Artificial intelligence will better equip society to uphold the values and achieve the goals of the law. With AI assistance, lawyers can spend more time working on the challenges that attracted many of us to the law, such as eradicating inequality, ensuring access to justice, safeguarding democracy and strengthening and expanding the rule of law.
Most lawyers spend a lot of time finding applicable laws, organizing information, spotting common issues, performing basic analysis and drafting formulaic language in emails, memos, forms, contracts and briefs. AI systems will be able to do this faster, cheaper and better. Large language models, like those behind ChatGPT, have significantly increased the capabilities of these systems. Established legal information providers and many startups are rapidly developing and releasing AI systems that are “fine-tuned” or specialized for legal tasks.
Unsurprisingly, AI is changing the skills lawyers need. To responsibly use AI, they will need a functional understanding of the technology to evaluate the benefits and risks of using it, such as how it might fail and how it might be biased or unfair.
Lawyers will continue to play a significant role as governments update laws, regulations and policies for emerging technologies, including addressing AI bias, discrimination, privacy, liability and intellectual property. Additionally, new roles are emerging in the legal industry, such as legal engineers who build systems, legal data scientists and legal operation professionals. There is a significant unmet demand for legal services from individuals and even businesses. Considering all of this, the best long-term prediction now is that there will continue to be a stable number of jobs for lawyers and other legal professionals, so long as the legal industry embraces technology and trains professionals to develop important complementary skills.
While there is uncertainty about the future, there have never been more opportunities for lawyers to make an impact on society.
Source: CNN
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