Commentary: AI should spur lawyers to rethink their value to clients
Why engage and pay a lawyer if a chatbot can do the same work in seconds and for a fraction of the cost? Lawyer Mark Yeo weighs in.
SINGAPORE: The rise of generative artificial intelligence has sparked much soul-searching within the legal profession.
In his speech at the opening of the legal year, Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon observed that AI would “upend the practice of law and the way we train and develop lawyers”.
Junior lawyers and fresh grads are concerned about what AI would mean for their job prospects. Lawyer attrition is still an issue in Singapore - a recent survey found that one in three new lawyers see themselves leaving the profession within three years.
Such job anxiety will only increase as AI tools grow in scale and ability. In February, Anthropic, the company behind the popular chatbot Claude, released a plug-in that automates key tasks frequently undertaken by in-house legal departments including contract reviews, compliance checks and writing legal briefings.
This triggered a US$830 billion global selloff in software and services stocks over a six-day period, signalling Claude Legal’s immediate impact.
Claude Legal is but one of the growing number of AI legal tools aimed at doing much of a lawyer’s work. It is no surprise that clients are now using AI not only to instruct their lawyers, but in some cases replace them entirely. Why engage and pay a lawyer if a chatbot can do the same work in a matter of seconds for a fraction of the cost?
THE RISKS OF SEEKING LEGAL ADVICE FROM A CHATBOT
While AI providers have improved the reliability of their legal tools, the risk of hallucination is inherent in Large Language Models (LLM) and cannot be fully eliminated. The only way to verify those cases is to find, read and analyse them, something that lawyers are better placed to do than the lay person.
In Sep 2025, a family court magistrate found that a man who was seeking a personal protection order against his wife had cited 14 fictitious cases in his legal submissions. Upon query from the judge, the man admitted that he had found those cases through ChatGPT.
Lawyers aren’t spared from this issue either. Last year, two Singapore lawyers were ordered to pay S$5,000 each in personal costs for citing two fictitious cases in closing submissions for a civil case. With 92 per cent of surveyed new lawyers using AI in their work, hallucinations are a pitfall they must beware of.
Lawyers also provide clients a safeguard that AI does not: confidentiality. Earlier this year, a New York federal judge ruled that the former CEO of a bankrupt financial services company could not shield his AI chats from prosecutors in a securities fraud case.
Communications with a lawyer and documents prepared by them are protected by privilege, save in specific situations. Uploading such information onto a chatbot might inadvertently waive the privileged status of that information.
While this issue has not yet been considered by the Singapore courts, clients should be judicious in what information they disclose to the chatbots, even if the AI provider warrants not to train their models on its users’ input. This reduces the risks that the information provided would inadvertently lose its confidentiality.
As the saying goes: “Dance like no one is watching, email like it will one day be read in court”. The same applies to AI chatbots.
HUMAN IN THE LOOP - A CASE FOR THE LAWYER’S EXISTENCE
Ultimately, what distinguishes a human lawyer from an AI chatbot is the humanness of the lawyer. Lawyering, especially in litigating disputes, relies heavily on intuition, real-time judgment calls, and persuasiveness in oral advocacy - traits that are distinctly human.
A lawyer can also provide input and insight beyond a client’s instructions. A skilled lawyer can, simply by asking the right questions, sense when a client is not being fully candid with them, and tease out a client’s underlying motivations and real interests.
As observed by Attorney-General Lucien Wong in his opening of the legal year speech, “AI may be able to answer your questions, but it cannot tell you when you are asking the wrong question”.
While a chatbot would always be eager to assist you, it can only ever operate as a tool, not a trusted adviser.
WORKING WITH GEN AI CHATBOTS
This is not to say that clients and lawyers should carry on as if AI never existed. With AI tools proliferating, it is too late to put the proverbial genie back into the bottle. How then should clients approach AI?
When the necessary cautions are taken, AI can help clients better instruct their lawyers. Clients can use AI to prepare case summaries for lawyers to review prior to meeting them, or to identify gaps or inconsistencies within their documents for them to consider.
These can be forwarded to the lawyers for their views and advice. Naturally, any output from chatbots must be verified for accuracy.
AI can also help sharpen clients’ thinking on legal issues. Instead of asking chatbots for answers, consider using chatbots to focus and frame the questions that ought to be asked of a lawyer during meetings.
Clients should ultimately see AI tools as what they are - tools. They are unlikely to replace a trusted lawyer entirely, particularly in complex or high-stakes matters.
By using AI as an assistant rather than the adviser, clients can have better informed and more focused conversations with their counsel, who in turn would benefit from having clearer instructions from which they can provide sound and appropriate legal advice.
A NEW APPROACH TO LEGAL PRACTICE
For lawyers, the rise of AI should spur us to rethink what value we provide to clients. Instead of focusing purely on the technical skills such as legal research and drafting, the lawyers of tomorrow will need to excel at soft skills that cannot be replaced by an AI chatbot. Client-management and good interpersonal skills will become a core part of lawyering rather than a good-to-have.
A lawyer’s judgment and intuition will also become more valuable in this new AI landscape. Resource-intensive tasks such as reviewing voluminous bundles of documents or conducting legal research can now be done in a fraction of the time, removing a key advantage that larger law firms had - manpower. Clients will seek in lawyers what AI tools cannot provide.
Legal education and training will also have to evolve with the times. Instead of purely focusing on technical skills, learning practical skills and gaining work experience through internships and mentorships will better prepare junior lawyers for legal practice.
Every major technological shift will force us to rethink the way we work. AI is no exception. It is incumbent on the legal profession to embrace it and utilise it to the best of our abilities while retaining our human touch.
Mark Yeo is a Director at Fortress Law Corporation. He was formerly a Deputy Public Prosecutor with the Attorney-General’s Chambers.
