The PC, smartphone, email and internet. History is littered with examples of how new technologies intended to make us more productive have led to unintended consequences, including stress and burnout.
Will things turn out differently when it comes to generative artificial intelligence?
Jack Newton, the CEO and co-founder of the practice management software company Clio, is among the optimistic. He says AI can not only help lawyers work smarter, but also do more meaningful work.
“We all have days when you feel like you’ve been busy all day. You’ve answered 100 emails. You replied to 15 text messages. You answered five calls. But at the end of the day you look back and say, ‘What have I accomplished? How did I move the ball down the field on these three important projects or issues?’ The answer is ‘not at all.’ Lawyers feel that way all too often,” says Newton.
In October, he delivered a keynote at Clio’s annual conference and unveiled several new products, including an AI assistant called Clio Duo, the company’s first foray into generative AI. The assistant summarizes documents, generates invoices and makes suggestions on how companies can improve performance. These types of tasks can be a “great candidate for automation or streamlining,” Newton tells the ABA Journal.
With the advent of generative AI, some legal professionals — at least those who don’t see the technology as ushering in a job-killing robot apocalypse — are likely hoping it will make their lives a little easier.
Others are skeptical. In May and June, Thomson Reuters surveyed more than 1,200 lawyers, accountants and others Future of professionals report. The survey found that a minority, or 13% of professionals, thought using AI would reduce their working hours within 18 months; 29% believed this would lead to shorter working hours from 18 months to five years; and the majority, or 58%, expected no change.
Meanwhile, 26% of professionals surveyed believed that using AI would lead to longer working hours within 18 months; 8% in 18 months to 5 years; and 66% expected no impact.
Co-founder of Casetext and 2017 ABA Magazine Legal rebel Pablo Arredondo now works for Thomson Reuters as vice president of CoCounsel. He argues that the monotonous nature of some tasks leads to burnout as much as the number of hours worked.
“It’s sometimes the feeling of doing things that are annoying, that don’t interest you intellectually and things where you have a deep suspicion that this could be automated or at least streamlined in a better way,” says Arredondo.
Then there’s the prospect that AI could reshape the legal industry’s financial model, which revolves around the billable hour. Law firms bill clients for a large portion of hours spent on complex but tedious tasks that AI can complete in seconds, such as research, drafting and document review.
“The billable hours model is incompatible with the kind of productivity gains that the AI generation will deliver,” Newton argues. “Lawyers will be forced to rethink how they price and package their services in a way that better reflects the true value they deliver.”
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This story was originally published in the February-March 2024 issue of the ABA Magazine.