Will Artificial Intelligence Replace Lawyers?

The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) has sparked ongoing debate about the disappearance of many professions, including lawyers. At the same time, a study published by Forbes last year shows that approximately 73% of lawyers plan to integrate AI into their daily work, and 65% of law firms believe that the ability to effectively use generative AI will determine which firms succeed over the next five years. AI is not only driving the search for more efficient solutions, but also highlighting a fundamental issue in Latvia - the justice system is operating at the limits of its capacity, and human resources are being stretched to the maximum.

Judges work an average of 46.5 hours per week

According to the European Commission’s report “Improving the Efficiency and Budget Planning of Latvia’s Judicial System,” judges work an average of 46.5 hours per week, with most regularly exceeding standard working hours. Moreover, workloads are unevenly distributed - there are courts and judges where the pressure is significantly higher, such as the Economic Court, Riga City Court, Latgale Regional Court, Riga Regional Court, and land registry divisions. The system currently functions because those working within it compensate for its shortcomings with their time, health, and energy. It would be naïve to assume that the rest of the legal ecosystem remains unaffected. If judges are overloaded, then so are lawyers, prosecutors, police officers, and legal departments in both public institutions and private companies. Every case that reaches the police, prosecution, or courts requires intensive work on both sides - drafting documents, analysing case law, and developing legal arguments. As cases become more complex and the volume of data increases, so does the intensity of this work. Unlike the judiciary, where workload is monitored, the work of lawyers and legal professionals often remains in a so-called “invisible zone,” but that does not mean the burden is smaller – often, it is quite the opposite.

Rethinking how we process information

The issue is not only a lack of time, but the growing volume of information and the challenge of managing it. Today, lawyers work with vast amounts of data: court rulings, legislation, legal doctrine, international practice and more. To prepare high-quality legal reasoning, it is not enough to simply find information - one must understand its context, the interconnections between sources, and their relevance in a specific case. Until now, this has largely been a manual process, requiring significant time and relying on individual or collective experience. This is why solutions are needed that improve how information is processed. Tools such as the smart legal database ECLI.ai, which structures case law and allows it to be analysed as an interconnected dataset rather than isolated documents, point to a new direction - legal analysis becomes faster not because lawyers work more, but because they work smarter with better tools.

Allowing professionals to focus on what matters

AI can provide significant added value in legal analysis – not as a tool that makes decisions instead of the lawyer, but as one that enables more efficient processing of information. Systems enhanced with AI can analyse large volumes of data, identify related judgments, highlight key arguments, and help structure sources. This allows lawyers to focus on what truly matters - strategy and the quality of legal argumentation, rather than mechanical information retrieval.

The overall quality of legal practice

It is important to emphasize that AI is not, and cannot be, a legal advisor or final decision-maker. It can make mistakes, it can be incomplete, and it will never replace professional legal judgment. However, it can be a tool that significantly improves the quality of work. A lawyer whose arguments are based on a broader and more structured dataset can make more precise and well-founded decisions. This, in turn, affects not only the outcome of individual cases, but also the overall quality and consistency of legal practice. The European Commission’s report highlights structural issues – uneven workloads, inaccurate assessments of work volume, and a system that depends on human overextension. In this context, AI is not a threat to the legal profession, but a tool that complements human expertise and intuition with advanced analytical capabilities, creating a synergy that neither humans nor technology can achieve alone. Therefore, the more relevant question is not whether AI will replace lawyers, but whether lawyers who do not use AI tools will be able to ensure the same level of quality and efficiency as those who do. And even more importantly - will we be able to use technology not only to speed up work, but also to make the legal system more consistent, higher-quality, and fairer?

Lessons from history

Just as mechanical looms did not replace weavers, and sewing machines did not replace seamstresses, AI will not replace lawyers - it will make their work more efficient and of higher quality. Mechanical looms increased textile production up to forty times, meaning that without them, businesses would have struggled to compete. At the same time, new types of jobs emerged, while society benefited from more affordable and higher-quality goods. The fears of early 19th-century workers echo today’s discussions about automation and AI. The key lesson from history is that the role of society and the state is not to resist technological progress, but to mitigate its initial impact by providing opportunities for reskilling and ensuring a social safety net.