Generative AI for Legal Research

This guide is for Law students, faculty, and instructors interested in learning about how generative artificial intelligence (AI) is being used in legal research.

For general information about Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), visit the Using Generative AI guide. It includes:

• Types of generative AI
• How to decide if you want to use AI
• Ethical considerations and which AI tools to use
• How to use AI tools
• ​​​​​​​Evaluating AI content

• Citing works created by AI

The University of Alberta AI Steering Committee has launched an institutional website: Using Artificial Intelligence at the U of A with resources for faculty, staff and students.

Generative AI tools are evolving incredibly quickly, and they are having a significant impact on education and research. This provides some concerns about using generative AI in legal databases. Many of these concerns were addressed in an article written by Benjamin Perrin, a law professor at the University of British Columbia.

Some of these issues apply more widely to the using generative AI in our work. Concerns like hallucinations, errors, and tasks and use cases may not be available. 

• Hallucinations - Like other generative AI programs, AI used in legal databases may hallucinate or create cases or legislation that do not exist. Perrin (2024) notes, “Incidents of lawyers in Canada and the United States getting into hot water for unwittingly submitting “hallucinations” or fake cases generated by AI to judges make Lexis+ AI more appealing…the fine print doesn’t say it will eliminate hallucinations but does claim to reduce the risk of them.” (Para. 4).

• Tasks - Tasks you may want generative AI to perform may not be available. For example, you may not be able to ask the AI program to produce case summaries for you.

• Errors - AI programs make errors when you are asking them to produce information for you. If an AI programs makes errors, you will still have double-check your sources to make sure you are getting the correct answers.

• Use cases may not be available.

Some database vendors have launched generative AI functions before the AI programs can do everything you need the database to do. This may result in more work for you, rather than having the AI functions save you time, as you may ask it to do something it can’t do yet or you need to check for hallucinations and errors in the information you find using generative AI.

If you decide to use generative AI tools to create content or use it for research, you should identify a specific reason to use these tools, such as generating questions to help you investigate a particular topic. For more information, visit the Using Generative AI Guide.