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Fascinating! I do wonder what happens to the traditional white-shoe partner track, where associates make their bones do sixteen hour days of grunt work (albeit
by HillRat 11y ago
Fascinating! I do wonder what happens to the traditional white-shoe partner track, where associates make their bones do sixteen hour days of grunt work (albeit with fantastic compensation) as a method of gaining experience and reputation. The skills of a high-level attorney, regardless of the practice, are honed through decades of experience. How would systemic AI affect the development of the profession?
- knughit 11y agoThe skills of a high level lawyer is in sales and negotiations and trials, not in the document analysis that junior lawyers do.
- rms_returns 11y agoDon't worry, the AI isn't going the replace the "Perry Mason" kind of lawyers, they are irreplaceable! AI is designed to replace the "Junior Grunt Joe" kind of lawyer/associate who is mostly involved in documentation and assistance.
- rodgerd 11y agoAnd where do the next generation of Perry Mason lawyers come from, if there are no rungs on the bottom of the ladder?
- js8 11y agoMaybe they could actually help the poor?
- chongli 11y agoHence the article's thesis: Artificial intelligence will cause “structural collapse” of law firms by 2030.
- rms_returns 11y agoWell, that logic applies to all fields, not just legal. Lower rungs are disappearing from everywhere. In accountancy, junior accountants used to manually do "debit-credit" first, now Excel does it for them, so what will they learn? In IT, junior programmers used to toil hard with algorithms and data-structures to come up with barely working programs. Now there are IDEs, libraries, frameworks, CMSs all built and ready for them, so what will they learn? In Physics and Math, Scientists worked hard on just the theoretical framework first and scratch their heads in classrooms. Now there are computer software that do it for them. Perhaps this explains we didn't get another Newton/Einstein since last few decades?
- HillRat 11y agoWe'll have to wait for AGI to replace litigators -- in other words, forever. :)
- morgante 11y agoNot everything which associates do is grunt work, and certainly not all of it s going to be automated overnight. Instead, what I think we'll see is that lawyers use AI to become more efficient, especially at the associate level. So the same workload which previously took 5 associates will take 1. Firms will still be hiring associates and thus have a partner path, but intake will be much lower. So instead of having to be top half at a top 5 school you'll have to be in the top 10% to stand a chance.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- zekevermillion 11y agoJust another tool to master.