The next generation of lawyers will enter practice having been trained in a fundamentally different environment from those who came before them. Many candidate attorneys will have used AI throughout their undergraduate and LLB studies, changing not only how quickly they work, but how they approach research, drafting, analysis and problem-solving.

Traditionally, much of a young lawyer’s development occurred through the process itself: identifying the legal issue, searching through legislation and case law, distinguishing relevant authorities from irrelevant ones, narrowing the enquiry, constructing an argument and, eventually, putting pen to paper. It was often slow and frustrating, but that process developed legal judgement.

AI can now compress hours of that work into minutes. Used properly, this creates enormous efficiencies. Used without sufficient supervision, however, it risks allowing young lawyers to bypass the very intellectual processes through which legal proficiency is developed.

This session considers the challenge facing law firms and those responsible for training candidate attorneys: how do we embrace AI without outsourcing the development of the lawyer to AI?

We will explore how the traditional model of articles may need to evolve, what skills young lawyers must still develop independently, and how supervisors can redesign research, drafting and training exercises for an AI-enabled workplace. The objective should not be to prevent young lawyers from using AI, nor to recreate the way previous generations were trained. Instead, we need to develop lawyers who understand the law, can interrogate and challenge AI-generated work, exercise independent judgement and reasoning, and use AI to amplify, rather than replace, their legal ability.

Learning 1- training the future lawyer

Learning 2- adapting AI into the modern firm

Learning 3- developing the skills required to be the lawyer of the future