Doctors and Lawyers Agree on AI in New Medscape and Clio Reports
I was listening to the LawNext Podcast with Bob Ambrogi and Joshua Lenon of Clio discussing the October 2023 release of the Legal Trends Report by Clio. During the talk, there was some surprise by the findings by Clio that clients may be very interested in using Generative AI prior to having discussions with lawyers. Joshua Lenon explained that ‘patients are comfortable self diagnosing with Google and we shouldn’t be surprised by this.’
I’ve been in Digital Health Technology for a few years and back in November 2022 I wrote about, “The Future of Legal Technology Follows the Path of Digital Health.” Looking at the Clio Legal Trends Report and Medscape’s Physician AI Report, it appears that the two industries are closer than ever in their technology perspective.
For people that don’t know anything about Clio, they’re like the Epic or Cerner of the legal world. And for people that know nothing about Medscape, they’ve got 12+ million downloads and they’re like the LexisNexis of medicine.
Lawyers are clearly concerned about their clients and perspective clients using Generative AI, but clients seem to have a much higher degree of trust in AI.
Doctors are feeling the same vibe when it comes to their patients using Generative AI
There is definitely a lag in technology adoption by lawyers compared to doctors. There are a number of issues to point to, but one of the major drivers is the degree of privacy and security concerns on the part of lawyers. For as much as the medical industry harps on HIPAA privacy regulations, the penalties are paltry compared to what happens to a lawyer if they disclose confidential client information. Doctors and health systems face minor penalties, lawyers lose licenses and livelihoods.
Another driver which accelerated technology adoption for Digital Health came courtesy of the US Government in the form of $35B in stimulus dollars to essentially mandate Electronic Health Record (EMR) adoption. In just 7 years, adoption of EMRs went from around 10% of US Hospitals to over 80%! There is no corollary in the Legal Tech space to the HITECH Act of 2009
Generative AI is creating a more level playing field for large and small companies with Digital Health as well as the Legal Technology domain. It is also allowing level comparisons across industries that wouldn’t have been possible prior to the revolution created by ChatGPT.
We can compare what patients and clients want from medical and legal technology respectively from the same “jump point.”
Lawyers seem to be ultra-conservative in their perceptions of Generative AI compared to clients. My favorite take from this Graph, is the “Responding to client emails, calls, and texts.” Seriously, the vast amount of landing pages, SEO, and Social Media Campaigns for attracting clients have “bots’ that are using AI at some level. Check out Clio’s website
This may simply be an education issue, and as Joshua Lemon stated in the podcast with Bob Ambrogi, ‘There was a time that Clio customers answered No to survey questions about whether they were using the cloud, even though Clio was on the cloud.’ Most importantly, the customers of lawyers and doctors are the ones that seem most in tune with Generative AI and both professions will have to play catch up or they will lose traction.
89% of doctors are concerned about patients taking the lead on using Generative AI to self-diagnose. The numbers for the legal profession are not quite there yet. This may be because patients are comfortable using Doctor Google to diagnose themselves and legal clients have not had the tools to navigate complex legal landscapes. But, times are changing.
Edward Bukstel
CEO
Giupedi
