Unless you have been living under a rock, you would have heard the warnings from Dario Amodei (Anthropic CEO) that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs in the next five years, or from Sam Altman (OpenAI CEO) that AI will probably lead to the end of the world. If you have heard these messages while sitting behind a desk in a junior-level white collar job, chances are your 'urgent' task felt a little less momentous and your future a little more uncertain.
The point of this press release is not to dismiss all AI-related job loss fears with the platitude of 'jobs we haven't imagined yet', but to show what AI can do. If you're a junior lawyer weighing your options or wondering how to position yourself amid the uncertainty, keep reading.
A report by a leading IT company Cognizant, titled: 'New work, new world 2026: How AI is reshaping work faster than expected',[1] found that legal jobs went from a 9% exposure score to AI in 2023, to a 63% exposure score today (in 2026). Exposure to AI doesn't necessarily mean that the job will be replaced by AI, but it does mean that it will be changed by it. Tasks that have, at the least, a component which could be replaced with AI typically fall to junior lawyers, including summarising case law, aligning agreements with precedents, legal research and reviewing contract changes. As a junior lawyer, you learn by doing. That's how you have been expected to build up robust legal judgment over time. But you can't outpace AI's processing speed, no matter how caffeinated, and you can't critically analyse AI-generated work with 20 years of experience you don't have yet.
Technically competent senior lawyers with years of experience will always be necessary. As legal AI becomes more adept at doing the foundational work that typically fell to juniors, it raises the question of what junior lawyers will do next. Ironically, legal AI may be the great equaliser: no one has decades of experience to fall back on, and junior lawyers are best placed to unlock the most long-term value of these tools. Most things that are not distinctly creative and human can be done by AI if you know how to ask it what to do. As a junior, identify workflows that can become fixed-price products, automate high-volume low-stakes work that takes up hours of your day. Learn effective prompt engineering and teach your seniors those skills. Click every button just to see what happens. AI is institutional scaffolding, not a shortcut, and juniors should explore all the ways it can be utilised.
Legal AI presents a unique opportunity in an old profession to allow relatively inexperienced lawyers to become experts at using a transformative tool. The professional trajectory may not be as clear-cut as a more traditional route up the ladder, but if you have ever been on the fence about whether the profession is right for you long-term, then start exploring the possibilities of the ever-growing tech options available. Legal AI will allow you to build, problem solve, enhance processes and be creative. And, as the lines between practice and legal tech blur, investment in AI doesn't necessarily mean you are pivoting from law. Instead, you are evolving within it and upskilling in a way that will make you attractive to all organisations.
Senior associates and partners also need to be mindful that the ways in which junior lawyers need to be trained is changing. An effective review of AI-generated output relies on sound legal knowledge and professional judgment. Now more than ever, it will fall on senior associates and partners to ensure that their juniors understand the pressure points and legal principles that underpin their work. Legal AI tools have elucidated that legal work is not just the output, but the reasoning behind it. Junior lawyers represent the legacy of law firms and will ultimately be responsible for upholding their hard-won reputations and delivering sound legal advice. It is essential that senior lawyers do not let short-term time saving undermine long-term development.
The future of the legal profession is changing at an unprecedented pace. Genuine mentorship from senior lawyers has never been more essential for the legacy of the profession. But mentorship now has a broader meaning. It means modelling intellectual curiosity, emphasising legal understanding, creating space for juniors to experiment and being honest about what none of us fully knows yet. The future of the legal profession will be shaped by the people willing to do the harder, more innovative version of the work. Thanks to legal AI, junior lawyers may just find themselves at the helm of this transformation.
Aalia Manie is a partner at Webber Wentzel and a director at Webber Wentzel Fusion. Kiera Bracher is an associate at Webber Wentzel Fusion.
[1] https://www.cognizant.com/us/en/aem-i/ai-and-the-future-of-work-report#impacted_jobs
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