How Artificial Intelligence Will Expand Opportunities for Human Lawyers (Part 2)
This post and my last one are about a new technology — artificial intelligence — but they are telling an age-old story. With every generation, innovative products and services arrive that seem to threaten an entire class of workers. Technology can indeed replace jobs, but what we’ve learned time and again is that our fears are often overstated. In fact, technology often creates far more and better work than it eliminates. Automation did so for garment workers, Excel did so for accountants, and the ATM did so for bank tellers.
Likewise, artificial intelligence is much more likely to prove a boon than a threat to lawyers. In my last post, I gave one of three reasons to be optimistic that AI will create more, rather than less, work for lawyers — namely, that it will allow them to serve a broader client base. Here are two more:
Artificial Intelligence Will Increase the Volume of Cases and Deals
As I’ve noted already, introducing AI-based tools into the legal profession will result in lower and more predictable costs for legal services, and will allow lawyers to serve a client base that was previously out of reach. On top of that, AI will allow lawyers will be able to derive more business — in litigation and transactions — from their existing client base.
Businesses large and small (including Casetext) regularly choose not to enforce a right (contract, trademark, copyright, etc.) because the litigation costs just aren’t worth it. As certain tasks (like legal research) are automated and the cost of litigation goes down, that calculus will change, and will result in more legal actions being pursued. Multiply this effect across all businesses, and you’ve got a lot of additional legal work. While attorneys may be making less per lawsuit or deal, they will be executing far more of them — and executing them far more efficiently.
We’ve seen this previously in accounting. After Excel was introduced, it became relatively inexpensive to do basic accounting tasks. But rather than putting accountants out of work, this allowed accounting firms to offer more and increasingly complex services. Today, accounting firms do more for their clients than ever before, including management and technology consulting. And as AI becomes a mainstream technology in legal practice, we’ll see the same thing happen in law.
Law Firms Will Change Their Business Model in Unexpected Ways
When ATMs arrived, everyone thought they spelled the end for bank tellers. And indeed, the average branch went from employing 21 tellers to 13. But then something unexpected happened: banks realized that because it cost so much less to operate a branch, they could open far more branches and be closer to consumers. Now, bank branches are everywhere — and today, there are dramatically more bank tellers than there were when ATMs were unveiled.
It’s difficult to predict how large firms might change their own business models as a result of efficiencies brought on by AI. The answer may not necessarily be opening more offices, but new opportunities will undoubtedly become available to firms that are open to adapting their businesses.
Our advice to those worried about the impact of AI: think about what opportunities this might provide for you and your firm. When you drag and drop a brief into CARA, for example, enjoy the fact that it’s doing the research for you, giving you more time to spend on the most important parts of your practice: crafting winning arguments, writing compelling briefs, and providing high-quality services to your clients. If past is prologue, AI is only making your true legal talents more valuable than ever.
