Is the Legal Profession Dead?

Will we witness the end of the legal profession in our days? With the advent of AI (Artificial Intelligence), there comes a serious challenge to this profession that celebrates its precision and logical arguments, almost always based on precedent. Let’s consider a few cases.

It seems certain that future lawyers will bring an AI assistant into the courtroom. It will listen to all testimony, look for irregularities, signal objection events, point out exceptions (with references), and help deliver closing arguments. Do you agree?

The law office of the future will need no paralegals. AI will develop all the background knowledge the attorney of record needs. It will supply appropriate quotes with references. It will cite tangential issues, how they were decided, and accompanying arguments. The future law office will have no space for a law library – it being online in every office. Attorneys will dictate and AI will compose their letters in the correct legal language. The trusty legal secretary’s days may be diminished.*

Public defenders may see their roles decline as suspects may be interrogated by AI, their case summarized, and possibly an attorney assigned. However, the future accused may elect an AI-only attorney. (After all, AI can now pass the bar exam.)

Corporate AI lawyers will draft break-proof contracts. Civil AI lawyers will create break-proof wills. (Maybe they already do.) Accident AI lawyers will simply negotiate a settlement, the legalities fully developed by AI – for both sides.

Of course, the Supreme Court will be the biggest user of AI, as it reviews all litigant briefs and summarizes the case based on law, even for politics – as seem to be a feature of recent Supreme meanderings. Appeals courts may be completely replaced by AI – if only to remove bias.

There seems no business as vulnerable as the legal profession. Clearly, legal costs will be reduced from $-000’s per hour to pennies. Only the bias and need for bias of politicians may protect this vaunted profession.

But is the much-valued judge a victim of AI, as well? Most probably, as they mostly review technicalities, rule on objections, approve witnesses, and simply keep courtroom order.

*My mom was a legal secretary, upon which her boss greatly depended.

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