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13 March 2026
Issue: 8153 / Categories: Legal News , Artificial intelligence , Legal services , Technology
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NLJ this week: The rise of the ‘ChatGPT client’ rattles the profession

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The AI revolution is no longer a distant murmur—it’s at the client’s desk. Writing in NLJ this week, Peter Ambrose, CEO of The Partnership and Legalito, warns that the ‘AI chickens’ have ‘come home to roost’, transforming not just legal practice but the lawyer–client relationship itself

Gone is the harmless ‘Google Lawyer’. In its place stands the ‘rottweiler’ of the ‘ChatGPT lawyer’, producing lengthy, sophisticated complaints packed with ‘spurious and irrelevant case references’. Clients are using AI to analyse advice, draft letters before action and even identify risks ‘that previously would have gone unnoticed’.

The result? Complaints now stretch to ‘three and four pages’, coupled with a spike in SARs as clients mine their own files for leverage. With reports of a $10m US lawsuit involving AI-issued proceedings, Ambrose’s message is blunt: lawyers must ‘get comfortable with using AI’—or risk being outpaced by the very technology their clients now wield. 

Issue: 8153 / Categories: Legal News , Artificial intelligence , Legal services , Technology
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