Every few months, headlines claim that artificial intelligence will soon replace lawyers. However, the reality is more nuanced and intriguing. Despite significant progress, current AI systems still struggle with deep legal reasoning, judgment, and innovative problem-solving. They can summarize information, organize data, and draft documents, but they often struggle to think like a lawyer. Meanwhile, law firms are heavily investing in AI leadership and infrastructure. They are hiring chief AI officers, bringing in technologists from outside the legal field, and creating dedicated AI teams.
Kara is not a lawyer. Her background is in public health and communications. Yet she now leads a company that has used AI to summarize more than 3.3 million judicial opinions and made them free and publicly available. In our conversation on "Notes to My (Legal) Self," she explained how justice, like health, is a public good. And access to law is one of its critical delivery systems.
Law firm litigators are facing a pivotal moment. Caseloads are growing in complexity and volume while client expectations are shifting. Between July and August of 2025, Ari Kaplan Advisors interviewed partners and attorneys at large law firms across the United States. The objective of the research was to understand how litigators and trial lawyers are leveraging technology to stay ahead in a rapidly evolving legal environment.
In yet another case of an attorney failing to check the work performed by AI, Gordon Rees - a firm that brought in $759,869,000 gross revenue in 2024, putting it at No. 71 on the Am Law 100 - found itself apologizing profusely to a judge and all parties affected, saying its attorneys were "profoundly embarrassed" after submitting a bankruptcy filing that was riddled with "inaccurate and non-existent citations."
We've all lost count of the times we've received an email, policy, or memo from a lawyer so "well written" that nobody understands it. It's frustrating, and you want to write back: "Great legal summary - I have no idea what it means." Unfortunately, that's often how legal communications are received by business colleagues and stakeholders: overly complicated, needlessly formal, and disconnected from everyday business needs - not human.
Mollick notes in his book that AI tools have the capacity to create enhanced expertise on anything and everything by everyone and anyone. This dynamic is already playing out in legal practice. Want to be an expert on non disclosure agreements? You can do several AI prompts and get much of what you need to know to get by, at least for more routine questions.
TO BE ANSWERED USING GENERATIVE AI: How much do you use generative AI tools such as ChatGPT right now? What's your prediction for how much you will use them by the time you graduate from law school? Why?
Justice Breyer delivers well-crafted critiques that misunderstand that proponents aren't trying to win the argument, they're trying to have smart people treat them like they have ideas worth engaging.
Law professors have avoided generative AI, but the Texas A&M Journal of Property Law is pioneering AI-assisted scholarship for legal writing, acknowledging its inevitable influence.
