For the past two years, the legal profession has become the favourite target of AI’s doomsayers. Every few weeks, another headline confidently predicts that AI tools such as Copilot will make lawyers obsolete. Why pay expensive legal fees, the argument goes, when AI can answer legal questions in seconds?
It’s an appealing narrative. It is also fundamentally wrong.
The legal profession has heard this story before. In the 1990s, when online legal research platforms such as Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis arrived, many predicted the end of traditional legal research. Instead, they transformed it. Lawyers no longer had to spend days searching shelves of law reports and could devote more time to analysing the implications for clients.
The same evolution occurred in disclosure. Thirty years ago, firms needed the court’s permission to use sophisticated electronic document review software. Today, firms may need the court’s permission if they intend to carry out disclosure without using such software. The courts assume, and competent legal practice dictates, that technology will play a role.
AI is simply the next stage of that evolution.
The mistake many commentators make is assuming that because AI can process information more quickly, it can replace judgement. It cannot.
Good lawyers should embrace AI wholeheartedly because clients should never be paying premium rates for work that technology can complete more efficiently. Reviewing thousands of documents, comparing contracts, preparing first drafts or summarising authorities are precisely the sort of repetitive processes at which AI excels.
Used intelligently, AI enables lawyers to spend more time on the work that genuinely adds value. It is a powerful tool for delivering better outcomes for clients, but it should never be viewed as a substitute for legal judgement.
The opportunity for SME firms
That distinction is becoming increasingly important because the biggest driver of AI adoption is not the technology itself. It is the client.
Sophisticated in-house legal teams, PLCs and procurement departments are becoming far more demanding about how legal services are delivered. They are no longer simply comparing hourly rates. They want firms to demonstrate how technology is being used to improve efficiency, responsiveness and value.
For SME firms, this could be particularly significant.
The traditional advantage enjoyed by larger firms has often been scale: more lawyers, more specialists, more resource and the ability to throw people at a problem. AI potentially changes that equation.
A smaller firm that uses technology intelligently can automate much of the administrative and repetitive work that previously consumed fee-earner time, allowing a relatively lean team to deliver a faster and more sophisticated service.
This is not about trying to become a smaller version of a large City firm. It is about competing differently.
AI can give SME firms leverage. It can help them respond faster, identify issues earlier and spend more time understanding their clients’ businesses. It can potentially enable a small team to deliver the kind of service and responsiveness that previously required considerably greater resources.
That could be a genuine competitive advantage.
But there is an important caveat. AI operates on probability. It predicts the next most likely word based on vast amounts of training data. It does not understand commercial risk. It cannot negotiate a settlement, read the mood around a boardroom table, persuade a reluctant counterparty or recognise when the legally correct answer is commercially the wrong one.
Most importantly, AI cannot take responsibility for the consequences.
That is why the relationship between lawyer and AI must remain interactive and critical. AI should accelerate thinking, not replace it.
Lawyers who become passive consumers of AI-generated output will quickly expose themselves. Those who challenge, refine and apply their own experience to that output will become significantly more valuable.
Ironically, AI may strengthen the profession rather than weaken it.
As routine legal processes become automated, the qualities clients genuinely value become more visible: strategic judgement, commercial insight, negotiation, advocacy and trust.
Clients have never really paid lawyers for information. Information is abundant. They pay for confidence in difficult decisions, the ability to anticipate consequences and the judgement to achieve the best commercial outcome.
There is no future in Luddism. AI will undoubtedly transform legal practice. It will reward firms that embrace efficiency and expose those that cling to outdated ways of working.
For SME firms, this should be seen less as a threat than an opportunity. The firms that use AI well will not necessarily be those with the biggest technology budgets — they will be those that understand where technology can remove friction, where human judgement matters most and how the two can work together.
The question is no longer whether lawyers should use AI. It is whether they are using it intelligently enough.
AI isn’t replacing lawyers.
It is replacing the excuse for doing things inefficiently.
And in a profession increasingly judged on value rather than hours, that may be the most important change of all.
Daniel Lloyd, Partner, Technology, Media & Telecoms at Druces LLP
Originally published on: LPM Magazine