UK top 50 law firm Kennedys has partnered with generative AI startup Spellbook to build a training programme for junior lawyers that helps them to build new tech skills and overcome fears about their ability to thrive in a world where entry-level tasks are increasingly automated.
Led by chief knowledge officer Catherine Goodman, the training programme will use simulated scenarios and AI-assisted drafting exercises to replicate learning opportunities that may start to disappear in the workplace. Participants will receive structured feedback on their work, mirroring the coaching traditionally gained from senior colleagues.
Goodman has been outspoken about the need to rethink junior training: AI is often presented as a disaster for young lawyers, taking away tasks that help them to ‘cut their teeth.’ However, she says AI presents an opportunity and takes away monotonous tasks, if we can just use AI exercises to fill the knowledge gap and accelerate exposure.
Set to launch later this year, the programme will combine Kennedys’ expertise in legal practice and professional development with Spellbook’s legal drafting and analysis technology.
Speaking to Legal IT Insider, Goodman, who is a lawyer and law lecturer, said: “I feel so strongly about supporting our junior lawyers coming up through the ranks when the messaging out there can be quite damaging. They are coming into the legal profession and being told that AI will replace them, and it doesn’t have to be true. It’s such a no-brainer to me that we need to leverage AI to do legal training and create simulated experiences. Those simulated experiences are what we’re working on, and it’s about gathering that intelligence from supervisors, partners, and experienced lawyers to build that into our simulated experiences to support junior lawyers as they learn to be lawyers.”
The project is in its infancy and Goodman is the first to acknowledge that the firm hasn’t “cracked the problem”, but she says: “It’s a massive step in the right direction. I am a bit of an eternal optimist, but I think it’s wonderful that we can leverage AI and it’s twisting the story a bit. Instead of saying ‘AI will take everyone’s jobs and noone can learn any more’ actually AI is a wonderful learning tool.”
Kennedys’ senior partner John Bruce was quoted in a press release announcing the partnership, and he observed that firms have a responsibility to ensure that junior lawyers aren’t left behind. Goodman told us: “There’s a nurturing point here that John is really focused on and speaks very genuinely about.”
Goodman will start the programme with a group of US attorneys and says: “Hopefully once I’ve proved the hypothesis, we’ll scale it to other regions and other groups.”
She adds: “We could probably take any legal task scenario and just ask the question ‘how do you learn to do this if you’re not doing it that way any more.’ So, how are we going to learn tasks differently but make sure we have at least the same, if not better out put and quite frankly, I think it’s probably better. We just need to make sure we are being curious about how we develop new ways of teaching.”
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