Published on December 7, 2025 4:28 PM GMT

Note: this was from my writing-every-day-in-november sprint, see my blog for disclaimers.

I believe that the legal profession is in a particularly unique place with regards to white-collar job automation due to artificial intelligence. Specifically, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are able to make the coordinated political and legal manoeuvres to ensure that their profession is somewhat protected from AI automation. Some points in favour of this position:

• The process of becoming a lawyer selects for smart people who are good at convincing others towards the lawyers opinion.
• Lawyers know the legal framework very well, and have connections within the legal system.
• Certain lawyers also know the political framework very well, and have connections within the political system.
• (delving a bit more into my opinions here) lawyers seem more likely to be see white-collar job automation coming and take steps to prevent it than many other professions. I would feel much more confident that I could convince a lawyer of the dangers of x-risk than similar attempts to convince a school teacher.
• Lawyers are well-paid and generally well-organised, so are in a good place to work collectively to solve problems faced by the entire profession.

I believe that as widely deployed AI becomes more competent at various tasks involved in white-collar jobs, there’ll be more pressure to enact laws that protect these professions from being completely automated away. The legal profession is in the interesting position of having large portions of the job susceptible to AI automation, while also being very involved at drafting and guiding laws that might prevent their jobs from being completely automated.

Politicians are probably even better placed to enact laws that prevent politicians from being automated, although I don’t believe politicians are as at-risk as lawyers. Lawyers are simultaneously at-risk for automation and very able to prevent their automation.

Whether the lawyers actually take action in this space is tricky to say, because there are so many factors that could prevent this: maybe white-collar automation takes longer than expected, maybe the politicians pass laws without clear involvement from large numbers of lawyers, maybe no laws get passed but the legal profession socially shuns anyone using more than an “acceptable level” of automation.

But if the legal profession were to take moves to prevent the automation of their own jobs, I’d be very surprised if they drafted an act titled something like “THE PROTECT LAWYERS AT ALL COSTS ACT”. I imagine the legal paperwork will protect several professions, with lawyers just one of them, but that lawyers will indeed be protected under this act. This is to say, I believe the legal profession to be fairly savvy, and if they do make moves to protect themselves against AI job automation, I doubt it’ll be obviously self-serving.