How is AI changing the legal profession?

Sean Harrington

Director of the AI and Legal Technology Studio

A 2025 vLex Fastcase 50 honoree and recipient of the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) Exemplary Service Award, Sean Harrington is a nationally recognized leader in the integration of artificial intelligence and legal practice.

Two years ago, lawyers asked whether AI would affect their work. That question is settled. AI tools now handle tasks that used to consume hours of associate time: case research, contract review, initial document drafts. The conversation has moved to implementation, and law schools need to keep pace.

At ASU Law, we've spent the last several years building that response. The results look different from what most people expect.

What does AI change about legal work?

AI compresses the time between a legal question and a useful first answer. A research memo that took a junior associate half a day can be drafted in minutes. Contract review that required teams now starts with a single attorney and an AI tool.

But compression creates its own problems. Faster output means more output to verify. A lawyer using AI for research still needs to:

• Confirm every citation
• Check every statutory reference
• Apply independent legal judgment

The profession's core obligation, the duty of competence, now includes understanding how these tools work and where they fail.

Clients have noticed the speed. They expect it. Firms that can't deliver efficient, technology-informed legal services will lose work to firms that can. Solo practitioners and small firms have a particular opening here: AI tools give a two-person office capacity that previously required a mid-size team.

What skills do future lawyers need?

Law students graduating in 2026 and beyond will enter firms, agencies and legal aid organizations where AI tools are already embedded in daily workflows. They need to know how to use those tools, but technical fluency alone isn't sufficient.

The harder skill is verification. AI models produce confident, well-formatted text whether or not the underlying analysis is correct. Lawyers who treat AI output as a starting point, and who know how to stress-test it, will outperform those who treat it as a finished product. The attorneys who struggled with early AI adoption were the ones who trusted the output without checking it, with consequences ranging from embarrassment to sanctions.

Ethical judgment matters too. When a lawyer uses AI to draft a brief, who bears responsibility for the content? The answer is clear (the lawyer does), but the practical implications are still developing. Students need to grapple with questions about disclosure, data privacy and the boundaries of appropriate use before they encounter them in practice.

How are law schools adapting to AI and legal technology?

Most law schools have acknowledged AI. Fewer have built structured programs around it.

At ASU Law, AI runs through the curriculum rather than sitting in a single elective. Students in the AI and Legal Tech Studio, a dedicated applied learning space within the college, work with the same tools they'll encounter in practice. In the Studio, students:

• Build applications using legal technology
• Partner with courts and legal aid organizations
• Work on access-to-justice initiatives
• Develop the judgment to know when AI helps and when it misleads

The Studio's partnerships with Maricopa County courts and public-interest legal organizations give students direct exposure to how AI can expand legal access for people who can't afford attorneys. Students work on real problems for real clients, building tools that address gaps in the justice system rather than studying those gaps from a distance.

That applied focus reflects a broader principle: law students learn technology by using it on problems that matter, not by reading about it in a textbook.

Why does this matter for prospective law students?

The legal profession students enter in 2027 or 2028 will look different from the one their professors entered. AI won't replace lawyers, but it will reshape which lawyers succeed and how they deliver value. Students who graduate from programs that treat AI as a core competency, not an afterthought, will have a material advantage.

ASU Law is building that kind of program. The combination of applied learning, court and community partnerships, and curriculum-wide AI integration gives students tools and judgment that most law schools aren't yet offering.