Hacker News Reader

Comment by atlasunshrugged | Hacker News Reader

Really? I would have assumed that attorney is one of those jobs that is going to be hugely disrupted by AI. Should people new to the field bother if they aren't going to be top X% (5? 10?)?

View on HN

There's way more to legal work than filling out forms. The AI is going to replace legal assistants, not the attorneys themselves.

Actual legal work, as opposed to legal-adjacent tasks, will be the last to be disrupted by AI, at least so long as AI means LLM. Law is simply too complicated to rely on something that doesn't have the ability to understand.

Doc review staff will be effectively eliminated...but they're already being eliminated by non-AI technology, so AI will just be the last straw.

I watched a tech demo of an LLM writing code to make a neat little user interface. I would have thought that utterly impossible a couple years ago.

I don’t think this would be a good time to start a career drafting contracts.

It’s not even the complicated part, these are fields where people still use fax machines and wouldn’t use teleconferencing until they were dragged kicking and screaming through COVID (And even then, lots of courts were like, nah, we’ll just close court for a year, too bad for you)

Free market dynamics don’t apply. Healthcare is the same way because it’s controlled by an old guard backed up by the force of law. There is no way to disrupt because the system is rigged.

For people without the resources, yes. For people that have a problem and resources, no. They pay for the best and want to be sure it‘s watertight.

Just get into and through Harvard Law, easy peasy...

The best programmers make good money too.

Quality is determined by a combination of network, reputation, and results, not your Alma mater. Search for a securities or criminal defense attorney, ask around, see if where they got their diploma plays into the referrals you get.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com