by Wilton H. Strickland

Humanity’s penchant for laziness knows no bounds, and this extends to the practice of law (though some people may doubt whether lawyers qualify as human). Here we have a profession that prides itself on its intellect, a profession that requires years of education and training to acquire the skills necessary to understand the grandiose artifice of the law and harness it to achieve worthy goals. And yet, more and more members of this vaunted profession are relying on a machine to do their thinking for them.

A 2024 study by Thompson Reuters found that 63% of attorneys who were surveyed use artificial intelligence (“AI”) in their work, with 12% admitting that they use it regularly. This has caused some embarrassing episodes resulting in sanctions. For example, in 2023 a federal court in New York sanctioned two attorneys for using ChatGPT to generate an argument citing non-existent legal authorities. In February of this year, a federal court in Wyoming sanctioned a large law firm for the same reason. More recently, a federal court in Colorado issued an order to show cause for why an attorney representing the CEO of MyPillow should not be sanctioned for the same reason. Rather than express shame or remorse, the attorney announced that he was puzzled by the ordeal because he uses AI all the time, and he even complained that the court did not give him advance notice of the problems with his own filing before criticizing him at a hearing.

Bar associations appear to share this cavalier attitude by treating attorney usage of AI — even when formulating and presenting legal arguments — as something to be managed rather than discouraged. The American Bar Association has issued Formal Opinion 512 that regards generative AI in the practice of law as a fait accompli and merely cautions attorneys to protect client confidentiality and to ensure fair billing. The Florida Bar has published a Guide to Getting Started With AI that instructs attorneys how to use AI “responsibly” for a host of lawyerly tasks while avoiding pitfalls such as AI hallucinations and fake legal citations. Not to be outdone, the Montana Bar issued a statement that encourages attorneys to scrutinize legal arguments generated by AI and to protect client confidentiality, closing with this pronouncement: “Lawyers working with AI will replace lawyers who don’t work with AI.”

Here is where I get off the bus. In my view, lawyers who work with AI for anything other than rudimentary tasks are no longer working as lawyers at all. The essence of lawyering is to identify the nature of a problem and to draw upon one’s learning, knowledge, and experience to resolve it. Relying on a machine to perform those essential tasks — especially at the beginning, when comprehending the nature of a problem is critical — is to abdicate the role of a lawyer and to embrace the role of a mouthpiece. Moreover, people who rely on a machine to think for them are weakening their mental faculties, a self-evident fact that is borne out by research and means that lawyers who use AI will steadily lose their ability to ascertain flaws in whatever AI produces. If lawyers honestly believe they are distinguished professionals who should command respect and earn a decent living, they should not discard or diminish the very thing that sets them apart: their minds. The mind is like any other part of the body in that the less you use it, the weaker it becomes. It also sets a poor example — especially for young people in school who are told to resist the temptation to cheat — when an intellectual profession displays reluctance to do intellectual work. The culture is already anti-intellectual and illiterate enough without having an entire profession announce its surrender to it.

I never use AI to read cases, to perform research, to generate ideas, or to draft arguments. Instead, I rely on my years of training and experience to find and present arguments that everyone else (including AI) often misses. I recall one occasion when the other attorneys in my office were scrambling to figure out how to defend against a federal lawsuit when I pointed out that the entire case could be dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, considering that there were foreign entities on both sides but not U.S. citizens on both sides (a little-known rule from the Eleventh Circuit that never occurred to them). I recall another occasion when my colleagues were scrambling to preserve counterclaims from the expired statute of limitations, when I pointed out that the counterclaims were compulsory and thus immune to the statute of limitations (a little-known rule from Florida that never occurred to them). I recall countless other occasions like these during my 25 years of practicing law. If I or the other attorneys had chosen instead to fire up a machine and tell it to “find something,” I’m sure it would have spit out any number of impressive-sounding notions, but I doubt it would have been as effective. Even if it had, at least I earned my money.

In short, I believe that the danger AI poses to attorneys (and clients) is not that it won’t work, but that it will. Clients need mental warriors, not mental invalids. Attorneys should use their minds rather than become dependent on a mental prosthetic to do their job. If not, attorneys should radically reduce their fees and stop portraying themselves as learned professionals.

The true believers in AI will likely argue that I’m just not with it and will be left behind. I encourage them to send me any legal arguments that they have curated rather than created. I know from recent experience that the arguments will be uninspired, two-dimensional, and easy to refute. At least they will have fewer errors in spelling and grammar, which will make them easier to read.

EDIT

The new pope, Leo XIV, is warning that AI poses a threat to “human dignity, justice, and labor.” Although I am not Catholic, I think the pope is very wise to point this out, and I think the legal profession would be wise to listen. Our mission as attorneys is to help people who are often in crisis and desperate for solutions. The more that attorneys rely on a mindless and soulless machine to perform that mission, the more they are failing at it. In every matter I work on, I put myself in the shoes of the people I’m helping in order to understand their predicament and to make sure the court understands it too. Justice, compassion, empathy, and mercy are all human qualities that no machine can appreciate or pursue. Some of the cases I’ve argued concern the most painful and gut-wrenching experiences that people can endure. Those people, and all people who hire an attorney to represent them, deserve to have their story told by a fellow human being who can relate to them.