Is law school getting us ready for legal tech?
Most law students will use AI at work before they learn to use it well. That is not a criticism of students. It is a gap in how we are trained.
Written by Niamh Kearney
Law school teaches you to find the law. You learn the databases. You learn to read a judgment and pull out what matters. You learn to cite properly. Nobody expects you to guess where a case is. You are taught how to look.
Legal tech arrived faster than the teaching did.
Walk into most firms now and the tools are already there. Research platforms with AI built in. Drafting tools. Software that turns a phone call into a file note. Juniors are told to use them to save time. Often nobody shows them how to check what comes out.
That is where it goes wrong.
Courts have already dealt with lawyers who filed submissions citing cases that did not exist. The AI made them up. The lawyer did not check. In Australia, courts including the Supreme Court of Victoria and the Supreme Court of New South Wales have issued guidance on how AI can and cannot be used in court work. The message is simple. The tool is not responsible. You are.
What I have seen in practice
This year I have worked with firms in Melbourne and Kuala Lumpur. The pattern is the same in both cities.
AI is good at a first draft. It is fast at summarising a long judgment. It is useful for spotting a point you might have missed.
It is also confident when it is wrong. It will hand you a neat paragraph with a citation that looks perfect. Sometimes the case is real and says the opposite. Sometimes the case is not real at all.
The junior who catches that is worth a lot. The junior who does not is a risk to the client and the firm.
What should change
We do not need law schools to ban AI. We need them to teach it with the same care they give legal research.
That means three things.
When to use it. AI is fine for a first pass. It is not fine for final advice unless a person has checked every line.
How to check it. Open every case. Read the paragraph it relies on. Confirm the legislation is current. If you cannot verify it, it does not go in.
What never goes in. Client names, confidential facts and privileged material do not belong in a public AI tool. Many students do not know that until someone tells them.
None of this is hard. It just has to be taught on purpose.
Why this matters for young lawyers
The skill that set a junior apart used to be finding the answer. Now it is checking it.
Firms do not need someone who can type a prompt. They need someone who can tell when the output is wrong and explain why.
That is a legal skill. It is the same judgment lawyers have always needed. The tools just make it easier to skip.
So use the tech. Learn it early. Just never let it do the thinking you will be held responsible for.
Niamh Kearney is the founder of Lawgistics Australia. First published on lawgistics.com.au on 28 September 2026. General information, not legal advice.