Will you 'dumb' down 'the legal world?

Will you ‘dumb’ down ‘the legal world? – artificial lawyer

By Richard Tromans, artificial lawyer.

This site strongly supports the use of it in the legal sector. But we should not avoid difficult questions, such as: will the legal world ‘dumb?

There are two main aspects of this: individual lawyers who are suffering because they transfer their thinking, creativity, creativity and judgment; and also a systematic discount of the legal sector’s workplace collection due to automation from bottom to end without any high -level human supervision.

And it’s worth repeating: this site is 100% in favor of the automation of many things in the legal sector – where it is ethical and makes sense – but where there are systemic risks, we really have to be careful. It is a good line that will have to go into a fast world, where we can see a considerable percentage of all legal work automated today, but where we will still need to keep people in the loop.

A simple example is ‘automated judges’. Can we do it now? Perhaps, especially with new patterns of reasoning and if they are related to a sufficient amount of relevant judicial practice. But should we be? The artificial lawyer would argue: No – in fact, never. Why? Because if we remove people from that loop for something that is so….human…. Then we do something how society works that can have big, negative implications. (And it would be difficult to change again….)

Would it be a good idea to allow a judge to work hard to use any tools that can manage the trial and all related data, and to explore related cases, to help them come to a conclusion? Yes.

But, there is a difference between two things: one has to do with efficiency and Help for a man capable of reaching up to the point that that skill can be applied – Instead of plunging out of process work. The other scenario is where the ability that civilization has developed over the millennia to ensure that a just society has been rejected in favor of efficiency at all costs.

And of course, you can ask well: but what is the risk of automating something completely if it works? And it’s true, I would rather be on a self-driving road than in a car with a human driver (especially after the latest experiences.) What is the damage to fully legal work automation?

The answer is delicate and it depends on this: do you want a world where decisions that will affect you personally, and your society as a whole, to be transferred to a system that is built by people you have never met and have no control over, nor the ability to appeal? Maybe a faceless corporation that has its own agenda? But, however, are we submitting the exercise of our legal rights for…? Personally, I would rather climb a human judge who can look into the eye.

(And in Waymo, a few car cars, but such vehicles will have to make premature judgments in an emergency situation, but we do not go to Waymo for trials for a divorce, employment judgment or a decision by the Supreme Court for help, for example.)

Changes in automation

Spellcheck probably did not result in any collective changes in the way the legal sector is operated. Not even the automation of the dock. Not even using NLP/ml to find the change of control clauses to a proper care project.

But having Genai’s ability to design from a previously agreed play book and/or precedent document in a few seconds, or conduct a deeply reasoned research on a matter of carefully curated data, or just your brain storm closing arguments in a trial with a LLM…. Now, this is different.

Why is it different? It is different because you are transferring some of your deepest thoughts, your judgment, your informed criticism ie the highest functions of your mind.

Observing a spelling error does not include higher functions of the human mind.

Finding a change in the control clause (rarely) engages the highest functions of the human mind.

But finding the correct way to express the customer’s needs in a contract, even if a “quite simple” (relatively), which requires a higher function scale, even if it is to say ‘OK, that is well, please continue’.

In not much more than two and a half years we have moved from making some Q&A with LLM, to developing agents that can act on their own, to add ‘deep research’ now that can choose three dozen resources in minutes to come to a carefully reasoned response to a legal issue.

This ability will grow and grow alone, and any lawyer who believes will not happen on the scale will soon be surprised.

The problem

The problem is not that it is super-productive, or it can read a source material worth one week in 8 minutes and provide a reasoned answer to a complex question, or draft something in 5 seconds, or rebuild a document in 1 second … and so on …… is that we are reaching out to a point where human lawyers will ask ourselves: Should I worry….?

Should I worry about what? To check it. Be sure that production is what I wanted. To be sure that ‘I, a living, breathing, arranged representative of my client and their best interests’ actually gives him a curse that all this is right.

Fortunately, lawyers have an obligation care to their customers. Plus, the tools today (though they progress too fast) are not yet good enough for lawyers to simply break away from the whole process.

But… .This will change. The challenge then becomes one of the market education to handle the work modes that include the automation of the large parts of what they once did, but Re-recovering the need to stay ‘responsible’ and providing critical judgment.

IE even more workers from us can dive into a state of detachment from an issue if we start to feel (over) sure that it has already been treated.

If the legal advances end up creating lawyers who do not control things who do not feel that noise of personal responsibility for the outcome of a legal work, then we are in trouble.

So to reiterate: Should we automate everything we can that is ethical to do so? Yes. Does this release the legal sector of the same need to protect clients? No. In fact, it increases them because the risk of complacency increases in such a world.

These two statements may seem to be contrary. So also AL support for him and yet concerns about removing lawyers from the loop completely. All boils about this: It is a tool, and the tools are there to help people in the place where they can really add value. They are not there to replace people unless that task is really so routine that it makes no sense for a man to do it.

Personally, I’m happy to have a Waymo take me home. A toast to make my toast. A room to vacuum my floor. My alarm hour to wake me up. And so on. And I’m happy to have 90% of the job a lawyer does today completely automated… .but no all its.

A possible world

Below is set in the near future:

A company that uses agents reveals a possible legal issue.
Without a human expert by checking it, the matter is sent to another agent within the internal legal team.
This issue is automatically triggered and has decided to reach the threshold where it must be sent to a legal firm (because the need for risk extinguisher is met).
The new agent of a legal firm accepts the work, and also the three follows it and must work by assessing what is to be done.
(At this point no human lawyer is included.)
It is sent to the correct practice group, where curated legal data and property data and knowledge of the firm are applied and a legal solution is produced.
The result has been sent (finally) to a partner in the firm …… (and this is a bit that really confuses them all) ……. And this lawyer gives him a quick look. But they know that a) the internal legal team will not read it, only theirs will … so it is the purpose, and that b) the probability that they have taken completely is very low. So they let go without properly controlled it.
(PS an addition here is: How many contracts exist that no customer has never really read in detail, even under the current system …?)
That inhouse team receives the work product and inserts the document in the right place, causing automated tracking actions throughout the company. (This results in the closure of a production unit in Mexico and the fire of deputy managers in Texas and Frankfurt – all of these are done through a fully automated process. And in fact even when the manager in Germany is worried and decides to appeal to appeal, contacting a lawful law that he does not win the case in 0.1 seconds theirs for which they are their efforts to make a law for it, which has nothing to do with their batteries.

Ok, this is a Dystopian vision for the future, but we are not a million miles away if we start to think that it is best to remove human lawyers from the loop.

cONcluSiON

The underlying problem here is the triage, or more precisely the possible lack of ability for human lawyers to get this right into a legal world of it.

Junior Associates Rote Automation Rote sounds like a very sensitive thing to do it will benefit from society as a whole. (Of course, new lawyers may not feel like that, but clients of the legal firm and the wider economy can see it that way – and that is something we will have to deal with.)

At the same time, automation fully, or more precisely ignoring the need for human engagement in the main moments of a legal project, is not only dangerous, but is potentially setting the ‘content’ compromised legal in the legal data ecosystem.

And this is where we turn to both influence on a personal level, e.g. The lawyer breaks out because they think there is no point to be included, and the wider systemic level, viz. Society as a whole believes that we can simply automate the ‘whole thing’, leading to all sorts of mistakes by folding into record.

So is he a ‘good thing’? Yes. The legal world has been due to a ‘ribalancing’ for a long time, and is now due to this technology. But even the artificial lawyer does not want to give blanche, or want to see human judgment and criticism completely replaced for something as essential to the operation of society as legal work.

How we get balance in the years ahead will be essential.

By Richard Tromans, Founder, Artificial Lawyer, June 2025

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