The law, more than almost any other profession, defines itself
by restraint. Lawyers are taught from their earliest days that
stability matters more than novelty; that continuity is a virtue;
and that precedent, even when imperfect, is safer than sudden
innovation. This is not a rejection of progress for its own sake.
It reflects something deeper, an understanding that law is a public
trust. Society leans on it for order and fairness and when that
trust is shaken, justice itself begins to falter.
For that reason, lawyers have always been slow to change. But
the challenge now confronting the profession is not a new filing
system or an updated database. It is something far more radical:
artificial intelligence, a technology that promises, and sometimes
pretends, to think.
