Derek Muller (Notre Dame), AI and the Law Firm Summer Associate: A Tale of Two Futures:

In May 2025, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, suggested that artificial intelligence could wipe out half of all entry level white-collar jobs—including in law—in the next 1 to 5 years. Every few months, this claim finds new virality on social media (always moving the 1-to-5-year window with it).

Contrast that with the arms race for entry-level legal talent happening at law firms [Where Can 1Ls Get Five-Figure Signing Bonuses?; Public Interest Stipends Open Latest Front in Law Firms’ Competition for Summer Associates]. …. This behavior is not the behavior of an industry that believes these positions are going to be replaced, on the whole, with AI.

To be clear, there are many different types of entry-level jobs. But why is it that AI seems not to be quite as disruptive as the AI proponents predicted? …

AI is increasingly being used in law—even in large law firms!—but perhaps more modestly. If it’s offering suggested revisions or edits to drafts, or it’s helping do the more mundane first-drafts of emails or letters, or if it’s doing the more sophisticated discovery work that “predictive coding” was doing 20 years ago, then it’s certainly being used. And maybe it’s replacing more paralegal work than entry-level work. …

[F]or the moment—and perhaps for the next few years—law students will continue to find a robust market for entry-level hiring. Firms are investing extraordinary sums of money for human beings not to work, just to ensure they can come to their firm in 30 months. When those figures start to change, we’ll know that firms have come to rely more on AI than entry-level white-collar employees. Until then, it’s (mostly) business as usual, with a wary eye on future trends.

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