Lawyers are concerned about several issues when it comes to artificial intelligence, including data privacy, compliance, and job displacement. In this opinion piece, I will address one of those concerns: job displacement.
Will AI really take jobs away from lawyers? The short answer is: No!
There are three reasons for this. First, AI systems being developed for the legal industry are primarily co-pilots. Second, there are numerous tasks AI simply won’t do for lawyers. Third, AI will create new jobs and career paths for legal professionals.
AI as Co-Pilots:
AI systems built for the legal industry are designed to function as co-pilots, helping lawyers be more efficient but still requiring human oversight. For instance, an AI system can draft a clause for you, but as a lawyer, you must ensure the clause makes sense. AI can assist with tasks like legal research, drafting legal documents, contract review, and identifying red flags. However, human involvement and judgement remain essential, as AI systems—particularly large language models (LLMs)—can sometimes be confidently wrong.
Tasks AI cannot do:
Despite its potential to assist in many areas, there are numerous tasks AI will not do for lawyers, either because it lacks the necessary abilities or because legal regulations prevent it. For example, in litigation, AI cannot make courtroom appearances—unless, of course, nations radically change their constitutions to allow robot lawyers to stand in court, which is highly unlikely. Additionally, for lawyers involved in strategic work, such as securing new clients, meeting with existing ones, or serving on boards, AI cannot replicate the human touch. AI lacks the commercial acumen required to build relationships, win clients, and navigate complex problem-solving tasks. It also cannot engage in the strategic aspects of legal work that require understanding human behaviour, negotiating, and making judgment calls.
Read also: The transformative potential of Artificial Intelligence in ADR
AI will create new jobs:
Some might argue that if AI makes lawyers more efficient, a law firm that would typically hire say eight legal associates annually might now only need five, using AI to assist those remaining associates. While that might be true in some cases, it doesn’t necessarily mean lawyers are losing jobs, as AI will create new roles and open up new career paths for lawyers. For instance, AI companies building products for lawyers require legal professionals just as much as they need AI researchers and engineers. Lawyers are domain experts who know the pain points and can guide the development of legal AI tools.
In addition, there will be lawyers who will build a career in AI governance, working on AI policy, algorithmic auditing, AI existential risks, and AI alignment. In fact, lawyers will play a bigger role in AI governance than we ever imagined. For instance, the AI alignment problem is one of the biggest challenges in AI. There is ongoing research on whether we can solve the alignment problem using the law. As you may know, law is the most democratic aggregation of human values.
Given this fact, why can’t we encode law into AI to align it with human values? Of course, there will be questions—for example, how do we evaluate the ability of AI systems to follow the law? Or how do we ensure that AI systems do not misinterpret the law in case of unforeseen “if-then” contingencies? Humans have the Supreme Court to interpret laws when faced with complex scenarios; what will be the Supreme Court for AI systems? These are questions that require both lawyers and AI engineers alike to answer. In fact, universities are recognising the growing need for lawyers to build careers in AI. Many institutions are now offering Masters programs that focus on the intersection of AI and law, preparing the next generation of legal professionals for the evolving job market.
To wrap up, while the rise of AI will undoubtedly transform the legal profession, it will not cause the widespread job loss that many fear. Instead, AI will make legal teams more efficient and open up new career paths for lawyers.
Jamiu Idowu; CEO, Sahel AI: [email protected]
