Spend ten minutes at any legal technology conference, and you’ll hear the same three words on repeat: research, analysis, and drafting.
These are the reigning kings of legal AI. We have AI-powered tools that can sift through centuries of case law in seconds. We have algorithms that can analyze thousands of contracts for risky clauses. We have generative models that can draft a standard motion or a cease-and-desist letter with terrifying speed.
This is all incredibly impressive. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry built on making the traditional work of a lawyer faster and more efficient. It is a necessary and important evolution.
But is that it?
Is the grandest vision we have for one of the most powerful technologies in human history simply to create a smarter typewriter and a faster filing cabinet?
The uncomfortable truth is that the legal tech world is suffering from a profound failure of imagination. We are so focused on automating the tasks of the 20th-century lawyer that we’ve forgotten to ask what a 21st-century lawyer could even be. We’re paving the cow paths of an old profession, not building a superhighway to a new one.
The focus on research, analysis, and drafting is understandable. These are tangible, quantifiable, and easily billable tasks. They represent the low-hanging fruit of legal work—the parts most ripe for disruption by pattern recognition and data processing.
By automating these processes, we are solving a clear and present pain point: the drudgery and inefficiency that burn out associates and inflate client bills. We are creating a more efficient version of the status quo.
But true revolution doesn’t come from making the old way 10% faster. It comes from creating a new way that makes the old way obsolete.
We need to stop asking, “How can AI do what a lawyer does?” and start asking, “What can a lawyer and AI do together that has never been possible before?”
This requires a leap of imagination. It requires moving beyond automation and into augmentation, creation, and prediction.