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samcleve01
Participant
January 2, 2025
Question

Do AI Assistant "user guidelines" make it useless for attorneys doing criminal law?

  • January 2, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 1380 views

The question in the subject is rhetorical, because as of now the answer is "yes." I'm an attorney. I was testing AI Assistant by asking questions regarding a brief in a real world criminal case. AI Assistant refused to respond to several questions, indicating "the document, the question, or the response" violated "User Guidelines." Seriously? Imagine: guns and violence in a brief involving a criminal case.
 
I thought attorneys were part of this product's target market. At this point, it's useless for any attorney doing criminal work. I can easily see it being useless for some species of civil work as well (for example, briefs involving allegations of s________l harassment).* Luckily, I have about a week left in which I can get a refund. I'm glad I caught it now rather than later.

 

*Ha! I received this warning when I tried to publish the post: "The message body contains s________l, which is not permitted in this community." So I had to obfuscate it like a scolded teenager. Grow up, Adobe.

2 replies

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dean_9286
Participant
April 1, 2025

I just had the same experience.  After 45 minutes with one robot and two "human" chats, I was told there are no exemptions.  I didn't matter that I am a state criminal defense attorney

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Community Manager
Tariq AhmadCommunity Manager
Community Manager
January 6, 2025

Hi @samcleve01, 

 

Thank you for sharing your experience and observations. We understand how frustrating it can be when a tool doesn’t meet your expectations, especially in a field as demanding and detail-oriented as criminal law.

 

Our AI is designed to prioritize ethical considerations and compliance with user guidelines, which sometimes results in overly cautious responses, particularly in sensitive areas like violence or harassment. While these safeguards are intended to maintain a responsible environment, we recognize that they can inadvertently limit usability for professionals like attorneys handling real-world cases.

 

We value feedback like yours to better align our product with the needs of legal professionals. I’ll ensure your observations are shared with our product team for review. 

 

Your insights are crucial in helping us improve, and we appreciate you taking the time to provide this detailed feedback.


^TD

sergios90141693
sergios90141693
Participant
January 25, 2025

I agree. It just doesn´t work. 
I was interested in it´s insights on a fictional script I´ve been working on, it´s a thriller based on real events about femicide in Mexico.
It just can´t provide even a simple summary of the story. It´s proving useless when compared with other AI tools. It´s a nice thing to have a tool than can assist professionals with documents. But its not useful if you are a attorney or a literay editor or even a journalist. 
This kind of guidelines are just making the tool too limited to be any useful.
I think it should be free because the usage is limited maybe to children and primary school students, but not for professionals.

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