Tech Tales with Paul Haswell
Join Paul Haswell, a partner at K&L Gates in Hong Kong, as he explores the transformative impact of technology on the legal profession in his new column for IHC Magazine. Paul offers insights into the challenges and opportunities for in-house and external counsel, providing thought-provoking perspectives on the future of law in the digital age.
Depending upon whom you ask, the job of a lawyer is one which is either almost certain to be displaced by artificial intelligence, or the one that is safe. This is not the first time the legal profession has been highlighted as potentially doomed; I’ve lost count of the number of times since becoming a lawyer I’ve been reminded of the quote “Let’s kill all the lawyers” from Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part II. However, it would be foolish to assume that AI is not going to have a dramatic impact on the work of lawyers, whether they be working in-house or in private practice.
Those who trained and qualified before electronic research tools such as LexisNexis became widely adopted will remember the time they spent researching case law by spending hours in a law library or trying to locate and obtain precedents to prepare an agreement. Those who trained in large law firms may even recall spending a significant part of their training in data rooms or on due diligence tasks trudging through vast quantities of documents. I can distinctly remember, and not fondly, the months I spent paginating case bundles as a very junior lawyer. I can’t recall much detail of the case I was working on, but I will never forget that for a number of weeks my work was to spend 12-15 hours a day in a dark room stamping sequential digits on to seemingly limitless pages of seemingly endless documents. Those 12-15 hours each day constituted chargeable time which was ultimately charged to a client and brought me closer to hitting the number of chargeable hours I was required to bill each month.
Such tasks are now, in most cases, at least partially automated. A savvy client may no longer be willing to pay for the time it takes junior lawyers to put page numbers on documents, and with good cause, when most photocopiers can do the same job in a fraction of the time. AI brings with it the automation of more complex legal tasks, such as the drafting of complex documents, the creation of pleadings in a contentious matter, and of course to carry out legal research tasks. AI can also prepare legal advice. All of this can be done in the fraction of the time it may take a well-trained lawyer.
Which begs the question: why should anyone pay for a lawyer when AI might be quicker and cheaper? Well, firstly, AI solutions are not foolproof, and they are really just tools which can help rather than replace lawyers. There have been plenty of recent stories of lawyers who delegated the drafting of pleadings to artificial intelligence only to see it create fake cases (which landed the lawyers in question in trouble). There is also the fact that there is more to being a lawyer than just generating documents; the role the lawyer is one of trusted adviser, of one who liaises with, understands, and acts in the best interests of their client regardless of how that client may change over time. This is the case regardless of whether a lawyer is in house or part of a firm. The best lawyers are human beings who bring their humanity to the work they do whether drafting documents, pleadings, or simply advising the clients day to day. For such trusted advisers artificial intelligence is just another tool to assist them in that task, no different to a law library full of cases or a precedent bank. AI just helps the lawyer produce outputs more quickly and efficiently.
So the real question as to the impact generative AI will have on lawyers is not whether it will replace them, but how will it change how their value is judged. The majority of private practice lawyers still charge by the chargeable hour, and even if they don’t the majority of law firms’ finance departments still assess lawyers by how many chargeable hours they have worked. This ignores the value of good legal advice, instead assessing outputs on how long it took to create that advice. In the age of increasingly capable AI solutions which can produce documents quickly it’s hard to see how much longer this model can survive.
So perhaps the impact of AI will be to give us more time to actually be lawyers, aided by some impressive new tools and focusing on helping our clients and stakeholders provide the best possible outcomes rather than hitting hours targets. If so then I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords!
Paul Haswell is a Partner at K&L Gates’s Hong Kong office, specialising in Technology Transactions and Sourcing. With over 20 years of experience, he focuses on TMT matters, including data and cybersecurity, telecommunications, and emerging technologies like AI and blockchain. A tech enthusiast since childhood, Paul has handled major technology disputes and offers a blend of legal expertise and passion for innovation.
Outside of his legal work, Paul is a tech and law podcaster and a DJ. He co-hosts the “Sunday Escape” radio show on RTHK and the podcast “Crimes Against Pop.” A music lover with an extensive vinyl collection, Paul enjoys discovering and sharing new music. He’s also a sci-fi fan, particularly of “Doctor Who.”
