Automation threatens the learning curve for junior lawyers
Tasks that young lawyers traditionally cut their teeth on are about to be hugely disrupted by digital automation, and female graduates will suffer the most as a result, new research has found.
The automation of tasks that had previously been done manually, such as document reviews, e-conveyancing and due diligence, will disrupt traditional legal training, “which may impact women’s ability to progress into senior, higher-paying roles,” says the report’s lead author, Meraiah Foley, a senior lecturer in work and organisational studies at the University of Sydney.
Meraiah Foley of the University of Sydney.
“Technology is neutral, but it plays out in gendered ways,” Dr Foley told The Australian Financial Review.
Despite women outnumbering men in the legal profession since 2016, law firms’ top echelons remain predominantly male, and are unlikely to be touched by automation. By contrast, 60 per cent of lawyers under 40 are women, and almost two-thirds of graduate positions at the nation’s top law firms are held by women.
Senior practitioners interviewed for the report said technological disruption would require young lawyers to “identify what their real value-add is” and look towards specialisation earlier in their careers to fend off the risk of automation in a world where the depth of legal knowledge, rather than the breadth, would attract greater value.
“[The kind of lower tier, lower value, generalised legal services, which are the areas where women have historically been over-represented in the legal profession… are the areas that are more likely to be kind of automated out of existence,” Dr Foley said.
Ambitious young lawyers appear to already be reading the tea leaves: law students studying a secondary science,
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