{"id":7047837,"date":"2026-08-25T22:19:33","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T22:19:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/business\/legal\/can-ai-meet-the-legal-realist-challenge\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T22:19:33","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T22:19:33","slug":"can-ai-meet-the-legal-realist-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7047837","title":{"rendered":"Can AI Meet the Legal Realist Challenge?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When I started this blog ten years ago, there was no ChatGPT, no Claude, no Gemini. If you wanted to know something like the legal definition of a \u201ctrade secret,\u201d you had to use a primitive tool called Google to find the answer.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Those dark days are over. AI has now materially improved everyone\u2019s quality of life. Don\u2019t believe me? Consider a recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org\/americans-pessimistic-about-ais-impact-and-want-more-regulation\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Annenberg survey<\/a> finding that at least 17% of Americans believe AI will have a positive impact on the country over the next decade.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We\u2019re at the dawn of a golden age. Especially when it comes to legal services. Gone are the days when you had to talk to an actual person to find out the statute of limitations for a breach of fiduciary claim. Now you can just ask CoPilot to write a memo on it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But there are still some things AI can\u2019t do. It can\u2019t wash the dishes. It can\u2019t tuck your kids in bed at night. It can\u2019t stop Jerry Jones from micromanaging my Dallas Cowboys.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At least not yet.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Another thing AI can\u2019t do yet is to give you practical legal advice you can rely on. I say \u201cpractical\u201d because to be fair, AI is <em>pretty<\/em> good at telling you what the law is, at least in theory.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I mean, it\u2019s not foolproof. We\u2019ve all seen the horror stories about hallucinated case cites. But that\u2019s just a bug in the system. I\u2019m sure the tech bros will get it worked out eventually, so they can buy more fleece vests.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Even then, the problem will remain. Even when the private equity guys roll up the AI startups and roll out an app that can accurately tell you what the law is <em>in theory<\/em>, it still won\u2019t replace a good human lawyer. Why? Because it won\u2019t be good at telling you what the law is <em>in practice<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is the Legal Realist challenge to AI-generated legal advice.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>The Legal Realist Challenge <\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The problem, anticipated by the OG Legal Realists starting over a century ago, is twofold.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">First, even on its own terms, \u201cthe law\u201d is often indeterminate. Some legal questions have simple answers, like what is the statute of limitations for a car accident claim in Texas? But many legal questions, especially the ones that tend to matter most to the outcome of a dispute, are not so clear cut. There are going to be reasonable arguments on both sides. Let\u2019s call that \u201crational indeterminacy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I understood this point in law school. There are hard cases that existing precedents don\u2019t answer. What I didn\u2019t grasp at the time is how pervasive those hard cases are in actual law practice. Trust me, they come up all the time.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And that\u2019s not the worst of it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The second problem is that even when \u201cthe law\u201d is relatively clear on an issue, there\u2019s no guarantee a real life judge will correctly apply the law. If you\u2019re a law school student, please skip the next paragraph because I\u2019m fixin\u2019 to impart some forbidden knowledge.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For the intrepid souls ready to take the red pill, what if I told you that sometimes judges are bad at applying the law? And by \u201csometimes\u201d I mean probably around half the time. Even worse, sometimes a judge might be ok at applying the law correctly, <em>but just doesn\u2019t care<\/em>. Maybe the judge understands the law but doesn\u2019t like it. Maybe she just rules for the lawyer who donates to her campaign. Maybe the judge is just in a hurry to pad his stats by getting the trial over with. Maybe the judge is bored and wants to threaten your client with contempt, even though your client did nothing wrong.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These are all hypotheticals, of course.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Let\u2019s call this \u201ccausal indeterminacy.\u201d It\u2019s the obvious fact that regardless of what the law says in theory, there are many other factors that determine how an actual flesh and blood judge will rule on your case.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(I\u2019m borrowing the terms rational determinacy, causal determinacy, real rules, and paper rules from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.uchicago.edu\/faculty\/leiter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Prof. Brian Leiter<\/a>, who taught the philosophy of law course when I was in law school.)<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When you combine rational indeterminacy with causal indeterminacy, it gets very difficult to predict outcomes, even for a seasoned human lawyer. Can AI handle that challenge?<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Paper Rules vs. Real Rules <\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s not easy. Let\u2019s say the question is whether the statute of limitations for a car accident claim is subject to the \u201cdiscovery rule,\u201d i.e. does the clock start running when the accident happened, or when the plaintiff discovered he was injured in the accident?<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Suppose there are some cases that say yes it applies, and other cases that say no it doesn\u2019t. It may be difficult, but you can try to reconcile those cases based on their facts and reasoning to arrive at a general rule. Let\u2019s call that the \u201cpaper rule.\u201d Discerning the paper rule is only the first step.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The next problem is that the paper rule is not necessarily the real rule. By \u201creal rule,\u201d I mean the rule that actually explains the different outcomes in different reported cases. I think the fundamental insight of Legal Realism is that the reasons courts give you for their decisions are not necessarily the actual reasons for the result. In other words, the paper rules are not necessarily the real rules.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Don\u2019t get me wrong, I\u2019m not suggesting the paper rules are meaningless, or that they have nothing to do with the outcome. There is, of course, some overlap between the paper rules and the real rules. And if you\u2019re a practicing litigator, you need to be well versed in the paper rules.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But if there\u2019s one thing almost 30 years of litigation practice has confirmed, it\u2019s that the Legal Realists were right that you can\u2019t just take the reasons judges give for their decisions at face value.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This presents a real challenge for AI. Is it sophisticated enough to distinguish between the real rules and the paper rules?<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Test Case: The Irreparable Injury Rule\u00a0 <\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Let\u2019s take another test case. I\u2019m going to use an issue that commonly comes up in my law practice: does a former employee\u2019s breach of a noncompete agreement establish the \u201cirreparable injury\u201d required (in theory) to get a temporary injunction?<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I broke it down in a past blog post, aptly titled <a href=\"https:\/\/fiveminutelaw.com\/2019\/08\/19\/mysteries-of-texas-non-compete-law-part-3-irreparable-injury\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Does a Breach of a Texas Non-Compete Cause Irreparable Injury?<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As I explained there, the paper rule is that there are a bunch of cases that say it does, and a bunch of cases that say it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Funny thing is, the judges who write the opinions usually just cite the cases that answer the question the way they want, and ignore the ones that don\u2019t. This is another point I didn\u2019t fully appreciate in law school.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In my experience since then, very rarely do you read an opinion that says \u201csome cases say it does, others say it doesn\u2019t, we\u2019re choosing to follow the ones that say it does because . . .\u201d etc. For whatever reason, most judges like to pretend like a hard question has an easy answer when they write the opinion.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But I digress.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You could try to reconcile the different rules cited in the opinions based on their facts, but let me cut to the chase: you would be wasting your energy. The truth is that there just isn\u2019t a coherent paper rule.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The real rule, as I explained in that post, is that the trial court judge is going to do what he thinks is fair, and if you appeal that decision, you will probably lose, absent extraordinary circumstances.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is AI smart enough to tell you that? Maybe. In my admittedly anecdotal experience, AI doesn\u2019t like to give fuzzy answers like \u201cit depends,\u201d even when that\u2019s the right answer.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I could see the next generation of AI getting better at that, but another problem will still remain. Even if AI gets good enough to tell you what the real rule is, that\u2019s just a start. Because it\u2019s only telling you what the real rule is <em>in theory<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In other words, even if AI can solve the problem of rational determinacy in the law, that still leaves the question of <em>causal<\/em> determinacy.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Can AI Handle Causal Indeterminacy?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By \u201ccausal indeterminacy\u201d I mean the question of how courts actually decide cases, regardless of what \u201cthe law\u201d says. I\u2019m skeptical about AI\u2019s ability to handle the problem of causal indeterminacy. I just don\u2019t see it being astute enough to give you an answer like \u201cyes, that claim is probably preempted by TUTSA, but Judge Smith hardly ever grants summary judgment, so don\u2019t bother.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As a test case, I Googled \u201cwill a Texas court find irreparable injury based on a breach of a noncompete?\u201d Here\u2019s the AI Overview Google provided:<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-2667\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"144\" srcset=\"https:\/\/fiveminutelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-05-17-at-6.24.46-PM-300x144.png 300w, https:\/\/fiveminutelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-05-17-at-6.24.46-PM-1024x491.png 1024w, https:\/\/fiveminutelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-05-17-at-6.24.46-PM-768x368.png 768w, https:\/\/fiveminutelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-05-17-at-6.24.46-PM-1536x736.png 1536w, https:\/\/fiveminutelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-05-17-at-6.24.46-PM.png 2040w\" data-lazy-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"https:\/\/fiveminutelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-05-17-at-6.24.46-PM-300x144.png\"\/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-2667\" src=\"https:\/\/fiveminutelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-05-17-at-6.24.46-PM-300x144.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"144\" srcset=\"https:\/\/fiveminutelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-05-17-at-6.24.46-PM-300x144.png 300w, https:\/\/fiveminutelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-05-17-at-6.24.46-PM-1024x491.png 1024w, https:\/\/fiveminutelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-05-17-at-6.24.46-PM-768x368.png 768w, https:\/\/fiveminutelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-05-17-at-6.24.46-PM-1536x736.png 1536w, https:\/\/fiveminutelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-05-17-at-6.24.46-PM.png 2040w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ok, I take it back. That\u2019s a pretty good answer.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Give it another ten years and you won\u2019t even need me.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">________________________<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-1740 alignleft\" alt=\"\" width=\"248\" height=\"198\" srcset=\"https:\/\/fiveminutelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Head-Shot-Casual-300x240.jpg 300w, https:\/\/fiveminutelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Head-Shot-Casual-768x614.jpg 768w, https:\/\/fiveminutelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Head-Shot-Casual.jpg 1000w\" data-lazy-sizes=\"(max-width: 248px) 100vw, 248px\" src=\"https:\/\/fiveminutelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Head-Shot-Casual-300x240.jpg\"\/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-1740 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/fiveminutelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Head-Shot-Casual-300x240.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"248\" height=\"198\" srcset=\"https:\/\/fiveminutelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Head-Shot-Casual-300x240.jpg 300w, https:\/\/fiveminutelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Head-Shot-Casual-768x614.jpg 768w, https:\/\/fiveminutelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Head-Shot-Casual.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 248px) 100vw, 248px\"\/><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><em>Zach Wolfe (zach@zachwolfelaw.com) is a Texas trial lawyer who handles non-compete and trade secret litigation at Zach Wolfe Law Firm (zachwolfelaw.com). Thomson Reuters has named him a Texas \u201cSuper Lawyer\u201d\u00ae for Business Litigation every year since 2020. <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><em>These are his opinions, not the opinions of his firm or clients. Reasonable people can disagree. Every case is different, so don\u2019t rely on this post as legal advice for your case. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I started this blog ten years ago, there was no ChatGPT, no Claude, no Gemini. If you wanted to know something like the legal definition of a \u201ctrade secret,\u201d you had to use a primitive tool called Google to find the answer. Those dark days are over. AI has now materially improved everyone\u2019s quality [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7047838,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[4027,6036,5156,210505],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7047837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-legal","tag-challenge","tag-legal","tag-meet","tag-realist"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Can AI Meet the Legal Realist Challenge? - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7047837\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Can AI Meet the Legal Realist Challenge? - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When I started this blog ten years ago, there was no ChatGPT, no Claude, no Gemini. 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