Over the last year or so, I’ve seen a new pattern: clients sending me agreements they drafted with AI and asking, “Can you just take a quick look?” The answer is usually: yes, but this is not a quick look.
The problem with many AI-generated legal documents is not that they look bad. They often look great. Clean formatting. Confident language. Familiar legal-sounding phrases.
The problem is that they are often missing the stuff that actually matters. The wrong provision. The missing carveout. The undefined term. The remedy that doesn’t work. The risk allocation no one thought about. The issue that only becomes obvious when the deal goes sideways.
That’s where lawyers still matter. A lawyer knows what to ask. What to look for. What’s market. What’s dangerous. What’s missing. And what the client doesn’t even know to worry about.
AI is a powerful tool. I use it. It has made me a better lawyer. But AI in the hands of a non-lawyer drafting legal documents is like a scalpel in the hands of someone who watched a few surgery videos. It may look precise. That doesn’t mean you want to be the patient.
My prediction: AI will not reduce legal disputes in the near term. It will create a new wave of them.
