This week, Amazon announced plans to lay off 14,000 employees by the year’s end. News reports indicate that’s only the beginning. In a blog post addressed to its workforce earlier this year, CEO Andy Jassy forewarned the layoffs, “As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs.”
Meta has also downsized its workforce this year. In January, CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent a memo to Meta’s employees outlining plans to increase efficiency using AI, enabling the company to eliminate 5% of its workforce, a total of approximately 3,500 jobs, by the end of 2025. Since then, Meta has carried out multiple waves of layoffs: in February, nearly 4,000 employees across the U.S., Europe, and Asia were cut; in April, over 100 staff from Reality Labs, which builds VR and wearable tech, were let go; in June, managers were told to give 15% to 20% of large-team members “below expectations” ratings to prepare for more cuts; and most recently, about 600 employees from Meta Superintelligence Labs, the company’s AI division, were laid off.
Meta and Amazon aren’t lone wolves; corporate America is fully on board with this game plan. According to a recent Resume.org survey, 39% of companies have already reduced their headcount, with another 36% planning to do so over the next few months. For example, Salesforce, which determined that AI could handle 50% of customer support tasks, subsequently cut 4,000 customer support positions last month.
Can Lawyers Avoid The Chopping Block?
The writing seems to be on the wall: AI is replacing jobs, and like it or not, legal professionals aren’t immune from this trend. AI is probably coming for their jobs, too.
Case in point: Microsoft’s workforce reductions in May and July impacted 15,000 people, 32 of whom were lawyers and five of whom were paralegals. Some industry experts believed AI was partially to blame.
Sean Burke, founding partner of recruiting firm Whistler Partners, who places tech attorneys at startups, said, “My guess is that the lion’s share of laid-off attorneys at Microsoft are in the bottom tranche, lawyers three to seven years out of law school that are more easily replaced, where you can get less lawyers to do more using AI.”
In The AI Era, Who Needs Lawyers?
Now that AI is ubiquitous and free, potential legal consumers, especially those who can’t afford an attorney, are questioning whether lawyers are even necessary. Why pay for a lawyer when AI can help you represent yourself?
Because of this attitude, the rate of pro se litigants relying on AI tools is increasing, with some achieving successful outcomes. In one recent case, a California woman appeared pro se in an eviction matter. While she was working with a local tenant advocacy network, a jury decided in favor of her landlord.
Rather than continuing to work the advocacy network, she turned to AI. With the assistance of ChatGPT and Perplexity, she identified errors in the court’s procedural rulings, ultimately winning on appeal. She explained that AI was the key to her success: “I can’t overemphasize the usefulness of AI in my case. I never, ever, ever, ever could have won this appeal without AI.”
In another case, a pro se litigant relied on ChatGPT to dispute allegations of an unpaid debt. She asked the chatbot for advice on how to respond to the lawsuit and used it to create templates and draft arguments in her favor. She was able to negotiate a settlement that reduced the amount owed by $2,000.
Facing The Music And Adapting
Not all lawyers are reacting to this newfound reality with dismay. Some are proactively pivoting and identifying ways to use AI to bridge the access to justice gap.
For example, Zoe Dolan, a supervising attorney at Public Counsel, a nonprofit public interest law firm and legal advocacy center in Los Angeles, decided to offer educational resources for self-represented litigants. She helped design a course that would assist LA County residents in understanding how to responsibly use AI for advocacy purposes. Topics covered included crafting prompts, creating documents, and analyzing the accuracy of AI outputs.
The Choice Is Yours
AI isn’t just changing the way lawyers work. It’s changing how people obtain legal assistance, and blurring the boundaries between attorney and algorithm. Some lawyers perceive this trend as a threat, but others recognize it as an opportunity to rethink how legal help is delivered.
As the number of AI-assisted pro se litigants increases, legal professionals must adapt by using AI to streamline tasks, educate clients, and focus on complex, human-driven advocacy. Lawyers won’t be replaced, but their role may very well be redefined. So what better time than now to change how you think about your work?
The future of law isn’t lawyers versus AI, it’s lawyers with AI. Attorneys who understand that distinction will shape the next chapter of the profession, their law firms, and the way legal services are provided.
Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York attorney and Principal Legal Insight Strategist at 8am, the team behind 8am MyCase, LawPay, CasePeer, and DocketWise. She’s been blogging since 2005, has written a weekly column for the Daily Record since 2007, is the author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers, co-authors Social Media for Lawyers: the Next Frontier, and co-authors Criminal Law in New York. She’s easily distracted by the potential of bright and shiny tech gadgets, along with good food and wine. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikiblack and she can be reached at niki.black@mycase.com.
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