Can AI replace my lawyer?

By Toby Walker

Associate Solicitor

04 November 2025

Blog News

As a solicitor writing this, I suspect you will already be thinking this article will be biased towards the lawyers and in short, my (biased) answer is: no, AI can’t replace my lawyer. But I’m hoping to use this as an opportunity to explain why it can’t (just yet…).

As we all know, it’s looking more and more likely that AI is here to stay in one form or another. AI tools provide a quick, simple solution to many day-to-day problems – which can be great for busy managers, directors and business owners.

Benefits of AI

I certainly agree that asking any AI tool (e.g. ChatGPT) to create a contract, containing standard clauses, will be quicker than the aggregate time it takes to (i) email your lawyer asking them to provide a fee estimate for the preparing such contract, (ii) the lawyer confirming their costs & scope of work after asking more questions to understand the commercial objectives / areas of ambiguity and (iii) the lawyer preparing the contract for your review.

I will also accept, that when prompted correctly, the contract will largely cover the key terms (e.g. the payment terms will reflect the parties’ intentions) and the standard “boiler-plate” clauses – the fact that AI is scouring the World Wide Web for precedents and examples means these items are provided quickly and comprehensively.

Additionally, if you were to upload a contract to any AI tool and ask it to spot any issues or items that are missing, it should pick up the issues and inconsistencies based on the precedents it already has access to.

All of the above highlights the benefits of using AI (and you may now be thinking, why shouldn’t we use AI to prepare a legally binding contract?).

Benefits of lawyers

AI isn’t perfect (I’m aware lawyers aren’t either!) but we should be able to spot critical errors in a draft contract. For example, whilst preparing this article, I asked an AI tool to prepare a loan agreement for me, with a shareholder providing a personal guarantee for such loan obtained by the borrowing company – I was able to quickly spot one fundamental issue in that the shareholder wasn’t party to the loan agreement and, therefore, the personal guarantee would be unenforceable. Whilst OK if the borrower paid back the loan as planned, someone on the borrower’s side may be left feeling a little red-faced if the borrower couldn’t meet all payments.

We are seeing more and more clients come to us with a first draft contract, created by an AI tool, which they want us to review (on the basis that this may reduce the time required to get a contract in the form to be sent to the other side and, ultimately, cost-saving). However, we have seen some obscure references to laws and case-law that don’t apply to England & Wales but rather to countries that takes over 12 hours to fly to! If it’s something we’re unfamiliar with, we need to carry out research to see if it’s applicable to the contract – which takes time in itself.

Can you be sure that the AI tool you’re using is safe for confidential information? And are you being non-compliant with certain data protection regulations if you upload confidential information? If it’s an OpenAI tool, it’s likely that your conversations are used to improve the models – therefore, your data is most likely being processed for such purposes. Additionally, law firms are required to maintain a certain level of cyber security, reducing the risk of unauthorised access.

I’m sure that when negotiating a contract, you will have, at some point, come to a stalemate on a particular term – the lawyers can use your commercial objectives, previous experience and judgment to find a solution to such stalemate, finding a way to draft the terms so that both parties find comfort. AI, however, doesn’t have the ability to use such experiences or knowledge to tailor the agreement in such a way.

Lastly, something which you may consider to be materially important, is that when it goes wrong because we, lawyers, have made a serious mistake which costs you money, you have the ability to make a complaint/claim with the view of seeking compensation – something which AI tools do not provide.

Therefore, to summarise, we know AI is here to stay and provides great benefits on a day-to-day basis but please remember there are various risks, which may prove costly, if you don’t seek legal advice. Does the quick turnaround/ reduced initial costs outweigh the costs of getting it wrong?

If you have any queries about any of the contents of this article, or if you would like to speak to a member of our team, you can do so here.

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Please note that the contents of this article are intended solely for general information purposes and should not be considered as legal advice. We cannot be held responsible for any loss resulting from actions or inactions taken based on this article.