaining trust in one's own cognitive abilities is essential while utilizing AI as a legal resource.

Read the paper here—Cognitive Debt

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

This is John.

This is the Legal Owl, where wisdom meets the law.

So today I want to jump in and talk about something that is.

It's on basically the lips of every lawyer.

It's something that we're dealing with, I myself deal with all the time.

And this is AI.

But is AI a hindrance?

Is it eroding our thought processes or cognitive cognition?

And are we seduced by its efficiency?

Where the lawyers come.

How did I come to this?

This is not something that I'm going to jump into to teach you anything to make your own decision, essentially, but it's something I want to discuss to give you kind of food for thought and where the restrictions actually may be.

So when we come right back, I want to jump into this.

I'm going to use a little bit of an example and how it may affect us moving forward in your career as a lawyer and personally as well.

I mean, I have seen the fallout myself.

So.

Welcome to the Legal Owl, where wisdom meets the law, brought to you by Help Lawyer.

I'm John, I'm your host and I'm looking forward to this discussion.

God bless.

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Welcome to Legal how where wisdom meets the law and Strategic Intuitive intelligence guides the way.

Okay, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.

I want to thank you for joining me today and this is something that I am looking forward to discussing.

Just make sure I don't get any interruptions up here because as soon as I start recording, um, we definitely get interrupted.

So as this is very natural going, I want to make sure that we don't get interrupted because this is important to.

Okay, great.

I've seen that now because I saw little pop ups coming up here and then I don't want to be interrupted.

So.

AI is transforming the legal profession.

It really is.

I see adverts out there all the time for lawyers to look at case, you know, case studies for lawyers I've, you know, since even launching the legal law.

Recently, I have been approached by so many AI companies that want to get in to show how lawyers can do it quicker.

They can do it, they can integrate it easier, they can gain their time back, and that's fine.

You know, I love using AI myself.

You know, I use it in my own work, in my own business, but only really to give me ideas and to look at potential strategies.

Because I'm aware, and I'll go into it recently, that we lean on it too heavily.

But lawyers are getting to the point now where you're being seduced.

You're being seduced by quicker answers, quicker research.

It's great for research, it's great.

Faster briefs to do it.

Run your whole company online, literally.

Don't go into your law firm, sit at home with a coffee, use your AI and everything else.

But what is it that we're losing?

What is it that you as a lawyer may be losing?

If I jump back into a recent case study.

Not back in, I haven't talked about it, but if we go into a recent case study by MIT that really had proven, and I'll find that case study and I'll link it below in the show notes, because I think it's really important, AI is making us thicker, more stupid, more aligned.

Now, even in my work in research, I'm in the process of moving in toward a PhD in elements, other areas in psychology.

And it's too easy.

It's too easy to get your research and then to start to formulate your thoughts around it and to get AI to write things for you.

But we lose it as a journalist, as someone who's written books, as someone who's written lots of articles, there's nothing better than having that craft and challenging your mind.

So what does this mean for a lawyer?

Well, the reality is, is that because you're being seduced by AI, the speed is reducing your cognition, is reducing your depth, it's reducing your relationship potentially.

And the MIT study basically had proven that there was cognitive decline.

They had done a really in depth study where people were using the AI to develop, you know, protocols, to develop content, to develop whatever they were doing reports and stuff.

And then other people that weren't using AI, and the reality was is that the people that were using AI could not, if they were questioned in any way, couldn't actually go into their paper, couldn't go into their research.

They couldn't remember what they wrote.

Which means that even.

And so anybody, any of you that know me you know, I'm very passionate about strategic intelligence, strategic intuitive intelligence, using intuition, pattern recognition, understanding it at a higher level.

And so you, with this cognitive decline, you are losing out.

You're reducing your potential ability to become more aware and to have intuitive insights, Right?

Because you're outsourcing your thinking.

Now, I'm not saying that it's bad.

I'm not saying that the AI can't help you.

I'm saying that we need balance, right?

We definitely need balance.

So you as a lawyer, if you get to that point, it seems it said in the MIT study where you can't think, you have less engagement in your project, you have less understanding, even deep reading into any literature or anything to do with case studies.

And I'll talk a little bit about a recent case I was involved with with a lawyer who utilized is not relying on AI a lot and was able to get more intelligence really from the case intuitively to confirm and collaborate that.

We'll talk about that in a little, a little minute.

You lose your ability for strategic thought and you create psychological distance not only from your colleagues, but also from the people that you're representing or the companies that you're representing or your clients, right?

So you've got to think about this as something that's really serious, that whilst we look at it as something that can help us in or day to day life or day to day work, there is a trade off.

And this is exactly what the MIT research was saying, right?

Because the people that were writing or were doing the research based on no AI, that they had to think deeper, they had to utilize deeper awareness, they had to utilize their intuition, they were able to remember, they were able to recall memory, they were able to go deeper and find in patterns elements that were missing, other maybe strategies that they could bring in.

Whereas the people using the AI was losing that out.

What does that mean for you as a lawyer?

I mean, seriously, you get too caught up in having to learn a prompt to speed things up.

Now, look, AI is phenomenal for some legal things I've gone on.

So recently I've looked at can I use AI to develop maybe a trademark application, just as an example, can I use it for that?

And so I started a brief and I started looking at it and it was brilliant.

It was starting to dig through each and every process.

And then I looked at it from AI's point of view, could I use it for responding back legally to someone?

And it was fantastic.

It was great.

But then I realized that no matter what I did, no Matter what.

I challenged AI with the legal aspects of it, acting as my lawyer, I was too focused on these prompts.

So what happens with you as a lawyer?

Maybe you become too focused on the prompts and maybe you get yourself distanced from your actual work or your operation.

And while you're trying to chase making things easier so that you have more time in your business, not on your business or in your business, or you have more time personally to yourself, it's fantastic.

Obviously helping you to deal with maybe other issues that you have.

But remember this cognitive decline has a domino effect, right.

If you rely on artificial intelligence for everything in your practice, psychologically, that is going to reduce your power and your mental health even more.

Whilst there's a lot of people will say it can help you, your mental health, but it is going to decline that as well.

Which means that your relationships in your personal life could be affected, your relationships in your professional life, 100% is going to be affected.

Sorry.

Right, I want to talk about now something I'm kind of passionate about in terms of utilizing your intuition.

So recently I was helping on a case, looking at something from an intuitive intelligence point of view.

And this is not about me or anything else, but I want to say that the lawyer on this was able to identify, had their own intuitive feelings.

And their intuitive feelings were corroborated not only with external research, but was corroborated with the other expert that was brought in and was also corroborated with, with my report, what I had given that tells you that that lawyer was able to go beyond.

And doesn't use any AI, doesn't use these tools.

In fact, you know, it doesn't like.

It likes everything just to be notes and pens and thinking and reading and getting involved in it, which is fantastic.

And that's not gonna reduce any of that lawyer's mental cognition in any way.

In fact, it's gonna probably harness it as he looks toward getting deeper awareness into the case.

So think about this.

If you're using AI to cut corners to save you time, not so much cut corners, that's.

That's a wrong thing.

That's great.

As long as it's to the point where it's just.

Maybe they're helping you with admin or something when it comes to the responsibility of the case that you're involved in, then you really want to be relying on your intuitive feelings, your operational awareness, what you understand through experience and your patterns, right?

Because then you're able to see, you're able to become aware of Things that are, that are not normally that in your face, right?

Because you can feel that difference.

So you lose your ability to become more aware and to become more strategic.

You lose the strategic advantage by just relying on AI.

Again, let me just say that that caveat is relying on AI for the point of everything that you're doing, not if you're doing it from a point of just the admin, sending out letters, just making sure that whatever you send out is right is, you know, maybe reflects a proper language and tone.

Fantastic.

That's great.

That can save us a lot of time.

But if you're utilizing it to analyze your case, to analyze everything, to let everything run that way, then, then you, you really must, you really must look at this MIT study.

It's quite a scary thought, really.

It really is quite a scary thought to think that AI could make us more ignorant and really cause cognitive decline in brain cognition.

We don't engage your brain.

I'm a great believer in basically the mind is a receiver and a transmitter.

So the brain is a receiver and a transmitter.

And the mind is the psychological building blocks of reality.

The mind is what's powerful.

And so even in the legal field, we want to really concentrate and develop in our mind because the brain will basically receive and send out those signals.

And we don't want to have cognitive decline in our brain functions.

And we certainly don't want to have cognitive decline and gone beyond that into our mind.

So AI's got, AI's got a lot to answer for.

We need to make sure.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm involved in psychological operations and things like that and research and stuff.

And I have seen it through my years of owning help lawyer, communicating with friends and people that are lawyers where the problems lie.

And I can see this reliance on AI being something negative for the future.

And it is positive in certain ways, but I'm seeing it too much where everybody wants to just cut a corner using AI, make it faster, make it quicker, look at AI to look at all your in depth.

Now we have something in AI where it can still hallucinate and open AI, anthropic and all these other AI models, the large language models, they're trying to have less hallucinations.

But while they're working on that, remember that it's still human input.

It's reading data, right?

It's just reading data that's been inputted.

You yourself are the computer.

Your mind is so powerful that if you stop using that, if you start to rely too much on AI, you're going to lose out and you're not going to be able to intuit or get hidden intelligence that could make or break a case.

AI is never going to replace lawyers, but it could make you less effective.

I know.

Here's the other thing that I think what happens is trust.

When you start to trust the AI, you are losing trust in your own inner power.

You are losing trust in you and your abilities and your capacity to continue to develop and to see things that are not seen, to go beyond your pattern and utilize your intuitive concepts.

To.

Uncover blind spots in your cases.

So AI kind of shifts that and it takes that power away from us because we then start to trust AI and we turn over to go to AI for everything and we lose trust in ourselves.

We lose trust.

Right?

And that's the worst thing because is you as a lawyer, the minute you start to lose trust in you and you start to give your trust to something that is artificial, that doesn't have the power of your mind, that is something that you've got to be aware of.

That's something that we really, really, really need to take on board, ladies and gentlemen.

So I want you to think about this, what I've said.

Think about how you use AI in your law firm.

Let me know in comments or emails through Help Lawyer that you know what your thought processes are, whether you've actually be honest, actually be honest with me.

Have you experienced any cognitive decline or are you becoming aware of I'm relying too much on AI?

I certainly have.

You know, I've thought, okay, it's too easy for me to go on and do X, Y and Z and get all this done.

But no, it's something that I want to make sure personally for myself that I keep developing my cognitive power, that I keep developing my brain, that I keep developing my mind.

I don't want to lose the ability to harness my intuitive power and I don't want you guys to lose that ability either.

So let me know.

Thank you for being with me today, guys.

Please let me know how you use AI, how it's helped you or hindered you.

This is just a discussion to open up and we can.

Then I'm going to bring in some experts on.

I will bring some legal AI experts on to talk about this and to show where it helps and where it hinders.

I'm not an AI expert, so I do want to bring these people on.

And also I've got some other guests coming on.

I'm looking forward to other guests, some that are members of our community and also some that are just interesting that I want to bring on and have conversations with.

So thank you for listening to me on the legal I will remember there's also an ethical issue to AI and using AI, and as I'm not a lawyer, I'm sure there's also an ethical problem in utilizing it within your cases, within law, and how it operates in the courtroom as well.

AI is never going to replace you, but it can hinder you.

And as we've seen from the MIT study, which I'll put down, it does have a negative effect and I do not want you to lose your strategic advantage.

Guys, thank you for listening with listening to me today.

If you've got any questions then please reach out and I look forward to the next episode and the guests that are coming on Legal owl Where Wisdom Meets the Law.

God bless.

You've been listening to the Legal owl, where law meets the unseen layers of clarity, leadership, and inner alignment.

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