Driverless Cars to Lawyerless Law Firms?
This blog series by Peter Impey, Consultant General Counsel at InTouch, looks at what AI is, how it’s evolving, and what it means for legal services. It outlines key developments and use cases, touches on risks, regulation and the SRA’s position, and explains InTouch’s practical, low-risk approach to bringing AI into everyday work in a law firm. You can find the full series and related articles on the InTouch blog.
Hands off the wheel!
A friend sent me a short video of his recent driverless taxi ride. It was slightly disconcerting to see the driver’s wheel spin with no driver, and it was a nervous watch as the car drew up to a red light at a busy intersection.
He was in America, but on a recent trip into London I saw for myself a convoy of three Wayve cars autonomously navigating the busy traffic on the Marylebone Road. They drove perfectly, by the way. Admittedly, each car had a human behind the wheel, monitoring and ready to step in.
The clip got me wondering: will we ever see lawyerless law firms? What else is changing in other sectors, and what will the impacts be?
A crucial point I think lawyers need to be aware of is that all these changes mean consumers have a new set of user experiences. The smartphone in particular has introduced new consumption patterns, and life is increasingly experienced digitally and online.
Because of the changes everywhere else in life, expectations have changed. When people consume legal services, they are increasingly comparing that experience with their other experiences. For example, communicating (video is normal), consuming information, entertainment or music, shopping, using their bank account online, or finding and comparing insurance quotes.
Convenience, speed and digital native experiences are the norm. Finding ways to deliver that and meet client expectations is vital. These are all drivers for product development and implementation of AI at InTouch.
Driverless cars to lawyerless law firms?
If it ever actually happens, driverless cars are just one of the dramatic “science fiction comes true” moments that will take place as AI impacts daily life. The fact is that driverless cars are nearly ready. There are plenty of obstacles to overcome, not least the litigation risk and regulatory aspects.
But the replacement of drivers (actually Uber’s end game for final profitability) will impact businesses from haulage firms to taxis. If Uber can become a driverless taxi firm using AI, can a big law firm use AI to operate without lawyers?
AI in legal services will impact the legal sector
Anyone in the legal profession must think carefully about what tasks the AI will magically perform, what roles AI can play and what role people will play.
Because of the economies of scale, larger legal businesses and corporates with legal teams may benefit the most. AI technology may be priced reasonably and create great savings, but there are additional costs caused by the difficult nature of change itself. Transforming how we work requires capital allocation and is resource intensive. Larger entities can absorb this more easily than smaller ones.
Nimble small firms are often extremely time-poor and lacking in expertise and relevant skill sets. Accordingly, small businesses will need to pay close attention to AI disruption. Relying on vendor deployment, training and support is a smart approach. InTouch users are able to seamlessly and intuitively begin to benefit from AI, saving time in their daily work.
AI changes will impact society
AI is expected to boost productivity, grow GDP and even increase longevity and quality of life. It will create new opportunities and jobs, and improve everything from health to education.
Meeting unmet legal needs by increasing access to legal services is part of the “rising tide” effect where all boats are lifted. This will aid the regulatory drive of the SRA towards more access to justice.
In my previous blog in this series, Legal’s AI Paradigm Shift – So What?, I explained some characteristics and factors of the drivers of AI. I pointed to the high probability of disruption and change in the composition of the global labour market, a predicted productivity surge and a displacement of knowledge workers.
Where people hate their job or are not very good at it, the combination of robotics and AI will be able to replace the people. But for the most part AI will provide a positive shift and new jobs will be created. Regulation and international cooperation will be important. We probably don’t want AI doing certain kinds of work, and certainly not “sociopolitical” aspects of society like entertainment, politics or judging.
2026 AI examples
While we wait for driverless cars, AI is already being used in a wide range of professional settings as an addition, not a replacement. The examples below are not exhaustive, but they show how quickly the use cases have moved from experiments to practical support in day-to-day work.
HR – Role review and CV filtering. Upskilling by simulating challenging situations in a safe environment. Practising interviews and taking notes.
Business – Marketing material preparation, sales pitches and acting as a negotiation partner. Workflow automation such as monitoring inboxes, drafting responses, improving and tidying text, and creating charts, tables and presentations.
Education – Materials preparation, assistant teaching, exam training and synthetic learning. Upskilling by simulating challenging situations in a safe environment.
Science and engineering – Aiding advances with analytical and large-scale research review. Assisting with synthetic biology research, such as protein folding.
Financial services – Monitoring compliance with policy and regulation, particularly for AML work. Pitch preparation. Accelerating due diligence and documentation review, including extracting unstructured data into structured form, plus financial analysis and pattern recognition.
Medical – Some of the most impactful examples are in medicine, such as developing new antibiotics to counter resistant bacteria.
While there are huge changes in outcomes from deploying AI, in most cases people remain integral to the process. Medicine shows how AI and robotics improve outcomes in a model where a human is assisted and enabled by AI.
Surgeonless surgery?
Surgical procedures performed with robotic systems can increase precision, flexibility and control during an operation. With this technology, vision can be at a microscopic level, giving the surgeon controlling the robot a view of exactly which individual cancer cells to cut out.
Lawyers who use AI will do a better job
Efficiency and cost reductions come from carefully automating repetitive tasks. InTouch already has this at the heart of the platform by allowing users to set up workflows, tasks and matter types based on templates and familiar documents.
Where AI comes in is to act as an assistant within the daily work of the user. As with the enhanced capabilities of surgeons, there are clear focus areas where AI can help lawyers perform better:
Productivity
Precision
Quality of service
Affordability
In the next blog I will consider the rewards of using AI in legal in more detail. But the key point is to maintain human oversight. The mantra for using AI in legal needs to remain “trust but verify”.
Conclusion: not altogether lawyerless but hybrid law firms
My view is that lawyerless law firms are a fantasy. It is unlikely that AI alone will steer a legal case down the justice highway. The AI is complementary to the work of the person.
Firms are already adopting AI, lawyers will upskill to use it and we will see better legal services. Without using AI you are only standing still while others move ahead, finding ways to improve their “quality and productivity”.
Failing to deploy AI means you are failing to find ways to create and maintain a sustainable competitive advantage.
Next in the series, we turn to AI’s risks and rewards in legal practice, from early horror stories and missteps to emerging “AI sensibilities” that help firms use these tools safely and responsibly.
This series of blogs about AI is written by Peter Impey, General Counsel for InTouch. If you’re exploring how to use AI in your firm, you can find the full series and related articles on the InTouch blog.
