I can’t cook. Technically that isn’t true, I am capable of combining an ingredient or two with heat to make something edible. But I am not a good cook. My wife can take three things out of the cupboard and make a four course meal. I can take ten things out of the cupboard and make four trips to the garbage. She is a chef, I am a low level microwave operator. It isn’t a recognized disability, and it allows me to bring ice or napkins to a potluck.
So, when I saw the ads on television for services that would send fresh food to my door with recipes to make designer meals in minutes, I was interested. Save time! Make better meals for your family! I imagined myself in a white apron with a jaunty beret, whirling through the kitchen and leaving a trail of delicacies in my path as I signed up for a trial membership.
When the first “meal” came, the picture of a French steak and frittes plate on the box had me salivating. That was when my fantasy ended. Inside the box was a piece of raw beef and two potatoes, along with three pages of instructions. They may as well have had a cow carry potato sprouts to my door. This saved me about twenty minutes to shop for groceries plus to go with the lightening of my wallet. You needn’t read my review of the service, the language was as colorful as the meal picture on the box. We ordered a pizza.
Artificial intelligence is being sold to lawyers on a daily basis as the greatest time saving device since associates but cheaper. (Apologies to young associate lawyers, there is no time saving device for you.)
It is nice to have the blanks in a letter filled in with the right data, but dumb old word processors did that. AI is billed as Clarence Darrow in a Superman cape. Given enough samples of your writing, it even promises to make the documents in your writing voice. (My voice is Hemingway recovering from a bender. Except English was his second language.)
Every case management software package offers some sort of artificial help, and so do the legal research giants. Yet we hear of artificial intelligence creating real problems. Briefs with made up citations to nonexistent cases. Citations to actual cases in the wrong jurisdiction, or in the right jurisdiction but for the wrong proposition of law. Any lawyer brave enough to have a computer write a motion had better be smart enough to read it and check every word for accuracy.
My law school Torts professor said that law school was just a twenty-minute head start to solving a legal problem. Artificial intelligence is twenty minutes in the opposite direction. Or more.
The managing partner at my first law firm never hired a paralegal because he didn’t trust anyone to write a document he was going to sign. If he was going to have to read and check every word, he may as well create the document himself. When associates wrote something for him, they were returned with so much red ink that they looked like a crime scene. While it is easier to edit than to write in the first place, it is also more frustrating. I can’t imagine him embracing AI- who would he belittle for the errors?
I am all for technology in my practice. Online legal research is much faster than Shepardizing cases, and more thorough. When it comes to artificial intelligence as a writing partner though, I am not convinced that the juice is worth the squeeze. If there is going to be a mistake made, and there will, I prefer to make it from whole cloth by myself. The grief I gather will be my own.
I am good at making mistakes, unlike making dinner. Luckily there are restaurants to bail me out of the latter problem. At least the picture of food on the menu looks like what comes to the table.
©2025 With All Due Respect. Spencer Farris is the founding partner of The S.E. Farris Law Firm in St Louis, Missouri. He may not be able to cook, but he clearly knows how to eat. Comments or criticisms about this column may be sent c/o this publication or directly to him via email at farris@farrislaw.net.