If You Are Thinking of Writing a Contract By Yourself with ChatGPT…

Please don’t.

At least not for anything important.

ChatGPT or other large language models (LLMs) do not understand what they are writing. They only string words together, one after another, based on probabilities derived from their dataset. This allows them to do remarkable things, and they are getting better all the time, but LLMs are in constant danger of making stuff up (or “hallucinating” if you want to get fancy.)

An LLM has no idea if the contract it wrote you will hold up in court, or whether it accidentally exposes you to new types of legal liability. (Does a loan contract violate usury laws? Does a business partnership violate state partnership law?) And then you eventually go to a lawyer to fix the problem, and the lawyer starts tearing his hair out.

I have no doubt that LLMs will soon be able to write solid contracts—perhaps in ten years, maybe even five. But not today! Save yourself a lot of misery, and go with a professional for now.

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