The Law Society of England and Wales has lived through many technological advances in its 201-year history, including the internet, personal computers and email document attachments.
All have helped smooth legal work. Yet all previous advances may in future seem minor when compared to the impact of AI, some experts believe.
Since the release of Open AI’s generative AI chat bot ChatGPT in late 2022, the legal AI market has boomed. Law firms and company in-house legal teams are increasingly using the technology to save time and money by automating tasks such as research, drafting and contract review, while also making AI integral to their strategies.
Some law firms are creating their own AI teams and jointly developing their own legal AI tools with AI start-ups.
Yet there are also concerns about AI’s downside – including its tendency to fabricate information, which has embarrassed several large law firms after the data was used in court filings. Other experts warn that AI is a bubble that will cause huge economic disruption when it bursts. Or that legal jobs are particularly vulnerable to being replaced by AI.
Is Law Society chief executive, Ian Jeffery, an AI optimist or doomster? He would appear more optimist than pessimist, noting AI’s transformative potential for the legal sector, including changing how lawyers work.
“One [has] always got to be careful about elements of hype or bubble-like characteristics of this kind of thing,” said Jeffery, who speaks in the measured manner of a career lawyer. “But if you take the wave of change as a whole… it doesn’t feel like a bubble. It feels like a period of a real transformation that is affecting the length and breadth of the profession and of course, not just domestically, but internationally as well.”
What about predictions that AI will automate away swathes of white-collar jobs, including in law? And that it will make it hard for entry-level lawyers to learn legal basics, such as drafting and reviewing a contract?
Jeffery, a former managing partner at UK law firm Lewis Silkin, predicts that AI will have more of an impact on the type of work that lawyers do, rather than on the total number of legal jobs.
Lawyers will spend less time on laborious tasks such as sifting through documents and more time using their legal knowledge and judgement, he suggests. On a “substantial” piece of litigation, lawyers may have to deal with hundreds of thousands or even millions of document records, he says.
AI may also create new revenue opportunities for lawyers, such as auditing AI systems and their outputs and verifying their accuracy, he adds.
The way junior lawyers can learn their craft is going to partly be through learning how to check that AI outputs are accurate and which is the right technology to use for the right legal task, he says, adding there is more to it than just a good prompt.
How is The Law Society, which represents more than 200,000 solicitors working in law firms across England and Wales, helping its members adjust to AI?
Jeffery, who qualified as a solicitor in 1992 and whose specialities include technology and intellectual property, says that the Law Society is supporting members with resources, training and policy advocacy.
In its response to a Civil Justice Council consultation on AI use in court documents, it will say that such use has the potential to improve efficiency and quality of legal services if appropriate guardrails are applied.
Another open question is about AI’s impact on legal risks. Will it help law firms detect risks for their own firm and their clients? Or will it increase risks if the technology is used without proper human oversight − possibly even leading to the collapse of a firm?
Jeffery, who was appointed Law Society chief executive in 2022, a few months before the release of ChatGPT, acknowledges that both scenarios are possible.
He adds: “There’s no technology substitute… for the human care, skill and ethical responsibility that solicitors, in every practice setting, bring to their work. So, I don’t see the technology replacing that. I don’t think it would be a good thing to try to do that… [but AI] can become an increasingly core tool in what solicitors use.”
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