International Focus
LAW STUDENTS IN THE DIGITAL MARKETPLACE How the employment structure of law students will change in the age of algorithmisation?
Szymon Skalski
Former Treasurer for ELSA Cracow
The post-pandemic world is a highly uncertain reality, especially in a matter so sensitive to change as the labour market. While the legal industry is often considered to be rather conservative when it comes to changing well-known solutions, it seems impossible that the long-term forced digitalisation of work will not leave a significant mark on the work of lawyers. This forces us to take seriously the discussion on the future fate of certain pillars of the whole industry. From the perspective of the employment of law students, one of the key aspects seems to be the substitutability of their work by more or less sophisticated algorithms or computer programs (AI or non-AI). However, to address these concerns as a whole, it is necessary to pre-determine the nature of the work that students most often perform in law firms. It seems that there are 3 aspects that best show the nature of work in a law firm before becoming an advocate or legal adviser: administrative work, research, and drafting simple procedural documents. Administrative work, which usually involves helping to organise work in a law firm and put in order documents, seems to be one of the first tasks that may be completely delegated for execution by algorithms. Basing the firm's work on a simple algorithm for 18 | SYNERGY Magazine
coordinating the work of employed lawyers, organising documentation, and keeping calendars seem today not so much a future as a very real possibility. What is more, such solutions do not have to be implemented using algorithms; probably sufficiently advanced software not based on machine learning could be sufficient to replace the work of students, secretaries, or office managers in this aspect though it might still require some level of censorship over it while AI would conduct those operations fully on its own and present workers with final results daily. Taking into account actions such as the e-Justice strategy1 introduced in the European Union and the awareness of certain backwardness of the judiciary in relation to today's world, it seems only a matter of time before the fully automated circulation of documents between parties, courts, and attorneys is introduced. The work of organising documents will then become completely redundant, or at least simplified to such an extent that it eliminates the need to employ additional staff. Perhaps the most essential part of the work of young lawyers in law firms is the substantive task of finding the information necessary to draft pleadings and 1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE X:52019XG0313(01)&rid=7
