Session on 13th of March 2025

In a thought-provoking Platforum9 session, Antoinette Moriarty, a psychotherapist specialising in law firm culture at the Law Society of Ireland, and Jordan Furlong, a legal sector analyst at Law21 and self-described “troublemaker,” explored how technology is reshaping the legal profession’s human landscape. Their conversation revealed that the impact of legal tech extends far beyond efficiency gains to touch the very purpose and identity of lawyers themselves.

The Storm of Anxiety

The rapid advancement of AI in legal practice has created what Furlong describes as a “thundercloud of anxiety” hanging over the profession. While society generally harbours apprehension about AI, lawyers feel particularly vulnerable.

“Lawyers have this particular [anxiety] to say, ‘I feel particularly vulnerable to this technology in ways that paper hangers and brick layers and pastry chefs do not,'” Furlong explains. This anxiety stems from a fundamental reality: “If AI is a words and language machine, well, so are we fundamentally as lawyers.”

The source of this anxiety isn’t merely fear of the unknown, but rather recognition of a profound business disruption. As Furlong notes, “Generative AI is going to fundamentally destabilise the standard business model of law firms and lawyers.” When a machine can produce in seconds what previously took hours of billable work, the economic foundation of legal practice faces existential challenges.

The Generational Divide

Perhaps no aspect of legal tech’s impact is more pronounced than the widening gap between generations. Moriarty points out that today’s newest lawyers “have been educated now during a period of intensive use of AI. So they’re coming in with a reliance, if you will, and not an open-mindedness.”

This presents a double bind. For experienced lawyers, AI threatens the economic model they’ve built careers upon. For new lawyers, the situation is potentially more dire. Furlong observes that junior lawyers have traditionally learned through what he calls “grunt work” – the very tasks AI is most adept at automating.

“Law firms take on new graduates almost as a developmental charity case,” Furlong states bluntly. “I will bring you up to speed to a point in which you can deliver even basic work for us. There’s not going to be that basic work available for them when they arrive.”

This crisis of lawyer formation – how to develop future lawyers without the apprenticeship model of learning by doing – emerges as one of the most significant challenges facing the profession.

Finding New Foundations

Despite these challenges, both speakers identified promising paths forward. Furlong suggests lawyers should focus on two foundational elements that remain uniquely human: advocacy and advisory roles.

“The classic sense of the trusted advisor, the counsellor, you go to them and say, ‘Okay, I know what the law says… but what do you think I should do? Because I trust your judgement, I trust your character, I trust your experience.'” These roles, he argues, are “relatively free from AI assimilation.”

For newer lawyers lacking the traditional development path, creative approaches are emerging. Furlong describes using AI itself as a training tool: “I am a new lawyer. I need to do some role playing. I want you to pretend you are someone who is facing a divorce… Ask me some tough questions. And at the end, I want you to tell me, how do you think I did?”

While acknowledging this isn’t ideal – “I really don’t love the idea of people learning from machines” – he sees it as a pragmatic interim solution while the profession develops better models.

Restructuring the Firm

For law firms, adaptation demands fundamental structural changes. Furlong advocates eliminating billable hour targets for partners: “At the best of times, it never made any sense to me that partners, equity partners, the owners of the firm also had billable hour targets. That’s stupid… Anybody can bill hours in a law firm. That is the least valuable thing you can be doing.”

Instead, he argues partners should redirect that time toward mentorship and development of junior lawyers – not just out of altruism but self-interest: “If you don’t do something to sustain the set of younger lawyers, who’s going to buy you out?”

Moriarty highlights the psychological challenge this represents for senior lawyers accustomed to “main character energy” who must learn to “step sideways or even backwards sometimes and let others shine.” Yet she notes this transition can be deeply rewarding: “They’re hearing an awful lot more about the experiences of their colleagues, which is its own form of satisfaction, so derivable from reaching targets.”

The Purpose Question

Perhaps most profound is how legal tech is forcing a reassessment of purpose within the profession. As routine work shifts to machines, lawyers must confront deeper questions about their value and identity.

“The American Bar Association recently has required law schools to start teaching courses in what they call professional identity,” Furlong notes, adding that this includes “interrogating yourself to say, why am I here? Why am I doing this? Why law?”

This reconnection with purpose extends beyond individual lawyers to firms and the profession as a whole. As Moriarty observes, there’s a growing recognition that while American approaches often focus on individual purpose, European models more often examine “the collective and the community.”

Furlong concludes with a powerful reframing of the current disruption: “Look at the mess we’re in right now globally. What else is it except the ultimate triumph of individualism of looking out for number one? During the pandemic, normal got us here. There’s no point going back to normal. So we need something new and better.”

In this view, the technological disruption forcing lawyers to question their roles isn’t merely a threat, but an opportunity to rebuild a profession with greater purpose, deeper human connection, and more sustainable values – a transformative possibility that extends far beyond mere efficiency gains.