AI and Your Custody Case | What It Can Help With and Where It Gets It Wrong
Outline
What Happened This Morning
How AI Works and Where It Falls Short
What Happens When Clients Use AI Without Expertise
If You Have a Team, Use the Team
If AI Is Your Only Option
Using AI Safely
I use AI a lot. I happen to like it. I use various platforms for various reasons and I find it genuinely helpful for fleshing out relevant ideas, perspectives, and things I can look at in my work, but I never stop there.
I want to share something from this morning that I think is worth talking about, because it is becoming a pattern I see more and more..
What Happened This Morning
I spent part of the morning talking to a client in a Teams meeting with an attorney, actually two attorneys, and we spent a pretty good amount of time addressing questions the client had brought to us from AI, and perspectives and opinions the client had formulated using AI.
The questions looked professional. They were well-organized, but a portion of them were either not applicable to this client’s specific situation, or they reflected approaches that would not serve them well in their particular circumstances. The client did not know which is which. That is the problem.
How AI Works and Where It Falls Short
When I use AI with issues I already have a fair amount of familiarity with, I probably do a better job than most about giving AI the proper information and context to work from.
Even so, when AI gives me six, seven, or eight different suggestions, maybe five of them are pretty good, one might be so-so, and the rest tend to be terrible and do not apply. As a professional, I would know immediately that the bad suggestions are bad advice.
That is the key variable: expertise to evaluate the output. AI requires it on both ends. You need the expertise to give AI the right context, and you need the expertise to look at what it gives back and eliminate what does not apply.
What Happens When Clients Use AI Without Expertise
When clients use AI for their mental health questions or their legal questions, they typically do not have enough expertise to provide AI with the proper context to begin with.
Garbage in, garbage out.
And then when AI tells them what to do, they do not have the expertise to look at that information and eliminate the suggestions that do not apply. Preceding as if those suggestions apply, can be damaging.
If You Have a Team, Use the Team
If you have a team of people around you who are familiar with you, your family, and your circumstances, and who already have the professional knowledge and expertise to focus you in on the points that are important and relevant for you and your family, I would suggest not even wasting your time with AI. Use the team that is familiar with your case.
If AI Is Your Only Option
Not everybody has a team available. If AI is the only place you can go, go there, but do so at your own risk. Recognize that very specific instructions that AI gives you might very well be completely wrong for your circumstances.
Look at the information. Take it with a grain of salt, and whenever possible, cross-reference that information with other sources, including a professional who can tell you which parts actually apply to your situation.
Using AI Safely
AI is a useful tool. I use it and I find value in it, but it also has significant limitations. In many cases, it could be steering you wrong.
The safest way to use AI in your custody case preparation is as a starting point, not a finishing point. Generate ideas with it. Then take those ideas to someone with relevant expertise, who knows your case and can tell you what is useful and what is not.
I hope that helps.
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