More than a decade ago, lawyers were singled out as an endangered profession because their livelihoods were at stake due to advances in artificial intelligence.
But the doomsayers got ahead of themselves. While smart software has taken over some of the legal work — searching, reviewing, and mining mountains of legal documents in search of actionable information — employment in the legal profession has grown faster than the U.S. workforce as a whole.
Today, a new AI threat is looming and lawyers may be feeling a bit of déjà vu. There are warnings that ChatGPT-style software, with its human language skills, could take over much of the legal work. The new AI has its shortcomings, most notably a tendency to make things up, including fake legal quotes. But proponents insist these are teething problems in a nascent technology — and fixable.
Will the pessimists finally be proven right?
Law is seen as the lucrative profession that is perhaps most at risk from recent developments in AI, as lawyers are essentially word salesmen. And the new technology can recognize and analyze words and generate text in an instant. It seems ready and able to perform tasks that are the bread and butter of lawyers.
“That’s really powerful,” said Robert Plotkin, an intellectual property attorney in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “My work and my career consisted mainly of writing text.”
But unless the past is no guide, the impact of the new technology is more like a steady rising tide than a sudden tidal wave. New AI technology will change the practice of law and some jobs will disappear, but it also promises to make lawyers and paralegals more productive and create new roles. That’s what happened after the introduction of other job-changing technologies like the personal computer and the Internet.
A new study, conducted by researchers from Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and New York University, concluded that the industry most exposed to the new AI was “legal services.” Another research report, by Goldman Sachs economists, estimated that 44 percent of legal work could be automated. Only the work of office and administrative support jobs was higher at 46 percent.
Lawyers are just one occupation on the path of AI advancement. A study by researchers at OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and the University of Pennsylvania found that for about 80 percent of American workers, at least 10 percent of their jobs would be impacted by the latest AI software.
The legal profession has historically been identified as a ripe target for AI automation. In 2011, an article in a longer series in The New York Times on the advancement of AI (entitled “Smarter Than You Think”) focused on its likely impact on legal work. The headline reads: “Armys of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software.”
A new generation of chatbots
A brave new world. A new breed of chatbots powered by artificial intelligence has sparked a battle to determine whether the technology can turn the internet’s economics upside down, turning current powerhouses into has-beens and creating the industry’s next giants. These are the bots you should know about:
But AI’s advance into law has turned out to be more measured. AI mainly identified, sorted and classified words in documents. The tools of technology served more as aids than replacements – and the same could be the case this time.
In 2017, Baker McKenzie, a large international law firm, established a committee to monitor emerging technology and set a strategy. Since then, AI software has made steady progress.
“The reality is that AI has not disrupted the legal industry,” said Ben Allgrove, a partner at the firm and its chief innovation officer.
The rapid progress in large language models – the technology engine for ChatGPT – is an important advancement, Mr. Allgrove said. Reading, analyzing and summarizing, he said, are fundamental legal skills. “At best, the technology seems like a very smart paralegal, and it will improve,” he said.
The impact, Mr. Allgrove said, will be that everyone in the profession, from paralegals to $1,000-an-hour partners, will be forced to move up the skill ladder to stay ahead of technology. People’s jobs, he said, will increasingly consist of focusing on developing industry expertise, assessing complex legal matters, providing strategic guidance and building trusting relationships with clients.
Technology has eliminated a large number of jobs in recent years, not just robots taking over factories. Personal computers, productivity software and the Internet have made office work more efficient and replaced many workers.
Office and administrative support occupations, including secretaries, clerks, collection agencies and office assistants, employ 1.3 million fewer workers than in 1990, according to an analysis by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Labor Department predicts a further decline, with 880,000 fewer jobs in those appeals by 2031.
“Technology is a driver and there are big changes, but they usually come gradually over a decade or more,” said Michael Wolf, chief of the division for employment forecasting in the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The agency’s current outlook is that jobs for lawyers and paralegals will continue to grow faster than the job market as a whole. Mr Wolf is closely monitoring the arrival of the new AI software, but he said it was too early to assess what the long-term impact of the technology would be.
Lawyers usually test the technology. The issues of data protection and client confidentiality are critical in legal work. The legal profession resisted the use of email until rules for handling information were established.
And the software models’ tendency to confidently make things up is alarming – and an invitation to malpractice – in a profession that revolves around finding and weighing facts.
To address those concerns, law firms often use software that runs on top of ChatGPT, for example, and is tailored for legal work. The custom software was developed by legal tech start-ups such as Casetext and Harvey.
Load up a case’s documents and ask the software, say, to draft deposition questions, and in a matter of minutes it’ll spit out a list of pertinent questions, lawyers say.
“For the things it does well, it does amazingly well,” said Bennett Borden, a partner and the chief data scientist at DLA Piper, a large law firm.
Using the AI successfully requires enough relevant data and questions that are detailed and specific, Mr Borden said. More open questions, such as what is the most important evidence, or who are the most credible witnesses, are still a battle for the AI
Lawyers at large firms have seen significant time savings for certain jobs and see the technology as a tool to make teams of lawyers and paralegals more productive. The self-employed see technology more as a partner in practice.
Valdemar L. Washington, a lawyer in Flint, Michigan, was selected last fall to test Casetext’s software, called CoCounsel, which works with the latest ChatGPT technology.
Mr. Washington used the software in a lawsuit against the city of Flint alleging that residents overpaid water, sewer and service charges. He loaded more than 400 pages of documents, and the software quickly reviewed them and wrote a summary that pointed out an important gap in the defense’s case.
The program did in a few minutes what would have taken him several hours, he said.
“It’s a real game changer,” said Mr. Washington.
But how much the legal profession will change, and how quickly, is uncertain.
The new AI is a challenge to the status quo. Higher productivity means fewer billable hours, but hourly billing remains the dominant business model in legal work. AI should increase pressure from corporate clients to pay law firms for work done rather than time spent. But top lawyers – the clients – are mostly former partners and associates of major law firms, steeped in the same traditions.
“There is a huge opportunity for AI in legal services, but the professional culture is very conservative,” said Raj Goyle, an advisor to legal technology companies and a graduate of Harvard Law School. “The future is coming, but it won’t be as fast as some predict.”
