You know this question’s gonna be asked of me sometime in the next few years. “My company has a pending case against it. I know I need legal counsel. But why shouldn’t I hire a robot, instead of you?”
Well. Let’s talk about origin stories and perspectives and consequences.
Me:
I grew up in a rural trailer park, worked my ass off through high school, got the heck out of there and attended Northeastern University in Boston, where I studied hard as a mechanical engineering student while also enjoying college life. Then I joined the Navy as a submarine nuclear officer. On the boat I interacted with and learned to respect 134 other guys who came from all sorts of backgrounds — a few incredibly privileged, a few incredibly deprived, most of them working class.
Then I got married, went to law school while working full time and welcoming three daughters to the world, became an attorney, and I’ve been grinding it out since 2010.
Since 2023 I have owned my own firm. I get what it’s like to work hard, own a small business, have everything on the line.
Plus, if you hire me, I’m beholden to no-one but you and the Bar. If I screw up your case, even by innocent mistake, my law license and livelihood are at stake.
The robot:
Built in some Chinese factory, programmed by the CCP with an LLM ripped off from Meta or Google or Anthropic or some discount no-name company. Probably has a dozen backdoors in its programming and overall biased to serve its makers before you. It has no law license to lose, it doesn’t eat or sleep, and it doesn’t have a family to support. If it screws up your case, even on purpose, there’s no significant consequence for it or its makers. Maybe you could sue them — if you had any money to do that, after it screwed up your case.
If you don’t understand why to hire the human instead of the robot, well,
I can’t fix stupid.
