The Great Resignation affected the legal industry. Thousands of lawyers left the safety and comfort of current jobs for greener pastures. I’m one of them. My main reason? What I was doing wasn’t satisfying enough. I wanted to pursue a more enriching experience while still using my legal knowledge. I’m not the only one.

The practice of law as it stands today is often missing something: Meaning. Why? One major cause is work that drains you but doesn’t give much back. What kind of work is that? The repetitive kind. The kind where you know what you’ve got to do, you just need to put in the reps. The kind that doesn’t stir curiosity. It just doesn’t have a creative or intellectual pull.

What is the solution? Less of the boring work, more of the good stuff. Read on to learn how to get more of it with cutting-edge legal tech.

Contract drafting and review feels better with generative AI

When it’s done right, artificial intelligence (AI) promises a higher quality of life at work. Most lawyers, even generalists, deal with enough of the same tasks (like contracts), to merit a look at AI augments. Legal tech is evolving rapidly, and new support tools crop up for your consideration. So keep an eye out for some that may help your practice.

One type of AI is called generative. It creates content for you to review. For a legal example, this article will use contracts. The underlying algorithm is crafted and the inputs selected to yield marble worth carving: Contract clauses, contract provisions, and additional information. 

Augmented by generative AI, your quality of life at work as a lawyer would improve in four ways. 

• You will enjoy the intellectual and creative aspect of your job more.

• You will improve the quality of your deliverable work product.

• You will gain a reputation as a tech-savvy lawyer.

• You will earn more money. 

Read on to learn how generative AI helps you get these benefits. 

Satisfy your curiosity and create higher quality deliverables

Generative AI will help you learn about new ways to do legal work. None of the words that an AI creates will be new to everyone. That’s because AIs work off the past. 

But much of what you see churned out will be new to you and each lawyer who uses the software. After all, each practicing lawyer has ideas they created, and not all are shared. Those ideas that make it into the inputs for an AI stand a chance of being matched, mixed, and shared with other lawyers as clients of a software. 

Each interesting idea, ready for review in front of you, is a source of enjoyment and freed-up time for you to be more thoughtful. The more thoughtful you are with your work, the more knowledge and skill you obtain, and the higher the quality of the work that you do.

Most lawyers genuinely enjoy learning about the law. They have an innate curiosity about legal topics. This causes lawyers to learn valuable skills and develop good judgment in tough situations. 

Generative AI gives you more time to think strategically and to bring context to bear on new details that interest you. With contracts, you spend no time first-drafting clauses and provisions, including definitions, that will only require a partial rewrite. You will notice important questions sooner, using functions like listing out non-standard (unusual) terms. 

The same AI can help you identify missing gaps faster, giving you time during negotiations to cultivate your position and tactics. Another thing that generative AI can do generally, not just with contracts, is to identify specific areas of a text that require additional attention, perhaps because they are unusual compared to what has been done before. 

Generative AI, in short, helps you notice more interesting patterns sooner and put them to paper faster. That means less routine, boring work for you and more for the machine. 

Earn reputation and money because of your legal tech skills <h3

Reputation and money are two other benefits of a lawyer using AI. If you have a reputation for being effective, that will make you more money. Additionally reputation can be its own reward.

Real tech savvy among lawyers is actually rare. A decent number of people put on a show. If you put in a bit of work, your knowledge of legal tech will build over time. Eventually, you will have a unique combination of legal skills and tech skills too.

Tech-savvy lawyers know that people will often come to them for questions. By being at the cutting edge of legal tech, you’ll be one of a few who understand early the benefits and how to get them. You will be at the front of a wave of innovation and be known for it. This comes with respect, no small measure of appreciation for most people.

You can leverage your use of AI to speak with authority and expertise and get positions of responsibility involving legal tech. This could happen at work or in professional lawyer associations. 

As for money, it is easier to get when you’re enjoying your work because you learn more and do more of it. Moreover, you earn more money when you do inherently higher-value work. If AI can do something you’re doing, then that task itself is low value compared to what you could do as a creative problem solver. 

Lead the way among lawyers with generative AI

The growth of artificial intelligence in the legal industry is an opportunity. You can be at the forefront of legal tech innovation. Using AI more means:

• Less trivial tasks on your plate and more meaningful work to fill your day.

• Noticeable, higher quality work because you had the time to be thoughtful about it.

• A reputation as a tech-savvy lawyer.

• More money.

Generative AI in particular is spreading in use across many industries. Law is just one. Be at the cutting edge. 

Enjoy contract drafting and review more

If you draft and review contracts as part of your practice, consider incorporating a generative AI to have decent first drafts with the click of a button. Spot issues sooner. Define undefined terms. Understand the core of a contract you’ve never read in language that a teenager could understand. That’ll make reading it much easier. 

Spellbook offers these functions and more, try them out during early access. Get your spot on the waitlist. 

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