There is an ethical dilemma facing the legal profession. One that will define not just our careers, but the future of the legal profession, and it is the rapid pace of AI evolution.
AI is no longer the ‘stochastic parrot’ the New Yorker described in 2023, in the three years since then there are now legal tools that research case law and legislation, review and draft contracts, and can analysis, audit and refine pleadings and affidavits. Research Group, METR suggests that capabilities of AI are doubling every 3months, with this capability speed only set to speed up.
If lawyers want to be the ethical business partners in the AI revolution, we need to immediately engage with the choice: (1) do we seriously engage in adopting and assimilating AI into the daily legal grind; or (2) become irrelevant as our clients and counterparties adopt and advance despite the risks with this very technology.
There are three trends that I am seeing which the profession can no longer ignore:
- The resource curse
There is a seductive siren call of AI that when AI reduces time spent, we should reduce headcount. We are already seeing a two pronged culling of talent at the senior and graduate level, and a flattening of organisational structures, with opportunities being consolidated by a narrow niche of wealthy knowledge management holders. This means we are not sharing the gains, nor are we using AI to build a bright new world. Rather than consolidate knowledge, we should lead industry by seeing the opportunity for what it is, the ability to redeploy and hire more staff to grow business and reduce low value meaningless busy work.
This reframing of legal productivity could have profound effects on reducing mental health risk in lawyers and finally deleting the billable hour from our lexicon. We could truly have work/ life balance with fewer days, deeper work, and a more sustainable profession. If we fail, we will end up with a realm of unemployed lawyers, with the few that remains having the productivity gains chewed up by greater demands on their time and wellbeing. The opportunity is for lawyers to decide on a positive AI future that nourishes us all.
The immediate question you can ask yourself is: with this extra time AI gives me, (a) how will I spend it, and (b) does that improve my quality of life?
- The critical analysis gap
The Courts are seeing a rise in self-styled ‘legal’ representation, there is even a website that tracks AI hallucinations in cases. We must acknowledge even where there are policies and rules that restrict AI use, people are finding a means to use AI to short cut complex processes. The answer here is not to restrict further, but rather how we teach people how to interrogate the output.
AI is eroding critical reasoning, grammar, and structured, logical argument skills. These are all the core strengths of a lawyers primary training. These skills are non-negotiable professional requirements. This means we need to start enlivening public language. For anyone that has read Don Watson’s brilliant “Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language,” you will wryly note how corporate jargon and Orwellian speech has crept from business management into legal teams.
Unfortunately, the English language can be embraced from schooling, graduate training, and plain English drafting at the senior levels. The opportunity for lawyers is to position themselves as the critical thinkers in a world of AI slop. The immediate question you can ask yourself is: Is my work written to be comprehended, or is it written to impress?
- The ethical bench
Have we missed the boat? Currently, businesses are deploying AI, and it is evolving at such a rapid pace case law and legislation cannot keep up. This has always been the trouble with our industry; it is notoriously reactive.
AI consumes unimaginable amounts of ‘data, land, energy, labor (sic) and water.’ The question is, are lawyers involved in the ethical decisions about use, deployment, and consumption of AI. As a profession, we need to be thinking and advising about the big picture, issues like the impacts on democracy with the consolidation of resources, land and cultural heritage rights with the destruction of environments, privacy and individual rights with the centralisation of information and the benefits (or otherwise) to humanity if economic and political power are consolidated in the hands of a few.
We have a professional obligation to think about the ethical implications, and we are well-placed with direct lines to our clients and decision makers to take a position on this. The opportunity for lawyers is to regain a direct line to CEO and Boards as the trusted business partner and guide them in humanistic reasoning.
The immediate question you can ask yourself is: Do you want a future focused on individual benefit or collective benefit?
The legal profession needs to realise that AI is not a threat to our industry, rather complacency is. If we can proactively approach AI with intellectual curiosity, ethical depth and critical reasoning, the opportunity is that lawyers can shape the direction and outcomes of AI at a holistic level.
The next question is: what are you going to do to achieve this?
