Legal AI: Lawyers, Get Out Of The Way!

A partner at a prominent law firm reportedly told Andrew Yang something that made my jaw drop, though maybe it shouldn’t have:

“AI is now doing work that used to be done by 1st to 3rd year associates. AI can generate a motion in an hour that might take an associate a week. And the work is better. Someone should tell the folks applying to law school right now.”

Let that sink in.

Not will do the work. Is doing the work. And doing it better. Faster. Cheaper. Without whining about billable hours or pretending to read a 300-page deposition transcript at 3 a.m.

I’m not in the legal profession, but I’ve worked long enough in industries that got flattened by automation to know what this means. If AI can draft legal motions, review contracts, cite precedent, and do it all with perfect formatting and no coffee breaks, the entire bottom rung of the legal career ladder just evaporated. That first real job where you're supposed to "pay your dues" and learn the ropes? Gone. Or if it exists, it’s being handed to a machine—or a paralegal equipped with one.

And the kicker is, most law students won’t know what hit them until they’re already deep in debt, resumes polished, networking at bar association luncheons wondering why no one’s hiring.

This isn’t just a legal problem. It’s the same pattern we’ve seen with manufacturing, customer service, journalism, even parts of medicine. You study hard, follow the rules, climb the ladder—and then discover someone replaced the first five rungs with code. Suddenly, you’re dangling.

If you’re a young person thinking about law school, or any career where a lot of the early work is predictable, repetitive, and language-heavy—maybe it’s time to pause and reassess. Don’t get me wrong, there will always be lawyers. We’ll always need human judgment, advocacy, and wisdom in the courtroom and the boardroom. But we may need fewer lawyers—and especially fewer brand-new ones. The ones we do need will be expected to work alongside AI tools from day one.

It’s not all doom and gloom, but it is reality. The old path is gone. A new one is forming, but no one hands you a map.

As for me, I’ll stick to music. At least for now, AI still struggles to capture the human soul in a fiddle solo.