Modern Legal Workflows – How Human Should They Be? A Discussion With 3 Law Firms  

AI is entering legal workflows with a sense of inevitability. To borrow from Hemingway, imagine a conversation in five to ten years between two Managing Partners:  

“How did your firm’s legal workflows get so completely taken over by AI?”  
“Two ways,” the other replies. “Gradually, then suddenly.”  

This article is not about whether that outcome is right or wrong or whether AI is good or bad. AI is, fundamentally, a tool — like many others that have come before it. However, this particular tool can increasingly run business processes autonomously, including legal workflows. As such, it carries significant transformational potential and risk.  

Assuming the trajectory proves true, the question becomes: How do we design the human into modern legal workflows? How human should they be?  

Recently, the authors of this article, three knowledge and innovation professionals working in law firms and one co-founder of a company serving the legal-tech industry, participated in a panel discussion on AI Overload, a growing phenomenon brought on by the flood of GenAI tools entering the legal sector.  It quickly became apparent that we were only scratching the surface of a far more fundamental phenomenon.  

Across our three firms, a few clear themes emerged:  

1. Adopting AI tools has already become business as usual in many firms.  
2. AI is driving demand for new forms of cross-functional collaboration and redefining roles, fueling momentum for innovation. 
3. The pace of adoption is accelerating, driven by both top-down interest and bottom-up experimentation.  

In many ways, new norms have already been set irreversibly. While not every AI tool will withstand the test of time, the overall impact of disruptive AI is undeniable. It is reshaping legal workflows and transforming firm operations in ways more profound than even the transition to the cloud.  

Sarah Hirebet points out that a new challenge when investing, as Stradley Ronon has done in several preferred GenAI tools, is to control the noise and clearly articulate and communicate across the firm where and how these new capabilities can realistically support legal professionals. In particular, the communication between the practice groups and the knowledge team is key: “Our management committee is doing a fantastic job with leadership here by highlighting the expertise of the KM team. We honor that collaborative approach by pursuing constant dialogue with the practice groups so that they feel heard about what they think is important.”   

This strategy avoids the risk of investing in capabilities that end-users are unaware of by front-loading change management efforts. It is also crucial to prevent the risk of application sprawl because lawyers have transparency in how their requirements are recorded and considered in the decision-making process.    

Part of making these efforts successful is offering real value to the lawyers who invest their time in the piloting and decision-making process. One way Stradley did this was through a significant investment in carefully designed, practical training. ”This is why Stradley has sought out partnerships with legal tech vendors, which have included co-creating the pioneering program Stradley Labs Legal GenAI Drivers Certification, which offers hands-on practice, hackathons, intensive support with ethics requirements and client communications, as well as 13 hours of CLE credits.” Hirebet notes that Stradley finds vendor relationships bring far more value when they are willing to go beyond an exclusive focus on their platform and truly invest in helping lawyers build the core skills they need to embrace the transformative potential of GenAI thoughtfully.  

It does not take a rocket scientist to understand why many firms face a “do or die” moment — or at least, a seismic shift driven by a new technological paradigm.  

Yet, as stewards of our firms’ intellectual property and data, not to mention the technology itself, we must ask ourselves: What kind of firm do we want to become? Should we be able to deliver legal work end-to-end with AI in just a few years?  

Are we prepared, ready, and willing to let human involvement decrease within legal workflows?  

Considering the five-to-ten-year horizon belongs firmly in today’s strategic roadmap. Strategic direction must shape how we evaluate AI tools, vendors, and their product roadmaps now, not later.  

Sarah Pullin explains: “Our decisions regarding AI at Baker McKenzie are grounded in a firmwide vision that integrates our client needs and our content, data, and expertise strategies. This vision is operationalized through various initiatives, including collaborating with trusted third parties. We continuously assess shifts in the views of our clients and the legal and business landscape, asking a fundamental question: How will this drive measurable value? That lens informs our approach to content and data quality, governance, and risk transparency, ensuring that our data and business systems are optimized for compliance and efficiency and primed for AI enablement. We define success through tangible outcomes and ultimately our ability to deliver high-quality, insight-driven services to our clients.”  

Clearly, all three firms represented by the co-authors of this article employ well-defined frameworks and governance models supported by mature, forward-looking strategies that allow for rapid but responsible technological change. This structured, deliberate approach ensures they can adopt technologies that deliver real, tangible value to legal workflows.  

At the same time, the human dimension remains central. Cross-firm communication, interdisciplinary task forces, and dedicated committees are vital to ensure that issues like ethics, sustainability, strategic alignment, and competitiveness are appropriately weighed.  

At K&L Gates, Carolyn Austin has led several initiatives to establish strong collaborative networks across the firm. From formal committees and small working groups — focusing on specific GenAI use cases, reviewing challenges and feedback — to PUG (Power User Group) teams where the next generation of lawyers are encouraged to engage. Carolyn says, “Because of the great interest in GenAI right now, we have a rich opportunity to engage our community of legal professionals, including senior partners, new associates, and allied professionals, in practice innovation.  Involving task forces with intentionally diverse roles, multiple skill sets, and complementary expertise tends to surface fascinating insights. We’re interested in seeing if new roles develop out of this creative collaboration. As a global firm, getting a broad, international view from across the firm is important for us, and we believe this will help us keep our AI initiatives grounded, human-centered, and responsive to our clients.”   

So, why do we, three law firms and a vendor, treat AI as something more than just another technology tool? Because if we do not, we risk reaching a point, gradually, then suddenly, where our workflows have transformed beyond recognition and possibly beyond our control. Think of electric vehicles that are diagnosed and updated remotely and require specialist equipment to be fixed. No one knows what is happening under the hood, and even the traditional mechanic’s role has become negligible. Our goal should be to transform legal workflows deliberately and consciously — to retain the human element where it matters most, to stay competitive, and to remain in control.  

To help explore what this balance might look like, it is helpful to consider two hypothetical extremes: Firm X and Firm Y.  

Type X Firms  

These firms are all in when it comes to AI. They strive to deliver high-quality work with maximum efficiency, using AI to generate work products autonomously. Their workflows are powered by specialized legal AI models, fine-tuned for specific areas of law or work types, and capable of operating within standard OCGs agreed upon with clients. Human involvement is minimal, typically limited to final approvals for compliance purposes. In effect, the legal workflows of Type X firms are not human.  

Type Y Firms  

On the other hand, Type Y firms compete based on human expertise. Their work products are crafted by experienced legal professionals, supported by deep in-house knowledge repositories, best practices, and top-tier templates and precedents. These firms embrace technology for general productivity and collaboration — summarising meetings, managing actions, and translating in real time — but avoid AI-generated legal outputs. Type Y firms proudly assert that their legal work is entirely human-made, with partners standing fully behind the results. Their workflows are, in effect, human through and through.  

The reality? Neither Type X nor Type Y is likely to thrive long-term.  

Type X firms may achieve efficiency but will drift toward commoditization. Drawing from the same knowledge pools and offering similar outputs, they risk falling into price-based competition that drives margins downward.  

Type Y firms, meanwhile, may face recruitment challenges. The next generation of attorneys may be unwilling to work in low-automation environments, and clients may question the value of traditional billing models that ignore technological progress.  

Instead, we believe a third model is more sustainable: the Type A Firm.  

Type A Firms  

These firms are intentionally designed to balance human expertise with technological advantage. They integrate AI to handle low-value, repetitive tasks, reduce friction in daily work, and augment professionals on complex matters. They recognize that the power of a legal expert lies in their ability to observe, learn, and solve complex problems creatively, with the support of cutting-edge tools and technology.  

Type A firms constantly evolve their strategy, aiming to stay ahead of the curve by responsibly adapting to new technologies while simultaneously attracting and retaining top talent. They design their workflows with human agency at the core — confident that no matter how advanced today’s AI becomes, tomorrow’s next technology breakthrough could render it obsolete.  

So, how do you act today to ensure that you design yourself, the human, into strategically aligned GenAI-augmented legal workflows?   

First, we believe there are strategies that firms can employ now to balance the human vs AI equation. Start by assessing your firm’s long-term AI vision and strategy. As per above, it will depend on the type of firm you are today and wish to be tomorrow.   

This will help us consider a future with AI, where we are unlikely to be the most informed or fastest-processing party. Instead, we must stay in control by leveraging our secret sauce, which includes human qualities such as the ability to forge bonds and relationships with our clients, being empathetic, and, crucially, our ability to be critical thinkers.   

Second, start taking control today. Direct GenAI initiatives towards the places they add the most value and tightly control initiatives where AI tools might impact your firm’s crown jewels. Here are three practical suggestions to get started.  

1. Create systems that give legal professionals and AI instant access to knowledge, i.e., instant access to authoritative information in the proper context. This win-win should be a hygiene factor for modern legal workflows, irrespective of your long-term strategy. 
  
2. Invest in training that ensures that legal teams both have a deep academic understanding of GenAI tools and the way they leverage statistical models to generate answers that are not guaranteed to be accurate, only statistically probable, and also the practical skills to effectively audit and add the necessary level of human judgment to the generated output. This is generally best accomplished by prioritizing tasks that are readily feasible for GenAI today and have high-value outcomes. These will typically be too complex to automate, yet simple, but time-consuming for humans. E.g., summarizing differences in regulatory requirements across two or three jurisdictions.
  
3. Identify workflows or work types that are unique or high value to the firm, especially those where you leverage significant in-house IP and expertise. Ringfence these with strong AI governance. Support the legal professionals in these workflows or work types with world-class knowledge and advanced tech, but tightly control the application of AI and the human audit process to produce high-quality work products.  

The insights shared by the co-authors of this article highlight the strategic value of taking a thoughtfully designed approach to best leverage the power of AI technologies towards effective, transformative initiatives. As we explore the inevitable integration of AI within legal workflows, protecting firms’ unique knowledge and expertise is essential. By focusing on areas where in-house expertise, experience, and knowledge excel and applying AI thoughtfully, we can create workflows without compromising the human element and the relationships that clients value.   

This balanced approach allows us to adapt and be resilient in changing times.  

This article was originally published in the 2025 Summer issue of ILTA’s Peer to Peer magazine (https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/1538025-summer25/21?). 

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Carolyn Austin is the Director of Practice Innovation at K&L Gates, LLP, in Australia. Carolyn leads a team of legal practitioners and specialist technicians focused on creating innovative approaches to service delivery through sustainable knowledge management, process improvement, and digital adoption.

Sarah Hirebet is the Director of Knowledge Management at Stradley Ronon Stevens & Young, LLP. Sarah empowers innovation by leveraging what people know, amplifying this know-how with technology, and designing processes that are more efficient, more accurate, and more joyful. 

Gabriel Karawani is a Co-Founder of ClearPeople. As the driving force behind Atlas, Gabriel plays a pivotal role in bringing one of the most advanced knowledge-centric platforms for Microsoft 365 to market, underscoring its critical role in the business success of many organizations.  

Sarah Pullin is the Global Director of Knowledge at Baker McKenzie. Sarah leads a function of knowledge lawyers, KM managers, information and research teams, global KM experts, four offshore teams, and KM systems and tools in support of the firm’s clients and business strategy.