Neal Page: Sir, excuse me. I know this is your cab, but I’m desperately late for a plane, and I was wondering if I could appeal to your good nature and ask you to let me have it.
Lawyer getting into cab: I don’t have a good nature.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles, 1987.
There’s a lot of hand-wringing these days about the impact AI is going to have on the poor lawyer. You know the one. The guy who brought home over $5 million in compensation last year. Poor baby.
But what isn’t talked about is the impact AI will have down below. The administrative staff. The paralegals. Those in the marketing department. Those who labor in billing and collections to make sure Mr. Big gets his $5 million. All these people slave away in internal offices for peanuts with no clout or status. These are the jobs and the costs the AI vendors merrily trumpet can be eliminated and reduced. These are the people who can least afford to be marginalized.
And what are the firms doing about this issue? Eliminating these positions to cut costs. Conducting massive layoffs of staff. And hiring fancy legal engineers. Searching for directors of AI sometimes at salaries of over $400,000.
Who’s Really at Risk?
A recent article in Tom’s Guide brought this home. It was written by Elton Jones, who writes about AI for a living. He cites some statistics from Tenet that some 92 million jobs could be replaced by 2030 worldwide. 47% of US workers are at risk of being automated away in the next 10 years.
So Jones, being curious, asked ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity to rank the 10 most likely jobs to be replaced by AI. Now granted, the bots had some self-interest here since the more jobs they can replace, the more valuable they are. (AI can’t think like humans? Right).
Oh great. The bots we hate dealing with the most are going to take over customer service
The job they all agreed on: customer service representatives. Oh great. The bots we hate dealing with the most are going to take over customer service. Jones quoted Perplexity as to why: “Chatbots and voice agents can answer routine FAQs, check order status, reset accounts, schedule appointments, process simple returns, and triage tickets around the clock.”
Except they often can’t: if these are the jobs most likely to be replaced by a bot, why can’t the bot do something besides tell me to push one. Or two. Or something novel, like answer the fucking question I’m asking. I’ve been trying to get my dermatologist appointment rescheduled for a week now, dealing with a bot that can’t seem to grasp the fact that I am already a patient. Jones puts it best: “I’d much rather deal with a human who fulfills such a role.” I’m with you, Elton.
But look at some of the other jobs the bots put on the endangered list: data entry people, inbound sales reps, bookkeepers and accounting types. Writers for entry-level content. All folks who labor in the bowels of law firms. And here’s one that really hits home: paralegals/legal assistants and researchers.
Jones quotes Perplexity’s answer to why all this is so: “The common factor across all these roles is predictability. Roles reliant on structured rules, data retrieval, standard text generation, or routine transactions are being automated.”
Whew. Mr. Big is safe.
Remember Customer Service? I Do
But here’s the thing. Just like when you can’t get ahold of a human to solve your routine customer service issue, something is lost when all those people that help a law firm serve its clients are gone. Does anyone really think someone who calls a law firm with a thorny or emotional legal problem, like my husband just left me, would rather speak to a bot that starts by saying listen carefully, because our menu options have recently changed? Or would they rather speak to a human receptionist who is empathic, friendly, and actually helpful?
Will clients be happier when a bot calls them to remind them last month’s bill hasn’t been paid? Do you think your chances of getting hired are better when the potential client reads AI generated marketing slop?
What happens to quality when all that work is done by a bot?
And those paralegals. You know, the humans who are often charged with doing things like checking cites or making sure the factual references are correct. What happens to quality when all that work is done by a bot? Not to mention the interface that, in my experience, paralegals often have with clients.
Let’s face it, we are in a customer service industry. But are we being too eager to jettison the very people that help provide customer service? I fear in the rush to embrace AI and save costs (gotta pay for that AI investment some way, right?), that’s what’s going to happen.
Here’s A Thought
There’s another reason we might want to think long and hard about what we are doing. Many of those people who serve in non-legal roles are the very employees who have been around the longest. (Let’s face it, there’s not much of a lateral market for a law firm billing clerk).
They are the people who know the firm’s culture the best. The admin assistant who has been sitting outside a partner’s office for 22 years, for example. And in an age when lawyers lateral back and forth between firms willy-nilly, it is these people who are the very ones who have institutional knowledge that others don’t. They are the ones who can tell a young associate working on a project for a partner that the style in which the associate is writing is one the partner detests. I know. That happened to me, and the admin saved my scalp from a partner known to rip associates to shreds if he didn’t like something.
More than that, many of those people know how the law works. They know the stresses lawyers are under. They understand client relationships. They respect the profession and those with whom they work. I had an admin once who cared so much about the work that she suggested how I might more efficiently handle the massive number of files I was trying to juggle. That wasn’t in her job description. No lawyer thought of that or bothered to care.
Lots of law firms are having trouble finding enough associates to do the work that needs to get done. Yet paralegals can help fill in the gap
And when it comes to paralegals, there’s a practical reason to keep them and utilize them properly. Lots of law firms are having trouble finding enough associates to do the work that needs to get done. Yet paralegals can help fill in the gap by doing lots of tasks for which having a law degree is not a prerequisite. Work that requires skill, judgment, and familiarity with the law and clients.
Think of the physician assistant in the medical context: medicine didn’t respond to a shortage of doctors by firing everyone else. It expanded their roles. And paralegals are even more needed in the age of AI, not less.
But blinded by the shiny AI lights and aided by vendors and consultants, firms are quick to can these folks. They are quick to hire expensive so-called experts to help. Ever think of retraining what you already have? It may not be as sexy, but it might be cheaper and get you a better product long term.
So yes, AI can do a lot. But it can’t take care of people. It has no soul
What Does It Profit?
What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
Which brings me to a final point, and one lawyers aren’t well known for: responsibility for our fellow man. Respecting those who have been loyal and worked in the trenches day and night. Looking for ways to keep them by retraining them and finding new roles instead of dumping them on the street. These people don’t make $5 million per year. They don’t have well-funded 401ks. They rely on the firm for basics like health insurance.
So yes, AI can do a lot. But it can’t take care of people. It has no soul. It doesn’t know what good nature is. And if we aren’t careful, we soon won’t either.