Seniors and juniors in the face of AI: semantic versus cybernetic information

Gianmatteo Nunziante

Nunziante Magrone, Rome

g.nunziante@nmlex.it

On 15 May, the Council of the Bar Association of Rome hosted a symposium organised by the Senior Lawyers' Committee and the Young Lawyers' Committee, with the support of the Law Firm Management Committee and the European Regional Forum on the topic of cooperation between young lawyers and senior lawyers in the age of digitalisation.

The works were introduced by the President of the Rome Bar, Alessandro Graziani; the President of the IBA, Claudio Visco; and the Senior Co-Chair of the Senior Lawyers' Committee, Antoine Maffei. The debate was developed in two panels, under the direction of Chiara Caliandro and Gianmatteo Nunziante, representing the Young Lawyers' Committee and the Senior Lawyers' Committee, respectively.

Below are some introductory notes on the topic discussed, followed by reports of what was discussed in each of the panels.

Those who adopt a wait-and-see approach to artificial intelligence (AI), almost as if they wished to believe it is merely a ‘bubble’ about to burst, have unwittingly embarked on a dead-end path.

Whether we accept it or not, AI has in fact already been sitting at our table for some time now; we may as well understand its potential and use it responsibly. Moreover, when one looks at the use of AI in law firms, there is now widespread discussion of barriers to entry into the market. This is so both because AI requires investments that are beyond the reach of many and because the most promising digitally native junior lawyers will be more easily drawn to firms that display a higher degree of digital literacy.

Human beings – and, in our case, legal professionals – remain central to any output, regardless of the contribution made by AI: there is, of course, an issue of accountability – who is responsible for the ‘finished product’ – but that is not the only point.

In 2011, the well-known Italian writer, Umberto Eco, contrasted cybernetic information – quantitative in nature – with semantic information – which is qualitative. The former, through the statistical combination of an innumerable amount of data, is capable of producing a result that appears entirely comparable to (and indeed, thanks to today’s computational capacities, even superior to) that produced by human beings. Yet, at present, even the most advanced AI models – namely those ‘reinforced’ through the technique of Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback, such as ChatGPT – remain deficient from a semantic standpoint. Put simply, these models are based on ‘statistical correlations between words and sentences learned during training in a game of symbol composition, without ever possessing intentionality or an awareness of meaning’.[1]

It is here that human beings will predictably continue to play a fundamental role – even in the provision of legal services – at least until truly sentient AI emerges. And it is here that collaboration between junior and senior lawyers may find its proper place, in what I would describe as a phase of ‘transition’.

One recurring question, in fact, is how the next generation of lawyers will be trained if it is true that recent graduates – and, progressively, junior lawyers more broadly – will give way to an AI that is, in practice, increasingly capable of performing, in a more cost-efficient manner, the tasks to which they were initially assigned (I refer, to begin with, to due diligence and drafting activities).

In the collective imagination, those who embrace AI without hesitation are precisely the digitally savvy young people – the very individuals for whom it poses, on paper, the greatest challenges – whereas those who resist it are the old guard, sceptical and convinced, at least for the time being, that they are shielded from any direct repercussions on their work. In both cases, what is lacking is a forward-looking perspective – one that takes into account generational transition, the future of law firms and, more broadly, of the legal profession itself.

There is room here for bidirectional, or reciprocal, mentoring. Traditional mentoring – from senior to junior – aimed at training younger professionals and preparing them for the practice of law, may be complemented by mentoring in the opposite direction – from junior to senior – whereby the younger professional places his or her digital skills at the disposal of the more senior one, thereby acting as a facilitator in the use of such tools by those who are not digital natives.

What might at first glance appear to be an oversimplification of the balance of power between professionals of differing seniority can, in a complex environment such as a professional practice – especially a smaller one – become a virtuous practice, laying the foundations for an orderly generational transition without loss of goodwill or accumulated value. The senior lawyer embodies the ‘semantic’ component of information – to use the contrast referred to above – by virtue of his or her expertise and experience and is therefore capable of grasping the meaning of data by placing it in context. The junior lawyer – without this implying any diminution – is instead the bearer of cybernetic information (or rather, knowledge) and of an innate familiarity with digital tools. The combination of these two different sets of abilities makes it possible to manage the profession’s transition to the digital sphere without losing the added value of knowledge – understood as the set of information, notions, skills and experiences acquired through study, observation or practice, and to be distinguished from the mere accumulation of notions – which is the true distinguishing feature of professional practice.

From this perspective, the involvement of junior lawyers in dedicated teams within reasonably structured professional firms, tasked with identifying and assessing the most appropriate technological tools in light of the organisation and needs of the relevant professional practice, should be viewed positively: and indeed this is what is currently happening, a sign that the transition to digital in law firms has already found its way! The challenge consists in ‘if and how’ openly senior lawyers will be embracing the AI and integrating it with their semantic expertise.