Concur that automation and other better tools will make law more productive, reducing the number of people needed to get a given amount of work done. We’ve seen that in the last 5 years in the simple replacement of traditional law library searches with next generation tools.
However, in the end, the judgment about what is important and what isn’t in a particular set of circumstances is going to be very difficult for this decade’s AI to get even close to right…and “even close to” may be enough to displace rote paralegal (or rote new-attorney) work, but it won’t displace the judgment of an experienced attorney. Any more than AI will design the hardware inside the next smartphone, or write the code inside Facebook.
AI is just a tool people use.
(And as a reminder, I’m a tech guy who mostly worked on hardware. All I know about law I learned over the dinner table from my son in the last 5 years. So take my opinions accordingly!)
