Artificial Confusion: AI Will Create More Legal Jobs – Not Take Them Away
In the future, AI has the power to reduce legal costs and change law firm business models.
As the CEO of an artificial intelligence legal technology company, the most common question I’m asked – often, nervously – is whether technology will replace lawyers. The fear is understandable. Computers have “learned” how to assist in tasks that used to be attorneys’ jobs, like due diligence, eDiscovery, and legal research, to name just a few. After enough tasks are taken away, what will be left for attorneys to do?
It is now beyond question that technology will take tasks from you. But that doesn’t mean it will necessarily take your job. Markets react to technology in unexpected ways. Many people thought ATMs would all but eliminate non-automated (human) bank tellers, but there are twice as many tellers today as there were before ATMs. Technology automated many accounting tasks (imagine the pain of accounting before Excel), but now the Big Four accounting firms make more in revenues and employ more people than the entire Am Law 100 combined. After garment work was automated in the 19th century, the numbers of employed garment workers only climbed. Often, technology creates more jobs in precisely the industries that fret the most about losing them.
All of this is not to say that technology definitely won’t take your job. The correlation between more advanced technology and increase in jobs isn’t always in the same, happy direction. For example, I wouldn’t want to be a short-haul truck driver over the next 15 years, as automated vehicles hit the road. The only point I want to make is that technology will not necessarily take your job. And assuming it doesn’t, there will likely be incredible opportunities for growth for firms that are willing to both embrace technology and evolve their approach.
To go a step further, I want to outline how the same market dynamics that led to more tellers, more accountants, and more garment workers might also lead to more lawyers. Here are three scenarios that might lead to there being dramatically more jobs for lawyers in the future:
1. Lawyers address unmet legal needs, serve more clients, and tackle new legal issues. Studies estimate that as many as 80% of legal needs go unmet due to a lack of resources. Intrepid lawyers will start to realize that technology reduces the costs associated with representing a client – intake, research, discovery, brief writing, and managing client relations will become substantially less costly – and will be able to grow their business by representing more clients, even the under-resourced. This is a win-win: people with real legal problems who have so far gone unassisted would get the help they need.
This tracks what happened in the garment industry: automation drove prices down, leading to a larger demand for more garments, in turn resulting in many more workers employed in the industry. More clothing, more garment workers – everyone is happy.
2. There are more cases and deals. Not only will technology enable attorneys to address unmet legal needs for the under-resourced; lower and more predictable costs will also mean there will be more lawsuits and transactions, even among law firms’ existing clients. As a business owner, I find myself in situations where I choose not to enforce a right (trademark, copyright, contract, etc.) because the litigation costs just aren’t worth it. But if I knew a litigation would cost under $10,000 and have a good chance of success, I would weigh my options differently. Multiply this effect across all businesses, and you will find attorneys making a lot less per litigation or per transaction but at the same time serving a lot more clients who are seeking legal assistance for even more matters.
This is what happened in accounting. After the basic tasks of accounting became relatively inexpensive, accounting firms started offering more and increasingly complex services. Today, accounting firms like Deloitte and PwC do a lot more for their clients than ever imagined before, including management and technology consulting.
3. Law firms change their business model in new and unexpected ways. When the ATM came out, everyone predicted bank tellers would quickly become unemployed. And as anticipated, the average branch went from employing 21 tellers to 13. But then banks realized something interesting: It costs dramatically less to operate a branch, so they could open far more branches and be closer to consumers. Now, in some cities, you can’t walk two blocks without bumping into a Bank of America. The result? Today, there are dramatically more bank tellers than there were when ATMs were unveiled.
Will law firms change their strategy in a similar way? It’s hard to know -nobody predicted that banks would take advantage of the changing economics to open more branches. Technology may not necessarily lead law firms to open more offices – at the very least, likely not as many offices as there are local bank branches – but there undoubtedly will be new opportunities available to firms that are open to adapting their business models as the profession adapts to new technologies.
So, the next time legal technology surprises you – when you drag and drop a brief into our product CARA, for example, and it does a lot of research for you – don’t worry! If past is prologue, lawyers like us are likely around for a good while.
Jake Heller is the co-founder and CEO of Casetext. Before starting Casetext, Jake was a litigator at Ropes & Gray. He’s a Silicon Valley native, and has been programming since childhood. For more information about CARA, Casetext’s AI-backed legal research assistant, visit info.casetext.com/cara-ai.
