Summary: In this episode of the Carl Taylor Law Podcast, Carl Taylor discusses the significant impact of technology, particularly artificial intelligence, on family law. He reflects on the evolution of technology from the past to the present and raises concerns about the potential for negative implications in legal proceedings, especially regarding the authenticity of evidence. Taylor emphasizes the need for legal professionals to adapt to technological advancements and prepare for future challenges in the legal landscape.
Takeaways:
- Technology has drastically changed family law over the years.
- AI can create fake evidence, complicating legal proceedings.
- Judges and attorneys may struggle with technological advancements.
- Future legal practice will require fluency in technology.
- Authentication of evidence will become increasingly important.
- There is a lack of case law regarding AI-generated evidence.
- Legal professionals must stay informed about technological changes.
- AI could revolutionize society and the legal field.
- Understanding technology is crucial for effective legal practice.
- Collaboration among attorneys is essential for navigating future challenges.
Chapters:
00:00The Evolution of Technology in Family Law
05:34The Impact of AI on Evidence and Legal Practice
09:04Preparing for the Future of Family Law
Carl Taylor (00:01)
Hello and welcome to the Carl Taylor Law Podcast. This is Carl Taylor and I’m so excited to be with you today or whenever you’re listening to this. Today I’m going to get into a topic that’s sort of near and dear to my heart…to some extent. And it’s the idea of how is future technology going to impact family law?
It’s pretty fascinating to think about how much things have changed from the time I was born in 1983 to the present. A great deal in those 41 years; when I was born there was no email. Everyone had those rotary type phones, or at least my parents did.
Fax machines were considered new, cool tech, and now they’re completely outdated.
No cell phones, not as we know them at least. And all the new tech over the last forty years has, of course, made a lot of impact on family law, right? Today, so much of the evidence that we use is emails or text messages.
Family law attorneys, you know, 20, 30 years ago wouldn’t have had any of that sort of tech to utilize. But what’s kind of interesting about where things are right now and where they’re possibly heading is have we reached sort of a cusp of where perhaps more negative than positive is going to sort of seep into our justice system. That’s a concern I have.
For those who don’t know me, one of my hobbies is I’m a writer and I write lot of dorky science fiction and speculative fiction. Some of which gets published, much of which does not. One of my short stories I published is called ‘Split the Baby’ and it conceived this idea in the future where you could sort of take a digital replicant of a child during a custody battle and just make a copy and each parent could take the child sort of digitally.
Now we’re obviously a far way off from that sort of thing, but AI artificial intelligence is here and it’s here to stay. And one of the things that we’re going to be looking for as divorce practitioners and that you need to be looking for if you’re going through a divorce is the ability to create fake evidence utilizing artificial intelligence, right? Because judges are just attorneys that have ascended, right? And most attorneys are not great with technology. So it’s gonna be very difficult in the future, I think, for things like domestic violence to be proven or disproven if people start bringing in fake information or documentation.
I mean, there’s already the ability to sort of create fake documents. I’ve had cases where people have created fake text messages or fake emails and I’ve had to get to the bottom of it or react to it during a trial. But in the future, and maybe even today, you could literally create somebody’s voice and you could use AI to create saying whatever you want, in essence. And who’s going to have the money to bring in an expert to go through all that in an open court setting for a divorce or a domestic violence hearing or a custody battle?
So it’s…I don’t think anyone really quite has a handle on it yet, but it’s just something interesting to sort of kick around and think about. I think in the future, technology and law are going to become fused in a much greater sense. And one of the things I would tell young students today potentially looking into a career in the law is this:
Don’t sleep on technology because whether you go into the law or any other field, it’s not going to be the same as when I went into it. It’s not going to be enough to just know Microsoft Word and, and Outlook and kind of wing it from there. You’re going to have to really, really be good with technology. Even if you’re not directly utilizing it. You’re going to have to know how to utilize expert witnesses, and how to cross-examine expert witnesses, who are attempting to authenticate future evidence.
And I’m not just talking about Chat GPT in the sense of, you know, will legal work be going away to some extent because, you know, people would want to be their own attorney with Chat GPT? That’s sort of the existential threat to the legal profession in general, although I don’t think as much for family and divorce law because it’s so personal. But the idea of evidence, I think, is really a fascinating topic.
So…
We kind of go through these ups and downs of technology and eventually the law tends to catch up. We generally lag behind a bit, us attorneys, but a few years ago I was the first attorney to write a national article for other attorneys on how to handle Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the practice, because I saw that as a way that potentially people could be hiding assets, and in time that sort of bore out. And then the law eventually caught up and they created more of a tax accounting process or receipt system so that it became harder to hide money in cryptocurrencies.
But for a while it was sort of like the, what I called the digital version of burying money in your backyard. So there’s always going to be clients or adversaries who are looking to go through the process and utilize technology to their advantage. And if you don’t have that same amount of information or fluency with technology, I think it’s going to be even more to your detriment than in the past for lawyers. That’s something I’m really trying to keep abreast of.
As we move forward, really keeping an eye on the AI, like, not just because it’s a buzzword, you know, and it is of course, but also because I think that it’s going to revolutionize society and in some ways it’s going to make it a lot easier to commit fraud, essentially. And as part of a, you know, a divorce plan, it’s really imperative to us attorneys to really understand what we’re being given by our clients, what we’re seeing in court from the other side, what we’re receiving in discovery, and to call on the proper experts. And I think in the future, it’s going to increasingly be technological experts to assist us with that process. And I think there needs to be at some point, not just the average continuing legal education credit for attorneys on the subject, but really deep dives into how this works.
Because, think about something like in DWI law, driving well intoxicated. They utilize what’s called an Alcotest. I know this because I used to be the municipal prosecutor for a bunch of towns. And the Alcotest is a fairly simple machine, but it is a machine. There’s all these cases like the Chun case and all these millions of dollars probably have gone into the Alcotest and how it holds up or not, , is it properly calibrated, all this sort of, you know, very intense tech over a somewhat simple machine. So if that’s what it takes for something like a DWI breathalyzer, then I can only imagine that what’s going to be happening in the coming years is going to be very extensive in the area of artificial intelligence.
So I don’t think anyone has a ton of answers right now, and I’m not going to go on this podcast and say that I currently do, but it’s something that I think, you know, being aware of the situation and starting to really dig deep into the technological aspects of practice is really going to pay off in the coming years.
So anyway, that’s today’s podcast. I hope you received some information that was helpful and it allowed you to expand sort of what you’re thinking about when it comes to technology and divorce law. And of course, if you think as you’re going through your divorce planning that your spouse might be utilizing artificial intelligence in some sort of negative way, I’d love to hear from you. And if you’re a fellow attorney listening, I’d love to hear what you’re doing in your practice and collaborate to see how we can kind of make sure we make the judge’s jobs easier, whether through the use of experts or otherwise as we proceed into the into the future.
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