In an earlier blog – Breakneck Innovation & the Law, I shared that, “The world has been experiencing the breakneck pace of the 4th Industrial Revolution, marked by emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), neurotechnology, automation, blockchain technology, cryptocurrency, and others. It is also said that we are already seeing some of the signs of the 5th Industrial Revolution with advancements in fields like AI and robotics, and with company adoption of automation and machine learning to enhance productivity and efficiency.” Bearing these developments in mind, I have to agree with Jana Saad, Legal AI Strategist, when she says that, “The law has always followed society. Today, society is following AI. It falls to us – the legal profession – to ensure that both lead somewhere just.” (J. Saad, 2026). And I would extend this to say that this is imperative not only for AI, but for all evolving technologies. So, how can we justly future-proof the legal profession and the law for a digital-first world?
Some AI fundamentals
Although many of us may already be aware of some of these fundamentals, I will start by discussing a few foundational AI concepts. “AI represents a wide spectrum of technologies designed to enable machines to perceive, interpret, act, and learn with the intent to emulate human cognitive abilities. Across this spectrum, generative AI (GenAI) includes systems such as sophisticated large language models (LLMs) that can create new content, ranging from text to images, by learning from extensive training data.” (Cazzaniga et al., 2024).
GenAI communicates in natural language to give answers to relatively complex questions, and it can create content in response to formulated questions or instructions (prompts). It works by learning patterns and characteristics from large volumes of data, and it is based on a statistical understanding of language. Some examples of GenAI tools include OpenAI ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini - European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) Working group on Cyberjustice and Artificial Intelligence (CEPEJ-GT-CYBERJUST(2023)5final), “Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) by judicial professionals in a work-related context” (February 2024: Source).
“OpenAI’s public release of the Large Language Model (LLM) ChatGPT in late 2022 marked a pivotal moment in the development of AI and in expectations about its future impact.” (Source). And after ChatGPT’s public release, commentators worldwide began speculating about whether the underlying technology could revolutionize legal practice (Susskind & Susskind, 2023).
According to Schwarcz et al., 2026, “two emerging technologies have the potential to significantly enhance AI’s capacity to facilitate human legal work by improving reasoning capabilities and grounding outputs in authoritative legal materials”:
(i) Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) – which is a technique that integrates GenAI with trustworthy, authentic legal source materials. Unlike traditional models that rely solely on their training data to answer prompts, legal AI systems with RAG capabilities can retrieve relevant legal texts—such as case law, statutes, and regulations—before generating output…
RAG systems integrate LLMs with legal search engines and document retrieval systems (Lewis et al., 2020), enabling these tools to respond to queries based on authoritative legal materials. Widely touted for its potential to minimize or even eliminate hallucinations (Ju, 2024; LexisNexis, 2024), RAG also enhances transparency, allowing users to verify LLM responses using underlying sources (Grupen & Pereyra, 2024).; and
(2) A new class of GenAI language models known as “reasoning models.” Developers explicitly design these models—unlike earlier AI chatbots—to draw on additional computational resources at the point of use, planning responses before generating them, much like a human taking longer to think and outline their thoughts before answering a complex question.
… Reasoning models mark a significant departure from earlier LLMs like ChatGPT-3.5 and GPT-4 by allocating more compute at the time of inference, allowing them to process prompts step-by-step in ways earlier models did not. By constructing an internal chain of reasoning, these models continuously re-evaluate initial output to refine the answers they ultimately produce. (Source).
AI and the labour market
According to Cazzaniga et al., 2024:
Almost 40 percent of global employment is exposed to AI, with advanced economies at greater risk but also better poised to exploit AI benefits than emerging market and developing economies.
... The gains in productivity, if strong, could result in higher growth and higher incomes for most workers. Owing to capital deepening and a productivity surge, AI adoption is expected to boost total income. If AI strongly complements human labor in certain occupations and the productivity gains are sufficiently large, higher growth and labor demand could more than compensate for the partial replacement of labor tasks by AI, and incomes could increase along most of the income distribution. (Cazzaniga and others. 2024. “Gen-AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work.” IMF Staff Discussion Note SDN2024/001, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC).
Additionally, the World Economic Forum (WEF) publishes a bi-annual Future of Jobs Report, which covers evolving technological, societal and economic trends to understand occupational disruption and identify opportunities for workers to transition to the jobs of the future. The January 2025 Report brought together the perspectives of 1,000+ leading global employers, representing over 14 million workers across 22 industry clusters and 55 economies across the world.
Some of WEF’s reported findings were:
(i) AI and big data top the list of fastest-growing skills, followed closely by networks and cybersecurity, as well as technology literacy.
(ii) Complementing these technology-related skills, creative thinking, resilience, flexibility and agility, along with curiosity and lifelong learning, are also expected to continue to rise in importance over the 2025-2030 period.
(iii) Half of the employers plan to re-orient their business in response to AI, two-thirds plan to hire talent with specific AI skills, while 40% anticipate reducing their workforce where AI can automate tasks.
(iv) Given the evolving skill demands, the scale of workforce upskilling and reskilling expected to be needed remains significant: if the world’s workforce were made up of 100 people, 59 would need training by 2030.
Evolving skills & roles
In the January 2025 WEF Future of Jobs Report it was also revealed that, “On average, workers can expect that two-fifths (39%) of their existing skill sets will be transformed or become outdated over the 2025-2030 period.” Additionally, “broadening digital access is expected to be the most transformative trend – both across technology-related trends and overall. Advancements in technologies, particularly AI and information processing (86%); robotics and automation (58%); and energy generation, storage and distribution (41%), are also expected to be transformative. These trends are expected to have a divergent effect on jobs and will fuel demand for technology-related skills, including AI and big data, networks and cybersecurity and technological literacy, which are anticipated to be the top three fastest growing skills.”(Source).
As I mentioned in an earlier blog – Does every lawyer need to be a tech lawyer?, the 4th Industrial Revolution and the coming 5th Industrial Revolution call for us to be fairly conversant in tech law (and its related areas) as much as our profession calls us to grapple with it to faithfully and dutifully discharge our oaths in this rapidly-evolving, digital-first world. So, positioning or repositioning ourselves for the roles that will evolve and emerge on account of these Revolutions may be critical.
WEF further reports that, “Technology-related roles are the fastest growing jobs in percentage terms, including Big Data Specialists, Fintech Engineers, AI & Machine Learning Specialists and Software and Application Developers.” WEF further indicated that, “Analytical thinking remains the most sought-after core skill among employers. This is followed by resilience, flexibility and agility, along with leadership and social influence.” (Source).
To zoom into the legal profession, while AI will likely first impact routine legal tasks and potentially decrease the demand for certain entry-level industry functions, it also brings opportunities in the form of new law or law-adjacent job roles. Some specialized roles have arisen, or will likely arise under the following broad areas – Data, Privacy & Cybersecurity, Data Analytics, AI Governance & Compliance, Compliance (in general), RegTech, Litigation & Dispute Resolution, Legal Technology, Training & Advisory Services, etc. (J. Saad, 2026). A few examples of actual job titles are – Legal Tech Product Manager, AI Ethics & Policy Advisor, Legal Data Analyst, E-Discovery Specialist, Legal AI Trainer and Cybersecurity & Privacy Counsel.
Knowledge is power
Cazzaniga et al., 2024 further highlighted that, “High-exposure, high-complementarity occupations have significant potential for AI support, as AI can complement workers in their tasks and decision-making. However, there is limited scope for unsupervised use of AI in these roles. These are primarily cognitive jobs with a high degree of responsibility and interpersonal interactions, such as those performed by surgeons, lawyers, and judges. In such roles, workers can potentially reap the productivity benefits from AI, provided they have the skills needed to interact with the technology.” (Cazzaniga and others. 2024. “Gen-AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work.” IMF Staff Discussion Note SDN2024/001, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC).
The burden is heavy because, whether we like it or not, a fair number of clients, even high-net-worth clients, will come to us after first running their legal enquiry through one or more of the “free” or paid AI platforms. And they will do so, possibly totally ignorant of the shortcomings or risks of doing so, which we have to be able to warn them of, in an informed manner, that doesn’t seem like we’re only guarding our territory and our bread and butter.
We also have a duty to guide the court should AI or related emerging tech issues arise in our court matters. This calls into question our knowledge base in the area. Especially as the WEF Future of Jobs Report discloses that “AI and big data top the list of fastest-growing skills, followed closely by networks and cybersecurity as well as technology literacy.” (Source).
Outside of the courtroom, we cannot be active and engaged participants in steering or guiding policy, law or regulations, regarding evolving technology, if we’re not adequately informed, trained and educated. And the general public is relying on us to be the bastions that help to influence and positively shape the laws and regulations of the tech industry so that there is balanced lawmaking which ensures that the human, gender, environmental, utilities and other factors of these technological developments aren’t overlooked or bypassed.
The burden is also heavy because we are called to guide an imperfect, incomplete and extremely fluid technological landscape with sometimes modest or no judicial precedent, and oftentimes no local law or legislation (depending on where we reside and practice). However, in those instances we can only resort to international laws, standards, regulations and best practices.
In light of all of this, we must enhance our knowledge base not only in terms of AI and tech literacy but in terms of legal and regulatory frameworks across jurisdictions, ethical considerations, etc. (J. Saad, 2026). And if specialized training, upskilling, reskilling or microlearning isn’t available at your university, or alma mater, recognised and accredited certifications can be pursued at other universities, institutions and even via the academies or courses run by some of the very AI and emerging tech companies.
Reject the Luddite or laggard approach
For different reasons, the legal industry, in certain jurisdictions, tends to resist, or be slow to adopt, or adapt to evolving technologies. Those skeptical of AI hold the view that while AI may streamline certain aspects of legal work, it is unlikely to alter the core nature of lawyering (Armour et al., 2022). While legal tech proponents foresee a fundamental restructuring of the industry, with AI automating countless legal tasks and even replacing certain categories of lawyers (Brescia, 2024; Susskind & Susskind, 2023).
According to Jana Saad, Legal AI Strategist, “The future of law belongs to those who can speak both the language of justice and the language of machines.” Additionally, Bridget Mary McCormack, President and CEO of the American Arbitration Association®–International Centre for Dispute Resolution® (AAA-ICDR), expressed that, “The legal industry has long been cautious about adopting new technologies, but as demand for fair, efficient, and accessible justice grows, innovation is no longer optional; it is essential.” These were her remarks in relation to the 2025 launch of the AAA-ICDR’s AI arbitrator for two-party, documents-only construction cases on an opt-in basis. With their AI Arbitrator, humans are in the loop in the form of a human arbitrator appointed to the case who reviews, fixes or amends anything that may be required in the AI Arbitrator’s draft Arbitration Award, and issues the final Arbitration Award. Additionally, parties get to validate the AI Arbitrator’s summaries early on in the process (Source 1; Source 2).
Moving forward
We don’t have to be caught unprepared in the crosshairs of the 4th and 5th Industrial Revolutions. And more importantly, we should see AI as an opportunity for positive transformation rather than just displacement and disruption (J. Saad, 2026). As such, it may be useful if we – do an audit of our current (or future) jobs, invest in skills that are structurally hard to automate (bearing in mind that AI is not currently good at tasks which call for emotional or social awareness, or meaningful and nuanced attorney insights, strategy or problem solving), and embrace, learn about and leverage AI for your benefit (Source).
The AI fundamentals mentioned earlier, the data gathering practices of AI companies discussed in the Breakneck Innovation & the Law blog, and considering the negative impact deepfakes and hallucinations have in law and legal service delivery, must always remain central in our minds (see OCCBA Jul – Dec 2025 Journal, Vol 7. No 2. “Hath not Artificial Intelligence flaws?” by J. Grant & B. Barrow). In this way, we would never overlook or underestimate how critical it is for us to, among other things–understand how AI works, use AI with care (if permitted in our jurisdiction, law school, university, firm or organization), maintain the human-in-the-loop; or for our industry–lawyer-in-the-loop to verify and fact-check outputs, refrain from using AI to verify AI, and follow relevant professional standards, laws, practice/guidance notes and court protocols (Source).
Closing thoughts
“The legal professional of the future must be as fluent in the language of algorithms as in the language of precedent.” (J. Saad, 2026). We all have an important part to play in reimagining and transforming the legal profession and the law, to meet the demands and developments of the 4-IR and 5-IR, not only for ourselves but also for the benefit, well-being, and safeguarding of the public. Drawing from the United States arbitration context, the comments of Bridget Mary McCormack, AAA-ICDR President & CEO, are instructive and fitting to conclude, “Now is the time to embrace AI to drive positive change through speed, efficiency, and accuracy…For nearly 100 years, people have trusted us to resolve disputes fairly, and today we carry that trust forward by transforming arbitration to meet the demands of a digital-first world.”
Bellina Barrow is the Principal Attorney/Founder of Tenoreque Legal, a virtual legal practice based in Trinidad & Tobago since 2021. A former legal tutor and a dedicated mentor, Bellina is committed to fostering and contributing to thought leadership in law, fintech, tech, digital assets and sports by deconstructing and demystifying these areas via practical and digestible storytelling and writing. Outside of her technical and academic writing, Bellina is also a co-author of the books Soul of An Athlete (2023) and Women in Law: Discovering the True Meaning of Success (2022).
