You will be shocked to hear that 33% of the time AI legal research tools offered by Thomson Reuters (WestLaw) and LexisNexis hallucinate. These new shocking stats come from research that Stanford University recently conducted. These figures wouldn't be astonishing with the number of AI research tools on the market, but these are just the figures of two of the most established law software companies.
The controversial part of this study is that these companies specifically CaseText, Thomson Reuters, and LexisNexis are marketing their legaltech tools as "hallucinating free, and reducing hallucinations to nearly zero." I mean, who is going to check them on that or hold them accountable?
It goes without saying that as an attorney or legal professional, you must always supervise and verify AI outputs. But, these stats are important for legal professionals to know how weak their assisting tools are, and we still have a long way to go in getting nearperfect legal tools or replacing lawyers.