The role of lawyers is changing

The traditional role of the lawyer is under pressure

The traditional role of the lawyer is, therefore, changing. Right now. These are facts, not predictions. As a lawyer, legal professional, or law firm leader, you should probably be urgently looking at which of your routine and repetitive tasks look like they will be taken over by AI, what level of oversight, supervision, and verification is needed of your AI-generated legal output, where your existing legal work can be augmented by using AI, how AI can be used across your law firm generally in other areas – not just in legal work, and what legal work remains or should be done that only lawyers can do much better than AI. Most importantly, you need to seek out the new lawyer-only opportunities that are emerging in society by also using AI more and more. This last part is where your future livelihood and bread and butter as a lawyer and law firm will increasingly come from.

This probably can’t wait

It probably can’t wait. It probably shouldn’t be pushed off until tomorrow. Indeed, the grace period relating to the introduction of AI into lawyering and law firms has now passed. Yes, it all sounds hard, too fluid, and uncertain and difficult to navigate. Indeed, you could just throw your hands up, listen to the doomsayers, say it’s all too hard, and decide there’s no future, or point in being a lawyer or in having a law firm. Or you could accept that it’s probably time to start doing things differently than you have before. Maybe it is time to let go of what’s always been and maybe it is also time to start seriously being the main player, in designing what comes next in your own future of law.

Your future in law as a lawyer is still largely in your hands, in my opinion. Al is just an enabler; you still get to decide why, what in, and how to use it in your law practice.

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The AI-enabled future is already here

No one knows exactly how much or how fast AI will impact the future of law, but the signs are everywhere that it already has, that it is pervasive, and as I said before, it is here to stay. It’s premature to say AI will do this or that definitively or with certainty because its development and impact are so fluid. But it’s also just as naïve to sit back and hope it will all blow over and go away. That’s not happening.

Because of the rate of evolution in AI developments and a range of other societal forces, we now see long-term legal strategies having to be increasingly compressed. My own legal and generalist future thinking has changed considerably in just a few years. Thinking ahead for me now means thinking, planning, and reacting one, three, maybe five years out. Beyond that, the fog is just too thick to see clearly.

The routine is vanishing

We are heading into a future of more tech, faster tech, and smarter tech. That is certain. AI will continue stripping away routine, repetitive, and low-value legal work. It is reshaping legal service delivery and the law firm model in ways we’re only beginning to see. So, what’s left when the routine goes and can no longer be charged out for like before?

Ultimately and obviously, it will still be the work that still needs you. Just you. The human lawyer. The one who can still tell the truth from fiction, right from wrong, brings intuition and has that empathetic human touch. A human lawyer who is a more intelligent, augmented sounding board, trusted adviser and confidante to a client increasingly facing more and more unprecedented societal issues and problems. No machine can do that yet.

This work won’t just land in your lap

That kind and volume of work, however, won’t just land in your lap though. There also probably isn’t enough of it sitting inside your firm now either, especially as AI removes more and more of it and the rest at an increasing scale. You will have to go looking for this more complex and unique work both within and outside your law firm. This will be at a time when everyone else will be starting to do the same and using AI for that. It will also involve making hard decisions about pricing the value of that work, pitching it, acknowledging your clients’ concerns and capacity to pay for such, and convincing them of all of this.

That is why client relationship management, business development, branding, marketing, networking, and rainmaking are now more critical lawyer traits, skills, and competencies than they have ever been. Talk to your clients more by all means. Review your client and client industry data more thoroughly. Take it seriously. Workshop the signals and trends you see. Test, experiment, innovate, adapt, and review, and repeat. Look for opportunities in predictive and preventative instead of reactionary lawyering. The work is there, but it needs to be mined and cultivated in a way lawyers have either never done before or not done to scale for a long time.

Your clients expect more than ever

Your clients are already using AI. They’ll expect you to be competent in it, too. They know it creates efficiency. They know AI excels at first drafting as well as review. They’ll expect to see those efficiencies in your processes, outcomes, and especially in your pricing. They will be doing more and more of the things you deem legal work, then they will increasingly be bringing it to you in a state for review and advice. It will be like the days when the internet was first introduced, and they cut and paste stuff off it and asked you to finalise it. It will just be magnified more now.

Clients want faster, better, and cheaper than ever before. And they want them now. Only technology can help deliver that standard. Ask any experienced lawyer and they’ll tell you the same. Lawyers will need to deepen their interactions with clients, anticipate emerging needs, and attract more complex, higher-value work into their practice, all while simultaneously using AI.

Commensurately, clients are and will continue to be less and less likely to pay for routine and repetitive work they know is being generated by AI. The billable hours you used to charge for it – well, this will be going, going, and not in the not-too-distant future, almost gone.

The role of the lawyer is shifting

The role of lawyers is, therefore, shifting – from creation and review towards brainstormer, idea creator, and strategist. It will be more multi-disciplinary and future-focused than it has ever been before. It will utilise lawyers’ other educational qualifications in cross disciplines, and tie together aspects of culture, business, technology, and law more and more. Ironically, lawyers are and will still be needed more than ever – just not for what they’ve always done but for these new roles that they will be required to do. The lawyer becomes less the doer of the mundane and more the overseer, translator, verifier, and adviser of it. I have long advised making junior lawyers more senior asap. That’s the direction the legal profession is heading. This retraining needs to happen sooner than ever before.

Increasingly, the legal problems that will remain are the ones that can’t be automated. They’re complex, uncertain, niche, often unpredictable and multi-dimensional. These are the spaces where legal work can grow. Just look at the niche areas of law that have been created and grown, that did not exist in the past 5-10-15 years. Truthfully, though, that’s where the most valuable legal work opportunities have always been.

It’s about outcomes, not documents

It’s no longer about lawyers producing documents. Clients can generate those themselves. Instead, they now want better outcomes than their competitor or opponent. They want more certainty in the products and services lawyers are producing for them. They want their lawyer to use AI to their advantage. The new mentality will be – my lawyer and their AI are better than yours – therefore, I win. Clients want clarity, confidence, and speed in a world that is increasingly challenging all these. They quite clearly want problems solved and risks managed in ways lawyers alone cannot do, AI alone can’t do, and human lawyers can no longer do without using AI. Not using AI is no longer an option.

The billable hour is fading

This is why pricing must shift. How do you charge by the hour for routine and repetitive work done by AI in a fraction of the time, yet still is very important nonetheless? It makes more sense now to price on outcome, not output. Pricing based on the result is where the legal profession should be going. The billable hour isn’t dead; it is still useful at times, but it is and will clearly continue to be fading fast for routine work.

It’s time to learn, unlearn, and relearn

The future of lawyering I am outlining above, as well as the changing role of the lawyer, demands learning, lots of learning, unlearning, relearning, and ongoing learning – at scale. It demands greater experimentation, greater innovation, and more consistent adoption of AI.

It is now human plus AI. That’s the short to medium-term formula for lawyering. AI plus humans, more so in the longer term. The lawyer-alone model is almost done. And no, AI can’t practise law on its own either. I don’t believe it ever can or will in a way that humans expect its lawyers to.

The human advantage in a complex world

Here’s the deeper truth. The world is not getting simpler. It is full of volatility, complexity, and uncertainty. It always has been. That’s the world lawyers work in. And it remains the source of our value. That hasn’t changed.

So, don’t talk yourself out of your own job, career, or business. Look for what and where you can contribute. Value is a keyword. Find new roles for yourself. Find new work for your clients. New ways to create value matters more than ever. Will it be easy? No. Was it ever? Probably not, if you reflect on it.

The role of the lawyer is changing whether you like it or not. From doing routine work to overseeing it. Towards prediction and prevention rather than reaction. Towards human judgement enhanced by machines than the lawyer as a standalone adviser. I continue to see and view AI primarily as an enabler – an augmenter – not a standalone thing. Its best use case continues to be a tool for human beings to use for smarter decisions and outcomes.

Using AI for routine, repetitive, and first-draft legal work is part of your new role. Owning the complex, human elements of lawyering is the other part of it.

This isn’t the end – it’s a shift

No one knows exactly what the future of law holds. Nor the future of AI, for that matter.

But I take a glass-half-full view. Why? Because I believe in lawyers. For their intellect and resilience.

It’s not all doom and gloom. Not even close. I say that as a lawyer. There are lots of untapped and developing opportunities out there worth exploring.

So, there is no need to throw your hands up in the air in exasperation and defeat. The end is not near. The future of law, lawyering, and the legal profession will just be different than it has been before.

Paul Ippolito is a legal futurist, lawyer coach, and consultant to law firms.

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