How might AI reshape the practice of law in 2036? And what skills will define a successful lawyer? These are important questions for the legal profession as AI takes on a larger role in determine how law firms provide legal services to their clients.

As part of its AI and the Future of Legal Practice project, the Thomson Reuters Institute engaged a panel of legal experts from across the profession to identify the critical skills lawyers will need in the future. Interestingly, many of the skills identified emphasize a return to the humanity of legal practice rather than focusing solely on technical rules.

What emerged from this discussion is the idea of a lawyer with the capabilities built around the work that AI cannot absorb. Five enduring skills came up across most of the conversations regardless of legal practice areas, generations, and points of view. Panelists agreed that AI will have a dramatic impact on the profession; however, more ambiguous is what that impact might be. Nevertheless, there was near universal agreement that by 2036 AI will likely take over much of the more rote work such as drafting, discovery, document review, and research and summarization of legal documents.

5 critical skills for lawyers

However, these five enduring skills remain and are seen as critical for lawyers to have by 2036:

1. Judgment and validation‍

In 2036, AI will enable lawyers to spend less time on the mechanics of the legal practice and more time focused on client services such as providing strategic insights, problem-solving, contextualizing, and validating AI-produced outputs that support what clients are seeking.

This shift carries a risk, however, the deferential hazard. As AI gets more fluent, lawyers and clients may become overly reliant and increasingly deferential to AI’s outputs. In this scenario, responsibility for achieving the client’s goals may appear human on paper yet the underlying human judgment starts to disappear, driven out by the ease of the AI-provided answers.

The skill that survives will be the disciplines of evaluation, validation, and judgment in an AI world that too often makes these disciplines feel unnecessary.

2. Client-facing communication and empathy‍

The practice of law is about solving human legal problems. Thus, the ability to sit with a client, understand their circumstances, and expertly assess the true nature of their legal problem will be a singular necessity in the future, all panelists agreed.

As legal-AI becomes more readily available, effective client engagement becomes even more important. Lawyers may increasingly face clients who say, "Wait a minute, this tool is telling me something different, why is that wrong, help me understand." In that moment, only effective client engagement can dissuade someone from pursuing an ill-advised, AI-driven strategy.

Moreover, several panelists observed that learning how to provide clients with emotional support will be critical to successful client engagement, particularly in high-stress, high-emotion cases involving divorce, a child in crisis, a business on the edge, and so on. These are not information problems alone, and a lawyer who treats them that way may not understand the human dimension of a legal problem and not just its technical aspects.

3. Negotiation and advocacy‍

These two critical skills endure in 2036 because they are acts of human connection. No tool can supplant trust, timing, and the  ability to read another person that is at the heart of successful negotiations or courtroom advocacy.

Two parties could, in theory, set their AI systems against each other to negotiate a deal; but wherever there is room for ambiguity and negotiation, there is room for creative lawyering. No AI system has the the ability to understand nonverbal cues for reading a counterpart and knowing when to hold a position rather than moving on. This ability is adversarial and relational at once, and both halves depend on a human presence on each side of the table.

4. Critical thinking and problem recognition‍

The hardest part determining the best legal solution is deciding what problem the client has and what is the best strategy to address it. This is often a judgment call informed by experience and gets harder to automate as the facts get messier, more nuanced, and the stakes get higher.

The panel drew a sharp line on this point. noting that issue-spotting, which is the bread and butter of a law school exam, is not the same as problem recognition. AI can tell you what a case requires you to consider, but it cannot make a judgment about the problems a client faces where the facts are messy or the framing is contested.

5. Practical AI fluency‍

Practical AI fluency, not AI technical knowledge, will become an increasingly important and enduring skill by 2036. Lawyers a decade from now will need to have the ability to evaluate tools, understand their strengths and limits, and weigh cost against quality, particularly in situations in which clients have limited means.

Why these enduring skills hold under any future scenario

Panelists had wide ranging views on issues of demand, on timeline, and on whether large firms or small ones stand to gain the most from AI.  At the same time, these five “future-proofed” skills showed up across every scenario from steady continuity to a full remake of the legal services delivery model. This consistency is what makes them endure and a solid bet on what every lawyer will need no matter which future unfolds.

You can learn more about the AI and Future of Legal Practice here.