The AI Law Professor: When chatbots become senior partners

Key insights:

• • • Emergence of 5-level classification — As AI continues to impact the legal industry, a five-level classification system has developed that shows how tech is evolving from today’s tools to more fully autonomous legal agents.

    • AI’s role in legal will change — Today’s AI tools are moving from simple chatbots to sophisticated agents capable of reasoning through complex legal problems and even creating novel legal theories.

    • Ethical & professional considerations will become critical — There is a growing need for legal professionals to understand and prepare for ethical obligations and changes to professional standards brought by the integration of advanced AI into their practice.

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Welcome back for the second edition of my column, The AI Law Professor. Last month we jumped right into the idea of AI containment, triggered by the release of Claude Opus 4 and security measures to control what AI can and can’t do. This month, I’d like to take a larger view and share the AI roadmap for where we are and where we’re going, and what it means for lawyers.

Imagine this: You’re preparing for tomorrow’s oral argument, and your AI legal assistant has been helping you anticipate the judge’s questions. Suddenly, it goes beyond the research. “Based on Judge Harrison’s last 17 rulings,” it says, “she’ll interrupt your commerce clause argument at the two-minute mark. Here’s how to redirect her attention.” The AI then drafts three possible responses; each psychologically tailored to the judge’s decision-making patterns. It even suggests wearing your blue tie — apparently, the judge likes blue and rules 23% more favorably when attorneys wear blue.

You pause. When did your legal assistant become a strategic advisor? More unnervingly, when did it start analyzing judges or your wardrobe in this manner without being asked?

This scenario isn’t far-fetched anymore. With OpenAI’s leaked internal memo describing a five-level AI classification system, we now have a roadmap showing how AI will evolve from the helpful chatbots of today to the autonomous legal strategists of tomorrow and beyond. This framework reveals something profound: We’re not just getting better legal tools to automate what we already do, rather we’re witnessing the emergence of a type of AI that could fundamentally redefine what it means to practice law.

But what does this mean for your practice specifically, and how quickly will each level arrive? And most critically, how do you prepare for an AI colleague that might soon know more about law than you do?

Let’s examine this framework, and why every lawyer needs to understand it now.

The 5 levels of AI progress

In my generative AI (GenAI) law class at Suffolk University, I emphasize that the way to think of AI is as a helpful assistant — but as with any assistant, it can make mistakes that we need to review and correct. However, this will change as AI advances. The answer to the question, “What’s the difference between a tool and a colleague?” used to be simple: Tools execute requested tasks, colleagues exercise judgment on their own. Now, however, that distinction is blurring.

While today’s AI drafts contracts, tomorrow’s might negotiate contracts, and next decade’s could run an entire law firm. Sounds like science fiction? Let’s take a look at the five levels of AI progress from OpenAI’s leaked memo and see how far we’ve come and where we are going:

Level 1: Chatbots — Your digital law clerk

We’re here now. You’ve likely used ChatGPT, Claude, or some proprietary AI platform for drafting contracts, summarizing depositions, or brainstorming legal strategies. These tools excel at pattern matching and language generation but operate purely reactively. They respond to prompts but can’t take action or maintain a memory across extended projects. We also know that they’re prone to hallucinations.

The key limitation: These tools have no true understanding, they just offer sophisticated pattern matching. Think of it as a brilliant but unreliable first-year associate who needs constant supervision.

Level 2: Reasoners — The PhD associate

We’re seeing reasoners in the wild with the release of models like OpenAI’s o3 and Gemini Pro 2.5. Level 2 AI doesn’t just find patterns, it also reasons through complex legal problems. Imagine feeding an AI a complicated fact pattern involving overlapping federal and state regulations. Instead of just retrieving similar cases, it identifies underlying legal principles, spots potential conflicts, suggests counter-arguments, and maps out strategic considerations.

The disruption ahead: When AI reasons better than most associates, traditional law firm pyramids may collapse, and the path from law school to partnership gets reimagined. Smart law firms already are planning for this shift.

Level 3: Agents — Your autonomous partner

We’re beginning to encounter agents with the release of OpenAI’s Operator, Deep Research, and Manus. And just like with the initial release of ChatGPT, expectations are off the charts for fully autonomous AI, but the reality likely will be more sedate and limited. For example, Operator can get stuck in an infinite loop of opening too many browser tabs, or Manus takes our request in a different direction than we intended.

True Level 3 AI agents won’t wait for your instructions. They’ll monitor legal developments, track deadlines, initiate filings, and adapt strategies based on outcomes. True AI agents will also be self-correcting, so they’ll require less supervision. We’re not quite there yet, but I’d venture to guess that less than three years we will be.

The ethical minefield: Who’s responsible when your AI agent makes a strategic decision that backfires? How do you supervise something that processes information faster than you can read?

Level 4: Innovators — The inventive legal mind

We haven’t seen AI innovators yet. Level 4 AI won’t just apply existing law, it will create novel legal theories and business models. Unlike its pattern-bound cousins, AI innovators will have the creativity to think outside the box and invent new, original arguments and insights.

For example, ask today’s AI to propose a framework for regulating human/AI collaboration in the workplace, and you’ll get recycled ideas. Level 4 AI would identify gaps in employment law, agency law, and tort law that intersect in novel ways, then propose unique and innovative solutions.

The existential question: If AI can create new legal theories, what skills and abilities will remain uniquely human? The answer might be wisdom, such as knowing not just what’s legally possible but also what’s the right thing to do.

Level 5: Organizations — The Al-run law firm

This is yet to come. Level 5 represents AI systems capable of self-governance at scale, running entire law firms from client acquisition through case resolution, without human intervention. This is where things get philosophically challenging and difficult to conceive.

For example, imagine how LegalGPT, LLC might actually operate: An AI law firm offering services at one-tenth the cost of traditional firms, operating 24/7, while continuously learning and improving. No offices, no partners, no billable hours — just outcomes. The firm would handle routine matters for free, subsidized by complex commercial work. Legal deserts disappear overnight and improved access to justice becomes universal.

The fundamental question: If Level 5 AI provides better, faster, cheaper legal services, do we have an ethical obligation to embrace it? Or a duty to preserve human judgment in the justice system? There’s no easy answer, which is precisely why we need to engage with these questions now, while we still have the agency to shape the outcome.

Navigating the transformation

As AI advances through these levels, the legal profession faces choices about integration, regulation, and adaptation. Today’s routine use of AI for research and document drafting may seem quaint compared to the use of tomorrow’s autonomous agents to orchestrate entire litigation strategies. Yet each step forward requires careful consideration of ethical obligations, professional standards, and the irreducible human elements of legal practice. We still have time to find our place.

Not surprisingly, the transformation won’t be uniform. As futurist William Gibson put it: “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” Transactional practices may adopt AI agents more readily than areas such as criminal defense, in which constitutional rights and human liberty demand special caution. Corporate clients may embrace AI-driven efficiency while individual clients may continue valuing human connection and empathy. Regulators must balance innovation with protection, ensuring AI enhances rather than undermines justice.

I admit this roadmap is unsettling. However, AI’s development marches forward regardless of professional comfort levels. Those legal professionals who engage thoughtfully with these tools, learning and understanding their capabilities and limitations while maintaining ethical grounding, will shape the profession’s future. Those who resist may find themselves bypassed by history. The choice, for now, remains ours to make.

In my next column, we’ll explore AI agents and agentic workflows and principles to guide our use of them.

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You can find more about the use of AI and GenAI in the legal industry here