AI Isn’t Making Attorneys Obsolete – It’s Making Them Busier Than Ever

There is a lot of AI hype in the legal industry. For attorneys, the technology claims to streamline operations, make workflows more efficient, and cut down on overhead costs. At the same time, clients have attempted to use AI to take on legal tasks themselves and cut lawyers out of the process altogether.

But the hype hasn’t caught up with reality (not yet, anyway). For now, instead of replacing lawyers, AI is making attorneys busier than ever.

When Clients Cut Corners.

Emerging AI platforms suggest that they can take on everything from legal research to drafting wills, contracts, and more. However, as I often explain to clients, large language models are not “reasoning” tools. Therefore, they are not capable of understanding the nuance of legal situations, arguments, and risk. While AI outputs may seem sound (and look good) on the surface, they often hide serious errors that only a trained attorney can detect.

For example, at our law firm, we have seen many clients cut corners by relying on AI to draft trademark applications. The LLM often gets the language wrong – so much so that it would certainly result in a USPTO refusal. When these clients finally do turn to “human” legal counsel, they’re looking for advice on how to untangle the mess of a poorly conducted trademark research and an error-ridden trademark filing. What was intended to save time and money often leads to needing to re-file the trademark application altogether, resulting in up to 8-10 months of delay, and higher overall costs.

Some clients have also turned to generative AI to draft business contracts. The challenge here is that, without an attorney reviewing the contract, it’s impossible to know if it is legally enforceable. A language model can’t reason and understand whether the terms it is suggesting are enforceable, nor can it anticipate issues the terms might create downstream.

If you spend time on LinkedIn, you will surely see folks boasting about how they closed a deal using an AI-drafted contract. For now, those posts are celebrated. What won’t appear on LinkedIn is any information about how many of these contracts end up getting challenged in court and how the poor drafting causes a huge liability to surface. Ultimately, I predict a large increase in contract disputes ending up in court due to poorly drafted AI contracts in the years to come.

For these reasons, I recommend that attorneys educate their clients on the risks and limitations of AI. It is important to show that while the AI might be able to draft a contract, it doesn’t mean that it has thought through all the terms you should put in the contract or even write the contract in a way that avoids loopholes and problematic ambiguities.

Growing Pressure on Firms.

While clients experiment with AI themselves, many have also pressured their attorneys to use the tech to cut hours and lower bills. Case in point: most attorneys have likely seen general counsel boast on social media about hiring firms that promise to deliver work faster with AI. However, these tools are not yet sophisticated enough to deliver that promise without sacrificing quality.

Consider the recent AI-generated court filing made by an attorney in a case against Walmart: it cited nine cases, only one of which actually existed. Not only does this type of conduct harm an attorney’s reputation, but it can also result in fines and, in extreme cases, the potential loss of a bar license.

Even when used responsibly – as an aid to generate rough outlines or build a framework of research – lawyers must thoroughly check, correct, and refine every output. What looks like efficiency may end up costing just as much time, if not more.

AI may eventually streamline some aspects of legal practice, but today it is not the miracle time- or money-saving solution the industry is being sold.

Approaching Innovation with Caution.

Legal work is complicated, time-consuming, and often expensive. For this reason, turning to technology that promises to make that work simple and cheap is, of course, considered the holy grail for those who wish to cast lawyers off.

However, my recommendation would be to not buy into the hype – at least not yet. Approach AI with curiosity. Tinker with it. Find places it can help. But proceed with extreme caution. Your law license depends on it.