LLM vs LLB: the case for junior lawyers is undermined by AI

{"text":[[{"start":6.43,"text":"They consume vast tracts of content, cost a packet to train and graft well past normal office hours. Junior lawyers have much in common with generative artificial intelligence. Galling, then, for the former to face pay stasis — Slaughter and May is freezing their salaries at £150,000 for now — while more spending is being thrown at AI."}],[{"start":32.81,"text":"Expect the machines to continue shouldering more of the workload. Fusty image notwithstanding, lawyers have been deploying tech for nearly a century: dictaphones in the 1950s and two decades later the clunky red UBIQ that enabled case law search without recourse to libraries."}],[{"start":52.3,"text":"Today tech is corralled to zip through documents, conduct due diligence, summarise cases and even draft simple ones. It can handle matters like conveyancing or litigation; one of England’s newest law firms uses AI to prepare “polite” debt chasing letters for just £2."}],[{"start":72.1,"text":"Nor is it all just grunt work. LexisNexis’s Lex Machina — no relation to this column — helps predict the outcome of litigation cases based on past behaviour of courts, counsel and judges. A&O Shearman’s antitrust AI tool works out which jurisdictions require regulatory filings to be lodged and what information they will need before drafting the necessary requests for any missing data."}],[{"start":100.78,"text":"A few years down the line all this may look as laughably quaint as the Dictaphone. AI boosters see it plugging gaps in the constitution, highlighting potential legal action — think well-informed ambulance chasers alerting you to a breach of copyright, say — or even acting as judge. Parties input their grievances, the model spits out a resolution."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":127.37,"text":"For now, the case for junior lawyers remains. Finances stack up. Hourly billing rates vary hugely, but assume £600-£700 at a magic circle firm. Applying the lower end to 1,500 billable hours leaves several times their salary to be tipped into the partners’ pot."}],[{"start":148.27,"text":"Today’s juniors are also tomorrow’s seniors: succession planning relies on an intake of young blood. Algo-generated reports still need human oversight; that usually entails at least some degree of amending too. The Panglossian view on AI applies in law too: if it is easier to launch cases, more people will do so, thus expanding the pie."}],[{"start":173.87,"text":"But there’s a more fundamental role for humans. AI, with tentacles in every sphere of business and society, requires its own rule book. That is a massive undertaking, spanning ethics, intellectual property, privacy and much else besides. Budding legal bigwigs still have a case."}],[{"start":206.18,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftmailbox.cn/album/a_1746952148_3882.mp3"}