Location
Wolff Auditorium, Jepson Center
Start Date
4-4-2025 2:00 PM
End Date
4-4-2025 2:45 PM
Description
Chaired by Anthony Fisher, Ph.D. (Gonzaga University)
Developments in artificial intelligence (“AI”) impact clients, lawyers, and society. With all its promise and peril, AI raises several considerations for modern lawyers, including how AI makes decisions, how AI is being regulated, and what AI means for the future of work. With these considerations in mind, lawyers must incorporate AI in their advice to clients – and in the way they render legal services. Fundamentally, AI is not quite replacing human lawyers, but it is augmenting them. This augmented lawyer – who embraces AI without over-relying on it – must incorporate AI in client advice while also considering the ethical constraints on lawyer use of AI.
The rise of AI is significant in part because of its rapid development and growth. Technological innovation may occur incrementally, in small developments not felt in our daily lives. But in key points in human history, we identify technological change so radical we call it a revolution. Take, for example, the Agricultural Revolution beginning over 10,000 years ago, which some have characterized as the first economic revolution, in which we shifted human labor from hunting and gathering to cultivating land and farming. In the Eighteenth Century, the Industrial Revolution brought new means of production, allowing for machine manufacturing of goods and leading to large-scale changes across society. And now, the rise of AI marks a new era of major change.
In the last seventy-five years, computers have automated some processes previously limited to human intelligence. The capacity to create, store, and process large amounts of data, coupled with increased processing power, have made this rapid development possible. Just as the Industrial Revolution relied on machinery to overcome the limitations of human physical ability, the AI Revolution harnesses computers that appear to surpass the limitations of human intelligence.
No doubt, these economic revolutions disrupt labor, markets, and society. They also disrupt existing legal structures. At the same time, the law also shapes and facilitates revolution. In the Agricultural Revolution, novel legal concepts of private property and ownership may have played an important role in the shift to farming. In the Industrial Revolution, free markets and a lack of regulation of working conditions to environmental impacts led to unfettered development. Now, AI has the potential to bring growth and new possibilities, particularly with its impact on our legal structures and the practice of law. It is this dual role of the law – as the facilitator of change but also the target of disruption – that creates a tension in the legal profession.
On the precipice of an AI revolution, lawyers must grapple with how to advise clients and ethically use AI in rendering legal services – while also playing a role in shaping the future of the law. New technology, like AI, may very well create new problems. But these new problems rarely eliminate old problems; instead, they bring to light flaws and issues existing in our current systems. Simply automating the status quo will perpetuate and ossify the shortcomings of the status quo. This is true in all areas where AI may be deployed, from the criminal justice system to hiring decisions to autonomous vehicles. For the legal system, core concepts of fairness, due process, and equal protection may be undermined by AI when safeguards are not in place.
Several considerations come into play, including the extent to which decisions can be made by AI, the landscape of ever-evolving AI regulation, and the future of work. This presentation explores the impact AI is having on lawyering, both from the aspect of client advice and the practice of law itself. It explores AI as a possible revolution and the issues it raises in law, policy, and society. It also addresses special AI considerations for the modern lawyer, including AI decision-making, AI regulation, and the future of work.
Recommended Citation
McPeak, Agnieszka, "Augmented Lawyering" (2025). Value and Responsibility in AI Technologies. 11.
https://repository.gonzaga.edu/ai_ethics/2025/general/11
Augmented Lawyering
Wolff Auditorium, Jepson Center
Chaired by Anthony Fisher, Ph.D. (Gonzaga University)
Developments in artificial intelligence (“AI”) impact clients, lawyers, and society. With all its promise and peril, AI raises several considerations for modern lawyers, including how AI makes decisions, how AI is being regulated, and what AI means for the future of work. With these considerations in mind, lawyers must incorporate AI in their advice to clients – and in the way they render legal services. Fundamentally, AI is not quite replacing human lawyers, but it is augmenting them. This augmented lawyer – who embraces AI without over-relying on it – must incorporate AI in client advice while also considering the ethical constraints on lawyer use of AI.
The rise of AI is significant in part because of its rapid development and growth. Technological innovation may occur incrementally, in small developments not felt in our daily lives. But in key points in human history, we identify technological change so radical we call it a revolution. Take, for example, the Agricultural Revolution beginning over 10,000 years ago, which some have characterized as the first economic revolution, in which we shifted human labor from hunting and gathering to cultivating land and farming. In the Eighteenth Century, the Industrial Revolution brought new means of production, allowing for machine manufacturing of goods and leading to large-scale changes across society. And now, the rise of AI marks a new era of major change.
In the last seventy-five years, computers have automated some processes previously limited to human intelligence. The capacity to create, store, and process large amounts of data, coupled with increased processing power, have made this rapid development possible. Just as the Industrial Revolution relied on machinery to overcome the limitations of human physical ability, the AI Revolution harnesses computers that appear to surpass the limitations of human intelligence.
No doubt, these economic revolutions disrupt labor, markets, and society. They also disrupt existing legal structures. At the same time, the law also shapes and facilitates revolution. In the Agricultural Revolution, novel legal concepts of private property and ownership may have played an important role in the shift to farming. In the Industrial Revolution, free markets and a lack of regulation of working conditions to environmental impacts led to unfettered development. Now, AI has the potential to bring growth and new possibilities, particularly with its impact on our legal structures and the practice of law. It is this dual role of the law – as the facilitator of change but also the target of disruption – that creates a tension in the legal profession.
On the precipice of an AI revolution, lawyers must grapple with how to advise clients and ethically use AI in rendering legal services – while also playing a role in shaping the future of the law. New technology, like AI, may very well create new problems. But these new problems rarely eliminate old problems; instead, they bring to light flaws and issues existing in our current systems. Simply automating the status quo will perpetuate and ossify the shortcomings of the status quo. This is true in all areas where AI may be deployed, from the criminal justice system to hiring decisions to autonomous vehicles. For the legal system, core concepts of fairness, due process, and equal protection may be undermined by AI when safeguards are not in place.
Several considerations come into play, including the extent to which decisions can be made by AI, the landscape of ever-evolving AI regulation, and the future of work. This presentation explores the impact AI is having on lawyering, both from the aspect of client advice and the practice of law itself. It explores AI as a possible revolution and the issues it raises in law, policy, and society. It also addresses special AI considerations for the modern lawyer, including AI decision-making, AI regulation, and the future of work.