Artificial Intelligence in the Legal Sector

Written by Dr Eve Poole OBE, author of Robot Souls, Programming in Humanity

The findings from The Future of the Legal Workforce report show a sector that is not ready for AI. Whenever reports are published about which jobs are most at risk from AI, it is the professions that are identified as the most exposed. And while in the short-term, confusion over the reliability and provenance of AI-generated content may boost demand for lawyers, the legal profession always features near the top of the list of those most likely to be hollowed out by generative AI. But in this survey, firm profitability still tops the list of board-level priorities.

Ironically, AI is both the most enormous threat to this, and its solution. Some professional services firms have already jumped right on. Is AI going away? No. Is there some first mover advantage? Yes. So in the legal profession, Dentons have invested in fleetAI, a proprietary version of ChatGPT-4 purchased from Microsoft. They use it both internally and on client engagements and it is already proving popular with clients, who can also buy into it for their own use. Most importantly, it is saving valuable staff time. This suggests that embracing AI would free up the sector to concentrate on talent and succession, because finding the time for this is already flagged by a third of those polled, and AI will make the succession problem even more acute.

In the survey, the two concerns about succession planning that breach the 50% threshold are (1) adequately preparing successors for future leadership roles, and (2) identifying suitable successors with the necessary skills and expertise. In reality, it is far worse than this, because it is not just about immediate successors, it is about workforce planning. If AI will now do those tasks through which the sector used to train up graduates, how will we fill this career gap, if we still expect talent to emerge fully formed at the rung below partner?

In the short term, we can certainly focus on making this junior cadre our expert AI-wranglers. But once AI has matured, the sector will need a new approach to leadership development. No longer can we leave it to years served and ‘experience,’ there will be a need to get forensic about the precise skillsets involved in being a partner, and how these can best be acquired. Such an exercise would also help hone the skills of those already waiting in the wings, who can in turn mentor the next generation.

The survey findings identify the top 4 leadership skills for career progression as effective communication, commercial awareness, emotional intelligence and strategic awareness. This is a good place to start if you can sit down with your very best partners and get them to articulate the detailed competencies that these skills require. And if you inquire deeply into how this muscle memory was actually acquired, you will then be able to devise a process to develop it.

Usefully, these are also very human skills, that are not so easily replicated by AI, except perhaps for the tools it will provide to boost commercial awareness. But learning to trust your intuition about people, to spot the limits of AI, to make a very human sell to another person? We will always need people to do these things well, and these things are happily very teachable. So Brace Brace. And remember, if AI is not your firm’s future, you don’t have one.


Author of Robot Souls: Programming in Humanity