Overreliance on Legal AI Chatbots and the Erosion of Reasoning Skills
AI’s Role in Law Must Remain Subsidiary Augmenting Lawyer’s Work
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2025-10-15 15:06 UTC
Beyond systemic issues, there is a human cost to misusing AI in law. Many lawyers worry that treating AI as an oracle will erode their own legal reasoning. If an AI can quickly draft a petition or a plaint or summarize a case, will younger lawyers still learn how to do those tasks themselves? Professors caution that legal reasoning is a skill honed by years of learning and struggle through messy and difficult problems; handing that to an AI chatbot “on autopilot mode” may lead to deskilling.