During our Student Career Sessions last week, Nick Kosloff from Bird & Bird’s London office who specialises in employee incentives and benefits, shared his insights on the technology skills modern lawyers need to thrive in an increasingly digital legal environment. Kosloff’s perspective is particularly relevant given Bird & Bird’s long-standing reputation for innovation—a tradition dating back to the firm’s founding in the 19th century, when its founders launched some of the first patent claims.
The Foundation: Traditional Skills Remain Essential
Despite rapid technological advances in legal practice, Kosloff emphasised that traditional legal skills remain the foundation upon which technological competence is built. He identified three core areas that continue to be fundamental:
- Attention to detail: The meticulous approach that has always characterised good legal work
- Project management: The ability to organise and execute complex legal tasks efficiently
- Soft skills: The interpersonal abilities that enable effective client relationships and team collaboration
What has changed is how these traditional skills now intersect with technological tools. “How that eventually starts to tie in to the proper use of legal technology comes in how you’re able to sort of apply your vision and those project management skills on an abstract level,” Kosloff explained. “To guide and use legal technology properly to your advantage because it’s not just a process where you are throwing stuff on the wall, seeing what happens.”
Effective Prompting: The New Legal Skill
One of the most valuable skills emerging in legal practice is the ability to effectively instruct AI systems through precise prompting. Kosloff illustrated this with a parallel to traditional legal practice: “A very skilled lawyer with, let’s say, a little bit less on the project management side or soft skill side, would give instructions to a junior lawyer to say, ‘Hey, put me through this legal due diligence report on this client’s matter.’ The junior lawyer often will look at that and go, ‘What on earth does this mean?'”
The same challenge applies to working with AI tools. Lawyers who can provide clear, structured instructions to AI systems will extract more valuable, relevant outputs. This requires:
- Understanding how large language models respond to different types of instructions
- Structuring prompts with appropriate context and specificity
- Knowing how to iteratively refine prompts to improve results
- Having sufficient subject-matter expertise to evaluate and enhance AI outputs
Kosloff advised law students to develop these skills through hands-on experimentation: “It really is about applying that curiosity, seeing how it responds to your instructions at university in a lecture, in a seminar room, and just take your run around with it, just seeing what happens.”
Everyday Legal Tech Tools at Bird & Bird
Kosloff highlighted three key technological tools that have become integral to daily practice at Bird & Bird:
1. Legora – AI-Powered Legal Assistant
“Legora is just a powerhouse machine of extracting information, doing due diligence reviews, countering arguments, reviewing, getting second opinions on your work, rewording, type checking emails,” Kosloff explained. This generative AI tool assists with a wide range of legal tasks, from document review to drafting assistance.
2. Contract Analysis Tools
Kosloff described using Litera’s analysis tool “to check typographic issues and consistency issues, reference issues… It is very good at just eliminating that bit more of a lengthier process of control, finding errors and seeing where the defined terms have been used properly.” These tools streamline the error-checking process that has traditionally consumed significant associate time.
3. Document Comparison Software
“We use that constantly to give internal stakeholders and external stakeholders clients a quick view as to how a document has changed,” Kosloff noted of redline comparison tools. Beyond merely showing changes, these tools assist lawyers in spotting issues that might need additional attention.
Beyond these specialised legal tools, Kosloff acknowledged the importance of practice management systems, including time recording software and file management systems, though he noted these have become so fundamental that “I don’t even think about [them] as a legal tech tool.”
The Human Element Remains Irreplaceable
Despite his enthusiasm for legal technology, Kosloff was clear that technology enhances rather than replaces the human lawyer: “The thing that AI is not able to do, and I mean put this on my gravestone if it ever will be able to do it, it’s not able to be human.”
He emphasised that clients continue to value human qualities that technology cannot replicate:
- Building trust and rapport
- Managing client expectations
- Providing responsive, empathetic service
- Exercising judgment in complex situations
- Being a trusted advisor who has the client’s best interests at heart
“I’m willing to say that the vast majority of people prefer organic human contact over AI contact,” Kosloff observed, highlighting why technical skills must complement rather than replace human abilities.
Preparing for Legal Tech Interviews
For law students and early-career professionals preparing for interviews, Kosloff suggested firms are increasingly likely to assess candidates’ familiarity with legal technology. Potential questions might include:
- What is your experience with legal technology?
- How competent are you in prompting AI systems?
- Can you give an example of when you needed to compile or extract significant information in a short period, and how did you solve that problem?
He emphasised that interviewers will be interested in “how you have previously, in any situation whatsoever, whether that be in the academic environment or a summer job… been curious to see whether you could use these tools in practice to your benefit.”
Is Coding Still Relevant for Lawyers?
When asked whether coding skills remain important for lawyers—a topic that generated significant interest in legal education a few years ago—Kosloff expressed skepticism about their practical value in private practice.
“I personally am on the boat that says keep the lawyers and the coders separate,” he explained. “I haven’t seen an instance where certainly in private practice, in my line of work, coding is something that a client would pay a lawyer to do.” He questioned the value proposition: “Why would a client want to pay a lawyer to code where they could probably get a more cost-efficient service from an actual coder with much better skills?”
This perspective suggests that while understanding technology is increasingly important, lawyers should focus on developing skills that complement rather than duplicate technological capabilities.
The Evolving Role of the Lawyer
Looking to the future, Kosloff predicted continued acceleration in the digitalisation of legal practice “in ways that we cannot comprehend yet.” However, he remained optimistic about the future role of human lawyers: “The job of a lawyer is not going anywhere.”
As legal technology advances, lawyers who can effectively balance technological competence with uniquely human skills will be best positioned to thrive. Kosloff’s insights suggest that successful lawyers will be those who embrace technology as a tool that enhances their practice while continuing to develop the interpersonal and analytical skills that clients most value.
For law students and early-career professionals, this means developing a dual focus: building sufficient technological literacy to leverage emerging tools effectively while honing the human skills that will continue to differentiate lawyers in an increasingly automated world.
