Tech
Tech Tip 3: You Are More Than Human: The AI Lawyer – Part 1 of 2
Are we fated to re-live the legendary (and fearful) stories of inhuman lawyering in our times? The junior lawyer who brought a sleeping bag to office, and changed your working definition of the work-day. The 5-lawyer team in court – 1 advocate, and 4 luggage handlers. Myth or not, lawyering has always sought to transcend human limitations.
Our short answer must be a resounding “no, we can and must reinvent ourselves”. After all, Chief Justice Menon has said in his 2024 Opening of the Legal Year speech that the legal industry is at an inflexion point. Earlier in 2023 in the Mass Call speech, CJ Menon also considered how the advent of generative AI may mean that the law firms of the future comprise multi-disciplinary teams of lawyers, legal technologists and allied legal professionals. We can use technology to humanly be more than human.
Let us consider another productivity aphorism: is it true that working in legal practice with hardcopy is always ultimately superior to softcopy? It is an easy one to subscribe to without qualification, particularly when commonly uttered by your seniors. Our short answer is that “hardcopy vs softcopy” is a false dichotomy – ultimately, it is about workflow. For the senior lawyer who has spent 20 years building up an analog workflow, and derives his or her confidence from this workflow, it may not be sensible to jettison this entirely.
You are a digital native at an inflexion point in our legal industry. You have both the privilege to learn by apprenticeship from your seniors, but also the opportunity to craft your own workflow for your future.
This series of Tech Tips will therefore sketch for you, metaphorically and tongue-in-cheek of course, a picture of the “AI Lawyer” – the “Authentically Integrated Lawyer”. We have long ago put aside the tools and ornaments of the barrister’s head wigs or the judge’s gavel. We will explore in the upcoming Tech Tips the 8 Augmentations of the AI Lawyer.
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