As generative artificial intelligence continues to rip through the legal landscape, its promise has made the most innovative and skilled lawyers feel an unexpected sense of vulnerability.
In an industry built on a foundation of expertise, top-tier attorneys possess an unmistakable knack for grasping complex legal concepts, balancing competing interests and weaving intricate legal arguments through a maze of facts. They can diplomatically navigate sensitive issues while precisely pinpointing how a range of factors interact with legal obligations and business strategy.
Now, however, these masters of the trade are being pushed to integrate AI into their practice — an entirely foreign task. Indeed, according to a July Thomson Reuters report, 77% of legal professionals acknowledge that AI will have a "high or transformational impact on their work over the next five years."
No one, regardless of their legal acumen, starts as an expert in AI. This abrupt shift from a position of mastery to feeling like a complete novice can be jarring. It requires legal professionals to step into unfamiliar territory, learn new skills, and rethink ways of working that have long been ingrained as instinct or intuition.
Beyond Task Elimination: AI as a Catalyst for Enhanced Legal Performance
With the increasing adoption of generative AI tools, there is pressure on attorneys to get ahead of the looming changes it will bring to the legal sector.
Notably, generative AI has the potential to enhance the legal employee value proposition across the industry. This is especially true for in-house attorneys who balance sharp lawyering skills with being a generalist — a job requiring horizontal stretch across many areas of law, and vertical range across both substantive and operational workloads.
The industry is beginning to accept the notion that generative AI could eliminate paperpushing drudgery, freeing up lawyers to focus more of their time and thinking on complex legal matters. And many lawyers believe credibility is directly linked to the complexity of matters entrusted to them. So, this culling of administrative or operational matters has the potential to be validating and rewarding.
At the same time, viewing AI solely for task elimination limits the technology's far-reaching implications for legal practice. Even today, AI can make lawyers more effective at tackling challenging and creative tasks.
Yes, AI can draft basic emails or routine documents, but its true potential begins to appear when it is engaged as a strategic thought partner. Lawyers can be more creative, better writers and researchers, and more adept at organizing and analyzing information when tackling complex problems.
By leveraging AI in both day-to-day and high-level tasks, lawyers can push through the boundaries of their analytical and creative capabilities. This, in turn, leads to more fulfilling work experiences, as lawyers spend more of their time on challenging, intellectually stimulating problems.
The Paradox of AI Efficiency in an Already Demanding Profession
AI-powered efficiency, however, introduces a paradox: While it enables more efficient work, it also presents new sources of stress and mental load.
Quantum Workplace's "2024 Employee Engagement Trends Report" revealed that frequent AI users experience higher rates of burnout than workers who use AI infrequently or never. And a June report from Resume Now found that 87% of younger workers exhibited the most fear around AI-related burnout.
AI's speed and volume of output occurs at a relentless pace. Near-instantaneous responses, while impressive, can create pressure to work at an unsustainable pace and eliminate moments of reflection and downtime during the working day. Decision fatigue, more errors and reduced engagement with information might make lawyering worse, not better.
In a profession already known for its demanding work culture and the glorification of overwork, the added efficiency of AI can make it even harder for lawyers to justify taking breaks or setting work-life boundaries. With new capabilities come heightened expectations, both for output quality and speed, putting additional pressure on lawyers to perform at increasingly high levels.
This paradox has been well-documented with previous breakthroughs in technology. Consider, for instance, the dawn of the mobile device. The first wave of Blackberry phones promised the ability to fire off an email without logging into your desktop, ostensibly freeing up time. Instead, however, it enabled the 24-hour workday, weekend emails and the ability to reply to global messages in bed at 2 a.m.
In a similar way, AI has the potential to enable behaviors and work cultures that are detrimental to mental health and work-life balance, despite the initial promise of increased productivity and efficiency.
Decades of technological advance have intensified the fundamental challenge of balancing productivity with well-being. Technology itself will not alleviate this with more efficiency and productivity.
Leaders are ultimately responsible for the experience of their teams, modeling positive mental health practices and staying vigilant against the workload creep that can accumulate a toll, especially on high performers.
And, ultimately, individuals are still responsible for their own happiness and the well-being of others. The potential benefits of AI will not arrive on their own.
Preserving Humanity in an AI-Enhanced Legal Landscape
Though AI is poised to infiltrate every aspect of our working life, humans still hold the reins when it comes to mental health and improved employee experience on their teams. AI is a tool that amplifies capabilities, but doesn't inherently improve well-being or good management. The responsibility for these aspects remains firmly in human hands.
Legal professionals must continue the quest to set boundaries, including making mindful decisions about when to stop working and engage in nonwork activities.
If anything, it is more important than ever to decide when to limit effort when AI makes it more possible to do more. Higher productivity always extracts a hidden cost, especially in a profession already rife with burnout risk.
There are a few principles that are worthy of reflection.
1. Leave potential gains on the table.
This is one of the most difficult ones, especially in an era with the rise of legal operations. When productivity measures indicate a certain level of return on investment, those plans need to be accompanied by a window of time for change to set in and a buffer to accommodate the increased productivity.
If generative AI is capable of cutting down a given task from four hours to 30 minutes, leaders cannot demand that those 3.5 hours be filled immediately with new workload.
Betty Liu, the executive vice chair of the New York Stock Exchange, popularized a productivity approach called the "1-3-5 rule" to optimize speed and efficiency in every person's day. The rule states that in any given workday, a worker should seek to accomplish one big thing, three medium tasks and five small activities.
Generative AI may not change this notion — it does not instantly enable people to tackle four big things. While productivity gains will surface, managers will need to allow these gains to settle in.
2. Identify fulfilling areas of work.
Fulfilling work is at the top of the employee value proposition for most legal professionals. It is en vogue to say that lawyers need to be freed up for more strategic work, but within that sentiment is the idea that more strategic work — especially for in-house lawyers — is a positive experience.
This is not only to satisfy the demand from the business, but also to deliver on the attorney's professional growth and job satisfaction.
Leaders should design future job descriptions and workloads proactively. It is not sufficient to motivate changing ways of working solely on the basis of what work will be displaced — more detail is required to paint a vision of what gratifying and interesting work will be introduced. The job descriptions for in-house lawyers will be different in the future; winning legal leaders will write those job descriptions today.
And the legal professionals being asked to change should be involved in crafting their future jobs. This is a moment to identify passionate, high-potential individuals that see the opportunity to increase their professional development and raise their hand to add more value. Accordingly, this is an opportunity to differentiate talent and match it with the most fulfilling workloads into the future.
3. Establish a culture that recognizes and rewards AI impact.
Supporting mental health in the era of AI is more than mitigating risk and articulating an employee value proposition — it is an opportunity for cultural change. Setting key performance indicators, as well as objectives and key results; adding these to team goals for performance measurement; and incentivizing or mandating AI use are useful measures that are traditionally recommended for alignment and motivating behaviors.
But adopting AI is a strange new way of working, and its effectiveness depends on each person's curiosity. Mandates alone won't make people use AI effectively.
Instead, focus on showing how AI helps the business. Share success stories, get feedback from clients or other departments, and celebrate when AI leads to better work.
This approach can foster a positive attitude and culture of optimism toward AI adoption, leading to improved job satisfaction as team members see tangible benefits and feel that their efforts are recognized.
Balancing AI Integration With Human Well-being
As we integrate AI into legal work, it's more important than ever to be proactive about wellbeing and good management. It is crucial to emphasize that AI is a tool to support, not replace, human expertise in decision-making. This principle becomes even more critical due to AI's far-reaching implications.
As we navigate this new frontier, the legal profession can set a standard for how AI can be integrated responsibly and in a way that prioritizes human well-being. Striking the right balance can unlock the full potential of AI in legal practice, while preserving the well-being and professional excellence of legal professionals.
Originally published in Law360.
