AI in Law: A Double-Edged Sword — Insights from Ms Gu, In-House Counsel at ISDA

By: Sarah Chu

The law industry often serves as the bridge between society and justice, ensuring fairness in society. However with the rise of AI Technologies, new implications emerge. To understand the implications for the politics edition, we have interviewed a UWCSEA Alumni parent, Ms Gu.

Ms Gu is an in-house counsel at ISDA. Ms Gu’s role as in house counsel is a little bit different to lawyer. The difference is that Ms Gu only serves her own company, with a focus more on commercial considerations. For this edition, she has discussed with us the benefits and negatives that have arised with the introduction of AI technologies.

In recent years, use of AI and legal research softwares has become a hotly debated topic among the legal industry. Ms Gu tells us that there are 2 groups in terms of legal practice, one is the law firms, the second group is in-house counsel. Law firms provide legal services to companies, banks and other entities. Ms Gu’s role as an in-house counsel means she is the lawyer for her own company. This makes it so that there is some difference in how AI is used for both groups.

For in-house counsels, the immediate benefit that AI brings is basic research work. A main one being translation. In Asia Pacific, there are many diverse countries, languages, and dialects. AI, specifically large language models like ChatGPT and deepseek, play a huge role in translation, as it is more accurate than previous multilingual neural translation machines before AI came into the picture.

“The in-house legal team is relatively small, it is not possible to have lawyers sometimes from every country who speak every language.” says Ms Gu.

Another consideration required with the increase of AI usage in the law firm is false information. AI technology can make things up. Ms Gu recalls a recent interesting article where a lawyer from a law firm in the United States used ChatGPT or another large language model to research court cases. It turned out that the court cases were fabricated by AI.

“When you’re doing research, not only translation, AI can be very harmful too”. Ms Gu says it will always be prudent for those in the legal industry to verify the accuracy of the information given from AI. A handy way to verify information, applicable beyond the legal industry, is by requesting references from AI.

Ms Gu concludes that a risk of AI, not only to the legal industry, is overreliance on technology. It is always worth checking the information you’re given, no matter what occupation or industry you’re in.