How Will AI Change the Work of Lawyers?

'Digital Sovereignty' Is Just a Slogan

Damien Charlotin is a legal technologist and researcher associated with HEC Paris and Sciences Po Paris and creator of the global database of AI Hallucination Cases. We discuss AI’s impact on legal work and the EU’s digital policies. The bottom line: the use of AI in legal work is very beneficial to both lawyers and society, while the EU’s policies on AI and privacy are definitely not. Here are my own takeaways from our conversation: First, the use of AI in legal works is highly beneficial for lawyers and society, because it allows smaller law practices to take on big cases, generally improves access to legal knowledge, helps with data management in very complex cases, and automates trivial, non-interesting parts of lawyers’ work, such a renaming files. Overall, AI will increase access to legal knowledge at a much cheaper price, which means that qualified legal advice will be in high demand. Ultimately, Damien believes that AI will lead to more work for lawyers, not less. Secondly, EU’s strict regulation of data and AI often leads to a meaningless compliance burden on companies, achieving nothing and making no one happy. There is a well-known emphasis on “data privacy” in EU’s regulation and if we ask people if they care about their privacy, most will say “Yes”. However, people’s actions suggest otherwise. Everyday, we gladly give away our behavioral data to American companies in exchange for free services. Because we genuinely get something good out of it. Almost all people are willing to sacrifice privacy in exchange for free, useful internet services, even if they say their privacy matters to them in the abstract. The real threat is not abstract notions of online privacy, but a cyberattack from a malicious actor who steals a company’s customer data, trade secrets, sensitive business information etc. We rely on the tech giants to supply the structural security we take for granted. New, small tech companies in Europe (and other places in the world) don’t have the same levels of operational maturity, knowledge and experience to prevent attacks from malicious actors. Strengthening defensive cyber capabilities and ensuring a meaningful protection for users should be the regulatory focus, rather than forcing companies to go through comprehensive paper exercises about how they process data and protect people’s privacy. ‘Digital sovereignty’ is important in principle to ensure EU’s competitive relevance in future. Unfortunately, EU policymakers are unwilling to back up the high-flying buzzwords with action. For instance, the EU could offer an attractive prize to whichever contender that comes up with a viable alternative to Microsoft 365. But no such prize is on the table. Instead, the EU is going through a stage of moral panic about its dependency on tech giants and condemn the American products and services that people and businesses are deeply dependent on. The condemnation and moral outrage is satisfying, namely to Europe’s intellectual elite, but it doesn’t accomplish anything by its own or change reality. The reality: People are not leaving Facebook, Instagram or TikTok in droves, most companies rely on OpenAI and/or Claude, and the market for Tesla cars is rebounding after the sales briefly plummeted when Musk was often in the news. There is a good reasons for this: the American services are frankly much better, than anything we can offer in Europe, people love them - even if they complain, and currently there is no meaningful indication that this could change in the near-term future. Please join the conversation and share your thoughts in the comments. Links: Global database of AI Hallucination Cases [https://www.damiencharlotin.com/hallucinations/] What jobs will AI destroy? Exhibit A shouldn’t be on the list. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/05/17/ai-isnt-end-legal-profession-its-future/] (Damien Charlotin/Washington Post) Get full access to Futuristic Lawyer at www.futuristiclawyer.com/subscribe [https://www.futuristiclawyer.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Will AI "Kill All the Lawyers" & Judges?

Is AI a threat to the work of lawyers and judges? I talked about this with Irina Carnat [https://www.linkedin.com/in/irina-carnat/]. Irina is a postdoctoral researcher at the Lider-Lab and l’EMbeDS of Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies and author of the well-written paper ‘Automation as Delegation of Power: Constitutional Constraints on AI Systems for the Administration of Justice’ [https://www.iris.santannapisa.it/retrieve/92de1dbb-0487-424d-b350-75011c47887b/II-25-Carnat.pdf]. The narrative around AI replacing lawyers is flawed. Lawyers obtain value from AI systems through their own interpretation and understanding of the system’s output. LLMs don’t do anything on their own. Therefore, AI is not a competitor to lawyers, but a collaborator. Even though law firms are probably required to adopt AI to stay competitive in the future, this will change the legal profession slowly over time, not rapidly disrupt it overnight. Regulatory safeguards ensure that meaningful human control is in place to avoid “cognitive surrender” in task delegation to AI. Yes, AI does pose a threat to the future job prospects of junior lawyers, but maybe fewer, but better lawyers is not that bad after all. We should also address the common claim I see on LinkedIn and Substack that EU’s regulation presents a hindrance to innovation. That is only the case, if “innovation” means that companies can spend less and increase profits. From an EU perspective, if “innovation” does not support fundamental rights protection, that is not the kind of innovation we are looking for. Instead of loosening regulatory safeguards, we should invest more in better legal scholarship to help companies transition through the compliance process. See the full conversation here on Substack, via my YouTube channel [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxqSfY7V9Ho&t=258s], or listen to it on your favorite streaming service, and let me know what you think in the comments below. Links: AI will kill all the lawyers [https://spectator.com/article/ai-will-kill-all-the-lawyers/] (article in The Spectator from December, 2025) Moral Crumple Zones: Cautionary Tales in Human-Robot Interaction [https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260] Global Database of AI Hallucination Cases [https://www.damiencharlotin.com/hallucinations/] Get full access to Futuristic Lawyer at www.futuristiclawyer.com/subscribe [https://www.futuristiclawyer.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Tech Philosopher on How AI Changes Knowledge Work

Sune Selsbæk-Reitz [https://substack.com/profile/236642841-sune-selsbk-reitz] is a fellow Danish tech philosopher and author of the new book “Promptism: Fluent Machines, Forgotten Questions, and the Fight for Meaning in the Age of AI [https://technicspub.com/promptism/]” which wrestles with questions of how generative AI systems change our relationship with knowledge. When we interact with chatbots, we expect fluency and well-presented answers with little to no room for interpretation and ambiguity. Yet, reality is rarely so simple and learning and progress tend to reside in confusion, failed attempts, friction and doubt, not in confident-sounding answers to hard problems. Selsbæk-Reitz describes in Promptism: “Every era invents the lie it most wants to believe. For ours, it’s the lie that clarity equals truth. I would argue that we’ve grown allergic to complication. All we want is our politics to be simple, our science to be certain, and our morality to be frictionless. Large language models feed that appetite with surgical precision and shape the answers we accept.” According to Selsbæk-Reitz, it’s vital that we adopt pauses for uninterrupted thinking in daily life, refuse to accept readily available answers as a default, seek out friends we disagree with, and learn to sit with uncomfortable doubt and challenging questions without reaching for the nearest resolution. The problem of AI’s presentation of a false, but convenient reality is counterintuitive and non-obvious. Frankly, I thought this was a difficult conversation to have, but an important one to open up. Links: Two thirds of students say AI is hurting their critical thinking. They’re using it more than ever. [https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtificialInteligence/comments/1s52lhb/two_thirds_of_students_say_ai_is_hurting_their/] Hikikomori: Why are so many Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms? [https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23182523] The average attention span has shrunk to roughly 40 seconds. Here’s how to get it back. [https://www.nationalgeographic.com/health/article/attention-spans-shrinking-how-to-regain] Get full access to Futuristic Lawyer at www.futuristiclawyer.com/subscribe [https://www.futuristiclawyer.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Disinformation Expert on the Impacts & Laws

I recently sat down for a chat with disinformation expert Ricardo Vásquez Dazarola [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricardo-v%C3%A1squez-dazarola-1b868249/]. Here are my main takeaways from our conversation: * Disinformation is intentional (e.g. political influence campaigns) while misinformation is false information, but without any intention of harm. * Disinformation is “lawful, but awful”, whereas hate speech is illegal in many countries. Each jurisdiction has a different threshold and understanding of what constitutes illegal speech (yet social media’s moderation policies are typically based on the American standard). * Literacy campaigns and education is the best way for a society to absorb disinformation. In Finland and Estonia, children are taught about disinformation from a young age to mitigate the impacts of Russian propaganda campaigns. * Humans have always lied and spread false information, but social media and AI exacerbate the issues. Laws cannot regulate ‘the truthfulness’ of what people say online or in private messages. What they can do is regulating how information is distributed. For example, Brazil adopted a law that said messaging apps such as WhatsApp had to be designed in such a way that you cannot share the same message with more than three people during elections. * The law should address technology on the level of its design, contrary to regulating its impacts which are many and often unknown. * The role of social media platforms is not to screen what is true and what is important. The role of social media is to provide users with the right tools, so they can easily screen relevant information for themselves. Currently, social media platforms are intentionally making it hard to do so, because they want to increase engagement as much as possible. * Social media platforms should be transparent about deepfakes and who sponsors political advertisement ( requirements under EU law). * As of now, social media is best used for stupid things, not as a reliable source of news. Get full access to Futuristic Lawyer at www.futuristiclawyer.com/subscribe [https://www.futuristiclawyer.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

How Will AI Change the Work of Lawyers?

Today my guest is Justin Curl [https://substack.com/profile/88527826-justin-curl] who works in the intersection of tech, law, and AI policy. Justin co-wrote the paper, AI Won’t Automatically Make Legal Services Cheaper [https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/ai-won-t-automatically-make-legal-services-cheaper] with Sayash Kapoor [https://substack.com/@sayash], and Arvind Narayanan [https://substack.com/@aisnakeoil] and has surveyed lawyers about their experience using AI tools [https://www.understandingai.org/p/ai-is-just-starting-to-change-the] for Understanding AI [https://open.substack.com/pub/understandingai]. We discuss how AI is already changing the work of lawyers and what the legal profession may look like in the short-term future. A topic of major importance to society! What do you think? Join the conversation in the comments. From the archive: Get full access to Futuristic Lawyer at www.futuristiclawyer.com/subscribe [https://www.futuristiclawyer.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]