AI poses a major challenge for law associations. It will require a strategic response over the next 2–5 years - just not the one everyone’s talking about.
Will AI Change Legal Work?
Of course - it is already helping drafting, summarizing, and negotiating legal documents, speeding up workflows. AI adoption is inevitable. Firms just have to achieve controlled innovation - letting their tech-savvy lawyers, often juniors, experiment, while protecting client confidentiality. Does this impact law associations? No. Lawyers survived the move from the quill pen to the typewriter, so they’ll survive this one.
Will AI impact Law Firms?
Yes - law firms will evolve. But law associations have little to fear; indeed lawyers might relish their human skills being prized again. Perry Mason & Rumpole of the Bailey return! Things to watch out for inside law firms:
- ‘Textflation’ vs. ‘Goldthreading’: Documents may get longer as AI tools make it easier to add clauses, but summarization may help fight back - letting the ‘golden thread’ of an argument or document shine through.
- Human skills vs. Book learning: Face-to-face judgment, reliability, and creativity will become more valuable.
- Hybrid firms vs. Magic Circles: AI will lower costs and encourage new business models, especially firms finding niches, combining AI and paralegal specialists.
Will AI damage law associations?
Yes. This is the issue: AI can affect an entire industry, quicker than anyone expects. Natural monopolies emerge when users reinforce a platform’s value. The most used service becomes the only one to use. See GoogleMaps, WhatsApp, Linkedin, even Twitter. Only overwhelming reasons change the dynamic. If an online platform gives you a great draft, tuned to the linguistic style that works best for your particular court, judge or opponent, wouldn’t you use it?
When this happens, very quickly, knowledge of the legal system could end up owned privately and offshore, reducing national control. This will be economically damaging - just as it has been to your local high street - but also socially damaging, as law is a core institution that holds a society together.
What Law Associations Must Do:
Protect Intellectual Property: Retain national ownership of legal data and stay alert for usage-reinforced monopolies.
Prioritise Transparency: Ensure that if natural monopolies arise, they are run with a public-interest purpose. Transparency; steward-ownership; regulation if needed.
Prevent Lock-In: As AI systems develop, lobby for interoperability - to guarantee that lawyers can move their IP and data between AI providers.
Why It Matters
A strong legal system underpins a fair society. Law associations must step up now. They must be clear about the value of a country’s legal infrastructure. AI can then do its job of enhancing access and productivity, but must not end in a private monopoly. A free society needs to keep practising its own good judgement.