I have been practicing law long enough to remember when the fax machine was a competitive advantage. I mention this not to establish credentials but to explain why I find the current moment in the profession genuinely interesting rather than merely alarming.
Every generation of lawyers has had to adapt to something. Some generations got railroads and the legal questions that followed. Some got the administrative state. Some got the internet and electronic discovery and the realization that “document review” could consume a significant portion of a human life. Our generation gets artificial intelligence, which promises to compress some of that work while simultaneously generating new questions that nobody has answered yet.
What I have noticed, from my vantage point in the third row of most technology conversations, is that the lawyers who adapt best are the ones who stay focused on what the technology is actually good at and what it is not. It is very good at pattern recognition. It is less good at judgment. The profession runs on judgment. That seems worth holding onto.
The fax machine did not replace lawyers. Neither, I suspect, will the tools we are worried about today. What it will do is change which lawyers are valuable and why. That conversation is worth having now, while there is still time to shape the answer.
