Trial attorney Enrico Schaefer used ChatGPT Plus and GPT-4 Turbo to prepare for trial, generating cross-examination questions, organizing opening and closing arguments, and brainstorming case themes. He found AI especially useful for surfacing clear themes that persuade fact-finders, and says the tools delivered substantial value in his recent trial.
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So I have been in trial for the last week and a half, and so you're probably wondering, where's the content, Enrico? Well, look, I've been in trial for the last week and a half, so the good news, bad news kind of situation applies here, which is that the bad news is I haven't had time to do a lot of content on AI and how to leverage AI in order to win. The good news is that I'm going to be showing you over the next week or two how I used AI to win my trial. How it is that I leverage this tool to help me brainstorm different themes for the case. Because if you're a trial attorney, you understand that it's the themes that win the case. That the evidence isn't really important, but you have to have a message. You have to have a story. You have to have a theme that you can convey to the judge, jury, arbitrator, fact-finder in order to convince them that you are correct. There has to be something that they can hold on to that's tangible, that is digestible, and that isn't just a bunch of information that you're throwing at them. AI works really, really well in developing themes. The other thing that I did is used the AI tools, ChatGPT Plus, to help me prepare my cross-examinations. And while the tool isn't perfect, it really added tremendous value to the process of trying to develop cross-examination questions and to do so in a format that is consistent with cross-examination. So you can create a GP2. Thread or tool that is going to help you with direct examinations using non-leading questions, and then one that's going to use the template of a leading question of a, you know, attacking the credibility or impeaching the witness cross-examination style questions for the adverse witnesses. The biggest value that I was able to get out of these tools though was really helping me put together The opening and the closing arguments. So how do you actually organize all of this information into a coherent story? What does that story need to look like? What are the themes that are being pulled out of your motions, your pre-hearing brief, all of the case law that you've uploaded into the system? Really tremendous value right now using GPT-4. Turbo in preparing for trial. But here's the real thing that you need to understand. The tools that we have now, the value that we get now is nothing compared to what we're gonna be getting in the future. So my name's Enrico. Stay tuned. You're gonna get some content coming up over the next weeks, and it's gonna be how to use these AI tools to win at trial.
