At Odds: Owners Want AI Cost Savings, Employees Need Upskilling

If you own a law firm, there’s a lot to like about AI.  It can make you way more efficient, without adding staff.  Take a darker view, and AI means that you can potentially let go of current staff, in favor of an AI tool (or, tools), that can replace existing staff.  Now, of course, your employees aren’t dumb – you wouldn’t have hired them, if they were – and, they realize this.  This set of circumstances, of course, creates a problem: Why would your employees use AI, if they know that it’s going to be used to replace them?  Would you? 


 

So, how do you – as a business owner – incentive your employees to use AI?  Well, your staff wants upskilling training.  If they are effectively being asked to offload a portion of their job responsibilities to an artificial intelligence, they’ll want to replace that skillset with another.  For those employees to continue to justify their roles, they know and understand that their roles will have to change.  In other words, they’ll need to do more of the things that the machines can’t do . . . yet.  Thus, if you’re just asking your staff to replace themselves, without a viable alternative: you’re not only setting them up for failure – you’re setting yourself up for failure, as well. 

 

The upshot: Don’t ask your employees to use AI for their job, unless you have a plan for upskilling, that you can relay to them at the same time. 

 

It’s a win-win. 

 

. . . 

 

Do you have a plan for how AI is going to affect your law practice?  If not, let’s talk. 

Through a unique partnership between the bar association and Jared Correia's Red Cave Law Firm Consulting, National Creditors' Bar Association members have access to experienced law practice management consultants at a special discount rate.

To get started, visit Red Cave's NCBA landing page, and start running your law practice like a business.

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