By Giles Thompson.
There’s no shortage of noise about AI in the legal world right now. Some of it is energising, some unsettling, and a lot, frankly, is overblown. Every week I speak to lawyers caught between excitement and anxiety. And I get it.
But the more conversations I have, the more convinced I am that we’re missing the real story. This isn’t about AI replacing lawyers. It’s about how AI is quietly, steadily reshaping the way we work.
Stop debating replacement
At the LogicallyDrafted Conference in New York this past October, we asked attendees: “GenAI vs Automation - partnership or rivalry?” Nearly nine in ten chose partnership. That response signals a real shift. The conversation has matured.
We’re no longer asking whether AI will replace lawyers. We’re asking how it can strengthen the work lawyers already do. It’s the same pattern you see in other industries: when Toyota introduced robotics, the gains didn’t come from discarding existing processes, they came from building on top of them. Robotics amplified disciplined, high-quality workflows. Legal drafting is no different.
The Real Shift
Much of the hype around GenAI focuses on drafting, but when it comes to legal work, AI isn’t very good at it. It hallucinates, improvises, and often creates more work than it saves.
The bottleneck simply shifts from drafting to checking. If AI drafts everything, lawyers end up reviewing everything, and productivity stalls.
Where GenAI truly adds value is in making automation smarter and easier. It can identify template variables, merge near-duplicate versions, and pre-populate questionnaires from related documents, all tasks that once took days. It can flag anomalies across hundreds of contracts and catch issues even experienced lawyers might miss.
That’s where the shift happens: automation becomes quicker and more efficient. Even documents that once felt too bespoke can now be automated, freeing lawyers from repetitive work and letting them focus on the areas where they add real value.
Avvoka’s Approach: Making Automation Smarter with AI
Document automation remains the backbone of legal drafting, there’s no getting around it. Rule-based systems deliver consistency and control: the same inputs always produce the same outputs. That reliability isn’t optional: it’s the foundation GenAI depends on. AI doesn’t replace structure; it amplifies it.
At Avvoka, that’s exactly how we apply AI. We enhance both micro and macro processes across the platform. Many of the features we’ve launched over the past year, from Smart Automation to Draft Assist, are built on this principle. AI amplifies automation; automation provides the discipline that keeps AI accurate, reliable, and safe. Together, they move legal teams forward.
Augmenting Lawyers, Not Replacing Them
This is just the beginning. I see a future where drafting platforms aren’t just automation tools, they become intelligent ecosystems that understand how lawyers actually work.
Right now, so much institutional knowledge is locked away in documents and markups. GenAI can surface it: showing how clauses evolve, which fallbacks succeed, and what’s trending as market standard. Platforms can learn from real transactions and firm-approved precedents and understand what has worked and what hasn’t. GenAI can provide clause guidance and help create dynamic playbooks that improve over time.
It’s not just about drafting faster today: it’s about building a living reservoir of expertise lawyers can draw on tomorrow.
AI won’t take your job, but lawyers who use AI might
AI isn’t here to take your job, but lawyers who embrace it will have a clear advantage.
AI doesn’t replace judgment; it enhances it. AI empowers lawyers to make smarter, faster, and more strategic decisions by removing repetitive work, turning contracts into a rich source of data, and surfacing actionable insights.
Those who use it effectively will be the ones shaping the future of legal work.
