Will AI replace Paralegals?

[Anonymous]

Yes, it’s likely to replace paralegals. But there will be other jobs available to review and correct all the errors/hallucinations the AI produces.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Big Law partner here: at least in the near term, I think AI is going to make paralegals more not less important, since you need someone to verify whatever the AI outputs. Longer-term, it might replace all of us, who knows. Probably will. But one foreseeable medium-term future is a practice dominated by senior attorneys working with paralegals, and the junior/intermediate ranks largely automated away by AI. From a “will I have a job” perspective, paralegal seems to me as good a bet as any, particularly since you don’t need to incur massive loan debt like many lawyers do to take a shot at it.

I was going to say the same thing.

For a ton of careers your ability to seamlessly utilize AI and its advanced functions will become the number #1 job skill since the experienced folk probably won’t become “fluent” but will absolutely tear you a new one if a junior person allows mistakes to slip through.

In theory, it may also impact the law firm business model if clients expect you to complete work 50%+ faster (though they may give you 2x the work).

Yes to demanding more and faster. No to getting more money. Most likely lots of long term downwards pressure on billing hours and billing rates. The clients with in house will use AI and eliminate a good chunk of work.

The top of the pyramids with a large book will be okay for a while. The middle and lower lawyers will be cut to the bone. The current model is going away like secretary pools.

The problem with that logic is that there are large companies with tons of in-house attorneys, yet those same firms are also the biggest spenders on outside counsel.

I don't quite get it other than lawyers are risk averse people, so if you give the Senior Counsel the ability to hire outside counsel they will always do it so they have someone to blame to cover their ass.

[Anonymous]

I could definitely replace many activities a paralegal does.

However A.I. has more potential to replace the lawyers themselves than the paralegals when you think about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

However A.I. has more potential to replace the lawyers themselves than the paralegals when you think about it.

+1, agree with this for Jr. attorneys plus the prior comment about at least some degree of binder work remaining. The allure of AI is an assistance without the hassles of an assistant. For the assistant work still needed, a paralegal with enough basic training to understand why certain details matter is preferable to a Jr. attorney.

[Anonymous]

S/o I have court next week on a personal matter and I just prepared two fairly decent motions with Chat for my lawyer to potentially use, with a memo of law for each, affidavit, proposed order.. took me about an hour of feeding info and revising.

Was pretty impressive