3 Pillars of the Future of Legal Practice. Through the Eyes of Young Lawyers

Winning Essays by Young Lawyers from the FutureLaw Essay Competition 2026

We discuss the future of the legal profession more intensely today than ever before. Artificial intelligence has become a topic of conferences, expert articles, and daily discussions in law firms. We are solving how the way legal services are provided will change, whether it can replace some parts of a lawyer’s work, and what new rules its use will require.

Naturally, those with years of experience are the ones entering these discussions. Lawyers, firm partners, judges, and academics. People whose long-term practice gives them the ability to view changes with distance, critically, and in broader contexts. Their perspective is undoubtedly important. But when debating the future of the legal profession, there is another perspective that we should not overlook—the perspective of those who will not just analyze this future, but who will, above all, live it.

The perspective of young lawyers is different in many ways. Not because they are less cautious or unaware of the risks associated with using artificial intelligence. Rather, it is because their starting point is completely different. While many law firms today dedicate significant time and energy to the question of how to implement AI into their operations, for the generation of incoming lawyers, using it is a natural part of the job. They do not perceive it as a revolution that will come one day. It has already arrived.

Perhaps that is why the question that interests them the most is not the one that dominates many expert debates—whether lawyers will use AI. For them, the answer is clear. They will. Much more interesting questions begin only after that. How will the value of a lawyer change in a world where anyone can generate an answer? How will a young lawyer learn the craft when technology takes over a large part of the tasks that entire generations learned from? And what will truly remain the human core of the legal profession?

These are the questions that opened the essays submitted to the FutureLaw Essay Competition 2026. It was not about the fear that artificial intelligence will replace lawyers. It was rather a reflection on how AI forces us to redefine what it means to be a good lawyer. Three themes emerged from the young authors’ work that could be the fundamental pillars of the future legal practice.

1. From the lawyer who searches for information to the lawyer who creates value

Legal education and the start of a career were built for decades on a model that had a clear logic. A young lawyer started from the basics—researching case law, preparing reserches, analyzing documents, and creating first drafts of contracts or submissions. It was often work that was time-consuming and repetitive, but at the same time had a significance that was not immediately visible.

It was during these hours that not only documents were created. Legal judgment was created. A young lawyer did not just learn where to find the answer. They learned to understand why a certain answer was correct. They gradually gained an instinct for argumentation, the ability to distinguish the essential from the non-essential, and the experience that a well-formulated text does not necessarily mean a good legal conclusion.

The arrival of artificial intelligence fundamentally disrupts this model. If AI can prepare a research, summarize a decision, or create a first draft of a document in a few seconds, the question naturally arises whether it makes sense for a human to continue performing the same work. The answer probably sounds no. Technological progress should not be about maintaining inefficient processes just because we are used to them.

However, an even more important question arises: if we eliminate the process by which lawyers learned to reflect, what do we replace it with?

The future of the lawyer will therefore not lie in competing with AI in the speed of information processing. Man will not win this competition. The value of the lawyer will shift elsewhere—to the ability to interpret information, place it in context, and decide what truly makes sense in a specific situation.

2. The greatest skill will not be using AI, but knowing how to doubt it

In the discussion about the future of lawyers, it is often repeated that the new generation will need technological skills. This is true, but perhaps we overestimate the difficulty of this part. Young lawyers will probably not have trouble learning to work with new tools. For many of them, working with AI will be as natural as working with a legal database today.

The real challenge will not be getting an answer. The real challenge will be knowing whether that answer is correct.

Artificial intelligence does not only bring the risk of errors. Lawyers have always made mistakes. What is new is that the mistake can be hidden in a text that appears very convincing. AI can create an answer with the correct structure, professional language, and self-assured conclusion. This is precisely why the ability of critical thinking will be even more important than before.

A future lawyer cannot only be a person who knows how to correctly prompt artificial intelligence. They must be a person who can deconstruct its results. Verify the sources, understand the argumentation, find the weak point, and decide whether they can stand by a given conclusion.

Because the responsibility for the legal judgment will not rest with the tool. It will rest with the human who decides to use this tool.

3. The future will not be a generational struggle, but an exchange of skills

One of the most interesting changes that AI brings is the change in the traditional dynamic between experienced and young lawyers. Law has always been a profession where knowledge was passed down from top to bottom. The senior taught the junior, the partner taught the associate, and experience was naturally linked to years of practice.

However, technology brings a new element to this relationship. Young lawyers often enter firms with a more natural relationship with AI tools, a greater willingness to experiment, and the ability to quickly change established procedures. However, this does not mean that experience loses its value. On the contrary.

AI can help create text, but it does not understand the client. It cannot sense the business context, the strategic risk, or that the legally correct solution is not always the best solution. This is a capacity that develops over years of practice.

The future will therefore probably not be about one generation replacing another. It will be about the possibility of a truly mutual learning. The younger ones will bring a new way of working with technologies; the more experienced ones will bring the judgment that gives these possibilities the right direction.

What if AI does not take away the value of lawyers, but helps them find it again?

A large part of the discussion about artificial intelligence begins with the worry of what it will take away from us. And some changes will undoubtedly be challenging. AI will change the economy of legal services, the method of education, and client expectations.

However, it may also show us which parts of legal work were truly valuable and which parts we mistakenly thought were valuable.

If the value of a lawyer was based only on having access to information, knowing how to find and process it faster than the client, then this value was always vulnerable. However, the true essence of the legal profession never lay only in information.

It lay in the ability to reflect.

The young lawyers, with their essays, did not present a picture of a future where technology displaces man. They presented a picture of a future where the human element will be even more important—we just have to look for it elsewhere.

Not in the volume of text created. Not in the hours spent researching. Not in mechanical work.

But in judgment, responsibility, and the ability to understand the problem beyond the data.

Perhaps that is where a new chapter of the legal craft begins.