AI-savvy clients forcing lawyers to change how they work

In the same episode, he warned that the rapid rise of AI-drafted contracts is creating a new legal minefield, forcing lawyers and law firms to navigate risks many clients may not even realise exist.

Farouk emphasised that this shift is changing the way lawyers approach client conversations, noting that AI-generated information can create a false sense of certainty while stripping away the key nuances of complex legal issues, and ultimately leaving clients without the full picture.

“It does throw up certain issues, but, in particular, there are various nuances which they may not understand,” he said.

“For example, they may have sought counsel from AI in relation to what to do in a particular employment dispute matter. That doesn’t always provide the full picture in terms of strategy and negotiation.”

By relying on AI-generated information, he stressed, clients are often given simplified answers that fail to capture the broader considerations critical to sound legal decision making.

“I think in a nutshell, it’s a very narrow thought process when you rely on AI; it doesn’t take into account some of the broader strategic commercial considerations,” he said.

VIEW ALL

However, Farouk acknowledged the shift is not entirely negative, noting it can give clients a useful head start by building a basic understanding of the legal issues they’re facing before engaging a lawyer.

“In one sense, sometimes it’s good in that they have some baseline knowledge of that particular area of law,” he said.

“For example, if it’s an employment dispute, because they’ve relied on AI, they sort of have a general understanding of the area of law. If we’re talking about a transaction, they’ve sort of got a general understanding of how the legal process works.”

Looking ahead to how lawyers should respond, he shared that they need to stay across AI and incorporate it into client education, stressing that its use is now unavoidable and that clients will continue to rely on it regardless.

“If lawyers are across this and can understand it, I think it goes back to that education piece and the fact that AI is what it is; everyone’s aware of it, we’re not going to be able to stop clients using it,” he said.

He also recommended that lawyers implement “guardrails” to support clients who heavily rely on AI, helping them better integrate AI-generated content into legal workflows through clearer structures, templates, and review processes.

“It’s more about educating them, coaching them, providing guardrails. If you’ve got a client who is heavily reliant and always using AI, maybe help them out and say, look, if this is sort of a document that we’ve produced, we can create sort of a template,” he said.

“So you’re aware of what should be in there, what shouldn’t be in there. We can create a checklist. We know you’re going to use AI, so feed it through AI, but before you provide it to the other side or it goes externally, send it to us, and we’ll take a quick look.”

By establishing clear guardrails, Farouk explained, lawyers can shift time away from routine drafting and towards higher-value strategic advisory work, while still maintaining legal accuracy and managing risk.

“But that way, because we’ve put those guardrails in place, rather than spending heaps of time in that sort of very mundane sort of drafting work, we’re providing more high-level strategic-type advice and checking whether they’ve been following the guardrails, they’ve got those certain clauses in there, and just ensuring that it’s providing the more value-added strategic advice,” he said.