Gen Z: The law as they understand it
“Honey, the legal world was in a full-blown meltdown, and this judgment is the ice water they needed.” That’s how a law firm’s new plain English AI tool’s ‘sassy’ mode summarises March’s Mazur ruling.
Manak Solicitors’ Legalese Translator summarises a wide range of legal documents – such as employment contracts, tenancy agreements and court rulings – in plain English, using different tones.
The five ‘tone’ types other than ‘standard’ are Gen Z, Boomer, sassy, corporate speak and TL;DR (too long; didn’t read). It translates the text into its core essentials – with the help of emojis in some of them.
Ben Frost, head of marketing at the Kent law firm, said the tool should not be dismissed as a “marketing tool” and was a “a real tool to help people understand what they are reading”.
The law firm wanted clients and potential clients to “get value from it”, which is why it had invested money in developing and maintaining the tool.
Mr Frost said more than 75 people had used the tool in the 10 days since it went live and the feedback had been “very good”. The most popular tone was ‘Boomer’, despite the fact that many people using the firm’s website are from Gen Z.
Staff members, family and friends had uploaded legal jargon in tenancy agreements, employment contracts, parking disputes and terms and conditions which many said they did not read.
Mr Frost said: “It’s an opportunity to put things in laymen’s terms, so they can pull out the key information.”
He said he built the tool using ChatGPT and training it so that it was “siloed from the rest of the world” and any data uploaded could not be seen by the law firm or anyone else, and was not retained.
Mr Frost said the idea behind the tool occurred to him in January because “we all hear stories about people who sign or ignore legal documents they don’t understand”.
Building the tool was “an interesting way to bridge the gap” and “use AI for something generally useful”.
Following the soft launch, his plan was to start “real promotion” later this month.
He added that the tool was providing “simplified explanations” and not “automated legal advice”.
To coincide with the launch, Manak Solicitors published research from Censuswide, carried out last month, which found that 54% of the 1,000 UK consumers polled had experienced “at least one negative consequence due to confusion around legal terminology”.
The most common impacts from not understanding legal documents were stress or anxiety, experienced by 18%, wasting significant time trying to interpret them (16%) and signing something they later regretted (12%). A significant minority, 12%, reported financial loss as a direct result.
Despite these difficulties, six out of 10 consumers said legal documents were “easy to understand”.
Younger adults were the most confident, with almost three-quarters of 18-24 year-olds saying legal documents were easy to understand, compared to 57% of those aged 45-54.
However, younger consumers were also more likely to have experienced negative outcomes.
Manak Solicitors is part of a group of companies which includes housebuilder Manak Homes and building contractor Stanmore.
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