Thank you for the insightful post, and I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on how junior associates should adapt to these ongoing changes.
As a first year, it’s obvious that today’s legal careers are changing rapidly. For those at my stage of their career, understanding how to work with AI will become the bare minimum. I’ve worked on becoming familiar with the tools I have available and have started building with Claude, but obviously lack the experience to apply my own judgment.
I’ve tried to speed-run that judgement by using AI as a vehicle to better understand the core documents I’m working on (e.g., comparing purchase agreements from two separate deals, and using AI to compare which provisions differ and why). Despite this, it seems like the window may quickly be closing for junior associates to ride the wave of technological advancement (and develop the skill necessary for differentiation) rather than get left behind.
The short answer: whether you're corporate, litigation or any other practice, the formula is the same. Find the best practitioners in your group and learn everything you can from them. In the trenches, doing the hardest, most complex work.
AI is a tool to help you hone your practice. It'll make you faster. It'll give you a thought partner at 2 am when you're staring at something inscrutable and just not getting it. What you're doing already, though, is exactly the right instinct. Using AI as a bespoke learning tool: comparing purchase agreements across deals, mapping where provisions differ and why. That's exactly the right instinct. You're using AI to accelerate the reps, not skip them.
But what keeps your value is the practice itself. If you can deliver more value in that practice with AI (maybe more refined analysis, and faster) you will always have a place.
The window isn't closing. It's shifting, hence I say it's stack-ranking us. The associates who treat AI as a shortcut around judgment will struggle. The ones who treat it as a vehicle to build judgment faster, which is what you're describing, will see compounding growth.
Thank you for the insightful post, and I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on how junior associates should adapt to these ongoing changes.
As a first year, it’s obvious that today’s legal careers are changing rapidly. For those at my stage of their career, understanding how to work with AI will become the bare minimum. I’ve worked on becoming familiar with the tools I have available and have started building with Claude, but obviously lack the experience to apply my own judgment.
I’ve tried to speed-run that judgement by using AI as a vehicle to better understand the core documents I’m working on (e.g., comparing purchase agreements from two separate deals, and using AI to compare which provisions differ and why). Despite this, it seems like the window may quickly be closing for junior associates to ride the wave of technological advancement (and develop the skill necessary for differentiation) rather than get left behind.
Thanks for reading. This is a great question.
The short answer: whether you're corporate, litigation or any other practice, the formula is the same. Find the best practitioners in your group and learn everything you can from them. In the trenches, doing the hardest, most complex work.
AI is a tool to help you hone your practice. It'll make you faster. It'll give you a thought partner at 2 am when you're staring at something inscrutable and just not getting it. What you're doing already, though, is exactly the right instinct. Using AI as a bespoke learning tool: comparing purchase agreements across deals, mapping where provisions differ and why. That's exactly the right instinct. You're using AI to accelerate the reps, not skip them.
But what keeps your value is the practice itself. If you can deliver more value in that practice with AI (maybe more refined analysis, and faster) you will always have a place.
The window isn't closing. It's shifting, hence I say it's stack-ranking us. The associates who treat AI as a shortcut around judgment will struggle. The ones who treat it as a vehicle to build judgment faster, which is what you're describing, will see compounding growth.
Keep getting the reps in!