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As AI takes on legal work, what happens to the prestige of being a lawyer?
Artificial intelligence is transforming the profession, but it won’t diminish it.
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Even as AI takes over many tasks, the core purpose of legal work has not changed, says the writer.
ST PHOTO: KELVIN CHNG
Ben Chester Cheong
When I studied law, legal education still reflected an earlier model of expertise. Undergraduate examinations were often closed book. Students spent long hours memorising cases and statutes because access to knowledge itself formed part of professional value.
In practice, that translated into labour-intensive processes. As a trainee in 2015, I spent weeks reviewing documents in physical data rooms during due diligence exercises – work that was both a training ground and an economic foundation of legal services.
