Staying ahead of the bots: Strategies for legal practices in the age of AI

In January 2024, Dricus ‘Stillknocks’ du Plessis became the first South African to win a UFC championship in the United States, which awarded him the title of MMA world champion for his weight category. His victory made his nation proud and popularised the sport in South Africa.

Dricus became famous not only for his fighting victories, but also for the saying in Afrikaans: ‘hulle weet nie wat ons weet nie’ (C Ho Hip ‘UFC Champ Dricus du Plessis explains his famous phrase “hulle weet nie wat ons weet nie”’ (www.ewn.co.za, accessed 25-5-2025). He explained that he meant that the world does not know what we as South Africans know, as we are built differently. As people who survived the pandemic, while also managing lockdown, loadshedding, socio-economic problems and political protests, it is possible that he meant that South Africans know how to overcome obstacles, come together as a nation of diverse races and retain a sense of humour!

On 30 November 2022, a worldwide event occurred, namely the launch of ChatGPT, which arguably put legal practitioners in a fight for their global professional title. ChatGPT is considered a disruptive technology which is likely to change operations in professional practices. Although there are many exciting benefits of how artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots can assist operations of legal practices, legal practitioners must also face and prepare for the threats they may pose to the business models of legal practices.

The purpose of this article is to explore plans, skills and behaviours legal practitioners may need to adopt to face the threats posed by generative AI chatbots to remain the champions of the legal sector.

AI powered chatbots

Large Language Model (LLM) chatbots were regarded a breakthrough in AI. They were intentionally designed to understand and generate communication like humans via text or other forms of content, based on the vast amount of data used to train them. They have the ability to interpret context, generate coherent and contextually relevant responses, translate text messages into different human languages, summarise communications, answer questions, assist in creative writing and even generate new computer codes. ChatGPT is regarded the first LLM AI chatbot released to the public. The ‘chat’ prefix refers to the fact that it is a ‘chatbot’ and the abbreviation ‘GPT’ stands for ‘generative pre-trained transformer’. Since the launch of ChatGPT, it ‘quickly gained immense popularity, reaching over one million users within five days of its release’ (R Boda and A Powell ‘ChatGPT: a useful tool or risk for lawyers?’ (www.ensafrica.com, accessed 24-5-2025)).

What is the threat of AI chatbots for the legal profession?

Considering the vast learning and communication capabilities of LLM chatbots to simulate humans, the threat for legal practices in essence relates to the risk of AI chatbots substituting interaction between clients and human lawyers. If AI chatbots start substituting human lawyers, legal practices may start employing fewer humans.

If you doubt whether this is a realistic threat, consider when you first discovered AI chatbots, such as Apple’s Siri or Google’s Gemini, to make your life easier. As soon as you start getting used to asking Siri for directions, or using Google Play to take down notes while you are driving, it becomes hard to stop. The genie is out of the bottle, and it is hard to ignore these powerful AI conversational companions once you experienced their speed and efficiency.

The visual representation below helps explain the options to proposed clients and direct competition posed by AI lawyer chatbots.

Two factors which clients are likely to apply to select their preferred option above are

the level of trust in the legal service based on the confidentiality and expertise of the lawyer; and
the estimated cost of the legal services.

We can expect AI developers to continue working to improve the accuracy and security features of LLM AI chatbots. As LLM AI chatbots improves and gain more credibility, we can also expect clients to critically compare the cost of professional human legal services with free or low-cost AI resources which may drive the cost of legal services down.

It is up to legal practitioners to retain and secure their role in the above value chain. When ChatGPT was launched, the ultimate championship fight for legal services also started and legal practitioners should start taking winning against LLM AI chatbots seriously or face losses.

How to combat the threat of AI chatbots to legal practices

I propose a few options below to explore and help legal practices adjust and compete with the reality of AI chatbots as competitors.

AI Chatbots do not know what we know

Do you perhaps remember the launch of Google Search in 1998? Some lawyers feared at that time that people will start using Google to search for legal information, advice, and free template documents instead of consulting law firms. Although conducting searches on Google is now a common habit of lawyers and clients, there is no evidence to suggest that Google Search disrupted the legal sector negatively, as the reputation of inaccuracies on the Internet remains.

The launch of ChatGPT is different and disruptive due to its powerful capabilities, speed of responses and close simulation of human communication.

A way to combat the impact is to capitalise on the fact that ChatGPT has a limited knowledge base, as it has a machine training cut-off date in 2021. It is further currently unable to give accurate real-time updates on news events and legal judgments passed. It primarily continues to learn by relying on conversations with humans and searching the Internet.

Considering that South African law is further not codified and continues to develop, South African legal practitioner can say with confidence that ‘Google and ChatGPT do not know what we know’. Sources of South African law include the Constitution, case law, statutes, customary law, common law, English law, international law, and contributions of academic writers. Most reputable legal resources for South African law are exclusively available to paying legal practices and not to the public on the Internet.

As an ethical duty, to keep this ground of defence strong, and to help protect clients from misinformation and legal risks, I propose legal practitioners should (a) not help train open LLM AI chatbots on exclusive legal resources and (b) continue to respect and protect copyright of authors and publishers of legal textbooks and resources which still require a tremendous amount of human effort to create.

Use it or lose out

Studies show that the adoption of certain technologies by law firms today is a key differentiator for a competitive advantage, as, in the mind of most clients, law firms have historically been slow to adopt new innovations. As clients are increasingly relying on digital tools to help them live easier, their requirements and expectations automatically spill over to their engagement with legal practices. According to research, the three expectations which stand out for law firm clients are −

lower costs;
more efficient service; and
clear frequent communication.

Client frustrations may build if legal practices cannot provide services on a level which meet these expectations.

AI chatbots are geared to help meet these top expectations of legal practice clients. In this regard, adopting an AI chatbot for your legal practice, could assist with −

automation of repetitive legal tasks such as document drafting;
improve client communication by providing instant responses;
reduce workload as lawyers are relieved from repetitive tasks; and
improve securing clients by efficiently interacting with new leads and following up.

There are numerous expert platforms and developers offering assistance to professional practices to start creating and managing their own AI chatbots focusing on the content and topics of discussions important to their specific target markets. Considering the potential mutual benefits for lawyers and clients to adopt and use an AI chatbot, I encourage legal practice owners to explore this option.

If a consumer with a legal query has the option to use an open-source LLM AI chatbot or an AI chatbot offered by a specialised legal practice, with which chatbot is the consumer likely to engage more?

To become a contestant for the championship title, legal practitioners must enter the ring and participate in the fight!

Diversify and conquer

As AI chatbots are more likely to substitute the work of legal secretaries, paralegals or candidate legal practitioners first, we could in course expect a generation gap of legal practitioners to develop in established legal practices adopting AI and/or more recently qualified legal practitioners to start their own legal practices. AI is, therefore, likely to lower the entry level to start a legal practice and help more small junior legal practices to start faster. This is likely to lead to more competition in the legal sector, which will demand diversity by legal practices to remain competitive and arise as winners.

If it is true that adopting AI chatbots will help free up time for lawyers, lawyers could consider how to invest such ‘free time’ to help supplement or maximise their incomes. Possible options to ‘diversify and conquer’ are shared below.

Add legal practice areas: If your legal practice specialises in a single legal practice or in legal practice areas which are administratively heavy, or very suitable for AI automation to take over, be open and prepared to diversify your legal practice by adding services relating to additional legal practice areas.

Specialise in complex matters: Considering the nature of client-lawyer relationships, and the nature of some legal matters, it is widely agreed that complex and strategic legal matters are still best dealt with by human legal practitioners in confidence with their clients. Some legal practice areas will remain unsuitable for AI chatbots to substitute human lawyers. As champions of the legal sector, it is up to legal practices to identify and specialise in such legal practice areas which will aways continue to rely on and require human input.

Become multi-disciplined: Developing multi-disciplinary practices could be another option to diversify legal practices. Such multi-disciplinary practices could offer clients more holistic and strategic services to help them save time and money.

Additional part-time careers/ventures: Depending on the extend of business disruption or time savings relating to the adoption of AI in some legal practice areas, some legal practice owners may also need to obtain permission from the Legal Practice Council to diversify their income streams by pursuing part-time careers outside of the legal private sector (for instance online teaching) or entrepreneurial or investment ventures outside of the legal sectors (for instance relating to franchising, property management or farming).

If you are offered lemons, why not make lemonade, and sell it for a profit?

Become AI law specialists

Any new technological development offers opportunities for lawyers to shine by developing new laws, guidelines, policies and precedents.

At the time of writing this article, according to my research (on Google), the most recent international legal developments relating to the use of AI relates to the following guidelines published by the European Commission in February 2025 which explains the definition of AI systems for the practical application as legal concept as and prohibited AI practices referred to in the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act passed in 2024:

European Commission ‘The Commission publishes guidelines on AI system definition to facilitate the first AI Act’s rules application’ (https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu, accessed 24-5-2025).
European Commission ‘Commission publishes the Guidelines on prohibited artificial intelligence (AI) practices, as defined by the AI Act’ (https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu, accessed 24-5-2025).

The most recent South African legal development appears to relate to the publishing of the ‘South Africa National Artificial Intelligence Policy Framework’ document in August 2024 by the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies. South Africa is not the first African country to develop such an AI policy framework, but it is encouraging to note that South Africa is starting to take steps on this issue.

If legal practitioners want to remain the champions of the legal sector, they should remain curious, learn, know and contribute to rules and regulations on the use and restrictions of AI. While LLM AI chatbots have only been with us for less than three years, it is urgent for the law and lawyers to catch up. AI developers do not know what we know, but they know and have been concerned for over 60 years that AI may not all be good and pose serious dangers by misleading and ruling humans.

Lawyers should be intentional about not transferring their authority as legal developers over to AI chatbots. As helpful as AI chatbots may be, they could cause harm and havoc in society if not regulated or fed malinformation. To protect people, ethics and morals, the users (trainees) and development of AI chatbots should be regulated. As natural problem solvers, lawyers should take the lead to propose and develop appropriate legal frameworks.

Considering the magnitude of the threat LLM AI chatbots can pose, and just as various global technology companies worked together to create LLM AI chatbots, it will require governments and lawyers of numerous countries to work together, learn from each other and create global legal strategies to protect who we all made an oath or promise to do as legal practitioners – our clients.

Conclusion

Competitive sport journeys can often be helpful as metaphors to learn and teach strategies in competitive professional industries. Most MMA commentators agree that a good strategy displayed by Dricus du Plessis is that he seems to always be on the offence (as opposed to the defence) and moving forward. Being on the offence, as opposed to the defence, may require taking risks and staying focused on achieving what you want.

ChatGPT started the revolution of LLM AI chatbots and we must accept LLM AI chatbots are here to stay and compete. For legal practitioners to remain champions of the legal profession, legal practices must make plans for the future and be willing to adapt. The only constant is change and the legal practices who will be the most flexible in their approach to meet their goals, and take the most decisive actions soon, will win!

Emmie de Kock BLC LLB (cum laude) (UP) SA Business Coach is a Business Coach and legal practitioner at LawyerFirst – Coaching Lawyers online.