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TALK 07

 

Training junior lawyers in the age of AI

 

Junior lawyers learned their craft from first drafts and document review. AI now does much of that work. Something has to take its place.

 

WHAT THE AUDIENCE LEAVES WITH

 

01A way to divide junior work between AI, hands-on training and supervised review

 

02How to review a draft you did not write, with a short checklist

 

03A supervision routine that builds judgement deliberately, and what it costs

 

Lawyers have traditionally learned the job by doing the work nobody else wanted, such as first drafts, document review and the tenth version of a disclosure letter. It was dull, and it was how judgement was built. Read enough leases and you begin to notice the clause that will cause trouble before anyone points it out. AI now does much of that work in minutes, and clients are less willing to pay for it to be done slowly.

 

The easy responses are to hire fewer juniors, or to keep them on the old tasks by hand for the sake of tradition. Neither holds up. The first leaves a profession short of senior lawyers in fifteen years' time. The second trains people for work that no longer exists and asks clients to fund it.

 

This talk sets out a more practical approach. It divides junior work into three kinds. There is work AI produces and a lawyer checks, work juniors still do by hand because the doing is the lesson, and work done with AI and then explained back to a supervisor. It covers how to review a draft you did not write, what a supervision routine looks like in practice, and how much time it takes.

 

Dr Jackie Nagtegaal is a lawyer and the founder of a regulated law firm built around these tools, where every piece of AI-assisted work is reviewed by a solicitor before it reaches a client.

 

FORMATS

 

Keynote, 30 to 45 minutes
Workshop for supervisors or trainee cohorts, 90 minutes
Panel or fireside conversation

 

SUITS

 

Law firms, in-house legal teams, training principals and supervisors, legal educators

 

SHAPED TO THE EVENT

 

Length, format and emphasis are agreed with each organiser.

ENQUIRIES

 

Bring this talk to your event

 

Every talk is shaped to the room and the event. Tell me about yours and I will come back to you with how this one could work.

 

MORE TALKS

 

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Most businesses already use AI in more places than the board knows, and the rules around it are changing. How to govern it well, and who answers when it goes wrong.

I speak on other subjects and prepare talks to fit the event, its audience and its theme. Tell me what you are planning.

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