“The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers…”
It’s fair to say that Shakespeare was not thinking about Artificial Intelligence (AI) in late 16th Century England when he put quill to parchment – and coined that phrase in Henry VI, Part 2. But the sentiment has endured well into the 21st Century – and it’s been echoed in gleeful predictions about the demise of lawyers and the legal profession.
My proof? Exhibit A - Richard Susskind’s 2008 book “The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the nature of legal services”, which predicted my professional extinction within a decade. My key takeaway from Susskind’s book was – R.I.P. lawyers, and it will be all thanks to AI. Sixteen years and counting, Susskind’s prediction didn’t come to pass. I’m still here – and so is the legal profession, which is thriving.
Arguably, the lawyers and firms that are most thriving are the ones that have embraced AI. The added bonus for lawyers using AI is that it can do away with the mechanical, mind-numbingly boring aspects of legal practice. One obvious example? Contract reviews that can flag changes, analyse why your counterparty may have made those changes, compare them to other publicly available contract and templates, along with outlining trends.
Of course, the AI might not be right. In fact, the robots might lie – and fabricate legal cases that don’t exist, as one Australian lawyer discovered in July of this year. At the same time, AI can speed up the review process and suggest alternate positions or approaches that I may not have considered – or be the genesis for my own, nuanced approach. That can also save time and billings for clients – and generate better outcomes. Win-win, as long as there’s a human-in-the-loop who can check the AI’s work.
And that leads me to Exhibit B – Susskind’s follow-up book, “Tomorrow’s Lawyers” published in 2013, he proposed legal business models to help lawyers plan for the future – and to embrace innovation. Full disclosure – I totally disagreed with the premise behind “The End of Lawyers?” But after some deep reflection – and with the benefit of “Tomorrow’s Lawyers,” I think Susskind’s argument was spot-on. If we don’t remain relevant, if we don’t plan for the future, if we don’t innovative and think creatively about legal practice – we will be taken over by AI. And much of the work that we now do – it will be done by AI. It won’t matter whether you are a lawyer in-house, private or public sector, you will need to think about how you remain relevant.
In terms of my own practice, I have always been an advocate for legal-by-design. In fact, I have often struggled to call myself a lawyer for the simple reason that I never wanted to be seen as ‘one of those.’ That’s in the jokey ‘sea bottom dweller’ way, as compared to a lawyer who works in a client-centric way, who is proactive rather than reactive, who puts their client’s needs at the center of everything they do – and who develops strategic and legally-sound solutions for clients.
This is a key ‘point of difference’ – and it has always frustrated me when others don’t understand or embrace a legal-by-design approach. More recently, I realised that this approach is, by no means, universal. But if we want to have any hope of surviving as a profession, we-lawyers need to lean into legal-by-design practices. We need to help clients and the broader community understand the value that we can, and do add, from a humanistic perspective. And the simple fact is our real value-adds can’t be replicated by a robot.
So, what are those value-adds? Well, I thought I would embrace change and asked an AI that very question – “What is the difference between a Lawyer and a Robot?” And that brings me to Exhibit C, the AI’s answer, which I loved…
“The main difference between a lawyer and a robot is that a lawyer is a trained professional who applies legal knowledge and critical thinking to advocate for clients and navigate complex legal systems, while a robot typically follows programmed instructions and may lack the ability to understand context, emotions, or nuanced human interactions. Essentially, a lawyer uses judgment and empathy in their work, whereas a robot operates based on algorithms and data.”
Why did I love that answer? It’s not just because it was made by a robot – but it’s true! And no matter what those Disney movies show you – you can’t train a robot to feel. But they are pretty darn good at helping point us in the right direction.
And now from the non-robot (me). Here’s my own short-list of the real value-adds that we-lawyers can provide to clients (helped by their ‘friendly neighbourhood AI’), including:
- Placing clients at the center of everything we do.
- Integrating lawyers early and in every stage of a complex matter.
- Asking us to think proactively, not reactively about legal issues.
- Insisting that we take on roles within multi-disciplinary teams and work hard at making the team work together in a strengths-based way.
- Exploring innovative technologies – and letting us help you make sure that those innovations (AI or otherwise) are safe, don’t hallucinate or lie.
- Using those innovative techniques to reduce costs, simplify administrative tasks and document collection, while informing good decision-making protocols.
- Limiting adversarial approaches and enabling supportive organisational cultures and business processes to flourish.
- Actively giving back to our community by doing as much pro-bono as we can.
- Embracing a growth mindset by continually learning and re-creating ourselves to meet the needs of clients.
Instead of killing all the lawyers, I believe it’s essential to understand and reap the value lawyers can bring to clients – and for the broader community. And that includes recognising that our skillsets go far beyond what many (Shakespeare aside) would view as the typical lawyer, i.e. someone who manipulates legal principles and the court system for their own gain or to act as a roadblock in the pursuit of a just outcome. On the other hand – and to quote the Australian classic, The Castle – it’s not just about ‘the vibe.’ It’s about embracing innovation and technology to support what lawyers do best – solving problems. That’s not just our bread-and-butter. It’s what motivates us, excites us and gets us up in the morning with a smile.
Do robots do that?
No.
Out and proud to be a lawyer!
Figure 1 An AI generated photo of a 'surreal and eerie robot lawyer in a futuristic courtroom’ (2024).
