The rise and reality of the automated lawyer

The legal industry is being redefined by AI, but not in the way the headlines suggest.

Cast your mind back to 2023, when Goldman Sachs predicted that 44 per cent of legal tasks could be automated. 

There were a few main camps of thought. Some lawyers dismissed the idea that their work could be automated. Others started exploring AI use cases. And some feared the role of the lawyer was on borrowed time.

Those concerns intensified when data from Vals.ai showed AI already outperforming human baselines in various legal tasks. But things have changed a lot since then, and the true state of the automated lawyer has become increasingly clear. 

Lawyers are not being replaced. They’re being refocused. Legal work is shifting from manual execution to automated workflows. From managing redlines to managing risk. From writing contracts to writing instructions.

What is the automated lawyer?

To be clear, the automated lawyer isn’t science fiction. It’s not a bot pretending to be human. We’re talking about a lawyer whose work is accelerated—and in some cases, executed—by software. 

When ChatGPT first saw real adoption across the legal profession, we asked in-house lawyers about their favourite use cases. Just over half were either using or planning to use generative AI in their work, but 45 per cent remained reluctant. And for valid reasons. Many felt that they didn’t have the guardrails needed in place to use it responsibly, and others simply didn’t know enough about how to use it.

That was That was in 2023, and we’ve been measuring the shift in the work lawyers automate ever since. By 2024, there was already a step change in adoption of AI amongst lawyers. Legal teams not using generative AI dropped from 45 per cent to 14 per cent.

We also had a better understanding of exactly what they were automating, with contract drafting, document summarization, and legal research ranking respectively as the most commonly automated at the time.

Jump forward once more to earlier this year, and almost every in-house lawyer we surveyed said they believed AI would change their job within the next 12 months, with more 90 per cent of in-house lawyers reported using ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini either daily or weekly. 

Clearly, the automated lawyer is no longer a hypothetical. But contrary to some of the more alarmist narratives, automation isn’t rendering legal professionals obsolete, it’s actually redirecting their time and talent instead.

Instead of drowning in routine reviews, lawyers are reclaiming bandwidth for strategic, high-value work. They're not just executing contracts; they’re designing automated playbooks that execute contracts for them. They’re not trawling through clauses; they’re deploying AI to summarize, flag risk, or even pre-approve standard terms.

This is the new skillset of the in-house lawyer: legal operations meets automation strategy. As legal teams mature in their AI use, we’re seeing a distinct shift from doing the work to designing the system that does the work.

Hiring in the age of the automated lawyer

To operationalize this shift, legal teams are hiring differently. While deep legal knowledge remains essential, it is now paired with technical curiosity and a builder’s mindset.

Some teams are even introducing new roles:

• Legal engineers who translate legal knowledge into programmable workflows.
• Prompt engineers who fine-tune AI agents to respond accurately to legal instructions.
• AI-focused legal ops who evaluate, deploy, and manage legal tech across the stack.

This blend of legal fluency and technical literacy defines the future of the in-house function, particularly when data suggests that 93 per cent of CEOs and CFOs are actively encouraging legal teams to use AI more. 

Many parts of the lawyer can’t be automated

For all the hype around AI, one truth remains: not everything in legal can—or should—be automated.

While software can draft, summarize, and even review with remarkable speed and accuracy, the core judgment, empathy, and contextual nuance that define great legal work remain human. This will likely never change.

Strategic thinking in ambiguity

AI excels at pattern recognition, but the law often lives in the grey. When a contract term conflicts with business priorities, or when litigation strategy involves multiple uncertain outcomes, it’s the lawyer—not the software—who must weigh risk, anticipate stakeholder reactions, and navigate tradeoffs.

Human judgment and stakeholder management

Legal doesn’t operate in a vacuum. In-house lawyers are trusted advisors to product, finance, HR, and beyond. They mediate between business goals and regulatory boundaries seamlessly, tailoring their tone, risk appetite, and input to the scenario they're faced with.

Above all else, they build relationships, influence decisions, and align with company culture. No LLM can hold a difficult conversation with a CEO or calm a panicked customer over a compliance breach. And that's unlikely to change for the foreseeable.

Ethics, values, and the law’s spirit

Laws are interpreted through values, ethics, and social context. Whether advising on DEI initiatives, data privacy, or AI use itself, legal work involves more than mechanical rule-following...it requires judgment rooted in human values.

Software can follow a playbook; lawyers are responsible for knowing when to close it and how it needs to be adapted as and when things change. That's why there's so much trust in lawyers, and why AI adoption always had a big question mark above it in the legal industry. 

Irreplaceable synthesis

The best lawyers don’t just execute tasks, they synthesize information across domains. They foresee the implications of a product launch on IP, privacy, and employment law all at once. They balance legal precision with commercial sense, and this kind of holistic problem-solving still belongs to human cognition.

If legal ‘product’ - contracts, advisory notes, reports and so on - can be produced to a comparable degree by AI, then the knowledge of what makes that process robust, and its product trustworthy, is much more valuable. Perhaps irreplaceable.” - Richard Mabey, CEO at Juro

What the automated lawyer truly wants...

The rise of legal AI has unlocked exciting possibilities—but not all of them have been realized. For all the buzz, the demos, and the investment, many in-house lawyers are asking the same quiet question: Where’s the impact I was promised?

• You’ve won back time for high-value work... right?
• Your outside counsel spend is down... right?
• You’re working fewer hours, and burnout’s a thing of the past... right?

The reality for many lawyers is more sobering. Despite an ecosystem bursting with legal tech vendors and AI products, the gains aren’t being felt as widely—or as deeply—as they should.

And that disconnect points to something bigger: the automated lawyer doesn’t just want tools. They want outcomes.

They want help with real, compounding problems: high volumes, short timelines, disconnected workflows, too many redlines and too few hours in the day.

They want agents that reduce risk, copilots that drive efficiency, and platforms that integrate with how they actually work—whether that’s Word, Google Docs, or something else entirely.

To the time-strapped legal team, it doesn’t matter whether your AI is a “copilot” or an “agent.” What matters is that it works. That it’s accurate. That it reflects their contract playbooks, respects their guardrails, and supports the ambitions they have—not just for their legal function, but for the company they serve.

Useful resources

The concept of the automated lawyer is changing each and every day, but we're documenting these developments, weighing up the pros and cons of AI adoption in the legal industry, and unpicking what in-house legal teams truly need to thrive (not just survive) in the AI era. Here are our most recommended resources:

• Brief Encounters podcast: Hosted by Richard Mabey, CEO of Juro, this podcast features concise conversations with industry leaders on legal innovation, AI, and the evolving role of legal professionals.
• Ultimate guide to legal AI: A comprehensive guide that breaks down how legal teams are adopting AI, what use cases are driving real results, and how to future-proof your legal function in an age of automation.
• Contract review agents: An article all about how contract review agents work, and the guardrails in-house legal teams should build before they let an agent work across their contract portfolio.
• ChatGPT use cases for lawyers: A go-to guide for in-house legal teams looking to integrate general purpose AI, like ChatGPT, into their day-to-day workflows to increase efficiency.