How young lawyers grow in the AI era
Hello, this is Legal Agent.
Legal Agent is a law firm built for the generative-AI era.
Legal Agent, a law firm for the generative-AI era
Depending on the matter, Legal Agent uses generative AI heavily enough to deliver most requests within one business day, sometimes the same day. Thinking through how AI is used inside a law firm, one question keeps coming back: how do young lawyers grow in the AI era?
Generative AI will take over much of an associate's work
Put plainly, I think generative AI will take over a large share of what junior associates do. That does not mean the license itself becomes unnecessary. It means that much of the work first-to-third-year associates have carried in corporate legal practice will shift to AI.
A newly qualified lawyer does not start by setting the direction of a matter. The work begins with reading materials, checking contracts and producing a first draft: important production for the firm, and a genuine training ground for the associate. Generative AI is strong precisely in this area: it reads large volumes of material without fatigue, compares clauses across versions, finds past templates and similar matters, drafts candidate issues and a first cut of the text, and even tidies the formatting.
As a result, the initial work once handed to junior associates increasingly goes to AI first. From a client's perspective this is natural. If a draft of comparable quality appears in far less time, a junior associate spending hours on that same first pass loses much of its perceived value, and firms find it harder to justify billing for work AI could do just as well. This also strains the traditional pyramid, where partners oversee a matter and associates carry the volume beneath them: once AI absorbs much of that volume, simply hiring more associates no longer scales capacity the way it used to, and the model shifts toward a small number of lawyers using AI to move through a large volume of upstream work quickly, then applying judgment at the end.
This is a hard change for young lawyers, because it was exactly that unglamorous work, rereading contracts, struggling through research, having drafts marked up by seniors, that built their instinct for practice over time. If AI absorbs that upstream work wholesale, the opportunities to build that experience could shrink. Firms exist not only to handle the matter in front of them but to train the next generation of lawyers, and if AI takes over the work juniors used to do, the training that grew naturally out of that work disappears with it.
Does that mean young lawyers become unnecessary?
I do not see this only as a loss. What AI takes away is the value of spending time on the work itself. What rises in value is the ability to read, question, correct and translate AI's output into a judgment fit for the matter, and that ability is also built through experience. A young lawyer working the old way will struggle, but one who is exposed to a large volume of matters and AI-generated output under this new baseline could grow faster than before.
Volume of experience still matters most
I believe a large part of a lawyer's skill comes down to volume of experience: how many contracts they have read, how many negotiations they have watched, how many client decisions they have been part of. Two lawyers who have each handled a service agreement see different things if one has reviewed ten and the other a thousand: whether to cap damages, whether to carve out confidentiality breaches, these calls rest on pattern recognition from past matters as much as on knowledge of the rules. In that sense, AI can become the fastest way for a young lawyer to accumulate that experience, rather than an obstacle to it.
AI lets young lawyers touch more matters
Generative AI speeds up summarizing contracts, comparing clauses and drafting comments, work that used to consume a young lawyer's time. That is a real change for clients: faster reviews, faster first responses, faster access to past matters and templates. It is just as significant for young lawyers. In the past, the number of matters and contracts a junior lawyer could touch in a year had a natural ceiling, largely because finding materials, reading them in full and producing a first draft simply took time. As AI compresses that upstream work, young lawyers can move through more matters in a shorter period, and I see that as a genuinely positive shift.
More matters, faster turns, more feedback
Reviewing a single contract used to take real time: reading the whole document, flagging clauses, hunting for templates, researching, drafting comments. That accumulation, one matter at a time, is where experience used to build slowly. With generative AI compressing the search and issue-spotting steps, a young lawyer can move through a single matter faster. That means touching more matters, comparing more output, and receiving more feedback. Volume alone does not determine a lawyer's skill, but there is a threshold of repetition below which certain instincts never form: reviewing dozens of NDAs is what makes the subtle differences in a purpose-limitation clause visible, and reviewing the same investment agreement repeatedly is what reveals which clause is actually the one founders should worry about.
The skill of reviewing AI output at speed
Using AI well does not automatically grow a young lawyer. Once AI produces a large volume of work, someone has to review, judge and correct it at speed, and that is not an easy adjustment. I have felt it myself. Reviewing a stream of AI-generated contracts, comments and research can feel like my own processing cannot keep up, because each item demands a quick judgment about what is right and what is shallow. Lawyers now need the capacity to push a high volume of AI output through their own judgment quickly, and a young lawyer who builds that habit early is likely to become a genuinely strong lawyer: moving through a large volume of matters at speed, reviewing a large volume of AI output at speed, and receiving feedback from seniors at every turn.
Skepticism toward AI output is also built through experience
AI has become quite capable. Its contract reviews and legal answers often look plausible, with polished prose and issues that appear, at first glance, comprehensive. But "plausible" is not enough in legal practice. Checking whether the underlying provisions and guidance are correct, whether the facts of the contract were understood correctly, whether the client's position was read correctly, and which comments are safe to share with the counterparty versus which risks should stay internal: that verification skill is also built through experience. It depends on understanding contract structure, seeing what differs from past matters, and weighing the counterparty relationship and deal size to find a workable landing point. That is exactly why young lawyers need exposure to AI output at volume, with plenty of correction and plenty of feedback, rather than being kept away from it.
Training can no longer be left to chance
In a traditional firm, training happened naturally within the flow of matters: a busy case, a stack of material, marked-up drafts, watching negotiations unfold. In the AI era, leaving training entirely to that same organic process is not enough. As AI shortens working time, incidental experience may shrink, but a deliberately designed program can actually expand what a young lawyer is exposed to: which lens they use to review AI output, what knowledge gets retained, and, where matter folders, past correspondence and seniors' correction rationale are preserved, how lawyers judged similar situations before, not just AI's output. Making that experience reproducible is central to training in the AI era.
A new generation of lawyers is coming
My answer to whether young lawyers become unnecessary in the AI era is no. If anything, the pace at which they can grow should increase. If a large part of a lawyer's skill comes down to experience, generative AI can build the environment for accumulating that experience faster than before. A young lawyer who is exposed to a large volume of matters early, reviews a large volume of AI output, and keeps learning from the gap between their own judgment and a senior's could become a stronger practitioner sooner than in the past.
That said, using AI alone is not enough. It takes deliberate training, knowledge management and feedback systems. I believe young lawyers in the AI era can become more capable than ever, and LegalAgent intends to be part of building the organization that makes that possible.
In closing
LegalAgent brings together generative AI and lawyers experienced in corporate legal work to handle contract review, fundraising and M&A matters.
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