AI, Lawyers And The Future Of Legal Work
AI is changing the role of lawyers, the business of law firms and how clients use legal information.
AI, lawyers and the work that used to be bread and butter
Artificial intelligence is having a transformative impact on the business and practice of law, and obviously law firms, lawyers and the future of legal work.
The routine, repetitive, time-consuming and low-level stuff once done by lawyers is now being done more and more effectively, cheaper and probably, and in some cases arguably, even better by AI.
That is not going to stop and it is not going to diminish.
The problem is the short-term and medium-term impact of that is on the traditional bread and butter work of most law firms.
That work is under threat and under pressure.
It is the ordinary work, the routine work, the work that lawyers and law firms have relied on for a long time, and all of a sudden we all need to re-think what the lawyers role is in light of all this.
Oversight, supervision and verification
We also now need to look at what level of oversight, supervision and verification by a lawyer is needed of AI-generated legal input.
If AI is producing the work, the lawyers role is now, at least in part, to verify that work.
That is an important change.
It may also mean, ironically, that the lawyer has to charge for verifying the work, and the client may not really understand that.
From the client’s perspective, they may think AI has done the job.
From the lawyers perspective, someone still has to know whether it is right, wrong, useful, dangerous, incomplete or just not the answer to the actual problem.
There is however little point actually doing work that AI can do better, faster and cheaper.
The client using AI
I keep saying over and over again that we also need to urgently look at consumer behaviour with respect to the use of AI.
The legal client is using AI before they engage a lawyer, and that interfaces with the lawyer in a different way.
The lawyer is now being faced more and more by a client armed with AI legal information which in many cases they construe as legal advice, for good or bad.
That is an interesting and difficult development because the client is not necessarily coming to the lawyer in the same way as before.
The problem then becomes how you tell truth from fiction, and right from wrong, and how you charge for checking what the client is now bringing to the lawyer before the matter has even effectively commenced.
Judgment and the human lawyer
We hear the word judgment used a lot.
It is used to justify the continuance of a lawyers role and value more and more especially in light of routine work being taken away from them.
Yes lawyers have value and judgment, give second opinions and look at complex matters applying experience, intuition and an empathetic human touch.
That is still very, very important as AI is not yet as good at these things.
The difficulty now is that the lawyer may have to show that value of judgment more clearly than ever before.
The lawyer has to be an intelligent, augmented sounding board, a trusted advisor and a confidant to the client, more than ever before.
The work that lawyers used to do, and the way lawyers used to justify value, is under pressure.
Planning in this environment
Things are happening very, very quickly.
Big tech, legal tech, smarter tech and small tech are all moving at the same time.
A lot of this is targeted highly at the routine, repetitive and low-level legal work, but ironically it is also targeted at things that lawyers have traditionally thought of as judgment.
That is where it becomes difficult to discern what precisely is happening as well as how to navigate it all.
As I said, all this stuff is happening in real time.
It is fluid, uncertain and difficult.
Not all doom and gloom
You can throw your hands up in the air and say it is all too hard, that there is no future and no point being a lawyer.
I do not think that is right.
There are changes happening that are good and bad.
There are also opportunities.
AI can augment existing legal work and improve parts of how a law firm operates. So from that perspective, it is not all doom and gloom.
But there is no point pretending that nothing is changing. There is little point doing work that AI can do better, faster and cheaper.
The more important question is what the lawyers role becomes when that happens, and how you value and charge the client accordingly.
No one knows exactly what the future of law holds, and no one knows exactly what the future of AI holds either.
That is why the practical work now is not guessing the future perfectly, but making better decisions about structure, positioning, pricing, systems, capacity and AI use.
We work directly with solicitors, barristers, and consultant lawyers on the decisions that shape an independent practice - structure, positioning, pricing, systems, capacity, financial control, AI use, and strategic direction.
This is practical, experience-based advisory work for lawyers who want a stronger, better-run practice and clearer judgment about what needs to change next.
You can work with us through a Strategy Session or a Solo Law Firm Tune-Up.
We also offer practical tools, guides and webinars for lawyers who want to get on top of these issues properly.
Details are on www.paulippolito.com.au
