AI’s Unstoppable Influence In The Legal Profession
Between Caution & Change - Lawyers & Legal Professionals Facing AI
Over the past year or so, we’ve been running regular polls on generative AI and the legal profession on LinkedIn.
Thank you to those who contributed - it’s appreciated.
These polls provide signals that shape a part of our overall research into the future of lawyering, especially in understanding where AI is heading, and how lawyers perceive and use it.
What The Polls Reveal
Here’s a summary of what lawyers and legal professionals have been telling us and our commentary on what it may mean for lawyers -
Most agree AI is already having a meaningful impact on the legal profession.
Most see advanced AI as the most important emerging technology into the future.
Generative AI is best used for routine automation, though many also see it as a useful thought partner.
Some use AI only occasionally - some use it all the time - some not at all.
Quite a lot believe the lawyer’s role is not yet changing due to AI, and most do not see positions being lost to AI yet.
Fit-for-purpose regulation is seen as the top priority for AI adoption, followed by education, training and AI literacy.
A significant number feel there is stigma around using AI professionally.
A majority of legal professionals see legal secretaries and paralegals as the roles most likely to be transformed into the future.
AI’s Growing Presence In Legal Work
We’re still in the early stages of this technology, but there’s little doubt it is already shifting and changing lawyering.
AI isn’t going away, although some lawyers still try to wish it away. It will undoubtably grow more substantially, improve more substantially and expand into every part of our day to day lives in society, not just legal work.
Lawyers can say “let’s wait and see,” but the rest of society isn’t waiting. There is somewhat of an irony here whereby clients of law firms may already be using AI more than their lawyers, and even more concerningly, starting to bypass them entirely.
Therefore there is no sugarcoating it - lawyers, the legal profession and consumers of legal services will all be profoundly affected by AI. In my view, the role of lawyers and other legal professionals is being redefined in real time, in ways we are still only beginning to understand. That is what makes the future of law so uncertain, fluid and dynamic now more than at any previous time before.
The Uncertainty And Experimentation Phase
Lawyers are either jumping in, experimenting and adopting AI, watching sagely from the sidelines, or dismissing it based on early testing and deciding it is not yet superior to them.
These are all understandable responses, given the sheer nature of the technological advances, the never ending hype, the preliminary use cases, the haphazard application of AI to law, and real concerns over privacy and ethics.
Individually, lawyers are responding with excitement, disappointment or anxiety as they test it or worse, not testing it at all.
At the law firm level, debates are unfolding over AI’s impact on administrative support roles and junior lawyers’ work, traditional billing models and how to practically use large language models successfully, ethically and safely. There is a diversity of opinion on its usefulness, its speed of adoption and change, its potential superiority with low-level as well as high-value tasks, and where it fits within the traditional partnership model and legal business structures.
The “sit back and watch and do nothing” era however in my opinion is well and truly over.
We are now solidly in the “do something” era, as AI is not waiting for anyone. Indeed lawyers and law firms who can embrace it strategically and meaningfully will undoubtably gain a competitive edge over those who lag behind in its uptake. There is also a concern we have here that we may end up with a two-tier lawyer system when it comes to AI use in providing legal services - the competent and the rest. Saying lawyers need to be technologically competent is one thing, determining what that actual entails, and means, is another, especially given the fluidity of AI.
Evolving Lawyer Roles
Lawyers are beginning to see their roles shift from routine taskers to verifiers, strategists, ethicists and gatekeepers of AI agents. Lawyers will undoubtably be spending a lot of time in the future supervising machines. Just how this plays out is unclear and still unfolding right now.
The place of the modern lawyer and the value they bring once AI is enacted at scale, are real and pressing questions.
The hardest question remains how much routine, repetitive and mundane legal work will still include a lawyer? This fear challenges the profession’s identity, how it bills for work, its fees and remuneration structures and brings to the fore the role of lawyering. If a machine can do it faster, better and cheaper than a lawyer, why bother educate, train or use lawyers for that task? Brutal, yes, but also on point.
What is a lawyer for? What value and utility do they bring to clients - ones which can now increasingly use it to do a lot more of what lawyers currently do.
AI Is More Than Just A Tool
The smarter lawyers out there understand that given the above, they must become more high level in advisory, more client-focused and more multi-disciplinary. Lawyers will clearly be using AI more as a thinking partner and digital assistant than ever before. When used prudently, AI does help lawyers think better, test ideas out and gives them high level technical skill support than they can on their own.
The challenge here is for the lawyer to use AI in a manner where the lawyer is the value proposition for the client in a greater quantum than AI - which sadly for lawyers, with time may take be able to do more and more of the higher-value tasks of a lawyer. In this brave new world, client relationships, networking, business development and rainmaking take on next level importance and are now roles of everyone in the law firm, not just partners.
At the end of the day, AI boosts both productivity and creativity - more the former at this point than the latter. The former takes away routine, repetitive and mundane work and replaces it instead with verification and supervision. The latter opens up a time and space for that brave new world of predictive, preventative, higher-value and niche lawyering that clients will continue to need for the foreseeable future in a complex, uncertain and contested world.
Lawyer Cautiousness
Lawyers remain curious but cautious, waiting for safety signals and still questioning how good AI really is. That caution is justified on one hand, especially after the high-profile failures involving fake case citations. Judges are rightly concerned about fake cases being presented to courts and the potential contamination of the common law.
AI’s rise in law, apart from in BigLaw, has been comparatively slow over the years until Chat-GPT came along. E-discovery and document automation have advanced, but their broader use in the profession still remains patchy outside BigLaw.
There is excitement about what AI can do for lawyers, but also concern about what it might do to their livelihoods.
A Two-Tier Legal System On The Horizon
Given the above, we are concerned we may be heading toward a two-tier system - lawyers using AI for high-value work, as well as AI-first platforms with minimal lawyer-in-the-loop involvement for more routine matters. This is not just for individual client work, but for that of businesses and corporations as well.
The obvious questions beckon. What does it mean to be a lawyer when routine work may never reach you as a lawyer or even human hands? What happens when clients use AI just as or even more independently than their own lawyers? Many lawyers are quietly questioning their futures as they see what AI can do and hear the noise around it taking jobs. Professional identity is in flux. We are at an internet-like moment, where clients will either bypass lawyers entirely and use AI themselves or else use AI first and then come to lawyers to finish what they’ve started. Both scenarios have profound implications for everyone - consumers, lawyers, law firms and courts.
Human Led - Maybe For Now
For now, even lower-level legal work is still human-led but for how long, no one really knows. The current reality is mixed. AI is front and centre, but adoption remains cautious and measured. Advanced AI is coming at scale.
Our polling signals that the legal profession is slowly working out AI’s role - balancing risk with opportunity and innovation with tradition.
Lawyers are smart and adaptive. The problem is so is AI.
As I said earlier, the time to do nothing has passed. You cannot sit in a state of shock, awe, paralysis or ignorance.
There is a clear need to do something when it comes to AI and your lawyering.
Paul Ippolito is Principal of Ippolito Advisory. He is a legal futurist, lawyer coach and consultant to the legal profession. Paul is available for media enquiries, speaking and consulting. You can contact him here.
