३ नोव्हेंबर, २०२६
"Virtually no schools offer formal training programs for legal engineers, though some have added classes."
"Many legal engineers are former practicing lawyers who taught themselves A.I. skills or learned on the job. Some have backgrounds in legal operations, paralegal work or consulting. Fewer are former software engineers who then went to law school — 'the unicorn,' one hiring manager said.... 'It’s not so much going from actively practicing law to not,' she said. 'I think it’s more embracing this generational shift in the legal industry.'... 'You don’t necessarily need a giant pyramid of lawyers anymore... People who have this kind of skill set don’t have to have a J.D., and they don’t have to be software engineers, but there’s business process re-engineering, or this M.B.A. type skill, that I think is really necessary.'"
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३४ टिप्पण्या:
Maybe because I went to law school some 35 years ago, I knew several of us - lawyers with a software background. Maybe there was some selection for knowing them - taking Computer Law from the same guy. I think that most of us ended up in patent law. I might not have bothered if this Legal Engineering. I initially went the patent route because one of the few I knew trying to practice Computer Law told me that he was always losing clients to patent attorneys. They could do everything that he could, but he would lose them to patent attys whenever patents came into the picture. So, my getting licensed as a patent atty was initially defensive. And later got me hired into a decent sized regional firm. We had a strong IP practice, with a score in our IP practice group, but only two of us patent attys. My boss didn’t travel, so I did. And enjoyed it.
I’m not a fan of the job title. A true engineer of law would be a legislator. Otherwise, I agree with Bruce. I knew lots of lawyers that learned how to code. Long before Obama told them to do so, because they wanted to get the most out of computers, especially for running their business.
Re-engineering. Good old Michael Hammer, who knew all about how to adjust business processes, despite never having worked in a corporation, or having manufactured so much as a donut for a living. But as a professor, he KNEW what to do.
I applied for a couple of these jobs. Interviewed with a bot. Never spoke to a human. Did not get the job. The A.I. was like, you can apply again. You have to train yourself so that you can train the AI. I had the distinct impression that my job interview was training the AI. They want people applying for jobs to train the AI without paying anybody for applying for the job. And AI keeps asking me to apply again. They promise big salaries but don't seem to be hiring. I gave up.
If you're wondering why kids are still living with their parents, it's because AI is taking over large parts of our economy and we don't know how to handle this shift. It's a huge deal. And the AI makes you very cynical because it lies without hesitation. "Your interview is not part of training AI." Bullshit, you damn computer. I like technology but by God it can piss me off.
We own some AI stocks just to be on the safe side. My family bought 100 shares of SpaceX. It probably will be worth something some day. That guy is smart. If you want to buy an AI stock, go with Elon. (My opinion). He strikes me as really honest and, like many foreigners, is super impressed with the USA. And he has a sense of humor!
Elon buying X is like Citizen Kane buying a newspaper. "I thought it would be fun."
I applied for a lawyer job, a writer job, and a film producer job. I gave very honest answers, as best I could. The bot wanted processes. It asked me very specific questions about my process as a film producer. I just answered honestly. We didn't have rules, I just had to get it done.
We had no money. I would go to Walmart and buy all our props. We would film our movie and then return all the stuff we had bought. Walmart has a "no questions asked" return policy for the first 7 days. This is why Walmart is a retailing legend and shareholders have done very well.
I had a film professor (liberal) who complained about Walmart and I kind of went off. "Have you ever been to Walmart? Walmart is a blessing for the poor! Everything is cheap in a Walmart. This is where the poor shop. This is how I got my movie made. Why are you hating on Walmart?"
Anyway, my experience getting my movie made was not helpful to the bot. It's not looking for reality. It's looking for processes that sound good so people who use the AI can think they know something about something.
I don't know about legal engineers, but I am sure that lawyers were involved in making sure that you could not get easily readable terms of service prior to spending a significant amount of money on a "smart TV."
I was hoping to analyze the TOS to see what I was signing away, using AI. Maybe, as a public service, I should take pictures of the TOS as I scroll through them, and us AI to transcribe them, and publish them to Reddit.
It's not just the TOS, but that they can change them at any time and demand that you agree to them again, or they will discontinue unspecified services. I recently bought a microwave from LG, and after getting it installed, it turned out that I could only use it at full power, and enter times +/- 30 seconds, unless I downloaded their phone app, which I am sure would come with unreadable TOS itself.
I think that there are plenty of lawyers in tech.
I imagine the lawyers writing these TOS as Dick Dastardly tying Nell to the railroad tracks, but alas, there is no Dudley Doright, Ralph Nader type, to save the day.
"A true engineer of law would be a legislator."
I have for some years now held the view that any legislature should be primarily populated by engineers rather than lawyers. Engineers are trained first and foremost to be problem solvers. Lawyers, OTOH...
Hmmm but the “MBA-like skills” are still valuable eh?
Okay, I admit I'm an old fart. I practiced law: real estate, commercial litigation, and bankruptcy for 41 years beginning in 1976, and have been in recovery for 9. I read the article in full. Could someone please explain to me just what a legal engineer actually does? The article didn't make it at all clear. Thanks.
Our bar association is constantly asking us to do more pro bono. The email blast sets forth a list of available cases which is typically about two-thirds child custody (and half of that "emergencies") and one-third landlord/tenant. The great thing about these automated legal processes is they'll all speak Spanish.
Just an old country lawyer said...
Okay, I admit I'm an old fart. I practiced law: real estate, commercial litigation, and bankruptcy for 41 years beginning in 1976, and have been in recovery for 9. I read the article in full. Could someone please explain to me just what a legal engineer actually does? The article didn't make it at all clear. Thanks.
I had the same reaction.
Well at least they're not training H1Bs to replace them. So they've got that going for them, which is nice.
I thought it was only accounting firms that hired legal engineers.
Just thinking back about 12-18 months ago meeting with our attorney here in our town. Brilliant guy. Great, 2nd generation law firm. He's very tech savvy. He flat out said months ago, that right then, AI could do a lot of what much of his staff does. He said it could probably do what he does. I see that in a technical way, but his personal knowledge- and human judgement- of the people he's dealing with, and the specific situations and his experience would be lost.
That said he said he was sure that within a year or so, most law firms would quit hiring interns and junior level attorneys in firms would get thinned out greatly. I don't know if that's happened, but I can see it coming true. AI can do the work.
I suspect someone is needed who knows the law and can enter proper code to get their system doing what it needs done.
I would think it's a no-brainer for anyone still in the workplace to become as proficient with AI as possible. For your own sake, for your own future.
As for us retired goofs, it's fun learning what we can. I'm currently learning to toss bottle caps into a basket 15 feet away.
I think I would ask AI how to get AI's attention to get a job. To see what it said. Actually, you get jobs through friends and family but that won't work if you go to a new city. In a new city you have to apply where there's turnover which is restaurants and low-end retail. There you get abused but you can make friends and move on and up with the others. But this isn't professional advancement, this is just eating. If you didn’t get a job right out of college, you have to work out why that happened. You may have to move to an area that agrees with your politics. The bottom line is you have encounter reality and reshape. I don't believe AI will change this.
"At A.I. companies, legal engineers sometimes help build tech for lawyers, but more typically help clients integrate the product into work flows, run trials and onboard employees."
So, it's more engineering than lawyering. OK.
Since some of you asked what is meant by a "legal engineer" I'll take a shot at explaining. These would be individuals that are sufficiently competent with AI models and associated software tools to design and build either "system prompts" or complete specialized "AI agents" that could perform various typical legal analyses and document preparation services otherwise performed by legal support staff or various parties in the legal team. And do so in minutes or hours instead of days or weeks.
That's why the legal profession is about to be massively transformed.
Could someone please explain to me just what a legal engineer actually does?
Ask the AI!
(Joke)
It's a job where you help the AI take over the legal profession. They need to train the AI. And they want your knowledge for their computer brains. The AI is like a zombie that wants to eat your brain. Books, mostly, but also your brain.
In the future, rich people will hire doctors and lawyers, and poor people will ask the AI for help.
It's funny because old people suck at technology, and we need the kids to show us how to do things. I want to date younger for the babies, but also so she can handle my damn tech support.
Kids know way more about tech than we do. I still can't do Snapchat. I'm like, "What the fuck am I supposed to do?" I didn't have the patience for Snapchat.
My father has trouble with Google. I'm like Dad, type in the box. And hit enter. Our family is filled with people who hate technology while we've made a lot of money in tech stocks.
AI is unusual in that now the kids hate it, too. At least the kids who are out of school, looking for an entry-level job. The old mean joke used to be, "Learn to code." Now coders are being let go and they have to find work.
We will always have people jobs. Stand-up comic. Sales. Waiters. Baristas. The Democrat party is filled with people who have huge college loans and crappy job prospects. And those numbers are big and getting bigger.
Apply for a job with an AI.
Mercor.
As a follow-up, I'll add a few more words about "system prompts" and "AI agents" to offer additional insights.
A system prompt is the series of preparatory instructions that a user can give to most commercial AI models to significantly direct how it responds and what kinds of results it gives you. If you start with such a prompt before you ask it your main question, it could significantly alter its ultimate response. At a minimum, I suggest the 3 following elements for your prompt: the persona, "temperature", and restrictions. The persona is the overall characterization you want the AI to assume ("You are a legal expert specializing in immigration law"). The temperature setting is how factual or creative you want it to be (0 for factual, 1 for creative). And restrictions are any boundaries or response conditions you want to set on its answer.
The above prompts are typically for chats and simple tasks. Building AI agents is where the real business process reengineering takes place. You don't need to know how to code (but it greatly helps), but this is where someone who really understands legal workflow and can clearly describe that to the AI model will be able to achieve major results.
Forget learning to code. Learn to describe workflow. AI will do the rest.
It's really rough out there for kids in their 20s. I'm a senior citizen and retired, but my son is in that age group because I had him later in life. So I do see it up close and personal and can appreciate the differences in challenges for that age group over the course of my own lifetime.
The other thing I appreciate? Any change that results in more opportunity for real-life humans to work. I appreciate it, but I am not optimistic on this front in the mid to long term. Worrying about my son's future and the future of his cousins and friends and my friends' kids and grandchildren in the same age group is qualitatively and quantitatively different than the concern I had for older kids not in Gen Z.
It is kind of like John Henry going up against the machine.
I don't know anything about AI, and I'm very suspicious of it. So my ignorance level is great. And where there is ignorance, there is fear.
You know, when they split the atom, the scientists were joking that there is a small chance we might destroy the universe. I'm like, "That's not funny. Why are we doing this?"
We cannot predict the future! (Even when our guess turns out right -- and somebody's guess always turns out right).
AI companies want a liability shield and they hope the Democrats will give them that.
Learn to describe workflow.
Yeah, what he said. They want your process so they can regurgitate how to do stuff.
The good news is there will be jobs-a-plenty in the future. The bad news is all the jobs will be touching servers.
"Legal engineers"? Like Roy Cohn?
Knowing who the judge is and how to make the payoffs was always more important than knowing the law.
From my experience, AI is just the desperate girlfriend/boyfriend who will say anything to keep you around.
Administrative engineering.
I wont say prompt engineering is easy, but its just like any basic skill, like using word or excel. Anyone with lawyering skills can do it: not the other way around.
I'm at a huge law firm that has been using AI. The legal profession is about to discover that the majority of its members are selling buggy whips. There will always be a demand for smart people, but AI will make it harder to tell the difference.
Hmm...
"You, a legal engineer!"
Doesn't really hit hard, does it?
If a Legal Engineer is really good, the first thing that he should do is figure out a way to get AI hallucinations out of legal documents.
Saint Croix said...
"The bot wanted processes. It asked me very specific questions about my process as a film producer."
It sounds more like the AI is gathering data to create another AI to do that job rather than actually interviewing people for that job.
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