Hello again everyone. I suspect a number of you out there have been wondering when I was going to get around to today’s topic. Hell, even I was wondering about it. Back in January, I identified ChatGPT as one of my top ten things for in-house lawyers to pay attention to in 2023, but I must admit that I am shocked at how quickly it has overwhelmed the debate about legal tech. To be honest, I was hoping for a moment when the pace of “new” ChatGPT information would slow down. It hasn’t. And likely won’t. But I think it’s important enough of a topic to at least try to take a snapshot of where things stand today for in-house lawyers when it comes to ChatGPT (or more generically, generative AI). Back when I was general counsel, I would have grabbed a few folks on my team and said, “Let’s jump into a conference room and whiteboard ten things we need to know about ChatGPT.”[1] As I have been thinking about and using ChatGPT, I realize we may need two whiteboards – there is a lot to cover! What I have done is read a lot about it and I have tried it out a number of times with many different asks. All to put myself back in the chair of an in-house lawyer and cut through the clutter to make sense of just what this tool is and what can it do to help me and the legal department. So, get your dry markers out, grab a big mug of coffee, and join me in the conference room as this edition of “Ten Things” tries to set out what in-house lawyers need to know about ChatGPT (and be sure to click through the links and check the footnotes for – a lot of – extra information):
Ethics
Ten Things: Common Ethics Issues for In-House Counsel
I was in-house counsel for over 20 years and served as Chief Compliance Officer for a good part of that time. One of the challenges I recall for me and my legal team was finding practical advice for in-house counsel around ethics issues. We held a number of CLE presentations on ethics every year — helpful in terms of yearly mandatory ethics-related CLE hours. While welcomed, the presentations generally left me less than satisfied because most of them were heavily focused on parsing out the text of the relevant Rules of Professional Responsibility (in our case, Texas), with a lot of focus on words like “shall” and “may.” I am not saying this is not important, but what I came to realize is that many of the ethics issues I dealt with as in-house counsel were broader than what a specific section of the rules did or did not mandate me to do. Instead, what I really needed was a general awareness of my different ethical obligations (including those under the rules) and whether I knew or could easily find the answer to my problem, or if I needed to ask someone for help to figure out the next move.
This edition of Ten Things will take on that challenge and discuss some of the basic ethics issues faced by in-house counsel and how to deal with them or what to keep in mind as you analyze the situation. There are definitely some traps out there for the unwary. Hopefully, after reading this you’ll have a better understanding of some of the key things around ethics you need to keep in mind as in-house counsel and when you may need to ask for help. Apologies to my international readers as this is a pretty U.S.-centric discussion though I think the themes apply globally.
Ten Things You Need to Know as In-House Counsel® 