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06 October 2023 / Jo-Anne Pugh
Issue: 8043 / Categories: Features , Profession
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Separating hype from reality—the impact of AI on legal training

AI may be transformative but lawyers still need to be taught core skills, writes Jo-Anne Pugh
  • While AI technology has the potential to alter the legal sector, this shouldn’t be conflated with a fundamental change in the nature of what it means to be a lawyer.
  • Rather than a complete overhaul of our current approach to legal education, we must consider how best to prepare an AI-enabled, rather than AI-replaced, generation of lawyers.

The legal profession has been likened to a ‘closed shop’, resilient against the influences of flash-in-the-pan trends and with a reputation for being hesitant to change. Yet, the plethora of discussions around advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technology over the past year demonstrate how the profession is not immune to jumping on a tech bandwagon.

Questions about the future of the legal profession in an AI world are on the rise, with charged headlines about AI threatening the livelihoods of legal professionals and stories of lawyers being fined after

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

Harneys—Maggie Kwok & George Weston

Harneys—Maggie Kwok & George Weston

Harneys senior leadership appointments

Freeths—Keith Browne & Jim Jordan

Freeths—Keith Browne & Jim Jordan

Freeths strengthens London Construction and Engineering practice with two strategic senior hires

Anthony Collins—Laura Moss

Anthony Collins—Laura Moss

Anthony Collins announces strategic hire to deepen skills base in the social business sector

NEWS
Existing defamation law can respond to AI ‘hallucinations’, but allocating responsibility will prove harder where outputs reach users without human intervention
The High Court has upheld a rare successful serious-irregularity challenge after an arbitrator relied on an implied term neither party had advanced
Thirty years after The Future of Law shook a profession still using fax machines, its central forecast looks increasingly less like prophecy and more like description
More than 100 teams from the legal and financial services sectors competed in five sports at the 51st Law Society RFC Festival of Sport earlier this month
Part-time status need only be an effective cause of less favourable treatment, rather than the sole cause, the Supreme Court has held in Augustine v Data Cars
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