Where does AI fit in training the new generation?
What would any conversation about legal tech be without mention of AI and generative AI (genAI)? This technology is evolving rapidly, and promising greater productivity at a time when law firms feel the pressure to deliver more value to their clients. As such, it’s no surprise to see it garner much interest among firm leaders — particularly as the demand for innovation resources has hit a new high, according to the latest Briefing Frontiers 2025 report.
The interest in AI and genAI is certainly present within the knowledge function too — with leaders recognising the tech’s potential to improve firms’ operations across many avenues. And yet, just as fellow decision-makers from other departments, knowledge leaders are approaching this with caution.
At a recent supper club hosted in partnership with Litera, several knowledge leaders agreed that the industry still has a long way to go before fully harnessing AI’s power — one key step being ironing out the kinks in the implementation process. Above all, they note that firms must move past the market hype around AI. They must recognise that AI cannot solve everything (yet), and instead focus on truly understanding its practical application and identifying where exactly it can bring value.
AI and training — have law firms found the best path?
Perhaps the biggest challenge weighing heavily on knowledge leaders’ minds is how AI is reshaping learning and development for the next generation of lawyers.
With this technology becoming more embedded in large law firms’ processes, it’s inevitable that the new cohorts of junior lawyers require the necessary skills and understanding to use this technology efficiently. In fact, some firms are already setting up AI training academies to prepare the new generations for a future where AI and legal work will be conjoined.
Some have questioned whether this would make more traditional training methods obsolete — after all, why learn how to do research and draft contracts the old-fashioned way, when AI can do this for you with just a few prompts? However, several world-wide incidents of AI hallucinations being taken as gospel and presented in court by lawyers have emphasised the danger of this mentality. With senior lawyers — who already have the necessary knowledge to detect wrong citations and AI-generated fictions — landing in hot water, the danger of such incidents happening among the junior cohorts multiplies.
Over-reliance on AI for training tasks, like drafting or contract reviews, can also cause long-term gaps in junior lawyers’ knowledge and skills development, warn knowledge leaders — gaps that will be much harder to fill later in their career, and that could even cause severe damage to a firm, should history repeat itself and fictitious cases be cited in court again.
As such, attendees emphasised that traditional training methods remain the core of a junior lawyers’ learning and development journey. And so is consistent supervision by more senior people, to ensure the juniors follow the right path — though they acknowledge that finding time in the diary for this can be quite difficult for senior associates and partners who are already juggling a lot of tasks.
This is where genAI could potentially be a force for good, noted some attendees, who were open to the idea of using this technology to supervise and correct juniors’ work (rather than vice versa). In their view, this would enable the next generation to learn how to do tasks manually, while taking the burden off senior supervisors.
Ciaren Diante, VP, international sales at Litera, comments: “What we’re seeing now is a real shift from hype to pragmatism with AI. Firms aren’t just asking what this can technology do, they’re asking ‘Where does it actually make us better, and how do we embed it responsibly?’. That applies as much to training the next generation of lawyers and adoption as it does to rethinking firm-wide transformation. At Litera, we believe the real impact will come when AI is not a replacement for human expertise, but an enabler for smarter learning, cleaner data, and more confident decision-making across the business.”
Overall, the consensus seems clear: AI has a place in a junior lawyer’s development — but only as an add-on to traditional training. Whether this balance will change as AI evolves, that remains to be seen.
Law firms represented at this Briefing roundtable supper club: Birketts, Carey Olsen, Charles Russel Speechlys, DAC Beachcroft, Farrer & Co, Forsters, Penningtons Manches Cooper, Stewarts, Taylor Wessing, Travers Smith
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