Ross Douthat

But it seems like in law, you can tell a pretty straightforward story where law has a kind of system of training and apprenticeship where you have paralegals and you have junior lawyers who do behind-the-scenes

research and development for cases.

And then it has the top tier lawyers who are actually in the courtroom and so on.

And it just seems really easy to imagine a world where all of the apprentice roles go away.

Does that sound right to you?

And you're just left with sort of the jobs that involve talking to clients, talking to juries, talking to judges?

I think it's first important to say this isn't just like the other, you know, this isn't just like previous disruptions.

But I would then go one step further, though, and say, okay, let's say the law adapts successfully.

And it says, all right, from now on, legal apprenticeship involves more time in court, more time with clients.

We're essentially moving you up the ladder of responsibility faster.

There are fewer people employed in the law overall, but...

The profession sort of settles.

Still, the reason law would settle, right, is that you have all of these situations in the law where you are legally required to have people involved, right?

You know, you have to have people.

a human representative in court.

You know, you have to have 12 humans on your jury.

You have to have a human judge.

And you already mentioned the idea that there are various ways in which AI might be, let's say, very helpful at clarifying what kind of decision should be reached.

But that too seems like a scenario where what preserves human agency is law and custom.

Like you could replace the judge with Claude version 17.9, but you choose not to