> The problem is that much of what makes a "good" lawyer comes from years of doing unglamorous work as a junior, financed by clients. If AI reduces the ability of firms to subsidize training the next generation of lawyers, you get fewer "good" lawyers and the whole market keeps eroding.
That is what AI will do, and firms will figure out how to adapt. To be fair, this trend has been going on for some time now already. Clients want attorneys with experience and judgment to be on the hook in real trials, mergers, etc. There’s only so many of those folks. The trend of the last several decades has been pretty steady overall headcount at firms despite large increases in the amount of legal work, and ever increasing demand for the limited set of seasoned attorneys.
Firms have not done a great job cultivating the next generation against the backdrop of those trends. But that’s true in a lot of white collar jobs. And AI will make that problem more acute.
But—lawyers are a transaction cost and it’s good for the economy to automate as much of it as we can!
> But—lawyers are a transaction cost and it’s good for the economy to automate as much of it as we can!
I guess it depends on how you look at it.
I don't think anyone would argue that spending money on lawyers is an ideal use of capital. But if AI-driven automation reduces overall demand for legal services (as measured by billable hours) and/or erodes the pricing power of lawyers/law firms, it doesn't mean that the "savings" will benefit all participants in the economy.
The biggest beneficiary will be corporations, as reduced legal expenditure can boost corporate profits. But that is a boon for the wealthy shareholder class, not the worker class. "Lawyer" has been one of the highest-paying white collar jobs available so the question becomes: as all of these high-paying white collar jobs become less plentiful, how do young people not born into wealth develop opportunities to get ahead economically?