How often do you use AI in your job?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a project manager for tech projects at a bank. My company subscribes and encourages us to use it. We’ve had it since April.

For now, we record our meetings and AI summarizes with key points, action items lists and next steps. Ai is built into our performance review logging system - we add simple sentences and it creates a professionally written summary. I also use it to refine my emails. I used to stress about wording and tone, where a quick email would take me 20 min to write and I’m still second-guessing after it’s sent. Now I can just write out my thoughts and facts, and AI can make it more or less casual/professional, more collaborative, more concise, etc. This is the biggest time saver and stress reliever for me. It’s like my assistant.


All employees are getting Pro version Subscriptions in a few weeks and company has optional training sessions for us to learn how it can help with productivity - summarizing long emails, creating a to do list, scanning our messages platform and producing a list of everyone you’re waiting for something from, etc.

I'm an AI skeptic and I think this is great. AI is saving you time and stress. Good! This is an appropriate use of a tool.

My issues with pushing AI on everybody are
1) not everybody experiences that stress, or takes more than a minute to write an email, and
2) turning a simple sentence into a professionally written summary = adding meaningless padding. That's fine in performance reviews, where padding is expected, but in most other contexts it gets in the way of communication. Simple and clear writing is good writing. Doubling the length of your message by adding some ten-dollar words is not good writing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lawyer- I use it to help me re write emails. It helps with my tone. I’m female and have always struggled with being too nice and taking on too much work. And then I swung to being too rude in emails. AI gives a good balanced middle tone.

The lawyers in this thread who are being so negative about AI simply don’t understand how vast it can be in its uses. It is such an awesome tool even if it can’t do a “legal” analysis. It can do the first draft of something like a blog post, it can create meeting minutes from a transcript, it can create detailed notes from a transcript, it can create a full PowerPoint presentation from a compliance document, it can help turn text into tables and develop databases, it can help create really advanced excel tools to do analyses, it can teach you how to create advanced templates. It’s amazing.

Np also a lawyer who has barely used ai. Our admin people are being encouraged to use it, I can see it would be helpful for them. Lawyers by and large are not for the reasons mentioned on this thread.

Lawyers on dcum typically are the best of the best lawyers - we graduated top of our top law schools and trained in some of the most demanding work places in the US. People like to shit on lawyers and say book smart doesn’t mean smart, but reality is that to be an attorney in my firm you need to be exceptionally bright, hard working, productive and good at stuff. You just didn’t get through college and law school with top grades without being so.

With that background, all the things you list…. I do perfectly and efficiently the first time. Other people on this thread saying it takes them “a quick” twenty mins to draft a very short email? My short emails take 2-3 mins and while I concede may have a minor typo, their tone and content is flawless. That’s why my clients pay me $2000 an hour. I need to be able to send that kind of client product for 10 hours a day in near consistent quality. I can produce the email, structure the excel, draft the article, etc in perfect form the first time in the same time it would take me to input the information in ai. Certainly less time than it would take me to review and edit the ai output. And the ai output is likely to be just not as good as what I can do. If I could not do it that well and that quickly the first time, I would have been pushed out of biglaw a long time ago.

I have friends in regular non legal jobs and their jobs are just less demanding. The hours and deadlines are less demanding and the work output is less demanding. My dh is a non lawyer (and very bright and very successful) but he may spend all day just debating a draft email he needs to send to the ceo, and he can get away with that in his job. I could see how ai might add value in that context (although even then, the reason why dh makes seven figures for a job where his only task in a day is writing an email is because he is damn good at communication and very well liked, so the times we’ve put his emails thru ai we’ve been very disappointed with the output because it no longer sounded like him).

You say your emails take 2-3 minutes… why would I pay you $2000 if an AI and a “less smart” person will soon also take 2-3 minutes to do the same thing? You’re the one in the most danger.

Not the PP you’re quoting but this is a very dumb takeaway. Those 2-3 minute emails are not the core of our job. It’s the writing and research and analysis that AI can’t do. The email is a short summary or update of the real work that AI can’t do.

[Anonymous]

I work with PII as a government attorney. Absolutely not permitted to feed that into AI. So never.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lawyer- I use it to help me re write emails. It helps with my tone. I’m female and have always struggled with being too nice and taking on too much work. And then I swung to being too rude in emails. AI gives a good balanced middle tone.

The lawyers in this thread who are being so negative about AI simply don’t understand how vast it can be in its uses. It is such an awesome tool even if it can’t do a “legal” analysis. It can do the first draft of something like a blog post, it can create meeting minutes from a transcript, it can create detailed notes from a transcript, it can create a full PowerPoint presentation from a compliance document, it can help turn text into tables and develop databases, it can help create really advanced excel tools to do analyses, it can teach you how to create advanced templates. It’s amazing.

Np also a lawyer who has barely used ai. Our admin people are being encouraged to use it, I can see it would be helpful for them. Lawyers by and large are not for the reasons mentioned on this thread.

Lawyers on dcum typically are the best of the best lawyers - we graduated top of our top law schools and trained in some of the most demanding work places in the US. People like to shit on lawyers and say book smart doesn’t mean smart, but reality is that to be an attorney in my firm you need to be exceptionally bright, hard working, productive and good at stuff. You just didn’t get through college and law school with top grades without being so.

With that background, all the things you list…. I do perfectly and efficiently the first time. Other people on this thread saying it takes them “a quick” twenty mins to draft a very short email? My short emails take 2-3 mins and while I concede may have a minor typo, their tone and content is flawless. That’s why my clients pay me $2000 an hour. I need to be able to send that kind of client product for 10 hours a day in near consistent quality. I can produce the email, structure the excel, draft the article, etc in perfect form the first time in the same time it would take me to input the information in ai. Certainly less time than it would take me to review and edit the ai output. And the ai output is likely to be just not as good as what I can do. If I could not do it that well and that quickly the first time, I would have been pushed out of biglaw a long time ago.

I have friends in regular non legal jobs and their jobs are just less demanding. The hours and deadlines are less demanding and the work output is less demanding. My dh is a non lawyer (and very bright and very successful) but he may spend all day just debating a draft email he needs to send to the ceo, and he can get away with that in his job. I could see how ai might add value in that context (although even then, the reason why dh makes seven figures for a job where his only task in a day is writing an email is because he is damn good at communication and very well liked, so the times we’ve put his emails thru ai we’ve been very disappointed with the output because it no longer sounded like him).

You say your emails take 2-3 minutes… why would I pay you $2000 if an AI and a “less smart” person will soon also take 2-3 minutes to do the same thing? You’re the one in the most danger.

Not the PP you’re quoting but this is a very dumb takeaway. Those 2-3 minute emails are not the core of our job. It’s the writing and research and analysis that AI can’t do. The email is a short summary or update of the real work that AI can’t do.

Of course it can’t do your job (yet). But what if it can do 20% of your job? 40? 60? When do you get devalued?

[Anonymous]

Not often. I’m a teacher who is also admin. Sometimes I lead pd. The other day I wanted a more clever name for a workshop and had ChatGPT throw out some ideas. I’ve used it for resume optimizing & meal planning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lawyer- I use it to help me re write emails. It helps with my tone. I’m female and have always struggled with being too nice and taking on too much work. And then I swung to being too rude in emails. AI gives a good balanced middle tone.

The lawyers in this thread who are being so negative about AI simply don’t understand how vast it can be in its uses. It is such an awesome tool even if it can’t do a “legal” analysis. It can do the first draft of something like a blog post, it can create meeting minutes from a transcript, it can create detailed notes from a transcript, it can create a full PowerPoint presentation from a compliance document, it can help turn text into tables and develop databases, it can help create really advanced excel tools to do analyses, it can teach you how to create advanced templates. It’s amazing.

Np also a lawyer who has barely used ai. Our admin people are being encouraged to use it, I can see it would be helpful for them. Lawyers by and large are not for the reasons mentioned on this thread.

Lawyers on dcum typically are the best of the best lawyers - we graduated top of our top law schools and trained in some of the most demanding work places in the US. People like to shit on lawyers and say book smart doesn’t mean smart, but reality is that to be an attorney in my firm you need to be exceptionally bright, hard working, productive and good at stuff. You just didn’t get through college and law school with top grades without being so.

With that background, all the things you list…. I do perfectly and efficiently the first time. Other people on this thread saying it takes them “a quick” twenty mins to draft a very short email? My short emails take 2-3 mins and while I concede may have a minor typo, their tone and content is flawless. That’s why my clients pay me $2000 an hour. I need to be able to send that kind of client product for 10 hours a day in near consistent quality. I can produce the email, structure the excel, draft the article, etc in perfect form the first time in the same time it would take me to input the information in ai. Certainly less time than it would take me to review and edit the ai output. And the ai output is likely to be just not as good as what I can do. If I could not do it that well and that quickly the first time, I would have been pushed out of biglaw a long time ago.

I have friends in regular non legal jobs and their jobs are just less demanding. The hours and deadlines are less demanding and the work output is less demanding. My dh is a non lawyer (and very bright and very successful) but he may spend all day just debating a draft email he needs to send to the ceo, and he can get away with that in his job. I could see how ai might add value in that context (although even then, the reason why dh makes seven figures for a job where his only task in a day is writing an email is because he is damn good at communication and very well liked, so the times we’ve put his emails thru ai we’ve been very disappointed with the output because it no longer sounded like him).

You say your emails take 2-3 minutes… why would I pay you $2000 if an AI and a “less smart” person will soon also take 2-3 minutes to do the same thing? You’re the one in the most danger.

Not the PP you’re quoting but this is a very dumb takeaway. Those 2-3 minute emails are not the core of our job. It’s the writing and research and analysis that AI can’t do. The email is a short summary or update of the real work that AI can’t do.

Of course it can’t do your job (yet). But what if it can do 20% of your job? 40? 60? When do you get devalued?

Here is the reality. The top flight lawyers in this thread are creating exactly the content AI is training on to TRY to SOUND like us. Not to actually reason or analyze like us. To SOUND like it is. It’s not even coming close to the actual work. It’s just rhetorical cosplay. Looks like the real thing at first glance, but is useless garbage on closer review.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lawyer- I use it to help me re write emails. It helps with my tone. I’m female and have always struggled with being too nice and taking on too much work. And then I swung to being too rude in emails. AI gives a good balanced middle tone.

The lawyers in this thread who are being so negative about AI simply don’t understand how vast it can be in its uses. It is such an awesome tool even if it can’t do a “legal” analysis. It can do the first draft of something like a blog post, it can create meeting minutes from a transcript, it can create detailed notes from a transcript, it can create a full PowerPoint presentation from a compliance document, it can help turn text into tables and develop databases, it can help create really advanced excel tools to do analyses, it can teach you how to create advanced templates. It’s amazing.

Np also a lawyer who has barely used ai. Our admin people are being encouraged to use it, I can see it would be helpful for them. Lawyers by and large are not for the reasons mentioned on this thread.

Lawyers on dcum typically are the best of the best lawyers - we graduated top of our top law schools and trained in some of the most demanding work places in the US. People like to shit on lawyers and say book smart doesn’t mean smart, but reality is that to be an attorney in my firm you need to be exceptionally bright, hard working, productive and good at stuff. You just didn’t get through college and law school with top grades without being so.

With that background, all the things you list…. I do perfectly and efficiently the first time. Other people on this thread saying it takes them “a quick” twenty mins to draft a very short email? My short emails take 2-3 mins and while I concede may have a minor typo, their tone and content is flawless. That’s why my clients pay me $2000 an hour. I need to be able to send that kind of client product for 10 hours a day in near consistent quality. I can produce the email, structure the excel, draft the article, etc in perfect form the first time in the same time it would take me to input the information in ai. Certainly less time than it would take me to review and edit the ai output. And the ai output is likely to be just not as good as what I can do. If I could not do it that well and that quickly the first time, I would have been pushed out of biglaw a long time ago.

I have friends in regular non legal jobs and their jobs are just less demanding. The hours and deadlines are less demanding and the work output is less demanding. My dh is a non lawyer (and very bright and very successful) but he may spend all day just debating a draft email he needs to send to the ceo, and he can get away with that in his job. I could see how ai might add value in that context (although even then, the reason why dh makes seven figures for a job where his only task in a day is writing an email is because he is damn good at communication and very well liked, so the times we’ve put his emails thru ai we’ve been very disappointed with the output because it no longer sounded like him).

You say your emails take 2-3 minutes… why would I pay you $2000 if an AI and a “less smart” person will soon also take 2-3 minutes to do the same thing? You’re the one in the most danger.

Not the PP you’re quoting but this is a very dumb takeaway. Those 2-3 minute emails are not the core of our job. It’s the writing and research and analysis that AI can’t do. The email is a short summary or update of the real work that AI can’t do.

Of course it can’t do your job (yet). But what if it can do 20% of your job? 40? 60? When do you get devalued?

Here is the reality. The top flight lawyers in this thread are creating exactly the content AI is training on to TRY to SOUND like us. Not to actually reason or analyze like us. To SOUND like it is. It’s not even coming close to the actual work. It’s just rhetorical cosplay. Looks like the real thing at first glance, but is useless garbage on closer review.

You are anthropomorphizing the AI the same way its boosters would. It’s not a person. It’s not a dumb assistant who is never going to be as smart as you. It is a program that converts words to numbers and gets a statistical approximation for the next word. It doesn’t ever need to be as good as you. It needs to be close, and for a person who is cheaper than you to get the rest of the way there.

[Anonymous]

I use it all the time for menial tasks I typically suffer through due to ADHD. It allows me to focus on things that take actual thought to complete.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lawyer- I use it to help me re write emails. It helps with my tone. I’m female and have always struggled with being too nice and taking on too much work. And then I swung to being too rude in emails. AI gives a good balanced middle tone.

The lawyers in this thread who are being so negative about AI simply don’t understand how vast it can be in its uses. It is such an awesome tool even if it can’t do a “legal” analysis. It can do the first draft of something like a blog post, it can create meeting minutes from a transcript, it can create detailed notes from a transcript, it can create a full PowerPoint presentation from a compliance document, it can help turn text into tables and develop databases, it can help create really advanced excel tools to do analyses, it can teach you how to create advanced templates. It’s amazing.

Np also a lawyer who has barely used ai. Our admin people are being encouraged to use it, I can see it would be helpful for them. Lawyers by and large are not for the reasons mentioned on this thread.

Lawyers on dcum typically are the best of the best lawyers - we graduated top of our top law schools and trained in some of the most demanding work places in the US. People like to shit on lawyers and say book smart doesn’t mean smart, but reality is that to be an attorney in my firm you need to be exceptionally bright, hard working, productive and good at stuff. You just didn’t get through college and law school with top grades without being so.

With that background, all the things you list…. I do perfectly and efficiently the first time. Other people on this thread saying it takes them “a quick” twenty mins to draft a very short email? My short emails take 2-3 mins and while I concede may have a minor typo, their tone and content is flawless. That’s why my clients pay me $2000 an hour. I need to be able to send that kind of client product for 10 hours a day in near consistent quality. I can produce the email, structure the excel, draft the article, etc in perfect form the first time in the same time it would take me to input the information in ai. Certainly less time than it would take me to review and edit the ai output. And the ai output is likely to be just not as good as what I can do. If I could not do it that well and that quickly the first time, I would have been pushed out of biglaw a long time ago.

I have friends in regular non legal jobs and their jobs are just less demanding. The hours and deadlines are less demanding and the work output is less demanding. My dh is a non lawyer (and very bright and very successful) but he may spend all day just debating a draft email he needs to send to the ceo, and he can get away with that in his job. I could see how ai might add value in that context (although even then, the reason why dh makes seven figures for a job where his only task in a day is writing an email is because he is damn good at communication and very well liked, so the times we’ve put his emails thru ai we’ve been very disappointed with the output because it no longer sounded like him).

You say your emails take 2-3 minutes… why would I pay you $2000 if an AI and a “less smart” person will soon also take 2-3 minutes to do the same thing? You’re the one in the most danger.

Not the PP you’re quoting but this is a very dumb takeaway. Those 2-3 minute emails are not the core of our job. It’s the writing and research and analysis that AI can’t do. The email is a short summary or update of the real work that AI can’t do.

Of course it can’t do your job (yet). But what if it can do 20% of your job? 40? 60? When do you get devalued?

Here is the reality. The top flight lawyers in this thread are creating exactly the content AI is training on to TRY to SOUND like us. Not to actually reason or analyze like us. To SOUND like it is. It’s not even coming close to the actual work. It’s just rhetorical cosplay. Looks like the real thing at first glance, but is useless garbage on closer review.

You are anthropomorphizing the AI the same way its boosters would. It’s not a person. It’s not a dumb assistant who is never going to be as smart as you. It is a program that converts words to numbers and gets a statistical approximation for the next word. It doesn’t ever need to be as good as you. It needs to be close, and for a person who is cheaper than you to get the rest of the way there.

No, I’m not. I’m describing how it works. It trains on the kind of work we do, to sound like we sound. Not to do the work we do, but to sound like it did. If you think my work is to *sound* like a lawyer, you misunderstand the task.

[Anonymous]

I am a lawyer and use AI all the time. I use it to draft emails, proofread documents, flag any concerning provisions in a contract, create reports, presentations, executive summaries, etc. It is not perfect and does make mistakes, but it can also get to 75%, allowing me to complete tasks much quicker and more efficiently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lawyer- I use it to help me re write emails. It helps with my tone. I’m female and have always struggled with being too nice and taking on too much work. And then I swung to being too rude in emails. AI gives a good balanced middle tone.

The lawyers in this thread who are being so negative about AI simply don’t understand how vast it can be in its uses. It is such an awesome tool even if it can’t do a “legal” analysis. It can do the first draft of something like a blog post, it can create meeting minutes from a transcript, it can create detailed notes from a transcript, it can create a full PowerPoint presentation from a compliance document, it can help turn text into tables and develop databases, it can help create really advanced excel tools to do analyses, it can teach you how to create advanced templates. It’s amazing.

This is only helpful if the result is error-free work. Since it isn’t, I have to spend as much time looking for the mistakes as it would have taken for me to do it correctly.

It doesn’t take nearly as long to review for mistakes as it does to create a document.

[Anonymous]

As a lawyer what is the best AI tool for summarizing video meetings without creating privileged issues? That I think would actually be useful but not sure safe to adopt given the data issues.

[Anonymous]

So far never. We are permitted to use Microsoft Copilot at this time.

[Anonymous]

Never. Wouldn’t even know how.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a lawyer what is the best AI tool for summarizing video meetings without creating privileged issues? That I think would actually be useful but not sure safe to adopt given the data issues.

Your firm needs to invest in an enterprise edition of the software that will not send data back to the company for training.

It's software. It can be the equivalent of Microsoft Word. You don't worry about your data being sent to Microsoft when you write a document on word.