Chapter 8 – Legal Considerations in Developing Expert Law Systems

Developing Expert Law Systems requires careful navigation of legal and ethical boundaries to avoid unauthorized practice of law. This segment explores key considerations for creating these systems responsibly.

One critical consideration is avoiding the unauthorized practice of law. Developers must ensure that these systems do not provide personalized legal advice, as this is a function reserved for licensed attorneys. Clear boundaries must be maintained between guidance and professional counsel. This is where it must be stated that it is not possible for an automatic system to dispense legal advice, but it is possible for a professional to step in at some point and give legal advice and it simply must be understood whether you do or do not have the right to give legal advice.  This is generally universally a professional right of Attorneys only, but there are limited scopes of activities within different professions where advice can be given.  You must be careful in the proper fashion given the rules of your profession.

Disclosure requirements are another essential aspect. Users must be informed that they are interacting with an automated system and that the system’s output is not a substitute for legal advice. Transparent disclaimers help manage user expectations and reduce liability.  Make it a simple and straightforward explanation of who you are as a professional and what the expert system with which your client is interacting is.  Explain that it is your best work at properly encoding their selected specific document process and/or is an automatic question and answer form that will give them a very categorically targeted and on point prewritten explanation of issues involved in what situation they indicate they are dealing with in their business or personal lives.

Professional roles must also be respected. For example, Legal Document Assistants and Paralegals can use these systems to assist attorneys but Paralegals cannot independently provide legal services, and Legal Document Assistants can only provide self-help at the specific direction of their clients. Adhering to professional boundaries ensures compliance with regulations.  A brief note is appropriate at this time.  ApexLawService.com is a website and business that we partner with often and it uses a method of business called many things, but one main thing it is called is Contract Paralegal Work.  Two good pages on the site about legal compliance in the context of Contract Paralegal Work are https://apexlawservice.com/how-it-works/ and also https://apexlawservice.com/ABA/.

Contract Paralegal Work is a simple method of explaining to a public client that your business does paralegal work for attorneys who are clients of your business and that you can take a sufficient amount of information from the person with a legal issue so that you can introduce them to an attorney with their niche area of focus and that the attorney will use your paralegal business to do the work the attorney ends up asking you to do for the person if the person does in fact hire the attorney to whom you introduce them.  There is more information about this business model further on in this book in the appendices, but suffice it to say, an expert system can help greatly by giving you as a professional the ability to do automatic information intake.

By addressing the considerations in this segment of the book, developers can create Expert Law Systems and Expert Document Systems that serve as valuable tools while upholding legal and ethical standards.  Use automatic conditional logic tools and integration tools to make a system that helps your client, helps you save time, keeps information organized and keeps you in compliance with the law.