Hi there,
I was having dinner with a GC and friend (hi Lisa đ) and she asked â in the age of AI, what does it mean to be a lawyer?
Letâs start with a scene you might recognize.
Youâre staring down a spreadsheet of legal requests. Contract reviews. Regulatory interpretations. Drafting commercial agreements. Answering a never-ending string of internal questions from business units: âCan we do this?â âIs this clause enforceable?â âWhatâs market standard?â
Now imagine an LLM â a Knowledge Machine â sitting quietly in the corner of your screen. It doesnât sleep. It doesnât take coffee breaks. You ask it the same questions, and within seconds it drafts a contract, explains the clause, cites the precedent, summarises the regulation, and suggests a negotiation position. The output? Often as good as what you might get from a junior associate. Sometimes, better.
So, if this Knowledge Machine can do 80% of what a lawyer does today â and is only getting better by the day â what exactly is left for the lawyer?
Thatâs not a hypothetical question. Itâs the question.
What Do Lawyers Actually Do?
Letâs break it down. Whether youâre a partner at a law firm or leading an in-house team, most legal work falls into these broad categories:
- Research and Analysis: Reviewing laws, regulations, past cases, and precedents to understand how they apply to a particular scenario.
- Drafting and Reviewing Documents: Contracts, policies, memos, pleadings, you name it.
- Providing Advice: Synthesizing legal information and applying it to business problems to recommend a course of action.
- Negotiating: With counterparties, regulators, or internal stakeholders.
- Risk Management: Identifying, explaining, and mitigating legal risk.
- Training and Governance: Educating the business and maintaining compliance frameworks.
None of this is revolutionary. But whatâs now revolutionary is how well machines can replicate it.
LLMs Can Do Most of This Work
LLMs today can:
- Parse large documents and extract key clauses
- Compare contracts to âmarket standardâ
- Draft from templates with customization
- Summarize regulations and compare them across jurisdictions
- Generate first drafts of advice memos
- Interpret ambiguous clauses and offer probable meanings
- Generate risk matrices
In fact, weâre already seeing GCs and law firms quietly using these tools. Not as novelties, but as real productivity enhancers. Junior lawyers who used to spend six hours researching a regulatory nuance are now getting their answers in six minutes.
And hereâs the truth that may make some uncomfortable: When it comes to technical legal reasoning, LLMs are starting to look an awful lot like lawyers.
So Whatâs Left?
If youâre a lawyer reading this, you might be thinking: Great. I studied for seven years to be replaced by a chatbot.
But the real answer isnât quite so bleak. Because while the Knowledge Machine can replicate the work, it cannot (yet) replicate the why behind the work. And in that gap lies the future of the lawyer.
Here are three dimensions where lawyers still distinguish themselves:
1. Context and Consequence
LLMs can identify risk, but they donât feel it. They can list potential outcomes, but they donât sit in the boardroom when the CEO is asking, âWhat should we do?â
Legal decisions arenât made in a vacuum. Theyâre made in the messy real world of trade-offs, personalities, politics, and values. A great in-house lawyer isnât just a legal answer machine; theyâre a strategic advisor who understands the broader impact of a decision. A great firm lawyer doesnât just redline a clause; they guide the client through risk in a way that supports the deal.
This isnât about having more data. Itâs about judgment. And that, so far, remains human.
2. Relationships and Trust
A GC doesnât hire a firm because they have lawyers who can explain the law. Every firm can do that. They hire the lawyer who calls at 10 p.m. with an insight that shifts the strategy. They hire the team that shows up when it matters.
Trust is earned through lived experience, not generated text. And as long as humans make the decisions, other humans will be needed to build those relationships.
3. Creative Insight
Ask an LLM to draft a clause, and it will do so with eerie fluency. Ask it to invent a new legal structure to solve a novel business problem, and it may fall short.
Lawyers who bring creative, cross-disciplinary insight â blending legal knowledge with commercial savvy, regulatory awareness, and emotional intelligence â will always bring value that machines cannot.
The Lawyer Who Understands AI Will Replace the One Who Doesnât
So hereâs the bottom line:
The lawyer who fears AI is already at risk.
The lawyer who ignores AI is running out of time.
The lawyer who understands AI? Theyâre the one who will lead.
Because letâs be honest: in-house teams are under pressure to do more with less. Law firms are being asked to justify their fees with new levels of scrutiny. Clients will not pay for work that machines can do. They will pay for what only you can do.
But to prove that, you have to know the difference. You have to know what the machine can do, so you can show where you add value. You have to build workflows that incorporate AI tools and free your time to focus on judgment, creativity, and relationships.
In other words, AI wonât replace lawyers. But lawyers who use AI will replace those who donât.
This is the moment to redefine what it means to be a lawyer.
Not as a legal technician.
But as a strategic advisor, a commercial thinker, a trusted partner.
Because the Knowledge Machine is already here. The question is whether you are ready for it.
Cheers,
-Jim
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