Why Critical Thinking, Curiosity, and AI Literacy Will Shape the Next Generation of Legal Practice
As artificial intelligence reshapes professional landscapes across industries, the legal profession is undergoing one of the most significant transformations in its history. The future lawyer is emerging at the intersection of human judgment, technological fluency, and a renewed commitment to first principles. In this evolving environment, success will not belong to those who outsource thinking to machines, but to those who understand how to think alongside them.
In this episode of X-Rays, legal innovator and MiAI Law founder Laina Chan shares a measured and insightful perspective on what tomorrow’s legal professionals must learn, unlearn, and master. Her reflections return repeatedly to a central truth: technology may accelerate legal work, but it cannot replace the disciplined legal mind.
Learning to Question: The Foundation of Legal Thinking
For Laina, the most important skill of the future lawyer is one she began developing at fourteen. She recalls an English teacher at an international school in Malaysia whose unconventional assignments challenged students to rethink assumptions.
One task required rewriting an entire play by reducing dozens of characters to just two. The exercise felt strange at the time, but the lesson endured. It taught students to question everything they read.
That instinct, Laina argues, sits at the core of legal excellence. Not memorization. Not repetition. But interrogation, verification, and independent reasoning.
AI can summarize information faster than any human. It cannot replace the act of thinking.
Students must still read cases, understand judicial reasoning, identify ratios, trace legal principles, and build their own conceptual frameworks. Without this foundation, the profession risks producing technicians rather than lawyers.
AI Literacy as a Professional Necessity
AI literacy is no longer optional. It is becoming a baseline competency for modern legal practice.
Future lawyers must understand how AI systems operate, how to prompt them effectively, and how to recognize both their strengths and their limitations. Even with careful safeguards, hallucinations can still occur.
Laina recounts how MiAI Law once generated responses despite lacking sufficient data, a behavior corrected only through extensive refinement. Language models are designed to respond. Lawyers must understand that tendency to use AI responsibly.
Acceleration Without Abdication
AI can dramatically speed up the early stages of legal research. Everything that follows, however, remains firmly within human responsibility.
Lawyers must verify authorities, assess relevance, shape strategy, and construct persuasive arguments. AI accelerates groundwork, but judgment cannot be automated.
Without deep familiarity with case law and reasoning patterns, lawyers cannot meaningfully evaluate or improve AI-generated outputs.
Reintroducing Humanity to Legal Practice
Ironically, AI may help return law to its most human elements. By reducing time spent on repetitive tasks, junior lawyers can engage earlier with substantive analysis and strategic thinking.
One senior counsel shared that MiAI Law surfaced an argument he had not previously considered. The tool provided insight. The lawyer supplied judgment and creativity.
Technology sparked the idea. Human reasoning completed it.
Designing the Ideal Future Lawyer’s Toolkit
Laina envisions a future toolkit that includes comprehensive research across cases, legislation, and contracts, automated discovery and due diligence systems, drafting tools grounded in first principles, and chronologies built for legal reasoning.
Yet she is clear about the limits. Identifying material facts and determining relevance remain deeply human tasks. These decisions require understanding purpose, context, and consequence.
The Limits of Automation and the Need for Oversight
Despite embracing innovation, Laina remains cautious of superficial automation. She is skeptical of email summarization tools that may cause lawyers to miss critical nuance.
AI can assist, accelerate, and uncover. It cannot decide what matters.
That responsibility remains human.
A Future Defined by Partnership
The lawyer of tomorrow will not be replaced by AI. They will be strengthened by it.
The future toolkit blends judgment, ethics, creativity, and critical thinking with AI’s speed, memory, and structure.
Looking Ahead
As AI becomes more embedded in legal workflows, Laina anticipates a broader range of voices shaping its development. For now, she emphasizes that curiosity, analytical rigor, resilience, and technological fluency will define those who lead the profession forward.
Law is not becoming less human. Technology is making room for lawyers to be more human.
