AI Is Breaking the Legal Profession
Because It Was Built to Be Broken
If you’ve ever tried to hire a lawyer and thought: "this is unnecessarily expensive, slow, and opaque" — congratulations. You’ve just described the legal system functioning exactly as intended.
Now AI is threatening to fix it. And the lawyers are panicking.
The Legal Profession Is Not a Meritocracy. It’s a Monopoly.
Every time I talk publicly about how generative AI could make legal help cheaper, faster, and actually accessible, I get hate mail. From lawyers. From bar regulators. From the same people who call a $400/hour estate plan "consumer protection."
They say AI is dangerous. Unregulated. Incompetent.
What they mean is: it doesn’t need a license. And that terrifies them.
Because the legal profession isn’t designed to deliver the best help. It’s designed to control who gets to help at all.
Arizona Killed the Monopoly. Nothing Broke.
In 2020, Arizona opened the door, for the first time, to non-lawyer ownership of law firms. They created licensed Legal Paraprofessionals. Over 100 new legal businesses formed. Nobody died.
In fact:
LegalZoom, Rocket Lawyer, and other platforms moved in
Dozens of paraprofessionals now help with family law and civil cases
Not a single consumer complaint has been filed against an ABS firm
Meanwhile, prices dropped. Flat fees replaced billable hours. Small businesses and middle-income clients got access to real legal help—without mortgaging their homes or sanity.
Utah did the same with a regulatory sandbox. They logged over 45,000 services to 25,000 clients, most of whom had zero access before. Still no harm data. Still no professional collapse.
So, again: what (and who) exactly are we protecting by keeping the monopoly on the practice of law?
Lawyers Aren’t Resisting AI Because It’s Bad. They’re Resisting Because It’s Efficient.
The legal profession runs on inefficiency. That’s not a side effect. That’s the business model.
AI kills that. It drafts in seconds what a lawyer bills three, five, maybe twelve hours to write. It answers client questions at 2AM. It doesn’t inflate (or even keep) time sheets. It doesn’t need a corner office.
Of course the legal industry is terrified.
Because AI doesn’t just make legal work more efficient.
It makes the inefficiency visible.
UPL Laws Are About Control, Not Safety
The Unauthorized Practice of Law (UPL) rules are supposedly about preventing harm to clients.
But here’s what they actually prevent:
Someone using a chatbot to fight an eviction
A single parent using AI to draft a custody petition
A small business getting affordable contract help from a non-lawyer platform
Meanwhile, LegalZoom has served 9+ million people. Rocket Lawyer has 250,000 subscribers. Utah sandbox entities have delivered tens of thousands of legal services with near-zero complaints.
These platforms aren’t rogue actors. They’re functioning legal infrastructure.
The only thing "unauthorized" is that they’re not paying dues to the bar.
There’s a Word for Making Help Illegal When It’s Not Perfect: Obstruction
No one’s saying AI is flawless. But neither are human lawyers.
You can get sanctioned today for filing fake case citations from ChatGPT. True. You can also get sanctioned for all manner of other incompetent, lazy, or just downright abysmal lawyering. All of which happen regularly without AI.
So let’s drop the sanctimony.
The real problem isn’t that AI makes mistakes.
It’s that it threatens the illusion that only licensed professionals can be trusted.
The Real Ethical Question: When Does It Become Wrong Not to Use AI?
If you know your client can’t afford you—but AI could make your services affordable—and you don’t use it?
That’s not professional judgment. That’s gatekeeping.
If you’re a regulator who sees tens of thousands of unserved people—but blocks a safe, working tool because it bypasses licensing?
That’s not public protection. That’s market protection. It’s anticompetitive.
And if the system we built can’t evolve to handle that?
Then maybe the system isn’t worth preserving.
Why I Keep Saying This—Even If It Pisses People Off
Every time I say AI can make legal services faster, cheaper, and better, I get backlash. I say it anyway.
Because I’ve run a flat-fee practice for years. No billing the clock. No dodging calls. Clients ask more questions. I give better answers. Everyone wins.
AI just makes that better. It helps me serve more people, faster, with stronger results. But only because I’ve trained myself, my associates, and my staff to use it well. I don’t avoid it. I don’t fake inefficiency to justify my rates. That model doesn’t serve me—or my clients.
So when lawyers panic about AI breaking the system, I get it. But here’s the truth: the system was broken already.
I’m not here to defend a monopoly. I’m here to help people. And if AI helps me do that—then I’m going to use it.
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