AI Revolution

Any lawyer who thinks they can avoid the AI revolution is kidding themselves. More than the Internet, emails and online document management, AI is already and will continue to be, the equivalent of the shift from 17th century agricultural societies to the 19th century machine driven economies.

While some lawyers will fear it – and remember when the Internet turned up lawyers were complaining about lost revenues-AI will reward innovative legal professionals and force lawyers to upskill and specialise.

The issue is not, to use or not to use AI, because the answer to that is self evident. The issue then is the challenges AI throws up for legal practice. A recent comment from Associate Professor Amy Salyzyn from the University of Ottawa is worth reading in this regard. Published on Slaw, an online Canadian legal blog, Salyzyn’s thoughtful contribution1 is well worth a read.

Salyzyn says that, “[a]lthough the full impacts of generative AI on the work of lawyers are yet to be seen, there is clearly an immediate need to discuss the responsible and ethical use of AI by legal professionals”, and that “Canadian lawyers have a general duty of technological competence.” It is the same in Australia. Lawyers are running a business and like all businesses in the services sector of the economy, they must ensure that technology is used to improve efficiency and to reduce prices for clients.

This challenge of technological competence on the part of lawyers in dealing with AI involves legal educators and professional bodies like law societies, argues Salyzyn. She writes that as “generative AI becomes increasingly ubiquitous in all these ways, it becomes harder for lawyers to avoid interacting with it. This reality means that gaining competence in generative AI is also increasingly unavoidable for lawyers. This does not mean that lawyers must become coders or tech whizzes; it does mean that lawyers must develop a basic understanding of how generative AI works and where the ethical hotspots lie.”

Building tech literacy capacity is “a profession-wide project involving multiple stakeholders. It starts with law schools integrating the topic into their curricula. It continues with legal workplaces ensuring that they offer sufficient internal training on AI and/or facilitate access to external education opportunities. Workplace policies regarding appropriate AI-use will also be increasingly essential. Law societies, too, have a role in providing guidance to lawyers on their professional obligations when using generative AI in the delivery of legal services,” says Salyzyn.

But are we seeing this in Australia yet? Too often we hear stories of the perils of AI. Students using AI for essays and exams. Lawyers churning our memos and letters using AI and getting the content wrong. This is all teething stuff and it should not, for a moment, stop the sort of industry wide effort to ensure AI is part of the DNA of lawyers and legal practice going forward.

Such capacity building is already happening. At UTS in Sydney, the Human Technology Institute (HTI) has teamed up with Lexis Nexis to offer courses and training for all levels of the legal industry.

And there will be plenty of AI offerings for lawyers depending on the size of practice and type of work. Liz Chase from the Leo Cussen Centre for Law2 writes; “Behind the scenes, the legal tech industry is gearing up for an AI arms race, investing heavily in creating tools that will redefine the way lawyers work. We can anticipate an explosion of novel solutions entering the market in the near future, transforming everything from document review to case prediction, due diligence to contract creation.”

But Chase also, and rightly, warns that “this imminent technological revolution presents a stark warning: adapt or risk obsolescence. Lawyers and law firms that resist incorporating AI into their practices run the risk of falling behind in an increasingly competitive market. The reluctance to adapt will not just affect their operational efficiency, but may also hamper their ability to meet client expectations.” In other words, market forces will ensure only those who adapt AI smartly will survive. That’s the beauty of markets. Because the winner is the legal consumer.

The good thing about the reception of AI in the legal industry is that it is being seen as a positive so far. The recent (July 2024) Thomson Reuters Future of Professionals Report3 found that only 33 percent of lawyers surveyed thought that AI meant the demise of lawyers. Most thought it enhanced lawyers’ standing because they can concentrate on value add work.

Technological advancement in occupations like law, medicine, architecture and the like generally means one thing – a chance to do things better and to go where we haven’t been before in improving the lives of people and our communities.
Greg Barns SC
Barrister
Republic Chambers Hobart

1. Amy Salyzyn, ‘Unavoidable AI?: The Increasing Ubiquity of Generative AI and Lawyers’ Duty of Technological Competence’; Slaw 21 January 2024 online at Unavoidable AI?: The Increasing Ubiquity of Generative AI and Lawyers’ Duty of Technological Competence
2. Liz Chase, ‘How generative AI will revolutionise the legal profession’, (Leo Cussen Centre for Law) online at https://www.leocussen.edu.au/ai-in-law/
3. Thomson Reuters, ‘Future of Professionals Report (July 2024) online at https://www.thomsonreuters.com/content/dam/ewp-m/documents/thomsonreuters/en/pdf/reports/future-of-professionals-report-2024.pdf