Impact critical thinking

New research has warned that AI taking on “volume work” could leave the next generation of lawyers without the skills they need to deliver high-quality legal advice.

The report draws on interviews with 16 senior leaders from some of the world’s biggest commercial law firms, including A&O Shearman, Baker McKenzie, Bird & Bird, Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer and White & Case.

On junior development, the report highlights how trainee and newly qualified lawyers have traditionally built their judgement through high volumes of document review, due diligence and research work, gradually developing legal reasoning through repetition. AI is now automating many of those tasks.

According to the researchers, the bigger concern is not simply that juniors are doing less grunt work but that being pushed prematurely into higher-level tasks risks leaving critical skills underdeveloped. One participant warned there is now “less requirement to go and interrogate sources,” raising the prospect that AI-generated outputs get waved through without the scrutiny they need.

“Traditionally, juniors learned by repetition through drafting, due diligence, and volume work,” said Anna Sutherland, executive partner at HSFK. “AI is changing that, so the challenge is to ensure they still build solid skills while acquiring new ones.”

The report goes on to say that firms are responding by placing greater emphasis on critical thinking — and the ability to challenge and interpret AI outputs — as skills to be actively developed, rather than assumed. But the report stops short of claiming any firm has cracked the problem yet. How genuine depth of legal understanding gets built in an AI-enabled environment remains, by its own admission, an open question

The junior development issue sits within a broader picture of an industry that is enthusiastic about AI but still figuring out what to actually do with it. More than 60% of lawyers now use AI for tasks like drafting and research, yet few firms have integrated it meaningfully into their business strategy. As one law firm leader put it, “the propensity of tech change is almost unlimited… the propensity of humans to change is very limited.”

The report argues that three leadership behaviours separate firms making genuine progress from those simply layering new tools onto old ways of working. The first is defining clearly where AI adds value and where human judgement remains essential. The second is having senior figures visibly engage with the technology rather than just talk about it. The third is running structured pilots with clear success criteria and a willingness to cut what isn’t working.

The research was produced by leadership consultancy Positive Group in partnership with RSGI, Hubel Labs and Professor Ashley Whillans of Harvard Business School.