tasks once routinely assigned to young lawyers can be carried out more efficiently by AI, raising serious concerns about career development and the future shape of the profession. Thomson Reuters put it more bluntly: if AI can draft, summarize, and research in a fraction of the time it takes a first-year associate, firms will need to rethink not only how junior lawyers are trained but whether they are hired at all.
This is not just a law firm and law school problem. It is an existential human problem.
If fewer young lawyers are hired because firms can automate the basics, the profession will narrow its entry gate. If fewer paralegals and clerks are needed, AI will not merely change workflow. It will disrupt livelihoods and eliminate stepping-stone jobs that have long supported legal careers.
At the same time, clients will demand that firms use AI to deliver work faster and at lower cost. That pressure strikes at the heart of the traditional model in which junior lawyers learn while billing time. Some industry leaders now predict that AI will weaken the billable-hour model itself, particularly for routine work once assigned to junior associates. And increasingly, that work may never leave the client at all, as inhouse teams deploy AI before outside counsel is ever engaged. That creates a paradox. Clients need experienced lawyers. But experience has to come from somewhere. So what emerges? Probably not the disappearance of young lawyers, but a redesign of how they are trained. The early signs are already visible. Firms are seeking associates with AI fluency. Law schools are expanding coursework in legal technology and AI. Yet many lawyers are adopting these tools faster than institutions are developing guardrails. That is a recipe for disaster.
The next generation of lawyers may require a different kind of apprenticeship. Instead of years spent on repetitive tasks, they may need earlier immersion in judgment, client interaction, strategy, and— critically— the supervision of AI tools. The responsibility for the final work product will remain human, even if the first draft is not.
In other words, junior lawyers may be asked to become real lawyers sooner. But how? Who( or what) will teach them?
If firms do not invest deliberately in mentoring and training, AI risks creating a hollow profession with fewer entry points, less effective learning, and a widening gap between those who understand legal judgment and those who merely know how to prompt a machine.
I have practiced law for more than 50 years. I learned the old-fashioned way by doing the work, spending hours researching, shepardizing for precedent, making mistakes, being corrected, and slowly developing judgment under the guidance of more experienced lawyers. It was not always efficient, but it was effective.
I am glad I am not starting out today in a world where a new associate is, in effect, competing with a machine.
We have seen this movie before. In 1997, Garry Kasparov lost to IBM’ s Deep Blue in a chess match long considered the pinnacle of intellectual competition. While that moment did not end chess, it changed it forever. The legal profession is at a similar inflection point. The question is not whether machines can assist lawyers.
They can.
The question is whether, in relying on AI, we risk losing something far more important: the way lawyers become lawyers in the first place.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Douglas J. Wood is an award-winning author of both fiction and non-fiction, recognized for blending deep real-world insight with gripping, plausible storytelling. Before transitioning to a writing career, he spent decades as a partner in a global law firm, managing a practice that spanned the globe. Douglas J. Wood is a retired senior counsel at Reed Smith, who now practices parttime in North Carolina and advises lawyers and law firms on practice development and transitioning towards retirement.
His eighth novel, Deadly Bytes, explores the dark intersection of technology and human nature. Douglas lives in North Carolina with Carol Ann, his wife of 53 years. They have three grown children, a daughter-in-law, a son-in-law, and five cherished grandchildren.
The Trial Lawyer 27