Will AI replace lawyers?

Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) is everywhere, and a lot of people are getting very excited about it. The tech companies that develop AI have been blessed with huge valuations. Apparently, it might replace us all, including lawyers.

Or will it?

The BBC reported this week that Magic Circle law firm Linklaters, whose partners charge £1,000+ per hour, has tested if it can use AI to replace lawyers.

Linklaters tested a variety of US chatbots on 50 questions at the level of a two-year English-qualified solicitor under its “LinksAI” benchmark test.

The firm’s findings, according to the BBC, were that OpenAI's GPT 2, released in 2019, was "hopeless". However, the o1 model, which dropped in December 2024, was much improved.

Linklaters thought that AI was getting nearer to being useful for some legal work, but only under the supervision of a living, breathing, human legal expert. Without expert human intervention, the answers might be gobbledegook, counter-productive and just plain wrong.

All models performed below the level of a junior qualified lawyer. Common AI problems included silly basic errors, the omission of important information and, rather oddly, made-up references.

The tests showed that as long as you had a pretty good idea of what the answer was, you could use AI for research purposes or to check first drafts of documents. So, there is some use for it for “mechanical” tasks, as long as its limitations are factored in.

However, we’re still not there yet. International law firm Hill Dickinson recently decided to stop its own staff using AI tools, presumably to avoid bad or wrong legal advice slipping through the net and out to clients, who would be none too pleased.

One thing on which the firms, understandably, agree, is that, however advanced AI becomes, the human factor in legal services can never be replaced.

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