
Earlier this week the The New York Times published an interesting must-read article entitled, “Which Workers Will AI Hurt Most: The Young or The Experienced?”
While it’s an interesting question, we do know that the rise of AI will impact jobs, and we are starting to see that in real-time across various industries (especially the tech industry) as AI can do parts of certain jobs, companies seek accelerated ROIs on AI, and companies want to reduce its costs (and especially publicly-traded companies to help drive up their stock prices).
The impact of AI on jobs in the legal industry will also undoubtedly be impacted and the article shared this example about the impact of AI on legal jobs in the paragraphs immediately below:
“Robert Plotkin, a partner in a small law firm specializing in intellectual property, said A.I. had not affected his firm’s need for lower-skilled workers like paralegals, who format the documents that his firm submits to the patent office. But his firm now uses roughly half as many contract lawyers, including some with several years of experience, as it used a few years ago, before the availability of generative A.I., he added.”
“These more senior lawyers draft patent applications for clients, which Mr. Plotkin then reviews and asks them to revise. But he can often draft applications more efficiently with the help of an A.I. assistant, except when the patent involves a field of science or technology that he is unfamiliar with.”
“I’ve become very efficient at using A.I. as a tool to help me draft applications in a way that’s reduced our need for contract lawyers,” Mr. Plotkin said.”
As AI technology continues to advance quickly, I believe it will increasingly be able to perform important aspects of the jobs of virtually every lawyer or legal professional in legal organizations.
While of course there may be some specialized human-centric things that lawyers do that AI cannot perform like going to court and making arguments on a client’s behalf, advocating for your clients during a face-to-face contract negotiation, or building deep and personal relationships with clients, leading AI solutions will increasingly be able to do more aspects of a lawyer’s or legal professional’s jobs over time.
By using AI tools, lawyers and legal professionals will also be able to free up more time so they can perform their jobs at a more strategic and higher level – but the reality is that we will probably need fewer of them over time.