[nopinsight]

The AI's effect is that some tasks get automated and require much less labor but in many cases a real human lawyer is still required to communicate with the client.

* Does that mean some lawyers or law firms which make good use of the technology might offer lower prices and gain market share?

* Is there latent demand that may be induced into the legal market once the costs are cheaper?

* Can lawyers retrain to specialize in other laws and thus increase supply and lower costs for less automatable areas over time?

I know little about the legal market. So I'm curious if the above analysis makes sense for it.

[C4stor]

> Is there latent demand that may be induced into the legal market once the costs are cheaper?

If I could get legal documents reviewed cheap (10-20 bucks ?) and fast for problems (new job contracts for example), I'd happily pay for that !

I don't "have a lawyer", and always have had the (probably wrong admittedly) feeling I'll go bankrupt just saying hello to one...

[mrleiter]

Premise: I study in Austria, so this is the Austrian legal market.

> Does that mean some lawyers or law firms which make good use of the technology might offer lower prices and gain market share?

In law, lower prices do not necessarily reflect on getting bigger market share. A lot of clients come from hear-say or publicly defended or publicly known cases. When such companies make good use of such technology they will most definitely gain market share by being able to accept more clients/increase "output" so to speak.

> Is there latent demand that may be induced into the legal market once the costs are cheaper?

That I unfortunately cannot answer, but interesting question!

> Can lawyers retrain to specialize in other laws and thus increase supply and lower costs for less automatable areas over time?

In Austria, that is common practice for law firms. You generally do a broad service, usually only divided into criminal law and tort/contract law and maybe public law. But within those, you specialise (e.g. NDAs etc...). Lawyers tend not to retrain, rather hire someone who is trained in specified subject. So maybe yes, "AI-hostile" trained lawysers will tend to be more sought after. Whether that is in criminal law or somewhere else, I cannot say.

[nubbins]

As a lawyer I'm extremely skeptical about this contract reading software displacing any lawyers any time soon, like in the next 10 years. This isn't because I question the abilities of the tech (though I do), rather its for the simple reason that I see so much more low hanging fruit for automation that still exists in the industry compared to reading contracts. Also this situation hasn't changed much in my 6+ years so I guess lawyers are able to charge for a certain amount of inefficiency, though I believe there was a huge wave of eDiscovery and subsequent eDiscovery automation layoffs in the 2000s, and the jobs outlook is probably not positive, more like neutral at best.

[zombieprocesses]

> The AI's effect is that some tasks get automated and require much less labor but in many cases a real human lawyer is still required to communicate with the client.

For every 1 lawyer in front of a client or jury, there are dozens if not hundreds of lawyers doing grunt work. The vast majority of legal work is reading documents. That's what most lawyers do and it pays well. If that goes, it's going to put a significant pressure on profession and wages.

It's going to be great for the top lawyers at top firms as they can charge more, work more clients and their overhead drops significantly.

Should be interesting how things pan out.

[sharemywin]

I'm thinking this effects paralegal services more than legal services.

- email/scan docs get a highlighted doc back to review with clients, possibly with citations to the legal justification etc.