What skills and crafts can you hone to thrive in the age of GPT, and artificial intelligence in general as a lawyer or knowledge worker?
It is getting increasingly more demanding on law students and lawyers to prepare for the future of law.
Understanding the business of your clients, the needs of your user, and the law is and will remain absolutely essential, but beyond that?
Read on to discover the five key skills – and a GPT prompt to get you started!
What skillsets beyond law do lawyers need in the age of AI?
Here are five key areas that can maximise your impact & empower you on your journey.
#1 Understanding AI & prompting
Key tool: ChatGPT
The field of Generative AI is rapidly growing and it is most likely going to have massive impact on lawyering – so it might make sense to put some effort into learning how it works.
Resources:
- Get started & motivated: 10 Things Lawyers Need to Know about Generative AI
- Basic: Codecademy ChatGPT course and Elements of AI for more broad outlook
- Learn prompting: Brainyacts by Josh Kubicki
- Hardcore / technical: CS50 AI
(I put it first, because it is a great gateway to learn all the other ones, keep on reading to get the prompts for your learning journey below)
#2 Service design
From legal ops to just good old fashioned legal practice, lawyers are providing a range of services. But with AI for everybody, this becomes a little bit trickier.
If your clients would be able to self-service, how would you incentivise them to come to you and pay you to do that work?
The key here is in design (click here to learn more).
Lean into being intentional of how your services feel, look, and work. Best way to learn this is to take inspiration from other service-based industries. How do hotels do it? What about your bank or your gym?
Start with this introduction to service design, especially making a service blueprint can be game-changing for lawyers.
#3 Visualisation
Key tool: Canva (it is super easy to grasp)
Yes, you can generate almost anything with the AI powered tools.
But creating a good visualisation of a legal concept or framework still takes at least some degree of ingenuity (plus a lot of the tools are incredibly bad with generating text).
Additionally, being able to create good visual aids for your work can make your services feel more approachable for your clients, and thus fuelling #2 above.
#4 Algorithmic thinking
Key tool: depends on your needs, start by following this guide
I hear you: why would you learn to code when ChatGPT can generate everything?
Because it is not just about the act of coding, it is a lot more about understanding the building blocks, the logic, and how inputs relate to outputs. And also just to unleash that builder mentality in your brain that makes you see things in a new way.
Plus Damien Riehl says in this great session with Dazza Greenwood that being a really good lawyer and a poor coder is a great predisposition to be good at prompting.
Need more motivation? Here is why lawyers should learn to code and why it can be kind of easy for them.
#5 Project management
Key tool: MS Planner, Asana, Jira, Excel, whatever you have in your organization
There is still some dark magic in the art of getting things done on time, within scope, and without overshooting the budget.
The project managers (especially those who can swim in domain-specific waters), are here to stay. Someone has to organise all the robot lawyers, right?
You can start with this guide and this intense course from Google.
How can you use ChatGPT to help you out?
Have ChatGPT prepare you a study plan with the following prompts:
- Start by priming the GPT to your topic (and learning the basics): What is [SELECT TOPIC]. What are the key skills of a person working in this industry?
- Act as a professional coach for [lawyers]. Prepare me a study plan for up to [HOW MANY] weeks for [SELECT TOPIC], include timeline, main milestones, resources and exercises. Include only freely available resources on the internet and videos [ADJUST FOR HOW YOU LEARN]. I have up to [HOW MUCH TIME] every day.
This approach is inspired by Tina Huang’s video on learning to code with ChatGPT. And yes, I borrowed a technique shared by a data scientist on her YouTube Channel. Multidisciplinary thinking strikes again.
Final Provisions
There is so much discussion on whether lawyers will be replaced with AI. According to some, 44% of the legal work could be automated (source).
My stance on this is that for those who prepare well, the job will be elevated, not eradicated.
The five areas above can serve as a differentiator. But don’t stop there – just keep on exploring, experimenting, and seeking inspiration, within law and beyond.
What do you think? Is there some other industry or area do you like to get inspiration from?
Baru
