THE RISE OF AI SHOULD HAVE YOU READING MORE, NOT LESS

Following up on our last post, the availability of AI tools requires professionals to read and study more, not less.

The AI tool is your eager, energetic intern allowing you to cover more ground faster at lower costs - assuming you’re staying on top of quality control.

You need to be able to distinguish between good inputs and bad inputs. With outputs, besides checking the sources, you need to be able at least to see where the output does not reasonably follow/is too ridiculous to be true.

How can you do that if you’re not training your own processor (brain) and improving your human intelligence?

The rise of AI in the world and in my day-to-day practice has me reading MORE - more studies and reports, more articles, more books.

Listening to MORE podcasts and webinars

Constantly thinking about and discussing and craving MORE data

Many (not all) of us who become lawyers — and not the hard finance or science professionals we have as clients — do so in part because we have strong language and reasoning skills, but relatively weaker quantitative skills. Despite that, quantitative skills and data literacy have and always will be necessary parts of a lawyer’s toolbox.

Knowing the law is not enough. I’d argue it is also our job to stay apprised of data on relevant industries and the capital markets in general, and deal terms in particular. Failing to do so makes it nearly impossible for corporate transactional attorneys to competently represent their clients.

This principle proves even more true as AI permeates our clients’ industries and our own.

Later, I’ll talk more about how AI can focus and support your self study, but the bottom line for now? Read a book. Review financials. Attend a webinar on market data. Otherwise, it might not be AI taking your job, it’ll be the attorney who uses AI even as they continue feeding data into their human intelligence.

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