Artificial intelligence has rapidly transformed the legal profession, compressing hours of research into seconds and surfacing precedent with unprecedented speed. Tasks that once defined junior legal work are now automated, leaving many to question whether human lawyers are becoming secondary to the technology they rely on. Yet for all its power, AI still stops short of the one thing law ultimately demands: judgment.
On a recent episode of X-Raised, host Myles speaks with award-winning barrister, author, and legal-tech leader Laina Chan, Founder and CEO of My AI Law, about where artificial intelligence excels and where it must yield to human experience. Rather than positioning AI as a replacement for lawyers, Chan argues that its true value lies in strengthening the parts of legal practice that machines cannot replicate.
AI has become remarkably efficient at retrieving information. It can identify authorities, compare legislation, and surface patterns across vast datasets in ways no individual ever could. But legal success is not determined by access to information alone. Chan points out that understanding the law in theory differs sharply from persuading a judge in practice. Courtroom outcomes depend on experience, risk assessment, and an instinct for how far an argument can be pushed before it fails.
Judges are not neutral processors of data. They are human decision-makers operating within constraints of precedent, institutional pressure, and practical consequence. Knowing which argument is legally possible and which is strategically viable is a distinction AI does not yet grasp. That distinction is learned through years of advocacy, not extracted from databases.
Courtrooms also operate as live environments where nuance matters. Tone, timing, hesitation, confidence, and credibility shape how evidence is received. AI may one day analyze facial cues or speech patterns, but it does not experience the atmosphere of a courtroom, nor does it understand how fear, authority, or empathy alter testimony in real time.
This is why Chan has designed My AI Law as a support system rather than a decision-maker. The platform accelerates research, clarifies authority, and reduces the margin for technical error, but it stops short of replacing human judgment. AI can present options, flag risks, and organize complexity, yet responsibility remains firmly with the lawyer.
Delegating judgment to machines is not progress, but professional abdication. Legal responsibility cannot be automated without eroding the ethical foundation of the profession itself.
As AI levels access to information, the differentiator among lawyers is no longer who can find the law fastest. It is who can interpret it wisely, frame it persuasively, and apply it with integrity. Persuasion, strategy, and narrative become the true currency of legal excellence in an AI-enabled world.
Rather than diminishing the role of lawyers, AI raises the standard expected of them. With routine work automated, what remains is the art of judgment, the craft of advocacy, and the human accountability that technology cannot assume.
Technology may inform every argument, but judgment remains the final authority.
