Key points:
- AI can now be used to perform many rudimentary legal tasks that lawyers have traditionally performed.
- Human skills such as relationship building, problem-solving, leadership, and collaboration — which have always been at the heart of good lawyering — are, therefore, becoming increasingly important.
- While many of these human skills do not come naturally to lawyers, there are steps law students, lawyers, and legal organizations can take to build these skills.
- To thrive in an AI-equipped legal profession, lawyers must learn to thoughtfully harness the capabilities of AI while ensuring the human dimensions of lawyering are not discarded or diminished.
Attorney Adam Williams* remembers watching the demeanor of his client Greg* shift between “guarded detachment and visible distress” as they met in the county jail to discuss his case. (*Names have been changed for confidentiality purposes.)
Greg was facing a federal drug conspiracy charge, and Williams was helping him weigh the merits of pleading guilty or going to trial.
“As we discussed his case, [Greg] became visibly overwhelmed at times,” said Williams. “He had never been faced with prison and was overwhelmed while suffering from physical addiction withdrawals.”
Williams, an Illinois attorney, has provided legal guidance for numerous individuals facing similar life-altering situations throughout his 20-plus-year career.
Recently, like many lawyers, he has adopted generative AI tools to help him work more efficiently. However, Williams said he recognizes AI’s limitations.
“[AI] cannot adjust its approach in real time based on a client’s body language, or offer reassurance grounded in a genuine professional relationship developed around trust,” he said. “Sometimes, that trust is necessary for a client to disclose sensitive information that becomes critical to their defense or cooperation.”
As AI becomes more pervasive in the legal profession, lawyers must ensure that these quintessentially human dimensions of lawyering are not discarded or diminished.
For it is human skills such as judgment, critical thinking, relationship building, problem-solving, leadership, and collaboration that enable lawyers to guide clients through adversity, craft innovative solutions to problems, mediate seemingly intractable disputes, advance new legal precedents, uphold ethical principles, and pursue justice.
Indeed, these human skills will become more important as AI becomes increasingly capable of efficiently executing and automating many basic legal tasks that lawyers have traditionally performed, and lawyers seek to affirm their role and value in an AI-equipped world.
Will AI fundamentally change a lawyer’s role?
Due to generative AI’s rapid evolution, it can now efficiently be used to perform many rudimentary legal tasks, including conducting research, identifying issues and risks, recommending potential steps in a transaction or dispute, and reviewing, drafting, and summarizing documents.
While many AI tools still need to be refined to enhance accuracy and preserve client confidentiality, there is every reason to anticipate that they will become more sophisticated, swift, and accessible within the next five years. These developments are igniting deep and sometimes worried introspection in the legal profession.
Exacerbating this anxiety is the proliferation of hard-sell marketing pitches that frenetically tell lawyers that if they have not onboarded the latest AI tool, then they may already ─ and irreversibly ─ be behind or rendered obsolete.
But instead of worrying about being replaced by or competing with AI to perform basic legal tasks, lawyers and legal organizations should focus on bolstering human skills ─ or those capacities that are grounded in singularly human experiences, behaviors, and traits ─ that AI does not possess.
Human skills will be more important in the age of AI
“The best lawyers have always had strong human skills, and as AI takes on more of the technical and routine work, those skills matter even more,” said attorney Amy Leafe McCormack, a founder and co-president of the Chicago legal search firm McCormack Schreiber.
According to McCormack, who frequently speaks on market trends and was included in the 2026 Lawdragon 100 Global Leaders in Legal Strategy & Consulting, “The skills technology simply can’t replicate ─ judgment, communication, relationship-building, emotional intelligence, leadership, business development ─ are what will separate the good lawyers from the great ones.”
Clients want more than just answers, she said, adding that “they need trusted advisors who can help them navigate uncertainty, weigh risk, build consensus, and make hard calls. AI can generate options, but it can’t tell your client which option is right for their specific situation, their company culture, or their risk appetite. That’s still a deeply human conversation.”
When I was in private practice, I found that the question clients most often wanted me to answer was, “What would you do if you were me?”
Whether they were considering filing a lawsuit or accepting a settlement offer, clients expected more than just a statement of the applicable law or their legal options. Rather, based on my experience, knowledge of the law, and appreciation of their specific circumstances, they wanted me to recommend a course of action and communicate it in a way that was clear, empathetic, and engaged.
McCormack believes that for attorneys to succeed in the age of AI, they must be able to understand their client’s goals, explain complicated concepts using “plain language,” establish trust, and work collaboratively with others.
“In a lot of ways, AI is just making it clearer how much those qualities have always mattered,” she said.
Where lawyers rank on human skills
Some human skills do not come naturally to lawyers. Dr. Larry Richard, an expert on the psychology of lawyer behavior and founder of LawyerBrain, has studied the personalities of thousands of lawyers. In his research, he has found that lawyers tend to score lower on cognitive empathy, sociability, and resilience than the general population, and higher on autonomy and skepticism.
This means, as Dr. Richard explained in a white paper for Managing Partner Forum, that, compared to the general population, lawyers have a lower interest in understanding the world from another person’s perspective, are less inclined to develop close relationships, prefer interactions that “emphasize the mind rather than the heart,” and are more resistant to feedback or criticism. Moreover, lawyers tend to value their independence and to be more questioning than the general population.
While these tendencies can serve lawyers well in adversarial or analytical roles, according to Dr. Richard, they can have significant consequences for a lawyer’s ability to exercise certain human skills when operating in other roles.
Low sociability scores, for example, “have broad implications for many aspects of law firm management — mentoring, teamwork, practice group leadership, client retention, support staff turnover, and rainmaking,” he wrote.
Fortunately, there are steps law students and lawyers can take to bolster their human skills.
How law schools are building human skills
While Illinois law schools have adjusted their curricula to offer courses and training on AI, they continue to emphasize the development of human skills as essential to effective lawyering.
In a recent AI Strategy Statement titled “Rethinking Legal Education in the AI Era,” the University of Chicago Law School identified “elevating the ‘essential human’ skills that distinguish excellent lawyers” as one of three pillars in its vision for legal education in an AI-enabled world.
According to the law school, while “AI may transform the legal profession,” “many aspects of legal practice are likely to remain the domain of humans,” and legal education, therefore, “should renew its focus on training students for the aspects of legal practice for which humans are likely to remain essential.”
The law school also announced that it is prohibiting the use of electronic devices in classrooms where the core 1L curriculum will be taught during the 2026-2027 academic year.
Human skills will remain a priority at DePaul University College of Law as well, because “the art of our practice” entails counseling and advising clients through “connection and understanding,” presenting arguments with passion and sound judgment, and crafting documents that are persuasive and personalized, said Kathryn Liss, Assistant Dean & Director of DePaul’s Office of Professional & Career Development.
At DePaul, first-year law students are required to take a Preparing to Practice course, which helps build their professional identity through discussions, assessments, mock interviews, and mandatory networking events with attorneys and judges.
Liss, who also serves as the Executive Director of DePaul’s Schiller DuCanto & Fleck Family Law Center, said participating in student organizations, such as moot court or law review, is an avenue for cultivating collaboration, leadership, and social and organizational skills.
Moreover, she emphasized that working in clinics or at an internship or externship enables students to practice their human skills with actual clients while being guided by a supervising attorney.
Similarly, Greg Miarecki, who serves as the University of Illinois College of Law’s Executive Assistant Dean for Career Planning and Professional Development, said that all first-year law students are required to take Fundamentals of Legal Practice, which addresses topics such as professional communications, giving and receiving feedback, and developing mentoring relationships.
Miarecki says students are also encouraged to build leadership skills through the College of Law Leadership Project, where he serves as Director, and to explore “the intersection of advocacy and ethics” in human interactions through the Kimball and Karen Anderson Center for Advocacy and Professionalism.
“While AI is poised to transform the legal profession in profound ways, that transformation does not change the fact that our profession is essentially a business focused on people,” Miarecki said. “AI can’t advocate for you with potential employers and clients, and AI can’t hire you to do work.”
While the full scope of AI’s impact on legal education is still indeterminate, Miarecki predicts that AI will eventually prompt law schools to “reconsider how we teach everything.”
How practicing attorneys can build human skills
It is not too late for more experienced attorneys to begin building or refining their human skills. Amy McCormack advises attorneys to be proactive.
“Seek out opportunities that put you in front of clients, require real collaboration, involve mentoring junior attorneys, or ask you to develop business,” she said, noting that service in bar associations, on boards, or in community organizations can also help “sharpen your communication, leadership, and relationship-building in ways that ordinary legal work sometimes doesn’t.”
I know from experience that taking on pro bono matters can help newer attorneys cultivate these skills more quickly due to the enhanced client contact and increased levels of responsibility often involved.
Early in my legal career, I helped handle a pro bono case that involved significant trauma. Through telephone calls with the client, I sought to earn their trust, sensitively outline legal options, and ensure they felt informed and empowered to make decisions.
Ultimately, the client said that feeling seen and heard had been as valuable to them as the legal advice I provided. This was an important lesson in client counseling and relationship-building, and I tried to incorporate those active listening and empathic practices into all future representations.
Michelle West, a lawyer and the founder and principal of MeWe Consults, LLC, pointed to mentoring, leadership, and continuing legal education (CLE) programs as other good ways of developing human skills.
“One recent program I facilitated, The Me in Mediation, explored the critical role that self-awareness and personal presence play in effective dispute resolution,” said West.
Emotional regulation, boundary setting, and problem-solving are additional skills lawyers could seek to build during CLE programs, as they focus on strengthening their competencies as negotiators, mediators, and managers.
Soliciting feedback on human skills
Many human skills are inherently interpersonal. Lawyers should therefore solicit feedback from colleagues, clients, and others regarding their communication, collaboration, leadership, and other human skills.
While this process may feel uncomfortable ─ as a reminder, Dr. Richard found that lawyers rank lower than the general population in their ability to accept feedback and recover from criticism ─ obtaining such information is essential to addressing deficiencies.
Lawyers who want support in applying what they learn in trainings should consider individualized coaching, West said, which can allow for personal reflection and tailored development goals and guidance.
Moreover, legal employers should be proactive in supporting employee development in these areas. As more employers adopt AI use policies and train lawyers on using AI ethically, they should also provide resources and instruction on building the human side of their practice.
West emphasized that when legal organizations adopt a more holistic approach to attorney development, they are investing in the long-term success of not only their respective organizations but of the entire profession.
Legal organizations should prioritize human skills in hiring
As legal organizations are onboarding AI tools, they should also review and modernize their hiring processes to ensure they can identify and hire candidates with strong human skills.
When reviewing candidates’ resumes for attorney roles, McCormack said that “legal employers should look beyond the usual markers ─ grades, law school pedigree, technical skills.” While McCormack said that these traditional indicia remain valuable, “they don’t tell you whether someone can build relationships, lead a team, or inspire confidence in a client.”
Instead, they should “look for leadership roles, client-facing work, business development, mentoring, community involvement ─ any situation where the candidate had to influence others or manage competing interests,” McCormack said.
While interviewing candidates, McCormack said legal employers should “spend less time testing legal knowledge and more time exploring how [the candidate has] handled real interpersonal challenges.”
This includes asking “about difficult client conversations, team conflicts, and moments where they had to lead or persuade. Those stories reveal a lot about emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and judgment,” she said.
McCormack believes that how a candidate engages during the interview process provides another important data point for legal employers to assess: “Pay attention to how they show up throughout the process. Are they prepared? Are they curious? Are they easy to talk to? Are they courteous and responsive?”
McCormack said that “those things are often better predictors of success than anything on the page.”
AI tools cannot replace ‘human connection’
Turning back to the case discussed at the beginning, attorney Adam Williams was trying to help his client Greg decide whether to plead guilty or stand trial on a drug charge. In the end, Greg decided to plead guilty.
“As he pleaded guilty and cooperated, I continued to support him not only by preparing him for proffer sessions and ensuring his rights were protected, but also by helping him manage the emotional strain,” said Williams.
Williams believes that, by providing legal analysis and creating space for human connection, he was able to empower Greg to move from “fear and avoidance toward informed decision-making and accountability.”
“That, in turn, directly contributed to a more favorable resolution,” Williams said. “The law provided the framework, but it was the relationship that made it possible for the client to navigate it.”
As AI ushers in new ways to lawyer, it is attorneys like Williams who will thrive. They will be able to thoughtfully harness the capabilities of AI, while exercising the relational, strategic, and persuasive skills that are at the heart of lawyering and serving others well.
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