LawCast BC: AI and the practice of law

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools such as Chat GPT continue to make headlines. Numerous industries, including the legal one, are already feeling the impacts and implications of AI, as well as exploring its potential.

We have invited guest speakers Jon Festinger, KC and Robert Diab to chat about the ways that AI has been used to help practice law, the risks in using AI tools and how AI could potentially change how people access legal services. Jon and Robert are working on putting a course together on AI, Law and Justice, which will be taught by them next year at Thompson Rivers University.

Jon Festinger, KC is a Vancouver based counsel and educator. As an Adjunct Professor at UBC’s Allard School of Law, he has taught a wide variety of law courses relating to intellectual property, media and communications, and business for more than 30 years. He also teaches at Thompson Rivers University. Jon practices law as Of Counsel at the law firm of Chandler, Fogden, Lyman.

Robert Diab is a professor at Thompson Rivers University’s Faculty of Law. He writes about constitutional and human rights, and topics in law and technology. This includes work on privacy, encryption, and AI, and on powers of detention, search, and public order policing. Prior to teaching at TRU, Robert practiced criminal and administrative law in Vancouver.

We encourage lawyers to read the Law Society's Guidance on Professional Responsibility and Generative AI to help them consider the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools in their legal practice. The guide is focused on the use of AI tools powered by large language models that can create new content or data based off of the data it was trained on, such as Open AI’s ChatGPT-4 or Google’s Bard. 

The full transcript of the episode is available.