The Routine Work Is Going. The Strategic Work Remains.

The Unseen Demand For Strategic Legal Work

The routine work is going.

The strategic work that remains is still largely unseen.

There is a great deal of unmet, unknown and latent demand for strategic legal work.

I see this as a lawyer in practice, not just in a theoretical sense.

Much of it remains untapped because clients, or we as their lawyers, have not yet had the time or space to think about it.

AI Clears The Drudgery And Changes The Lawyer’s Role

As AI clears away more of the drudgery, this becomes easier to see.

The role of the lawyer is changing.

Client and lawyer communication and relationships will take on a different meaning.

Add predictive lawyering and an increasingly complex, uncertain and contested world, and there is still significant strategic work left for lawyers to do.

The Nature Of The New Strategic Work

But it may be different work.

The hard stuff. The complex stuff.

The work that challenges your mind as a lawyer and where AI has only limited value.

It may be work many lawyers are neither trained for nor accustomed to doing.

It may be work so multi-disciplinary in nature that regulatory reform is needed.

It may be uncomfortable difficult work.

As AI takes on more routine tasks, it frees more thinking time.

Judgment Becomes The Value

That thinking time is where the real value now sits.

I am seeing this with our legal practice clients. I am also seeing it in with our advisory practice clients.

The routine is being automated.

Judgment and strategic thinking are becoming the real value.

Unshackle yourself as much as you comfortably can from the drudgery and free your mind to explore the strategic.

If you are building or reshaping a solo law practice, this is the work to prepare for right now.