Stanford Engineering
11 July 2025
Law professor Daniel Ho says that the law is ripe for AI innovation, but a lot is at stake. Naive application of AI can lead to rampant hallucinations in over 80 percent of legal queries, so much research remains to be done in the field. Ho tells how California counties recently used AI to find and redact racist property covenants from their laws—a task predicted to take years, reduced to days. AI can be quite good at removing “regulatory sludge,” Ho tells host Russ Altman in teasing the expanding promise of AI in the law in this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast Have a question for Russ? Send it our way in writing or via voice memo, and it might be featured on an upcoming episode. Please introduce yourself, let us know where you're listening from, and share your question. You can send questions to thefutureofeverything@stanford.edu. Episode Reference Links: Stanford Profile: Daniel HoConnect With Us: Episode Transcripts >>> The Future of Everything WebsiteConnect with Russ >>> Threads / Bluesky / MastodonConnect with School of Engineering >>> Twitter/X / Instagram / LinkedIn / FacebookChapters: (00:00:00) Introduction Russ Altman introduces Dan Ho, a professor of law and computer science at Stanford University. (00:03:36) Journey into Law and AI Dan shares his early interest in institutions and social reform. (00:04:52) Misconceptions About Law Common misunderstandings about the focus of legal work. (00:06:44) Using LLMs for Legal Advice The current capabilities and limits of LLMs in legal settings. (00:09:09) Identifying Legislation with AI Building a model to identify and redact racial covenants in deeds. (00:13:09) OCR and Multimodal Models Improving outdated OCR systems using multimodal AI. (00:14:08) STARA: AI for Statute Search A tool to scan laws for outdated or excessive requirements. (00:16:18) AI and Redundant Reports Using STARA to find obsolete legislatively mandated reports (00:20:10) Verifying AI Accuracy Comparing STARA results with federal data to ensure reliability. (00:22:10) Outdated or Wasteful Regulations Examples of bureaucratic redundancies that hinder legal process. (00:23:38) Consolidating Reports with AI How different bureaucrats deal with outdated legislative reports. (00:26:14) Open vs. Closed AI Models The risks, benefits, and transparency in legal AI tools. (00:32:14) Replacing Lawyers with Legal Chatbot Why general-purpose legal chatbots aren't ready to replace lawyers. (00:34:58) Conclusion Connect With Us: Episode Transcripts >>> The Future of Everything Website Connect with Russ >>> Threads / Bluesky / Mastodon Connect with School of Engineering >>>Twitter/X / Instagram / LinkedIn / Facebook Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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