Chatbots and Collaboration Skills

Lawyers will increasingly need to work with other lawyers and non-lawyers to deal with the expanded challenges around technology, such as e-discovery, big data, online security, and artificial intelligence.  As early as 1992, the MacCrate Report identified “effectively working with other people” as an important skill for effective lawyers.  While progress has been made, law schools still lag behind others with the teaching and practice of collaboration skills. 

In order to enhance students’ collaborative abilities, the students in the legal technology class are required to complete a group project.  The groups must develop a law-related task that is a candidate for a chatbot and then develop the bot itself for presentation, use, and feedback from the rest of the class.  The students use a no-code chatbot platform, which is not of the large language model variety, but is more accessible for most legal practitioners.  The class receives training in using the platform and in the basics of UX design.  Groups have developed a variety of useful chatbots, from client intake to automated document creation. Their reflection on the teamwork is generally positive – a significant reversal from their initial response to the collaboration.