Law Librarianship in the Age of AI by Ellyssa Kroski (2020)

Author:Ellyssa Kroski (2020)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LAN025000 Language Arts & Disciplines / Library & Information Science / General
Publisher: American Library Association

Lexis Answers provides users with AI-generated answers to common legal questions, such as legal definitions, standards of review, elements of a claim or defense, burden of proof, and legal doctrine with more question types coming. Users can also scroll through additional sources showing an answer by clicking on the “Next” link at the top right of the answer box.

WestSearch Plus, which incorporates the tool previously known as “Westlaw Answers” and together are referred to as “Law Summaries,” also provides answers to common legal questions and suggests searches based on West Key Numbers. A list of questions or types of questions that WestSearch Plus will answer is not available because the tool can now answer thousands of questions. However, it seems from sample searches that it goes beyond standard legal questions about elements of a claim or standards of review. (See table 8.2 for sample searches and corresponding suggested questions.) One or two AI answers generated by WestSearch Plus are displayed above the research results, and users can click a “Show More” button at the bottom of the box to see additional results. For both Lexis Answers and WestSearch Plus, it is best to choose a jurisdiction so that users can get answers from within it. If a jurisdiction is not chosen, then the AI-generated answers could come from any jurisdiction.

Both Lexis Answers and WestSearch Plus suggest questions that the AI-tool thinks a researcher might be asking while the user is typing in his or her search. This can be very helpful for law students who are not yet very familiar with legal terminology, but it can also create confusion. As previously mentioned, law students often believe that suggested questions or sources that drop down from the Lexis Advance and WestlawEdge search bars are suggested searches since this is what drops down while a user is searching Google. They don’t always realize that the suggestions are not necessarily searches; furthermore, they might not realize that the suggested questions are from Lexis Answers and WestSearch Plus AI tools. A law student who is not yet savvy in using legal research databases might click on the question and see one or two answers from these tools based on one or two primary sources, and they might conclude that these are the final “answers” to their legal issue. They might lead them to think that their research is complete, without exploring the results further.

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