By George Dimmock
As is the case across many professions, the question, “Will AI one day replace my role?” is being raised within the legal landscape. It now feels impossible to traverse a week without hearing of AI’s impact on modern working life, with there being an average of 150,000 job cuts globally as a direct result of this. Some of the most notable names being Amazon’s 14,000 job cuts in their corporate department as well British American Tobacco’s recent 5,500 job cuts to quality control, proving that not even traditionally ‘human’ jobs are safe. Through a legal lens, AI is already changing parts of how we practice at Hallett & Co, but I feel it unlikely to ever take over the role of a solicitor. Instead, it is much more prudent to state that it will help us work more efficiently and as is already proving to be the case.
Within my role at Hallett & Co, I am grateful for the wonders of AI in that it assists with a fundamental part of my day-to-day work: legal research. I am able to utilise AI tools to swiftly search through large databases of cases, legislation, and commentary, finding relevant information in seconds that might have taken hours to locate manually. As an aspiring solicitor, I find this feature to be of vast importance as it allows more time to focus on understanding the law and applying it to the client’s situation. This highlights my key argument: human judgement is still required for the interpretation of information before deciding exactly how it applies to a client.
I have found that in the vast majority of instances, issues only begin to arise when legal professionals allow AI to make this human judgement on their behalf. This was exemplified in the United States through the case State v Loomis. Here, a risk assessment algorithm called COMPAS was used to decide a defendant’s sentence. On paper, this may appear to increase the efficiency of the sentencing process however, the problem was that no one fully understood how the system worked or reached its conclusions. You would expect a human barrister to explain their reasoning behind a sentence, in fact, they would be ridiculed should they not do so. It is this lack of openness that causes real concerns about fairness and accountability; without transparency we risk placing too much trust in technology that may have hidden biases or errors. Therefore, if an algorithm can produce legal advice or even predict case outcomes, how can we be sure that the reasoning is both fair and accurate?
For anyone interested in this topic further, I would recommend the recent Channel 4 documentary titled: “Dispatches, Will AI Take My Job?”. Here, a regulated AI law firm is pitted against a trainee solicitor to draft court documents in a small-claims dispute. The AI produced a document in minutes, whilst the human solicitor took a few hours. Upon judging, the trainee’s work was rated stronger due to its depth of detail. Therefore, AI can perform process-driven tasks efficiently, but it cannot yet replace humans in areas requiring that more nuanced judgement.
Following on from the above, Richard Susskind may be right in capturing the future of the legal profession as noting that AI will not replace lawyers, but lawyers who use AI will replace those who don’t. To further explore this viewpoint, I would recommend “Tomorrow’s Lawyer” by Richard Susskind.
Far from signalling the end of the profession, at Hallett & Co, I envisage AI offering an opportunity: the opportunity to deliver faster, more transparent service without sacrificing the human touch. AI could mark the beginning of a smarter, more client-focused era in law.
