Law is one of the fields where AI is advancing fastest. It finds case law in seconds, summarises a file, drafts a first version of a contract. Parents whose child wants to become a lawyer, or is torn between law and business school, wonder whether it would be wiser to change course.
I guide high school students towards selective programmes, including double law degrees, and it is a question I hear more and more.
Where AI already beats a trainee
Part of legal work consists of research, reading and repetitive drafting. It is often the work given to juniors in law firms, and it is what AI speeds up most. The profession is taking hold of it: France's national bar council publishes guidance on putting generative AI to work in lawyers' practice.
The work that stays with the lawyer
A lawyer takes on responsibility. They advise a worried client, negotiate face to face, plead before a judge, choose a strategy when the law allows several readings. No tool makes these decisions for them, and they are what a client pays a lawyer for.
For young lawyers, on the other hand, the tasks that used to serve as training are becoming scarce. They will need to arrive in a firm with more method and maturity than before, and know how to use these tools without trusting them blindly.
What to build from high school
Writing first: a lawyer writes all their life, and exact, structured writing without approximation is still what sets them apart. Then oral argument, which school rarely trains. English, essential in business law and international work. And a good level in mathematics and economics, which opens business law, tax and double degrees in law and economics or law and management.
Selective double degrees recruit students who are strong in several disciplines. I describe those of the Sorbonne in the Sorbonne double degrees.
The route to becoming a lawyer in France
The path is long: a bachelor's then a master's in law, an entrance exam to a bar school, open from the first year of the master's, then eighteen months of training and the professional certificate, the CAPA. This path is not decided in high school. What is built in high school are the foundations to get there in good conditions, and to change direction along the way if needed.
If your child is torn between law and something else, start by finding out where they really stand, in writing, speaking and reasoning: that is the purpose of the level and guidance assessment. To build their whole path, there is the action plan.