Abstract
The dawn of artificial intelligence (AI) poses a fundamental challenge to the legal profession’s practical function and social identity. We argue that this challenge should be met as an opportunity to reclaim the profession’s core ethical intentions. We approach the emergence of AI as an occasion to define and safeguard what is irreducibly human in legal work. We ground our approach in the ethical imperatives set out in the American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct, while extending them into an invigorated framework for the AI era.
We survey the uses and ethical challenges associated with cutting-edge deployment of AI in legal work, and assess the governance responses of bar associations, courts, and law schools. We place these developments in historical context, comparing them to earlier technological shifts—from the printing press to computerized legal research—that at first threatened, but finally deepened, the power, status, and importance of the legal profession.
We articulate a conception of the “distinctly human” in law—emphasizing desire, creativity, and surprise—and argue that these qualities must be cultivated in legal practice, institutional design, and the lawyer’s own self-conception. We set out practical and normative guardrails for AI use, emphasizing provenance and auditability, confidentiality-by-design, human supervision, and bias mitigation. AI’s integration into legal work must be treated as an occasion to recenter judgment, responsibility, and social purpose, positioning lawyers as fiduciaries who use technology to amplify, rather than abdicate, the profession’s highest callings.
Included in
Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Commons, Law and Society Commons, Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons, Legal History Commons, Legal Profession Commons, Science and Technology Law Commons
