What are the skills of the AI-empowered lawyer?
It’s been a minute since we posted here! And, returning to our microblog roots, I’m here to share a brief introduction to my latest course-centric Delta Model. This one was designed for AI in Law Practice, a course I co-created with my VLS colleague Mark Williams. 1
The moment we saw the power and potential of GPT3.5 (and now 4), we began working on this course, which we first taught this semester (fall ‘23) and will offer again next semester. With an initial limited enrollment of 12, the course is full and the waitlist is full. Signal: students are curious and they want and need this kind of course.
The course is the first of an entire curriculum we’re building out to empower students to be prepared for practice in the mid-21st century.2 Finally, this isn’t my father’s law practice anymore.3
This post isn’t intended to persuade you that [generative] AI will change the practice of law. I do think it will change how we lawyers work.4 And it certainly will influence the kind of work lawyers do. (Remember the now-quaint adage that “every business is now in the technology business”?)5
And, all we can do right now is ask really good, thoughtful, intentional questions about the potential impact AI is having and will have on the profession and the industry. And prepare our students, as best we can.
For me, this starts with thinking about the skills students will need to thrive and, perhaps more importantly, the skills they will need to lead in this age of AI. And this begets a Delta Model for the AI-empowered lawyer.
Not surprisingly, I anticipate that our most human skills will become even more important and valuable as our profession evolves to integrate AI into our workflows. So, as we launch v.1 of AI in Law Practice, we’re focused not only on helping our students understand AI and begin to use it. We’re equally focused on how we can help them develop their superpowers of empathy, collaboration, and curiosity. For now, these factors differentiate us from machines. And, these factors are requisite for working successfully with AI. And with each other.
See below for the graphic of the AI-Empowered Lawyer’s Delta Model, v.1. We will be iterating on this semester’s beta version as we learn more about the ways generative AI will impact how legal work is done.
And, we invite you to contribute to the AI-Empowered Lawyer Delta, v.2!
What skills do you think are most relevant for the AI-empowered lawyer? Why? Let us know by commenting in Substack, or reach out directly.
We would love to hear from you.
-Cat
c.moon@vanderbilt.edu
🎉 Exciting news: Mark and I are Founding Co-Directors of the new Vanderbilt AI + Law Lab (VAILL), which is the first US law school-based lab focused on work at the intersection of AI, legal education, law practice, and access to justice. As soon as we have a website, I will update this footnote with a link.
The new curriculum is one of the lab’s legal education-focused projects. We aim to create a curriculum that can inspire and inform similar efforts at other schools. And we hope to collaborate with others interested in doing work in this space.
At age 80, my father is a practicing lawyer, the fourth generation in my family to practice. And yes, he is very much enjoying ChatGPT.
The HBR article Is your job AI resilient? cites current (as of 10/24/23) research suggesting that 44% of lawyers’ work will be impacted by AI. Rather than quibble with the research or the %, I suggest we reframe this as an opportunity to figure out how we might be proactive in reimagining how we work in the age of AI. This is not about robots replacing lawyers. This is about how we lawyers will collaborate with machines to be better lawyers. Which likely will require us to do some things differently.
Generative AI is set to have a substantial impact on the economy, which means it will have a substantial impact on corporate clients, which means it will have a substantial impact on lawyers who represent corporate clients. For some insight, see McKinsey’s The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier.