I finally got a straight answer on whether GPT-4 can handle legal documents

A lawyer friend of mine told me last month that AI like GPT-4 could summarize a 50-page contract in under 2 minutes. I didn't believe him at first, so I fed it a real lease agreement I had sitting around from my old apartment in Denver. It actually pulled out the main clauses and flagged a weird penalty fee I had missed. Now I'm curious if anyone here has trusted AI to review something important like a will or a business contract.

2 comments

2 Comments

amy_reed799d ago

Yeah @jordangibson you're totally right to be wary. I've used it as a quick first pass on a few contracts and it catches the obvious stuff, but I still run the sketchy parts by my lawyer before signing anything important.

jordangibson9d ago

Does it actually understand what it's reading though or is it just really good at pattern matching? I've seen it miss things that are super obvious to someone who's been burned by a bad contract before. Like it can spot a penalty fee but can it tell you if the language is intentionally vague so the landlord can screw you later? That's where I get nervous. You're basically trusting a machine that doesn't have instincts or street smarts about how people actually use these documents. I'd use it as a first pass but I'd still want a real person to look at the parts that feel off.