Author: Eimear McCann
Artificial intelligence is not just another tool; it is a “general-purpose technology “(GPT), the kind that fundamentally reshapes society. Like electricity, or the internet, GPTs change not just what we do, but how we think, learn, and create. In an industry as foundational as the legal profession, AI is poised to redefine both process and purpose, with a huge impact on our psychology and behaviour.
Perhaps what is most important to remember, amid this change, is that law is primarily a knowledge-based profession, and we need to ensure that this knowledge is properly managed. How we test for it, and how we define it, will evolve; however, how do we ensure that we do not outsource to such a degree that we lose far more than we gain?
Managing Risks
There is an emerging strand of research that emphasises the importance of “brain capital”, defined as a function of brain health, capacity and skills. Our brain capacity is already squeezed as we all navigate the digital, omnichannel pathways of a typical day.
As such, we need to be especially cognisant of the need to hone the skills that augment this brain capital. Looking at this in a disputes context, if AI completes the first draft, summarises the case law, or predicts litigation outcomes, the temptation to outsource our own knowledge grows. In other words, if lawyers begin to rely on technology without enhancing their own skills in parallel, we risk a skills erosion from within.
It may sound far-fetched to imagine a courtroom where no one truly understands the material, or where we have an over reliance on the surface output of a machine, but it is a scenario worth pondering. How much nuance and humanity could we lose? The amalgam of ethics and experience is crucial in litigation, and without those human foundations, trust (and much else) is lost.
Retaining Skills
We’ve all heard the (hopefully now redundant) rhetoric that AI may replace lawyers. Lawyers are not easily replaced! Instead, the growth of AI can, and should, transform how/where we work, and if properly engaged, should augment our processes and workflows.
Keeping it simple, these three core skills will become more important than ever as the tech accelerates beyond our engagement levels:
- Lawyers as Consultants: Moving beyond drafting to deliver actionable, commercial advice to clients.
- Strategy: Knowing which arguments will land, understanding the direction of judicial thinking, and predicting outcomes in tandem with analytics tools
- AI fluency: Really understanding what AI tools exist and what they can really do in practice.
The good news is that legal professionals already rely on judgment and strategy. What changes now is how those skills are developed and deployed. The firms that thrive will be those that invest in people who can ask better questions, not just get faster answers.
A Boost for Disputes Lawyers
Nowhere is this transformation more visible or more promising than in litigation, perhaps highlighted by a distinct lack of tech attention historically. Disputes lawyers are already using AI tools to eliminate the most labour-intensive friction points in their workflows. Tasks that once took days, e.g., creating detailed case timelines or summarising bundles of documents, can now be done in minutes.
AI can:
- Instantly generate timelines from case files and correspondence.
- Summarise complex evidence or witness statements at speed.
- Categorise, tag, and extract key facts from massive document sets.
- Detect inconsistencies or missing information across disclosures.
This not only frees up time but frees up thinking, helping us to replenish our stores of “brain capital”. With routine work streamlined, litigators can focus more on high-level strategy, risk evaluation, and courtroom tactics. Rather than replace the disputes lawyer, AI becomes a force multiplier, enabling leaner teams to manage complex litigation with greater precision and speed.
Importantly, this spans beyond its domestic application. As legal teams around the world handle matters that span jurisdictions and languages, AI is helping to standardise workflows, translate and interpret documents at scale, and accelerate collaboration across time zones.
An Economic Shift?
Law firms have long operated on a simple formula: hours equal revenue. This paradigm is shifting.
AI doesn’t just expose inefficiencies. It highlights a deeper tension around pricing expertise. If a task that once took five hours now takes one, how does a firm justify the same fee? If clients know AI was involved, will they demand discounts? Arguably, the billable hour is creaking under a new kind of pressure, and it will be interesting to see if the boutique litigation firms, with both the appetite and agility to adopt AI may push to the forefront.
Many firms cannot yet fully embrace AI because of client data restrictions around security and confidentiality, but this too will change.
A New Era
The initial fear of AI is dissipating, and we have partially accepted that this technology is firmly woven into the threads of litigation, the legal profession, and our lives more generally. Whist the technology may be artificial, ethics and regulation are guided by humans and as such, we have a huge opportunity to retain our autonomy and map out a future that is principled and fair.
Eimear McCann
Eimear is a former lawyer, and Commercial Director of TrialView, an AI litigation platform. She also lectures in legal tech and innovation – with a specific focus on AI – at BPP University and is a member of the Law Society Technology & Law Committee.