I know one !

She's got international experience and connections but moved to a small town. She was a magic circle partner years ago. Now she has a FTTP connection and has picked up a bunch of contracts that she can deliver on with AI. She underbid some big firms on these because their business model was traditional rates, and hers is her cost * x (she didn't say but >1.0 I think)

Basically she uses AI for document processing (discovery) and drafting. Then treats it as the output of associates and puts the polish on herself. She does the client meetings too obviously.

I don't think her model will last long - my guess is that there will be a transformation in the next 5 years across the big firms and then she will be out of luck (maybe not at the margin though). She won't care - she'll be on the beach before then.

Oof. That's quite possibly malpractice, and she could potentially lose her license if her clients twig to it. [0]

Lawyers have a duty of care and of candor and of confidentiality, and a ChatGPT-ish model like that can violate all three.

-- [0] https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/p...

I think she's quite open with the clients about what she's charging for and how she's delivering.

I think "quite possibly malpractice" does a lot of work. It's "quite possibly malpractice" to use an associate to draft an opinion. The associate could secretly take photos of the document and sell them to the opposition or the press, the associate could make stuff up, the associate could get drunk in a bar and tell everyone what they are doing. Who knows. You better have appropriate management controls, working practices and training in place! Even partners do this stuff sometimes though...

It could also be malpractice to use a networked computer to prepare documents - that could be hacked into and your duty of care could be shown to be breached.

If there's no deception and appropriate care is taken then is there an issue?

Yes, there absolutely could be.

I'm not saying "it's probably malpractice" just to say it, I'm saying it because the ABA has put out guidelines saying that, and so have most state bars.

If you're putting client data into ChatGPT, for example, that's violating your duty of confidentiality. Telling someone you're doing it doesn't excuse it.

And yes, many of the other situations you mentioned would also be grounds for censure or losing your license. An associate is an attorney, you might be confusing the term with paralegal.

An associate doing those things would likely lose their license. And law offices are required to use best practices for security controls.

Yes, that is obvious. The point you are replying to is that oversupply will mean the cost to the consumer will fall dramatically too, rather than the AI owner capturing all of the previous value.

It depends. If there will be one/few winners on the market, they will dictate price after human labor out-competed through the price or quality.

If prices are determined by scarcity then the cost of services will more likely be tied to the price for energy.

This is how it has always been. Automation makes a job require less traditionally required knowledge, the tasks less complicated and increases productivity. This introduces new complexity that machines can't solve.

The funny part is that people think we will run out of things to do. Most people never hire a lawyer because they are much to expensive.