Is AI Changing What It Takes To Be a Great Lawyer? Insights from Selectees

Legal professionals have rapidly adopted artificial intelligence, even as formal policies and training lag behind, with 69% of lawyers reporting work-related use of generative AI tools like ChatGPT in 2026.

“Once people try an AI tool, they get hooked on it. They’re really impressed by the value it brings,” says Linda Klein, senior managing shareholder at Baker Donelson in Atlanta, Georgia.

GenAI adds value for legal professionals by expediting and automating daily tasks, including correspondence, legal research, document review, contract analysis, brainstorming hypotheticals, assembling timelines, and drafting legal briefs.

These productivity gains benefit lawyers, law firms, and clients. But if AI tools can do the grunt work historically assigned to junior associates, and accomplish these tasks more efficiently than humans, will firms hire fewer people because of AI? Even worse, will lawyers become obsolete?

So far, at least, this does not seem to be the conclusion. The prevalence of AI may increase the value of human legal judgment rather than displace it. The practical question is what skills lawyers will need to succeed alongside AI.

Klein and Laurel Bellows, both members of the Super Lawyers Advisory Board and past presidents of the American Bar Association (ABA), point to two key skill areas: AI competence and responsibility, and traditional soft skills involving professional judgment, integrity, and diligence.

Adding AI to the Pile of Legal Career Anxieties

Anxieties about AI’s impact have joined the many career-related stressors lawyers experience. In BARBRI’s 2026 Career Aspirations Survey, law school students expressed the most concern out of survey respondents over how AI could change future legal hiring and career opportunities. Associates and senior attorneys were less worried.

What seems like a threat to one’s career can depend on where in the career one is. “My clients are CEOs and senior-level executives. They don’t have the same worries as new hires or junior associates,” says Bellows, founder and managing principal of The Bellows Law Group in Chicago, Illinois.

“They’re not as threatened with losing their jobs because of AI. They’re more frightened of losing their job because somebody else is coming in to replace them, or because of restructuring, or because the company isn’t happy with revenue. And these are all perennial concerns.”

Bellows further points out that, from a business perspective, executives see AI as a tool to expand opportunities and build more successful businesses.

AI may also disrupt some practice areas more than others. “You know, we haven’t figured out how to use AI much in the criminal justice system. There’s always going to be the need for people to stand up in court,” says Klein.

Legal Expertise: AI vs. Human Intelligence

Concerns that legal tech will replace lawyers confront nuanced and evolving data.

According to the ABA’s Profile of the Legal Profession, the number of practicing lawyers in the U.S. reached an all-time high in 2025, driven by record law school graduates and strong hiring. Early 2025 research from Harvard Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession also indicated a large class of incoming associates, with large law firm partners and COOs expecting steady demand for human attorneys.

However, an August 2026 study from the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) revealed a 7.5% decline in entry-level associate hiring at firms with 500+ lawyers, the first decrease in large law firm job numbers since 2014. Though broader economic and political factors contributed to the hiring drops, NALP noted that firms may be adjusting hiring practices in anticipation of AI efficiencies.

But rather than replacing attorneys, AI appears to be changing what law firms are looking for in new hires, with human judgment, AI supervision, and soft skills more important than ever. “I’ve heard, anecdotally, that there are some law firms that are hiring fewer new lawyers,” says Klein. “But at least for now, there is always a need for a human in the loop.”

Bellows agrees on the centrality of human judgment. “You might ask AI questions about a better way to phrase a clause or the newest situation on whether non-competes are enforced in a particular state, for example. But when it comes to the deal itself, institutional knowledge and a trained gut reaction from years of experience — I don’t know whether that can ever be replaced.”

Training Law Students To Use AI Responsibly

Since human judgment and experience remain essential in the legal profession, the more practical question is which skills and knowledge lawyers need to succeed as great practitioners in the AI age.

“When it comes to recruiting lawyers, AI is changing the skill set that we value,” says Klein.

“Firms want people who know how to use AI responsibly, which means, minimally, that you understand all the AI platforms and which might be better for a given task, you know how to evaluate AI-generated work, and you don’t put hallucinations into legal briefs.”

The role of lawyers has thus evolved from “going through thousands of boxes of documents looking for the smoking gun” to a more supervisory role over AI tools. “We’ll now learn by validating AI, making AI better, and spending our time using soft skills.”

Even in legal research and writing, “There’s a difference between the wording or phrasing of a law and applying that law to the case at hand,” says Bellows. “And the gut and judgment that humans can bring to a deal is irreplaceable. We use AI, but very carefully, reviewing every agreement.”

The upshot is that law schools and law firms alike “know that they have to change the way in which they train people in light of AI,” says Bellows, noting that “It’s also important to train people on whether AI is making biased decisions.”

Soft Skills Are Even More Important

Law students will still want to earn good grades. “But soft skills are going to be more important than what we used to call the ‘nerd in the library,’” says Klein. “Soft skills and the ability to use technology are what we need when we hire.”

In defining “soft skills,” Klein points to IAALS’ Foundations for Legal Practice: Integrity, honesty, trustworthiness, reliability, diligence, initiative, a strong work ethic, and common sense.

These are all necessary skills for lawyers that predate the rise of AI and are now even more important. Klein describes this as both evolution and revolution in legal AI. It’s radically new in some ways, but also reflects continuity within the profession and its needs.

“You can clearly learn in law school how to prompt AI and distinguish between different AI tools. You can learn the basics of advocacy, negotiation skills, and professional ethics,” says Klein. “But with some soft skills, we have to learn by example, watching other lawyers act and telling what’s good and what’s not. You can’t eliminate the human aspect, at least not yet.”

Don’t Use AI To Evaluate a New Lawyer’s Soft Skills

In a practical way, the preeminence of soft skills means avoiding the use of AI to evaluate new candidates or to tell you who to hire.

“I’m not a believer in legal employers using AI to evaluate resumes,” says Klein. “You really need to interview people. You can’t just use the algorithms to see if they have the necessary soft skills.”

Bellows likewise disapproves of the unskillful use of AI in preparing resumes. “If there’s a job posting, all of a sudden I get 10 AI-generated resumes that look almost identical. People are stupid if they think I’m not going to check to see what it is,” says Bellows.

How AI Can Hurt, and Help, Clients

AI tools can both help and harm legal clients immensely, depending on how they are used.

Client Con: Client Over-Reliance on AI

One area where clients can harm their legal interests is in over-reliance on AI without human oversight. 

“Some people are using AI as a substitute for legal advice in very complex situations,” Bellows says. “They may not have an understanding of the tax ramifications or the nuances of negotiation, and end up really hurting themselves.”

Klein has also observed an uptick in people who choose not to hire lawyers, believing they can handle it themselves with AI. “It’s actually made more work for me in defending clients against parties who choose not to hire lawyers. I have to respond to things that make absolutely no legal sense.”

Client Pro: Ending the Billable Hour

The pros and cons of the billable hour have been debated for decades. AI may finally be forcing a reckoning.

“If AI enables me to do in three minutes what it used to take me three hours to complete, my clients are saving a lot of money,” says Klein.

“Instead of pricing legal services based on value, we’re still largely in the billable hour model. I’m thinking AI may help reshape this. Clients won’t value what they can do for themselves with AI, like basic document review. Instead, the value is going to be placed on the attorney’s soft skills, judgment, supervised AI skills, and ability to motivate the client.”

‘Evolution and Revolution’: Legal Practice and New Technologies

Bellows puts the current AI moment in historical perspective and analogizes to past technological disruptions. “We were afraid of email and faxes, right? People were so frightened that the fax machine would change their lives,” she says.

“When we were talking about buying online, we said we would never do that. Now we have multibillion-dollar companies that depend on online purchases. So, why don’t we also figure out the positive way of working with AI?”

Klein shares this cautiously optimistic sense. “AI is not the first revolution in how we deliver legal services. When Lexis came out, that was a revolution. In law school, they were afraid we wouldn’t learn how to use Shepard’s and legal research if we used this newfangled thing. Likewise, the personal computer was going to be the great equalizer between small firms and giant firms. I see this as another revolution in the evolution, one to which successful lawyers will adapt, as always.”