Release: Legal Research Right in ChatGPT
Did you know you can do legal research with Midpage directly in ChatGPT with our ChatGPT integration? Our GPT is live.
More and more lawyers are using ChatGPT for legal work. But until now, it’s been impossible to do high-quality legal research in ChatGPT. That’s why we built the Midpage GPT: ChatGPT can now search, read, and summarize real case law from our full database of primary law. This significantly reduces the risk of hallucinations and the time it takes to produce a passable first draft. (And it costs a fraction of the price of tools like CoCounsel.)
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The Short Version: Why Get Midpage for ChatGPT?
This 15-second video sums it up.
Vanilla ChatGPT for Legal Research
Tools like ChatGPT frequently hallucinate case law and statutes. Why?
First, the models are simply predicting the next word or phrase based on statistical patterns in their training data. They are increasingly good at providing answers that sound accurate. But even the best models can make incorrect “predictions.” For instance, if you ask the model to recite the standard for a preliminary injunction, it will almost certainly get the factors correct. But it may invent quotes or cite cases that are either fabricated or unrelated. As your question gets more niche or complex, the likelihood of mistakes increases.
The second issue is that the models are perpetually outdated—they’re snapshots in time. Even if the models didn’t have the prediction problem described above, they wouldn’t be trained on the most recent case law and statutes.
Third, even if the models didn’t have the prediction problem, and even if the models were updated every single day, they still would be trained on an incomplete set of case law. The full body of US case law is not publicly available. There also isn’t a publicly available “shephardized” database that tracks whether cases are still good law. This is why deep research features that allow you to scour the open internet are insufficient for legal research.
Midpage x ChatGPT for Legal Research
All of these problems are solved by connecting our database to ChatGPT. How it works is simple: We give ChatGPT tools to search, read, and summarize the cases and statutes in our database. Midpage leverages the model’s “raw intelligence” to navigate our database of primary law, but does not depend on that same “raw intelligence” to determine what the law actually says. It actually reads the most relevant cases and statutes.
With the Midpage GPT, the model is significantly less likely to hallucinate because it always searches through a full database of primary law that’s updated daily. It also links to Midpage sources so you can easily verify results, and you can check the treatment of cases to see if they’re still good law.
More Big Law Firms Are Using ChatGPT
We polled more than 60 AmLaw 100 KM professionals at a recent talk. 67% of the respondents indicated that their firms use ChatGPT. We predict that more and more legal work will get done on generative AI platforms in the future. This release is a step in that direction.