One of the big worries in the age of AI is training younger lawyers, as I and others have discussed before. But a new LexisNexis study suggests we’ve been focusing on the wrong thing: the more critical training may need to be of experienced lawyers instead. Training the trainers.
Key Findings
LexisNexis surveyed 873 legal professionals in the U.K. in January of this year. Like many things with GenAI, the resulting study was long on questions but short on answers. That’s not necessarily a criticism. The truth is we just don’t know a lot of the answers yet. Which makes the notion of training the trainers perhaps key.
Here’s some key statistics from the study:
- 65% say legal AI tools allow them to work faster.
- 72% believe that younger lawyers using GenAI will have trouble developing reasoning and critical thinking skills.
- 69% worry that new lawyers lack “verification and source-checking skills.”
Okay. Not terribly surprising although one would think verification and cite-checking skills would be one thing beginning lawyers ought to be able to do. Perhaps the concern is not that they don’t have the skills, it’s that they won’t use them.
These findings align with expectations. Indeed, they are remarkably consistent with a white paper by one of LexisNexis’ main competitors, Thomson Reuters, about which I wrote back in December of last year. But the study revealed something more troubling.
But Wait, There’s More
Here’s one surprising finding: only 29% believe that AI helps them produce higher quality work and only 2% — 2%! — believes AI strengthens their learning.
Think about what this suggests: it suggests the main value of AI is that it helps us produce work faster, not necessarily better. And almost all agree that its use doesn’t help them learn. Meaning it doesn’t help them be better lawyers.
The study identifies the problem: “pouring over lengthy contracts, interrogating every cause, and immersing yourself in case law may not be glamourous, but these tasks have traditionally been how legal judgement is formed.”
And if this means AI will do a lot of this work and those skills aren’t developed, the long-term result, assuming these statistics reflect reality not just impressions, can only mean one thing: lower quality lawyering.
A Thinking Partner?
The study does propose a solution: getting young lawyers to treat GenAI as a “thinking partner” in doing legal work. Like a lot of platitudes, it’s a catchy phrase but the study is a little short on how we get harried associates under time stress to do just that.
Indeed, it will be too easy to let a “thinking partner” do thinking for you especially when pressed for time. And if you don’t have critical thinking skills already and confidence in your own thinking, it’s likely you will just accept what a bot tells you as right. Over reliance and lack of learning.
As one of the study participants put it, “No critical reasoning, no belief in themselves and no confidence.”
So, What’s the Answer?
As one of my mentors once put it, the problem is the problem. And as reflected by the alignment of the LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters studies, certain realties are clear. For example, young lawyers are going to use GenAI no matter what we do.
Another reality, as one of the LexisNexis participants put it, “we need to be deliberate about how we build judgment and strategic thinking alongside technical capability.” Certainly, true but how do we do that: “How do firms redesign early legal careers so judgment is built not bypassed? How do they embed verification, accuracy and critical reasoning in an AI-enabled workflow?”
Reading through the comments from the participants, I couldn’t help but think there is no consensus. Some say more collaboration. Some say being clear on objectives and providing context. Some say teaching how to prompt. Some say guided decision making and structured feedback. Some say embed the right mindset.
I even know a lawyer who runs a small firm who once told me we could just ban the use of GenAI until a lawyer has two or three years of experience. Nice idea, not very enforceable or practical as client demands for use of time saving GenAI tools ratchet up.
All good ideas but they all assume that more experienced lawyers can provide just these kinds of skills. And that assumption may not necessarily be correct. Sure, more experienced lawyers who are familiar with GenAI tools and know how to use them can formulate better prompts and spot AI slop when they see it. But how many experienced lawyers have that underlying familiarity? And if they don’t have it, how can they mentor younger lawyers correctly?
So, we need to start with the notion that older, more experienced lawyers need AI training just as much if not more than younger lawyers. “They need to understand the strengths and limitations of AI, feel confident using it responsibly, and know how to review and refine outputs.”
Armed with these skills, then and only then can they mentor young lawyers using GenAI tools to develop the critical thinking skills and abilities they will need to perform well in the future. Moreover, firms will need to realize that mentoring takes time and investment in the future that let’s face it, a lot of firms are not known for.
A Real Life Example
How could this work in real life? In today’s world, an associate is asked to do a first draft of a brief. They take it to the partner who marks it up with a red pen and sends it back. But in the future what will be needed is more from the partner. The partner will need to be able to spot if it looks like the associate over relied on GenAI or that the cites don’t look or sound right. The partner will need to sit down with the associates and explain how they caught that overuse, why it didn’t look right, and the consequences of that both with the client and the courts.
The Commitment
That takes a commitment that’s not there right now. The study points out an interesting gap in this regard about technology perceptions: 51% of the associates say keeping pace with technological developments is a top challenge while only 34% of the leaders do so. In other words, while associates see technology as a top challenge, their leaders don’t share that concern. How can they lead and train if they aren’t equally invested in understanding what’s coming?”
So, let’s start there: instead of looking at what we need to do to train young lawyers about technology that’s changing weekly if not daily, let’s develop a mindset among more experienced lawyers about technology and its impact. To get there we need an attitudinal change: more experienced lawyers need to commit to learning and keeping up with technology. They need to commit to mentoring new lawyers in different and more intense ways. It means they need to seek to define what good lawyering is on a more consistent basis as Jordan Furlong, one of the most astute observers of the legal scene recently talked about. (Furlong will be a Keynote speaker at the upcoming ABA TechShow in March. His topic: The Lawyers We’ll Need: Preparing the Legal Profession for a Post-AI World). They need to commit to their own training, something that they heretofore have not spent much time or energy on.
Law firms will have to recognize that future lawyers aren’t going to learn to be good lawyers in traditional ways. They have to recognize that young lawyers are going to use GenAI tools and that that doesn’t mean they are necessarily going to produce better work faster. In fact, it may mean just the opposite. And they have to know that young lawyers are going to make mistakes, mistakes that may be different than the past that need to be spotted and fixed.
That takes an investment in the long-term development of lawyers in a hands-on way. If we want young lawyers to develop the skills experienced lawyers have, let’s start with training the trainers.
Stephen Embry is a lawyer, speaker, blogger, and writer. He publishes TechLaw Crossroads, a blog devoted to the examination of the tension between technology, the law, and the practice of law.
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