As 2025 attracts to a detailed, one theme has outlined the 12 months: Synthetic Intelligence (AI). Irrespective of the place you seemed or who you talked to, AI was entrance and middle, from CLE seminars and convention keynotes to information protection and business stories.
For instance, the American Bar Affiliation lately launched its “AI Job Pressure on Legislation and Synthetic Intelligence Report.” This was the second in a collection of stories addressing AI’s influence on the authorized occupation. The report lined lots of floor, with matters starting from AI adoption and its influence on entry to justice to how legislation colleges and the courts are approaching AI.
One in every of its key conclusions was that our occupation has reached a crossroads: AI adoption has surpassed understanding. Nearly all of authorized professionals now use AI however don’t absolutely admire the sensible and moral challenges that come up when utilizing AI. In different phrases, because the report’s authors defined, “the dialog has shifted from whether or not to make use of the AI know-how to how to make use of it.”
In accordance with the report, authorized professionals proceed to perform comparatively easy duties with AI, resembling summarization, doc assessment, drafting temporary paperwork, and issuing consumer alerts, fairly than extra complicated authorized work that includes confidential consumer info. This discovering aligns with the outcomes of the 8am 2026 Authorized Business Report that I authored, and that might be launched this spring. That information exhibits that AI implementation in legislation corporations focuses on routine work, with high duties together with drafting correspondence, normal analysis, and brainstorming.
This sample of use helps clarify why price will play such a big position within the subsequent section of AI adoption. As AI instruments enhance and issues round threat and reliability lower, practitioners will search to use extra AI instruments to extra complicated authorized work. Whether or not they’ll find a way to take action, nevertheless, will rely largely on affordability, and which may be decided by agency measurement.
AI has the potential to stage the enjoying area by enabling solo and small-firm attorneys to compete extra successfully with bigger corporations. Nevertheless, as a result of “the authorized business is shifting towards a stratification of corporations into numerous levels of know-how ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots,’” lots of the most superior authorized AI instruments stay prohibitively costly. Within the absence of adjustments to pricing fashions or coverage intervention, bigger corporations will proceed to retain their longstanding aggressive benefit.
That very same price dynamic extends past legislation corporations and into the access-to-justice area the place, as soon as once more, AI affords super unrealized potential. The report cites a Berkeley-led research documenting 100-plus real-world AI use instances in authorized help, “together with scores, suggestions, and estimates of effectivity features.” Nevertheless, pricing is as soon as once more a barrier, and “excessive subscription prices for the most effective and most dependable authorized AI instruments may make these instruments unaffordable and inaccessible to the access-to-justice group.”
The report additionally highlights one other space the place AI’s promise has not been absolutely realized: authorized schooling. Traditionally, legislation colleges have been sluggish to combine know-how into their curricula, however the pervasiveness of AI is starting to reverse this pattern.
Till lately, most legislation colleges turned a blind eye to AI, forcing legislation college students to fend for themselves. College students from 16 colleges, together with Harvard Legislation, the UCLA Faculty of Legislation, and the College of Miami Legislation Faculty, stuffed that hole by forming student-led teams dedicated to understanding AI’s influence on the occupation.
Thankfully, that tide is lastly turning. Fifty-five p.c of legislation colleges now provide AI-focused programs. One other 83% present hands-on AI experiences like clinics or labs, and Case Western Reserve Legislation Faculty even requires all first-year college students to acquire authorized AI certification. Recognizing that AI isn’t going away and can solely develop into extra ubiquitous, legislation colleges are lastly treating AI literacy as a core skilled ability fairly than an elective add-on.
Our occupation is coming into a pivotal section the place AI’s influence can’t be ignored and should as a substitute be accommodated. It’s already a part of extra fundamental workflows in legislation corporations. The following stage of adoption will decide whether or not it advantages those that want it most or follows the cash to the highest of the meals chain. Will it broaden entry to authorized companies and enhance the standard of illustration, or as a substitute reinforce present gaps throughout our occupation and system of justice? Solely time will inform.
Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York lawyer and Principal Authorized Perception Strategist at 8am, the staff behind 8am MyCase, LawPay, CasePeer, and DocketWise. She’s been running a blog since 2005, has written a weekly column for the Day by day File since 2007, is the writer of Cloud Computing for Attorneys, co-authors Social Media for Attorneys: the Subsequent Frontier, and co-authors Prison Legislation in New York. She’s simply distracted by the potential of shiny and glossy tech devices, together with good meals and wine. You may observe her on Twitter at @nikiblack and she or he might be reached at [email protected].
