A.I. Is Coming for Lawyers, Again

The legal profession has been identified as a ripe target for A.I. automation in the past. In 2011, one article in a longer series in The New York Times on the progress in A.I. (titled “Smarter Than You Think”) focused on the likely impact on legal work. Its headline: “Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software.”

But the march of A.I. in law turned out to be more measured. A.I. mainly identified, sorted and classified words in documents. The technology’s tools served more as aides than as replacements — and the same could be true this time.

In 2017, Baker McKenzie, a large international law firm, set up a committee to track emerging technology and set strategy. Since then, the A.I. software has made steady inroads.

“The reality is A.I. 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 a significant advance, Mr. Allgrove said. Reading, analyzing and summarizing, he said, are fundamental legal skills. “At its best, the technology seems like a very smart paralegal, and it will improve,” he said.

The impact, Mr. Allgrove said, will be to force everyone in the profession, from paralegals to $1,000-an-hour partners, to move up the skills ladder to stay ahead of the technology. The work of humans, he said, will increasingly be to focus on developing industry expertise, exercising judgment in complex legal matters, and offering strategic guidance and building trusted relationships with clients.

Technology has eliminated large numbers of jobs in recent years, and not just robots taking over factories. Personal computers, productivity software and the internet have made office work more efficient, replacing many workers.

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