[EDRM Editor’s Note: EDRM is proud to publish the advocacy and analysis of the Hon. Ralph Artigliere (ret.) with co-author Zara Russell. The opinions and positions expressed are their own.]

Like it or not. Ready or not. The legal profession is in a state of transition, from the business end to the delivery of justice, with an urgency and scope unlike anything I have seen in a lengthy career. For lawyers and judges who work under constant pressure in a deadline-driven arena, the prospect of relief through technology is genuinely welcome. But the emergence of generative AI since 2023 is different. It is a transformative and complex transition visited at warp speed on a profession that is fundamentally vested in tradition, precedent, and ethical accountability.

When I think of difficult transitions, my mind and very fiber return to 1972 when I was a combat helicopter pilot. For the complex and finicky helicopter, transition is the point upon takeoff when the aircraft moves from powering its place on earth at a hover to achieving the forward speed and airfoil lift that signals true and successful flight. In combat, this success is dependent on mastering multiple factors like weight from cargo or passengers, fuel, and armament; wind direction and variability; temperature and air density; and the skill of having a smooth touch on the controls to urge the machine forward through transition to flight. With heavy loads and combat exigencies, the pilot needs to decide how much cargo is too much and when and how to take off safely. When you go through transition, there is a moment of wobbling, uncertainty, and slight drop in height off the ground when a helicopter moves from low hover to flight that can be unnerving but must be overcome with skill and determination. More than once my load was extreme but the need to leave the area was so urgent that I proceeded anyway and bounced off the ground on takeoff. Fortunately my struggling engine, my training and experience, and my guiding hand on the controls successfully overcame those tense moments.

That is precisely where we are in the legal profession. No one said it would be easy. Professional competence is not proven by what we remember to do in calm conditions, but by what well-designed systems and our human judgment help us execute under pressure.¹ This moment requires many things of legal professionals: learning new skills with new tools, reshaping how we deliver legal judgment that is fundamental to our roles, and the courage to take the controls and navigate the transition successfully. Judge Maritza Dominguez Braswell, a federal judge and leader in judicial AI education, captured the urgency in a recent interview:²

AI is going to be transformative… The only question is, who’s going to be part of it? Who’s going to have a hand in shaping all of that? I really think it’s important for both lawyers and judges to be active in that space. Because if we’re not, then the space is going to be redesigned by folks with different priorities.

The Fork in the Road

Indeed, lawyers, law firms, legal departments, and even court systems are struggling to get a handle on how to use AI to full benefit while avoiding the traps and pitfalls that seem to be inherent in undisciplined AI use. At the heart of the struggle is the complexity and variety of options for AI adoption and the question of where and how to apply AI in workflows — and my special concern: how to nurture and preserve skilled and specialized legal roles with human knowledge and decision making in a profession that is increasingly automated.

AI is forcing an overdue conversation in the legal profession: what exactly is the real value lawyers deliver? For me, it has always been the ability — unique to legal professionals – to identify and solve problems through disciplined legal judgment shaped by education, training, experience, and mental acuity that develops only through practice. As managing partner of a well-respected law firm, I realized that our most valued asset was the quality of every lawyer in the firm. The best lawyers never stop learning and developing legal skill and acumen, and the firm recognized that it was our responsibility to hire, orient, mentor, train, and develop new lawyers to the caliber of our firm’s roster. Our clients expected and deserved lawyers whose legal judgment and specialized skills would meet that standard, which is how we gained and kept clients.

That level of skillful, informed, specialized lawyering isn’t automatable even with powerful AI, and it remains a key asset of any firm or practitioner and the truest measure of professional distinction from other lawyers, and from AI. To be sure, AI can play a meaningful role. The right systems can surface signals we might otherwise miss, challenge our assumptions, and prompt timely action, so long as the lawyer is guiding the tool rather than treating it as an easy button for finished work product. But while AI can trigger and amplify judgment, it cannot replace the need to exercise it. Competitive lawyering today entails embracing AI to the extent it can help with performance in scale, speed, and thoroughness; but it should never be mistaken for the source of legal judgment, or as a substitute for the lawyer’s own.

What Our Generation Will Pass On

So what is the future of lawyering? And what will happen to the legacy of professional legal judgment that fine law firms and legal mentors have passed on for generations? The tradition of developing legal excellence by passing specialized skills from senior lawyers to associates — extending equally to new in-house lawyers and judicial law clerks — depends on a process that cannot be shortcut. Fledgling skills learned in law school are honed through training, practice, trial and error, observation, mentoring, and the gradual delegation of real responsibility. Over-delegation to AI of the very tasks that build legal judgment puts those skills at risk of being lost entirely — not through negligence, but through the seductive efficiency of delegating to a tool that never pushes back.³ And replacing or undervaluing the junior lawyers who would otherwise perform those tasks compounds the problem rather than solving it.

When I hear predictions of law firms “replacing” junior lawyers with AI, it tells me that those firms have a mistaken understanding of the technology, the value of younger lawyers, and the key to future organizational strength. AI cannot think like a lawyer. Younger lawyers today come from a background steeped in technology and offer the best prospect for using AI in ways that make them more productive and valuable than new associates in the past.⁴ Some firm leaders share this view, recognizing that today’s new hires will have at hand technology they can engage as they progress — answering questions, delivering embedded assistance, and reducing demands on supervising lawyers that would otherwise slow both parties down.⁵ This is not easy; it requires careful workflows, guardrails, and genuine supervision. But it is not only doable, it is the preferred path. Younger lawyers will be able to accomplish more than associates in the past, and in doing so, become the foundation for the future of the firm.

The steps we take now will determine two things: whether this generation of lawyers will negotiate the transition to AI for maximum benefit, and what kind of profession will be inherited by lawyers who haven’t yet begun their careers. The latter deserves careful consideration. What roles and opportunities will exist for the next generation? What expectations will they bring, and what will actually be there to meet them? To help lend perspective on these questions, I am joined by an extraordinary young person who brings to this piece something no senior lawyer can offer: the view from the other side of the handoff.

Zara Russell is just beginning her education, and she represents a generation that deserves the same opportunities for professional development and mentorship that defined the best of our profession. Her generation has grown up with powerful digital tools as part of ordinary life. Many approach AI with less fear, less mystique, and different expectations than those of us who entered the profession before the digital turn. They are ideal candidates for leveraging AI into productive and successful legal careers, not as passive recipients of whatever the legal establishment decides, but as builders of what the profession becomes going forward.

The Case for Getting This Right

I, for one, am confident that our profession is up to the task and that we will successfully get through this transition, as difficult as it may seem today. And I firmly believe the change is positive. Properly used, AI can yield remarkable results in many areas, including faster and greater personal output, better communication, helpful organization and compression of large amounts of data into absorbable amounts, and incorporation of embedded guardrails to supplement training. But achieving such benefit will require professionals to be at the controls and not passengers on a journey with directions and pathways dictated by others who do not have the same responsibilities, obligations, and goals.

One of the cornerstones of successful transition is the survival of human legal judgment as an imperative in legal workflow and judicial decision making. As powerful as the AI tools are and may become, the profession must protect the role of the human by not over-delegating tasks to AI and by using the tools in a way that keeps the human in the process at every step in which human skills are needed.

Lately we have heard much about how AI will replace lawyers doing fundamental tasks such as legal research, writing memos and briefs, preparing for discovery and depositions, document review, and the like. AI is now capable of performing, at surface level, most of the discrete tasks we have historically used to train young lawyers. This development presents a structural challenge to legal education and mentorship. And it is a lesson in restraint. Regrettably, there are lawyers and firms that are taking the bait and over-delegating to AI, sometimes to their later regret.

Many vendors are not helping. Much of the product development is focused on the idea that the tools can do the job of lawyers rather than allowing the lawyer to do the job better. Compounding that misdirection, anthropomorphizing AI systems misleads users by implying inner experience where none exists. Misattributing consciousness doesn’t just create a philosophical muddle; it invites lawyers and judges to treat systems that generate probabilistic language outputs as trustworthy partners, which leads to misplaced reliance, over-deference, and the erosion of independent judgment. The distinction between a tool that serves the lawyer and a surrogate that supplants the lawyer may not make for an appealing sales pitch, but it is the distinction on which professional competence depends.

Delegation to AI not only carries potential ethical and career-altering repercussions, but it can also lead to the loss of skills that lawyers and judges studied and worked long and hard to attain. The one thing that separates licensed legal professionals from others is the ability to apply specialized skill and knowledge to changing conditions under the pressure of deadlines and heavy workloads. AI, used properly, can help compress rote tasks and manage large sets of data and materials, but the decision-making end resides with the human in charge.

The unintended consequences of ceding control of legal judgment are not hypothetical. The risks play out task by task, role by role, and the next section examines them directly.

The Specific Risks by Legal Task

For different roles and practices, managing risk means different things. But the common denominator is understanding the power and limits of AI and the need for human involvement.

Undisciplined AI use entails specific and foreseeable risks. The risks of overreliance, skill erosion, surface-level output mistaken for substantive judgment, and disruption of the mentorship pipeline are not abstractions, however confidently the marketing may suggest otherwise. They play out in concrete and predictable ways across the specific tasks that define legal practice.

Another foreseeable risk is the failure of supervision and accountability: the breakdown that occurs when AI use in legal work proceeds without documented workflows, defined roles, and meaningful oversight. When lawyers disregard a firm’s standards for AI use, or when supervisors fail to enforce those standards through training, feedback, and clear direction, the consequences can include sanctions, malpractice exposure, and serious reputational harm. Courts have not hesitated to impose consequences where supervising attorneys failed to adequately oversee AI-assisted work product.⁶ But accountability runs in both directions. The supervising lawyer owes the associate not only oversight but genuine mentorship — training in how to use AI tools responsibly, clear direction on where human judgment is non-negotiable, and the kind of structured feedback that builds professional competence rather than merely catching errors after the fact.

Regarding persuasive and authoritative writing, whether it is a brief or judicial decision, the craft of legal argument is built in mindful drafting borne of legal judgment, not the polish or revision. Legal professionals spend countless hours learning this critical and specialized skill. Surrendering voice and judgment to a machine is as wasteful as it is risky. For the practitioner, ceding that judgment to AI can be deceptively attractive: fast, easy, and impressive on first glance. A strikingly polished AI-generated image can mimic the appearance of artistic skill while containing none of the deliberate choices that constitute the artist’s actual contribution. A legal brief can suffer the same gap between surface polish and underlying judgment. It is fool’s gold. And for a young lawyer, the struggle to organize the argument is not wasted time; it is where the lawyer begins to develop voice, structure, and judgment.

AI can assist in legal research, but over-delegation invites error and loss of efficiency. AI-assisted research conducted without human understanding of the tool and step-by-step involvement leads to untethered execution and fewer encounters with the source documents. Legal research is only as good as the judgments exercised at each step: reviewing uncovered documents, assessing their relevance, and taking the next steps needed to find binding and persuasive precedent. Verification of sources and use of authentic materials are essential. The more steps taken by AI without human guidance, the less viable the results are. For a young lawyer, those source-by-source encounters are not inefficiencies; they are how legal instincts are formed.

For trial lawyers, advocacy is a skill honed through education and experience. Those skills develop throughout a career, and a trial lawyer who does not mindfully evolve and improve will not be successful. Courtroom judgment cannot be pre-prompted or scripted by AI. Trial strategy involves pattern recognition developed over hundreds of depositions and trials. That pattern recognition cannot be downloaded; it can only be passed on to younger lawyers through observation and mentoring.

For office practitioners, developing great documents and strategies for clients is just as steeped in education, experience, and judgment. A contract that works for one client in one negotiated deal may have the same bones in the next matter with a different client, but the true distinctions that matter are uncovered with human intellect, skill, and applied experience. Delegating the task to AI forfeits these talents. And it is also a step the client may well find that he or she can do on their own. That would be a regrettable mistake on both ends of the relationship.

All of these examples implicate rich and hard-earned human reasoning skills that AI cannot perform. Lawyers do not learn these skills by delegating them to others, including AI. There is no easy path to professional excellence. It requires education, guidance, and experience that includes legal reasoning and decision making. Tasks that require research, legal writing, and analysis result in drafts that are reviewed, marked up, discussed with responsible attorneys, and finalized. Skills like taking depositions and attending hearings are observed and critiqued for constructive improvement. Young lawyers need to advance their work product, be it a document or a list of deposition questions, suffer the critique, and own the results. Using AI to propose the basic work erodes the experience and mental acuity needed to develop these skills. Worse yet, the new lawyer never has the chance to get good. That is a tragedy for the lawyer and for the organization.

AI can assist legal work. But if it displaces the work through which lawyers develop judgment, the profession may gain efficiency while losing both its critical skill set and the next generation of skilled lawyers.

The Next Generation of Lawyers

The decisions we make now about AI will shape not only how today’s lawyers work, but how tomorrow’s lawyers learn. The profession has always depended on more than information transfer. It depends on supervised responsibility, critique, repetition, judgment under pressure, and the gradual passing of professional habits from one generation to the next.

That is why I wanted to include the perspective of someone just beginning that journey. Zara Russell is an outstanding student and leader, Salutatorian of her high school graduating class, a mock trial participant, and an incoming Wake Forest University student who was selected for a highly competitive leadership, character, and ethics program that she sees as preparation for law school.⁷ She is not yet a lawyer, and that is precisely the point. She represents the generation that will inherit the profession we are now reshaping.

Her perspective can help us ask a question lawyers and judges should not avoid: Are we preparing the next generation to become thoughtful professionals who use AI wisely, or are we building systems that will deny them the very experiences through which legal judgment is formed?

Here is my interview with Zara, with her answers in her own words.

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Artigliere: Zara, tell us what you and your peers think about generative AI. Are you aware of how to use it, and is it part of your personal life and, where permitted, your academic work? Is it exciting, concerning, ordinary, overhyped, or some combination?

Zara: In today’s world, especially for my generation, generative AI is everywhere. Some of my peers have embraced AI. From their perspective, it is a tool and innovation that can improve their lives or at the very least they feel they must embrace it at the risk of being left behind. However, what I think is overlooked is that others of my generation detest AI. They are worried about the environmental impact and have seen firsthand the way AI is abused. Personally, I see both sides of the issue. I realize that AI is not going anywhere so to ignore it or resent it is unwise and unproductive. However, I have seen AI be used as a shortcut instead of a tool, time and time again. I am naturally curious and I enjoy the path to seeking answers. Frankly, I don’t want AI to take this from my generation. For this reason, I find AI to be concerning in that without people thinking, writing or researching for themselves, where does that leave the state of our society?

Artigliere: Have you observed AI being used well and effectively by your peers — not just as a shortcut, but in ways that genuinely improved their work?

Zara: I have seen effective use, actually. At first my classmates just used it to check spelling or grammar issues, but then they began using it for adjusting the tone of their writing or finding better words and phrases. Some have used it for research or to find gaps in facts or logic.

Artigliere: There is real concern among legal professionals that AI is displacing entry-level legal work — the research, drafting, and analytical tasks that have traditionally been how young lawyers develop their skills. Does your generation share that concern, or do you see it differently?

Zara: My generation is apprehensive about AI displacing entry-level work. We are trying to plan for our futures and it is hard to plan when the typical career paths are being disrupted. Education is expensive, both undergraduate and graduate school, so making sure we can pay back loans by getting jobs after law school is a real concern. The worry of not being able to properly hone essential skills that would be learned in these entry-level jobs is definitely present.

Artigliere: You have chosen a program at Wake Forest that puts leadership, character, and ethics at the center of your undergraduate education. Why is that path important to you, and how does it connect to the kind of lawyer you hope to become? Do you see it connecting to the questions AI is raising about human judgment and professional responsibility?

Zara: One thing AI can never be is a person with a complex background and feelings. As a lawyer, I hope to put empathy at the forefront of my career, so developing my understanding of how to act and lead according to my morals is of the utmost importance. This goal ties back to the human experience. It ties back to the imperfections and determination that make us human. When thinking about my future career, AI contrasts with these goals when its convenience is put before real people. So yes, I do foresee my program tying to questions on AI, especially with how to use it ethically.

Artigliere: Some law schools are moving aggressively to integrate AI into legal education; others are more cautious. Do you expect AI to be part of your law school education and future legal work? If so, what would responsible use look like to you?

Zara: I do expect AI to be part of my law school education and future legal work as I expect it to increasingly become a part of most aspects of life. Pandora’s box has been opened so AI is not going away. However, this makes it all the more important to use it responsibly. To me, responsible AI usage means that AI can be used for assistance, but not to form judgments. Acknowledging that, as I earlier mentioned, AI cannot truly understand the human experience is the first step to using AI responsibly.

Artigliere: Why do you want to become a lawyer, and what kind of lawyer do you imagine yourself becoming?

Zara: I have always found there to be something poetic about putting together a good argument and being able to sell a compelling story, which is what originally drew me to law. I do not have everything planned or figured out yet but, as a lawyer, I hope to carefully craft the same persuasive arguments that inspired me, while prioritizing real, human connection.

Artigliere: When you take your first position, what do you hope that experience will give you in the way of responsibility, mentorship, and professional development? Where would you want AI to help your development, and where would you worry that it might get in the way?

Zara: When I take my first position I hope that experience will teach me the skills that I need to be a good lawyer. This includes learning how to think like a lawyer and forming a strong relationship with a mentor to guide me. I would like to have a connection with my mentor and the opportunity to observe client meetings, negotiations with the opposing party, and hearings in order to get a feel for the human part and understand how to do it. I worry that AI use may make it harder for me to get the practice and build the connections that I need to succeed. On the other hand, I am hopeful that AI can assist me with menial tasks so I can spend more time thinking, creating, and forging these connections.

Artigliere: What would good law firm mentorship look like to you? And what would its absence cost you?

Zara: A good law firm mentorship to me is having a mentor that can pass down their extensive knowledge and give advice on how to succeed. It involves sharing what lessons they have learned and skills they have mastered. This body of personal, hard-earned knowledge is not something that AI can recreate. Without this mentorship, this knowledge is at risk of being lost to the next generation of lawyers.

Artigliere: What would you want the lawyers and judges of my generation to understand about what your generation needs from the profession they are inheriting?

Zara: I would want the lawyers and judges of your generation to understand that my generation wants to learn from you and wants the opportunity to work hard for that knowledge. I would also urge everyone including my generation to be aware of the implications of the shortcuts that can be taken by AI and what is at stake if we lose our connection to our humanity and one another.

Artigliere: Thank you, Zara.

Zara’s answers should give the profession pause, but also confidence. She is not asking to be protected from hard work, nor is she asking to be trained for a profession without technology. She expects AI to be part of her education and future practice. But she also understands something the profession must not forget: assistance is not formation, and convenience is not judgment. The next generation does not need us to preserve obsolete tasks for nostalgia’s sake. It needs us to preserve the experiences, mentorship, responsibility, and struggle through which lawyers become lawyers. When I shared the handoff paragraph with Zara, she said it includes both perspectives — and that the handoff is a gift to the giver and the receiver. She was ready to receive the handoff before she ever read the paragraph. This is why I am optimistic about the future.

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The Handoff to the Next Generation

Pilots are lifetime learners, as all of us should be. In flight school or in combat zones, the key to development is practice by doing. When an instructor or senior pilot turns over control of the aircraft, the handoff is not just a transfer of task — it is an act of trust that makes both pilots better. The instructor who never gives up the controls never produces a capable aviator, and the one who does finds that the student often surprises them. As Zara points out, that idea of extending opportunity and responsibility to the next generation rewards the giver as much as the receiver. It is also a natural management style that has served the best of the legal profession for many years. In these uncertain times of transition, we need to hold on to the instincts that have served us well. It worked for me over and over across challenging times in different roles, and I am confident the profession of law is equal to this moment.

CONCLUSION

As our profession works its way through the difficult questions of emerging AI, workflows, and how lawyers can leverage AI without relinquishing legal judgment, we need to be mindful that we will soon pass the controls to the next generation of lawyers. Zara’s answers remind us that this generation is not asking to bypass the struggle. It wants the opportunity to work hard for the knowledge, to learn how to think like lawyers, to build relationships with mentors, and to earn responsibility through practice. They deserve access to the wisdom and experience of those who came before them, and the chance to form the mentor relationships that will guide their development. When we let go, will they have had the experience, opportunities, and guidance they need to take over and carry on as mindful professionals in a craft that sets standards, takes responsibility, and owns the results it achieves? It is up to us to provide that.

The profession should not respond to AI by protecting obsolete tasks for their own sake. It should respond by identifying which tasks are training grounds for judgment and ensuring young lawyers still perform them, first with guidance, then with responsibility, and eventually with mastery. AI can compress, organize, surface, test, and assist. But it should not deprive young lawyers of the struggle through which professional judgment is formed. Our profession is ancient in origin, essential to justice and fairness, and fundamentally human. Legal reasoning is an art, not a calculation. The question is not whether AI will be in the cockpit. It already is. The question is whether we will use it to help the next generation learn to fly, or whether we will let it deny them the experience, responsibility, and judgment they will need when the co

Notes

1. Ralph Artigliere, From Training to Execution: Embedded Safeguards for Responsible AI Use in Legal Practice, EDRM (Apr. 30, 2026) available at https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/from-training-to-execution-embedded-3224099/.

2. Justin Smith, The New Legal Skill Set: Judge Maritza Dominguez Braswell on AI Guidance, Attorney Development, and How JAIC Is Transforming Judicial Education, Everlaw (June 9, 2026) available at https://www.everlaw.com/blog/ai-and-law/judge-maritza-dominguez-braswell-on-ai-guidance/.

3. Scott Schlegel, There Is Only One [Insert Your Name], (June 23, 2026), available at https://judgeschlegel.com/blog/there-is-only-one-insert-your-name (observing that AI personas built on partner judgment may preserve lessons but cannot replicate the apprenticeship model through which professional judgment is formed, and that the goal of legal development is formation, not imitation).

4. Ralph Artigliere, David Horrigan & Rose Hunter Jones, Force Multiplier?: Artificial Intelligence, Uneven Competence, and the Integrity of the Adversarial System, 30 J. Tech. L. & Pol’y 209, 228–29 (2026) available at https://www.journaloftechlaw.org/_files/ugd/ad7a6d_497d3735c4524d4cb8aea4f313ab0e9f.pdf. “AI does not eliminate epistemic asymmetry through access alone. It narrows the divide only when accompanied by competence, judgment, and structured adaptation.” Id. at 228.

5. Gary Wingens, AI Won’t Replace Junior Lawyers. It Will Give Them Better Work, JD Supra (June 15, 2026), available at https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/ai-won-t-replace-junior-lawyers-it-will-7556430/.

6. See, e.g., Johnson v. Dunn, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 141805 (N.D. Ala. July 23, 2025); Ralph Artigliere, When AI Policies Fail: The AI Sanctions in Johnson v. Dunn and What They Mean for the Profession, EDRM (August 1, 2025), available at https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/when-ai-policies-fail-the-ai-sanctions-9043268/. 

7. Zara’s mother is a law school graduate and former federal law clerk, currently serving as the Pre-Law Advisor for law school-bound students at Furman University.

June 29, 2026 © 2026 Ralph Artigliere and Zara Russell. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED (Published with permission.)

Assisted by GAI and LLM Technologies per EDRM’s GAI and LLM Policy