Where Exactly is AI Taking the Legal Profession

My 2 cents, even though you have no reason to listen to me

Where exactly is this AI thing going?

If you want competently written articles about the legal profession, then this isn’t the place (you should, however, check out Jordan Furlong’s Substack for that).

But I do want to share my perspective on things, since I tend to see an odd mix of things given the various hats I wear.

In today’s post, we’ll talk about what I am hearing. In upcoming posts, I’ll talk about what I’m seeing and what I fear.

What I Hear - Firm Policies

It is shocking how many large law firms still have no idea what their AI policies are. That astounds me.

To be clear, we haven’t done the best job at our firm of expressly setting out an AI policy.

But our general policy can be easily summed up as:

• Experiment with things

• Don’t train AI on client data

• Use it regularly

You’d be amazed that conversations in mid-2025 with many law firms go like this on calls:

Me: “Gotcha - so you’re looking to run a training session to help lawyers improve how they draft articles and make them less boring. What’s the current stance on Gen AI for this?”

Them: “Uh… we’re still trying to figure that out. “

Me: “No problem - lots of firms are in that position. So for this course, should we build in an AI component?”

Them: “…”

We’re talking about non-billable work that everyone is incentivized to do faster, not to mention software that can take boring garbage and make it more interesting very quickly.

Not to mention that substantive article drafting (which I think is a terrible way to do BD, but what do I know) can often be done by seeing what other firms have written about the subject and doing some gentle re-writes.

So if that’s how they’re thinking about non-billable work, then you can imagine what things are like on the billable side.

—

What I Hear - Gen AI Training

I used to get asked regularly by firms if we could train them on GenAI.

My initial stance was no, since… I didn’t feel equipped to do that. When I run sessions, I want to know they’re going to be great. And I didn’t feel equipped to do that.

I have since realized that the bar is so low, and I now tell people we run them. And we have. And they have gone well.

The reason for that is actually quite simple: using GenAI is just a function of trying to figure out what you need to do (or want to do) and how to get there. It’s merely a tool.

For whatever reason, however, many firms seem to believe they need to train on GenAI in isolation. Probably for the same reason that they had standalone DEI teams that weren’t integrated into things like management, onboarding, HR, etc.

That reason being: well, let me know if you find out.

The real reason is likely a mix of optics and confusion.

What’s funny is that a year ago, some firms were holding off on training associates in other areas because they wanted to focus on GenAI training.

That is delusional, since if you’ve ever used GenAI for anything, you will know that GenAI is most powerful in the hands of people who know what they are doing.

And if you don’t know what you’re doing, GenAI is perfectly positioned to feed you wrong answers presented in a very high conviction manner.

If GenAI is going to replace grunt work and lower level tasks, then you better believe you’ll want your people better trained on all sorts of things.

Look at the software industry. Why would you hire a new grad if you can hire a mid-level software engineer who knows what they are doing and can leverage AI extremely effectively to do more with less?

The same goes with law.

Do we really think that a well-run law firm would want to keep hiring a ton of juniors who have no idea what they are doing, if AI in the hands of more experienced folks can do a way better job (and do more with less)?

Perhaps you astutely noted that I said well-run law firm, and so therefore this doesn’t apply to most firms. And that is a fair point.

And perhaps you noted that the current business model would support this type of hiring, so yes, they’ll still do it.

But it’s hard to imagine that being the world we live in forever.

I generally think law will be slower to change - as it always is.

But as I watch law school application numbers grow and grow (due to general economic crappiness), I wonder if any of these applicants really understand what they’re in for.

I have no idea what the world will be like when they graduate, but I can only imagine that the value of the average new law grad to a law firm is only going down from here (irrespective of what starting salaries will continue to look like in BigLaw).