@drmtown I think it’s good at being a clerk because for a particular case, a law clerk generally reads the briefs, key portions of the lower court record, and a few key cases, and works off of that knowledge. Those materials do fit in the context window.
@drmtown Yeah, I’m thinking of a detailed syllabus, not just a list of cases. General-purpose AI isn’t good at understanding the holdings of cases like Daimler if you don’t feed the cases in. If you fed in Daimler, it would probably do better.
@drmtown I’d be curious how Claude would do on your issue-spotter if you allowed it to first ingest a detailed syllabus of your class (if one exists). I wouldn’t expect it to excel completely cold.
@ASFleischman FWIW, I was on a federal criminal jury that hung. It was reasonable, in retrospect. I was something like 70 percent sure of guilt and voted to acquit, but I thought it was reasonable to be at 90 percent.
@JoeDudekJD However, this is purely speculative, as you note. It's impossible to say with any certainty which individual Justice drafted this unsigned opinion on behalf of the unanimous Court. The stylistic clues are subtle at best.
@ded_ruckus@gojomo There are a surprising number of Supreme Court cases that are quite one-sided, and Claude performs very well with those. I agree Claude might be even more useful for run-of-the-mill lower court cases, and I would support large-scale empirical testing at that level.
@OrinKerr Do you think the relationship between lawyering and legal academia has changed since Posner wrote that 16 years ago? If so, in what direction?
@OrinKerr I read about 10 of his books when I was in law school, and I was totally blown away. I couldn’t put them down, even when I disagreed with him.
@OrinKerr In some respects Posner is underrated:
- His turns of phrase in some of his opinions are incredible, particularly opinions from the 80s and 90s. I’m not sure people appreciate that he is SUCH a good writer.
2. Some of his books from the 80s and 90s are fantastic.
@BRSoucek@FordhamLRev Thanks for conveying this interesting perspective. Just curious, do you think the Sixth Circuit panel that decided the case would interpret it in the way you advocate if a follow-on case arose?