The end of lawyers..?


 No. Lawyers are going to be around just as they have been for the next 50 or 100 years or more.

The daily working life of most lawyers will change, and for some considerably. Some aspects of lawyers jobs will disappear, and some roles in law firms too. Repetitive tasks such as document analysis, or taking clients through standardised processes will become increasingly automated. I don’t think they’ll be missed.

For just as the autopilot on an aircraft is used for the routine flying of the plane its still the pilot that handles take-offs and most landings. The autopilot removes avoidable repetitive workload and lets them concentrate on bigger things.

This seems to me a good analogy for how Lawyers and intelligent agents, such as bots, algorithms etc will be used in law firms. Lawyers will usually be the first point of contact for clients once they have decided to use a particular lawyer or firm and get the client underway taking instructions. The AI will then assist with information collation and analysis and perhaps in the preparing of advice and documentations for review by the lawyer before sending to the client.

We’ll be looking at this in more details in future blog posts.

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