Those in the trenches using these tools say AI can't match human judgment, empathy, or nuance
As artificial intelligence adoption accelerates across the legal sector, one question remains: Can AI replace lawyers?
It’s the question legal scholars, law firm leaders, and tech innovators tell Canadian Lawyer they hear most often.
Their answer? Not really.
While AI is becoming a powerful tool in legal practice, experts agree it still lacks the core qualities defining good lawyering – judgment, empathy, creativity, and the ability to navigate human nuance. And they say those are unlikely ever to be fully replicated by machines.
Robert Diab, a professor at the Faculty of Law at Thompson Rivers University, says the idea that AI will revolutionize the legal profession is overstated.
“The argument that AI is going to bring about a massive transformation in the practice of law … I respectfully disagree completely,” Diab says.
He says that while AI may support some tasks, the core of legal work – decision-making, responsibility, and the human touch – remains irreplaceable.
“AI won’t be able to hold the client's hand, negotiate with the other side, use emotional intelligence to read the room, or to read the client and to formulate the right questions… AI is not [capable] of going to court, using emotional intelligence to read what's happening, and making quick decisions about what’s appropriate and what isn't.”
Tali Green, CEO of legal tech platform Goodfact, adds that even the most impressive AI tools remain fundamentally unreliable without human oversight.
“AI still won't tell you when it made a mistake. It won't tell you why it chose this thing over that thing. It won't tell you that it's hallucinating.”
While AI might be able to draft content or retrieve relevant information, it doesn’t understand strategy and certainly can’t read a room, she says.
“If an AI prepares an argument for you, you're still going to need to figure out if it's persuasive or not. You are going to have to make a compelling argument to the court… These are the nuances that I think right now only a human can accomplish,” Green says.
Marlon Hylton, founder of Innov-8 Data Counsel and Innov-8 Legal Inc., echoes that point and says that lawyering is a human-centred profession where soft skills matter just as much as technical prowess.
“Lawyering is about people. It's about strategy. That’s what the real crux of it is. Going through the documents quickly isn't an end in itself.”
For Diab, a former practising lawyer, much of the hype around AI in legal practice stems from a misunderstanding of how lawyers work. AI might be good at finding documents or drafting rough content, but that’s only a small part of the job.
“The vast majority of the time, lawyers are poring over key documents in a case and the main contract. They’re going over the main two or three precedents that apply. They're really carefully wording their factum or written argument… The idea that 80 percent of what we can do can be automated is just gross misunderstanding or mischaracterization of the way most lawyers spend their time,” he says.
All these experts agree that AI has its place as a time-saving tool that can streamline tedious or repetitive work, allowing lawyers to spend more time on more important tasks.
“It will make many things that are tedious and mechanical easier, quicker and more effortless, but it won't replace the core tasks that we carry out that draw on our creativity, our emotional intelligence, the depth of our knowledge in an area of law,” Diab says.
Hylton sees this as an opportunity to accelerate growth for promising junior lawyers.
“AI will free up the time of talented junior associates to get more exposure to the more complex, more meaningful parts of the practice of law. That's going to get them to extraordinary in a much quicker time… They will be coming up with different approaches to a problem, applying human creativity, which is something AI today cannot do.”
Bruce Chapple, managing partner and CEO at McMillan LLP, agrees. Rather than replacing lawyers, he sees AI as a tool that enables them to focus on what really matters – giving advice, building relationships, and exercising judgment.
“AI will never be in the boardroom with people, delivering the arguments, responding to the arguments in real-time… or making difficult judgment calls,” Chapple says.
He adds that AI can improve efficiency by automating the first steps in a process and letting lawyers home in on the parts that require human insight.
“If AI can produce a first draft of an agreement, an associate can go back through it and work on the most important clauses, instead of spending the time on the entire agreement… AI will let us focus on the important parts of the advice we’re giving, to do it with more data, and therefore to give better advice at the end of the day,” he says.
The consensus among legal experts seems clear: While AI can enhance efficiency, it cannot replicate the human elements central to law – such as emotional intelligence, ethical reasoning, and the ability to persuade, empathize, and strategize in the moment.
As Green notes, the human element is irreplaceable, and there are nuances that an algorithm can’t yet grasp.
"AI augments human legal expertise; it doesn't replace it," Hylton says.
“The transformation thesis is overstated,” Diab says.
