Mary Meeker’s recent “Trends in Artificial Intelligence” report didn’t get much legal tech fanfare but it should. It contains insights and information that lawyers and legal professionals simply can’t afford to ignore.
Meeker is a former Wall Street analyst turned venture capitalist, best known for her long-running annual Internet Trends reports. Running from 1995 to 2019, her reports were some of the most respected and reliable surveys about internet trends and usage. I have written about her reports before.
The AI Trends Report
Meeker’s AI report contains data and analysis lawyers need to be considering when they look to the future and engage in any long-term planning (yes, “lawyers” and “long-term planning” in the same sentence is a bit of an oxymoron).
As Meeker puts it at the outset, “breakthroughs in large models, cost-per-token declines, open source proliferation, and chip performance are making tech advances increasingly more powerful, accessible, and economically viable.”
She continues: “Rapid advances in artificial intelligence, compute infrastructure, and global connectivity are fundamentally reshaping how work gets done, how capital is deployed, and how leadership is defined.”
Let that sink in. As I’ve said before, legal needs to start thinking today about how future work will be done, how it will be valued, and how the definition of a “good lawyer” is evolving.
Backed by solid data, Meeker confirms that change is now happening faster than ever. She calls AI a “compounder,” which enables “wicked fast adoption” of easy-to-use services. These are key points when thinking about what’s next for AI, LLMs, and their impact on legal.
AI Today
Meeker backs these ideas up with ChatGPT usage data. Consider 10 things AI can already do:
- Write or edit anything from emails, contracts, even poems, instantly and fluently.
- Summarize and explain complex material.
- Tutor extensively on any subject.
- Be a thinking partner.
- Roleplay anyone.
- Connect to tools like spreadsheets, calendar or the internet.
- Offer therapy and companionship.
- Help find purpose and define long term strategy by clarifying values and goals and mapping relevant actions.
- Organize your life.
How many law firms are thinking strategically about what AI can now do and how that affects (or could affect) their practice? More importantly, how are they using those capabilities to actually improve what they do and how they do it? Understanding today’s these capabilities is a prerequisite to preparing for what the systems will be able do in the future. And the changes those capabilities will usher in.
In Five Years
Meeker cites what ChatGPT thinks AI tools will be able to do in five years:
- Generate human level text, code and logic.
- Create full-length films and games. (Particularly challenging for litigators and courts facing deep fake challenges.)
- Understand and speak like a human. (See above.)
- Power advanced person assistants-coordinating across apps and devices.
- Operate humanlike robots: household helpers, elder care and retail and hospitality automation.
- Run automated customer service and sales. (Imagine the delivery of automated legal services in a virtual, no cost fashion.)
- Personalize entire digital lives: adaptive learning, curated content and individualized legal and health coaching
- Build and run autonomous businesses. Is legal ready for this?
- Drive autonomous discovery in science. (And in legal.)
- Collaborate creatively like a partner. Co-write novels and music. Or act as the senior partner mentor?
All of these developments will inevitably affect legal in just five years if not sooner. How many are planning for this? Is law firm management taking these possibilities into account in formulating their strategic plans? They damn well should be.
In 10 Years
But what if we go out 10 years. Here’s what AI systems could be capable of:
• Simulate human-like minds.
• Operate fully autonomous companies.
• Perform complex physical tasks with precision.
• Coordinate global systems in real time.
• Model entire biological systems.
• Deliver expert decisions.
• Influence public debate and shape policy.
• Build immersive, fully interactive virtual worlds.
The 10-year outlook is less about how lawyers work and more about what they’ll even be doing. What kinds of disputes will exist? How will they be resolved? What will the legal and factual issues of the next decade look like? Smart firms and in-house teams should be asking these questions now. Is anyone listening? Bueller?
AI Agents
And all this ignores the coming development of AI agents that can reason, act, and complete multistep tasks. Meeker says, “They don’t just answer questions – they execute: booking meetings, submitting reports, logging into tools, or orchestrating workflows across platforms, often using natural language as their command layer.”
Meeker observes it’s still early in the development of these agents. But the implications are massive. These agents will reshape how users interact with AI across research, scheduling, and operations.
Thinking about how this will impact to legal workflows is critical: from staffing to valuing services to rethinking how lawyers spend their time will change.
Artificial General Intelligence
We haven’t even gotten to Artificial General Intelligence, systems capable of handling the full range of human intellectual tasks. Meeker admits the timeline is uncertain, but notes that “expert expectations have shifted forward meaningfully in recent years.”
Exponential Change
Meeker makes a good point: development is moving exponentially. Global AI adoption is happening at breakneck speed and with it, faster, cheaper, more capable tools. Meeker notes a 100% spike in developers, startups, and apps in just four years. Who knows what’s coming next or when?
Here’s an insightful quote from Nvidia’s Jensen Huang that Meeker includes in her Report: “In 10 years, you’ll look back and realize AI has integrated into everything. We need AI everywhere.”
Lawyers and legal professionals who don’t accept this and plan for it risk getting left behind. Not just by forward-looking legal competitors, but by entirely new, unimagined businesses and models.
Where Does All This Leave Us?
Meeker is one of the most astute observers of tech’s impact and where things are headed. She’s been right more times than not. Based on her report, the well-worn legal management strategy of driving forward while staring in the rearview mirror simply isn’t going to work anymore.
Stephen Embry is a lawyer, speaker, blogger and writer. He publishes TechLaw Crossroads, a blog devoted to the examination of the tension between technology, the law, and the practice of law.
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