TechLaw10: The Displacement Dilemma – Human expertise in an AI-driven world

In this episode of TechLaw10, Punter Southall Law’s Jonathan Armstrong & Eric Sinrod, Professor and Duane Morris LLP attorney chat with special guest Nigel Cannings.

Nigel is the author of The Displacement Dilemma: How Human Expertise Survives an AI-Driven World. Now in its second edition the book explores the impact of AI on professional services, including the legal profession. It asks whether the profession faces long-term problems as the opportunities to train junior lawyers and displaced with AI.

Nigel, Jonathan & Eric discuss a number of issues including:

• how AI has changed law firms.
• what is the future of legal tech?
• how AI risks removing the work through which people become experts.
• how do we distinguish tasks AI can safely take over from the experiences junior lawyers need to develop their own judgement?
• if firms recruit fewer trainees and newly qualified lawyers because AI can do more of their work, where will the experienced mid-level lawyers of five or ten years’ time come from? Is each firm’s short-term efficiency creating a long-term problem for the profession?
• is diversity an issue too? Is the legal profession in danger of becoming more elitist?
• who should bear the cost of developing the next generation of lawyers if clients no longer pay for routine junior work?
• if we accept that there is going to be a reduced need for junior lawyers, then should universities and law schools push so many students through the system?
• how do you train people to be AI supervisors?
• will law firms focus more on rainmakers and less on delivery?
• will this mean changes to the ownership model for law firms?
• should law firms build or buy tech?

This is episode 303 in the popular TechLaw10 series.