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I’m interested in answers too.. 👀
But I also know AI replace some of the soft skills in lawyering. for example AI can’t replace an attorney capable of dealing with a disorganized, erratic and impatient client. Secondly, it can’t AI can’t replace rizz and those who know how to build relationships with clients and potential clients.
I just wasted time asking it to locate documents and it finally gave up and provided documents from something it figured was similar to what I was looking for 🙄
Legal marketer here. I'm trying to market and sell my firm's attorneys, their practices and their firms. RFPs drop out of nowhere and due in just a handful of days, client events need to be run, website updates and social media posts done, media outreach organized, client newsletters produced, platform subscriptions renewed snd invoices paid, award and rankings submissions compiled, and much much more. The days and evenings are packed.
At the same time I'm trying to find time to learn about optimizing the firm's site and content output for AI search visibility, as well as all the latest AI tools popping up to help streamline getting info and updates with which attorneys can do outreach to their clients. Or keeping my finger on the pulse in terms of what competitors are doing, what the business trends for law firms for next year look like, what rate increases would make sense given what the test of the market is doing.
My north star is that I need to do what helps bring in work either now or eventually. And I triage down from there in terms of deadlines and how far off something is on the horizon.
So a webinar on AI website optimization in a busy week? Yes, I sign up, record it on my Evernote which then transcribes and summarizes right in the note itself so I can catch anything I missed while responding to the urgent email that came in during the webinar and listen again during my commute. A webinar on market trends for 2026? Same.
A webinar or luncheon on best event trends? I passed on both. A call from an unknown number (was trying to sell me SEO tools for my website)? Hard pass - straight to voice-mail (no time for a "quick" 15 minute chat on something largely irrelevant or useless to our firm's model). NY Times email update on Saturn's rings? Straight to the trash folder.
NY Times email on the daily update? Scanned in 30 seconds for anything major I may need to read later. Legal Marketing Association monthly Teams lunch call for the small firm special interest group on a very busy day or week? Yes, will still attend and work on something on my other screen since I can reasonably do both well (and can listen to the recording on my commute in 2X speed to see if I missed any important details while focusing on an email). The networking and ideas there are immediately useful to my getting my job done well and provide insight to my firm (such as on potential rate hikes for 2026).
So if the knowledge gained or connections made in the activity that I will spend time on will help me help my firm get new work either immediately or over time or will impact existing client relationships, then I will allocate the proportionally appropriate level of time required and get myself up to speed. Yes, it means I am pulling 60 hours a week which I need to ramp down to 50 for my health's sake, but it's what it takes at the moment for me to provide value to the firm and its clients. If you keep that in mind, it can help you prioritize learning and connecting vs. your client workload.
Yes, this career - as most others - come with continuing learning or you will be not only standing still but left behind.
You have to use the same skills you use to advocate for clients to assess this: information gathering, critical analysis, assessment of precedent, etc. Each practice/attorney will ultimately be making their own judgment calls on how to stay relevant and competitive. This question is like asking what stocks to invest in to make money; we all wish we knew the answer, and if we all did, it wouldn’t matter anyway. And, like in stocks, the surefire way not to win is not to play. It’s a risk assessment at every turn.
Our firm has opted to adopt defined AI policies and discrete AI tools because it’s pretty clear to us there’s no avoiding it. Those who ignore AI will eventually be like today’s attorneys still relying on transcriptionists when we have word processing and voice recognition tools available. Eventually it will become ethically indefensible to bill clients for work done without using tools that have become standard issue. Up to you which tools you think will be in that category 🤷🏻