[Monday Column] The role of lawyers in the era of artificial intelligence (AI)

In recent years, the development of artificial intelligence (AI) has brought about great changes throughout our society. In particular, chatbots, generative AI, and legal search and analysis systems have emerged in the legal field, and various law firms, including the law firm I belong to, are providing self-developed artificial intelligence legal services.

Concerns are continuously being raised that not only lawyers but also professional occupations such as accountants and tax accountants may be replaced by AI, and it is true that AI is actually greatly improving the work efficiency of lawyers through extensive case law research, drafting, and analysis of laws and legal principles.

AI is excellent at quickly analyzing massive amounts of data, searching for precedents and laws, and deriving certain patterns. Compared to the days when lawyers had to manually flip through dozens of case books to find cases, AI can suggest similar precedents and strategies for resolving cases in a matter of seconds. In addition, it has already established itself as a powerful assistive tool for lawyers in drafting contracts, creating standardized forms, and repetitive legal review tasks. For this reason, some even predict that “simple legal documents will soon be written by AI, and lawyers will gradually become unnecessary.”

But can AI truly replace the role of human lawyers? The legal profession will not be affected by AI's counterattack, but the author's conclusion is that it will not be easy to replace human lawyers, given that they still have a role and meaning in existence.

The core of a lawyer’s role is ‘dealing with people.’ Among the many tasks a lawyer does, communicating with clients and understanding the client's injustice are more important than writing and submitting a perfect document. In fact, many clients feel a sense of relief and psychological healing as they talk about their unfairness and the frustration of not being able to tell anyone during legal consultation with a lawyer.

There are actually lawsuits that AI simply cannot handle. Among the criminal cases I handled, there was a person who lost both the first and second trials and was considering an appeal. Although I did everything I could as a defense attorney, such as interrogating witnesses intensely in the first and second trials and requesting evidence from other organizations, I lost the case and did not recommend an appeal to my client. On the contrary, considering the Supreme Court precedent and the high dismissal rate of appeals, I honestly said that the chances of winning the case were very low. The first client decided not to file an appeal based on my opinion, but he called me dozens of times three days before the last day of filing the appeal and said he would fight until the end. In the end, the case was lost, but the client expressed his gratitude to the author, saying, “Thank you for fighting hard until the end. I am so relieved that I have now done everything I can.” If it were AI, would it have been able to carry out this incident? According to AI's analysis of vast amounts of information and patterns, this case is one that cannot be won, so wouldn't they have prevented even an attempt?

Additionally, when carrying out an event, you often feel that the event is a “living creature.” Even if a strategy is drawn up and thorough preparation is made at the time of the initial appointment, there are many cases where completely unexpected facts are revealed, the client decides to withdraw, or the case progresses in a different direction, such as an adjustment. No two cases are completely identical, and even in similar cases, the legal evaluation may vary depending on the relationship between the parties, background, etc., and the conclusion may vary from the perspective of fairness depending on the client's situation or the court's judgment.

Cases cannot be solved simply by combining legal information or analyzing patterns. Although the client's case is just one of a vast number of cases with the same pattern to the AI, it is the only case that is important enough to swallow up the client's life, and as the lawyer in charge, it is a task that must understand the client's fear and injustice, sympathize with it, and do his best to defend it. This is because the energy transferred to the client must go beyond mechanical case performance.

A lawyer is not a person who simply writes legal documents, but a person who sincerely accepts what the client wants and solves the problem. AI is good at text data, but because it does not fully understand the subtle nuances of human relationships and the meaning of events between parties, there is a fundamental limitation in being unable to perform events based on various human interactions.

Therefore, I believe that the correct approach to AI is not “AI replaces lawyers,” but “AI assists lawyers.”

AI can save lawyers' time and reduce repetitive tasks, allowing lawyers to focus more energy on strategy formulation, value judgment, and communication with clients. In other words, the development of AI may not lead to the disappearance of lawyers, but may serve as an opportunity to further strengthen their expertise.

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[Monday Column] The Role of a Lawyer in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) (Shortcut)