AI Isn’t Coming. It’s Already Here. Will An Attorney Job Or Even Your Job Exist in 10 Years?

By Lane Siesky

A couple of years ago, artificial intelligence still felt like something we would eventually have to deal with. Today, I use AI virtually every day. Increasingly, so does my law firm. And that has me wondering: What exactly will my job look like ten years from now?

I have practiced law long enough to remember when legal research meant spending hours with books. Case files were actual paper files. Clients called the office because there was no texting their lawyer. There were no smartphones, Zoom depositions or artificial intelligence capable of reviewing thousands of pages of medical records in seconds.

Technology has changed the practice of law many times during my career. I distinctly remember Rod Clutter, Of Counsel at Siesky Law, telling me the only constant in law is change. But, AI feels different – it isn’t simply making an existing task faster. It is beginning to perform parts of the task itself.

In a personal-injury law firm, a significant case can involve thousands of pages of medical records, bills, depositions, dash cam video, 911 audio, police reports and other documents. AI can already help summarize records, identify important dates, organize information and assist with research. Work that once took hours can sometimes take minutes.

So will lawyers still exist in 2036? I think they will. But being a lawyer will look different. And lawyers are hardly alone.

Doctors probably aren’t disappearing, but AI will analyze enormous amounts of medical information before a doctor enters the room. Accountants will still be needed, but software will increasingly perform work that once consumed much of their day. The same questions apply to teachers, financial advisers, real-estate agents, programmers, marketers, paralegals and countless other professions.

Maybe the better question isn’t whether AI will eliminate a profession. It is: How much of the work currently performed by that profession will still require a human being ten years from now? And that leads to what I find most interesting about AI. The more capable our machines become, the more valuable our most human abilities may become.

AI may be able to analyze 20,000 pages of medical records, but can it sit across from parents who have lost a child and understand what they are going through? Can it recognize when a witness’s answer doesn’t quite ring true? Can it know when to reject a settlement offer? Can it stand in a courtroom, read twelve jurors and figure out which argument is connecting with them?

As information and basic analysis become easier for everyone to obtain, other skills may become more valuable: judgment, trust, empathy, leadership, creativity, relationships, persuasion and common sense. Those skills have always mattered. AI may make them matter even more.

I’m 53, which puts me in an interesting position. I began my career in one technological world and may finish it in an entirely different one. I’ve watched the internet change how we find information, smartphones change how we communicate and social media change how businesses reach people. Now AI is beginning to change how knowledge work itself gets done.

If I were 18 and choosing a career today, I wouldn’t spend much time searching for a profession AI can’t change. I’m not sure that profession exists. Instead, I would try to become very good at two things: the human abilities machines have the hardest time replicating and using the machines themselves.

The people who thrive in the next decade probably won’t be those who refuse to use AI or those who turn everything over to it. They will be the people who figure out what technology does better, what humans do better and how to combine the two. AI isn’t coming for our jobs someday. It is already changing them today. The more interesting question is what we’re going to do with the parts it leaves to us.