AI Won’t Replace Junior Lawyers. It Will Give Them Better Work

At every law firm leadership conference I attended this year, the same prediction kept coming up: Artificial intelligence will automate the work partners traditionally assign to junior associates. Therefore, the theory goes, the traditional law firm pyramid will flatten, and we will need far fewer junior lawyers.

I disagree.

AI will create more work for firms, including our most junior lawyers, and let us deliver the services clients want at lower cost and higher quality. I have never met a client who came to us looking to buy billable hours; they want solutions to their business problems, and the billable hour has long been a proxy for how we charge for those services.

In some cases, the hourly rate model has priced sophisticated legal work out of existence because clients could not justify the cost. AI changes that, and I believe it changes it in our clients’ favor.