Ask Your Lawyer First: AI and Family Law | Pittsburgh

AI tools such as ChatGPT can answer general questions about family law, and used carefully, they can help you learn the vocabulary of your case and organize your questions. Direct answers about your own situation should come from a lawyer who knows your facts and the court that will hear your case.

What these tools do well

An AI tool can explain what equitable distribution means or help you list the questions you want to ask. That kind of background can make a first meeting with a lawyer more productive, because you arrive already knowing the terms.

Where they fall short

An AI tool does not know your facts, and it does not know how the Allegheny County Family Division handles cases day to day. Its answers can sound confident while being out of date or drawn from another state's law. Nothing in the answer tells you which parts to trust.

Family law is unforgiving of small errors. A missing provision in a settlement agreement, or a deadline misread, can be costly to correct and sometimes cannot be corrected at all.

What we see in practice

We review poorly drafted documents daily, from marital settlement agreements to motions and briefs, including documents prepared with AI. Repairing a flawed document usually takes more time and money than drafting it correctly in the first place, and some problems surface only after the document has been signed or filed.

Our answers come from years of real cases before the same judges and hearing officers. That experience is what a general-purpose program cannot supply.

Using these tools safely

Whatever you type into an AI tool goes to the company that runs it and is stored there. Your conversations with your lawyer are confidential. Keep account numbers and the details of your case out of any AI tool, and treat its answers as a starting point for questions.

Before you sign or file anything based on an AI tool's answer, review it with your lawyer. The same holds for any message to the other party.