SkarpAI as a Legal Assistant—not an Attorney
A foundation-level series on using generative AI to organize legal questions, explain unfamiliar language and prepare drafts while keeping human judgment in charge. Learn why AI cannot establish an attorney-client relationship, how fabricated authorities arise, how to verify outputs and why confidential information, court rules and licensed counsel still matter. General-interest education only, not legal advice or professional training.
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Course Content
3 modules · 17 min total
What AI Can—and Cannot—Do with a Legal Question
Distinguish useful support tasks—plain-language explanation, issue spotting, document organization and draft generation—from legal representation. Understand that AI lacks professional duties, complete context and authority to make decisions for a person.
From Plausible Answer to Verified Legal Research
Follow a fictional question through a verification workflow: identify jurisdiction and date, turn claims into research leads, locate primary law, check quotations and citations, and mark uncertainty. See how fluent prediction can produce invented cases or outdated rules.
Protecting Information and Keeping Humans Accountable
Explore why sensitive facts should not be placed into an unapproved AI system, how anonymization and minimum-necessary disclosure reduce risk, and why a human must review every output. Recognize situations requiring current court rules or a licensed attorney.
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AI can assist; it cannot represent you
A legal question often has two layers: Information work: finding terms, organizing facts, summarizing a document, or producing a first draft. Professional legal judgment: deciding what facts matter, which law controls, what risks to accept, and what action to take.
Generative AI is useful mainly for the first layer. It generates likely text from patterns in data; it does not have a client relationship, a professional license, a duty of loyalty, or authority to make choices for someone. The ABA's 2024 Formal Opinion 512 says lawyers may use generative AI to assist with tasks, but may not hand over work requiring a lawyer's personal judgment, such as giving legal advice or negotiating a client's claim.
Study Flashcards
Key concepts from this course as flashcard pairs.
What AI Can—and Cannot—Do with a Legal Question
Confabulation
A confidently stated AI output that is false or erroneous. It may include invented or misapplied legal information.
Issue spotting
Identifying questions, missing facts, deadlines, or topics that may need further checking. It is not a final legal conclusion.
Professional judgment
A lawyer's responsibility to interpret law and facts, advise a client, make strategy choices, and remain accountable for the work.
Verify-before-use
Check generated facts against original documents and check legal authorities, dates, and citations against current authoritative sources.
Protecting Information and Keeping Humans Accountable
Minimum-necessary disclosure
Providing only the information needed for a specific task, rather than an entire file or history.
Anonymization
Removing or changing identifying details. It reduces risk but may not prevent re-identification from unique combinations of facts.
Confabulation
Confidently presented AI content that is erroneous, false, inconsistent, or unsupported.
Review gate
A required human checkpoint that verifies output before it affects a person, decision, filing, or external communication.