A few days ago, The New York Times declared, “A.I. Is Coming for Lawyers.” With GPT-4 having passed the bar exam and legal tech companies launching AI-based legal assistants, it sometimes seems that the potential for AI in law is limitless. But what about that most basic of a lawyer’s tasks — formatting citations to comply with the style of The Bluebook?

Despite ChatGPT’s impressive achievements, formatting citations is one task for which it is not currently suited, argues Ethan Isaacson, founder and CEO of LegalEase Citations.

Why is that? He explains in an article he wrote for the resources library of the LawNext Legal Technology Directory, AI and The Bluebook: Why ChatGPT Falls Short of Traditional Algorithms for Bluebook Legal Citation Formatting.

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Photo of Bob Ambrogi Bob Ambrogi

Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.