June 2025 — Paxton, the AI legal assistant, today announced the publication of a new white paper, Demystifying AI for Lawyers, authored by Robert Mahari, JD, PhD, a legal technologist with dual degrees from Harvard Law School and the MIT Media Lab.

This timely white paper offers an accessible and practical guide for legal professionals seeking to understand and responsibly adopt AI tools, especially as large language models (LLMs) become more integrated into everyday legal workflows. Drawing on original research, real-world case studies, and leading academic work, Mahari explains how lawyers can benefit from AI—without compromising ethical standards or legal accuracy.

The white paper explores:

  • The architecture and mechanics behind today’s AI tools, including LLMs and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
  • How models like GPT-4 actually process language—and why that matters for legal accuracy
  • Real legal use cases, including motion drafting, discovery, data extraction, and judicial behavior analysis
  • Key risks such as hallucinated citations and ethical blind spots, and how to guard against them
  • Why most academic research in legal NLP fails to meet the real needs of practicing attorneys

It also emphasizes the increasing ethical obligations lawyers face around AI, including the duty of technology competence, and provides actionable guidance for evaluating and deploying AI tools within firm workflows.

“This paper represents a major step in making advanced AI concepts usable for real-world lawyers,” said Tanguy Chau, founder and CEO of Paxton. “We’re grateful to Robert for his deep expertise and practical insights, and we’re proud to support legal professionals navigating this new frontier.”

Demystifying AI for Lawyers is available for free at Paxton.ai/whitepaper.