For as long as I can remember, the legal profession has offered a well-defined career path.<\/p>\n
For plenty of lawyers, that’s still exactly where they want to end up. But over the past 12 months, I’ve had more conversations with lawyers who don’t want to make partner than at any point in my career. Not because they’ve fallen out of love with the law. The opposite, actually. They still enjoy the legal work. They just don’t want to spend the next 20 years chasing billable hours to get there.<\/p>\n
There’s the obvious in-house move. But now there’s also Legal AI, Legal Engineering, Legal Operations and legal transformation. Roles that barely existed a few years ago are becoming some of the most interesting opportunities in the legal market.<\/p>\n
Most of the conversation around AI in law firms is about what lawyers stand to lose.<\/p>\n
Those are fair questions. But from where I sit, they miss half the story.<\/p>\n
What I’m actually seeing is AI creating new career paths for lawyers who understand legal practice and want to apply that knowledge differently. These roles don’t replace legal expertise, they build on it. Firms still need people who understand legal risk, client expectations and how legal work gets delivered. Increasingly they also need people who can help implement AI, improve processes, manage change and bring the rest of the firm along with them. That’s an opportunity that didn’t exist when most of today’s lawyers started their careers.<\/p>\n
I didn’t start out recruiting lawyers. My early years in Bluefin were spent on the tax desk, placing tax accountants and advisors. From there I watched Tax Technology and Tax Operations go from a handful of oddly titled roles to a genuine specialisation. Firms wanted people who understood tax but could also improve processes, implement systems and bring a team along that didn’t always want to change.<\/p>\n
Legal feels like it’s tracking a similar path, and AI has taken it up a level again. I’m now speaking with lawyers, legal operations people and change specialists who sit across legal, AI, projects and technology, in roles that would have made no sense to a hiring partner five years ago. Legal won’t necessarily follow tax exactly, every market moves on its own timeline. But it’s a useful comparison for how a specialist career shows up once technology changes the way professional work gets delivered.<\/p>\n
I was away recently when the managing partner at a mid-sized law firm emailed me out of the blue. They already have someone in a part-time AI role, but he was upfront that the role and what the firm needs from it will keep changing. About six months ago they decided AI needed to sit outside Operations as its own function. They’re still working out exactly what that function should look like.<\/p>\n
He’d seen everything advertised from AI Coordinator through to Head of AI and Innovation, and wanted a clearer picture of what to expect at each level and what the market pays. He has a good read on what the top-tier firms are doing, but far less visibility into how firms his own size were approaching it. He asked to see position descriptions and CVs to get a feel for the market, and wanted to know how comparable firms structure the role, where it sits inside the business and what level of experience they’re recruiting.<\/p>\n
None of that surprised me. It’s close to the exact conversation I’m now having with firms most weeks. And it tells me something: mid-market firms are working through the same questions the top end worked through a couple of years back, mostly without a template to follow.<\/p>\n
Here’s the part that took me a while to get used to. As you\u2019d expect most of the actual AI hiring isn’t running through legal recruitment at all. The AI Legal Engineers, the workflow automation specialists, the people implementing platforms like Legora and Harvey, they’re overwhelmingly candidates our data and technology team places.<\/p>\n
But legal AI hiring pulls on two skill sets at once: legal judgement and technical build. A firm that treats it purely as a legal hire, or purely as a tech hire, tends to end up with someone strong on one side and stretched on the other. Getting it right means pulling from both pools, which is exactly why I’m now working alongside our data and tech colleagues, as well as Sasha on our legal desk, on these industry briefs.<\/p>\n
The lawyers exploring these opportunities tend to have something in common. They’re naturally curious. They like understanding how a business works. They’re interested in improving systems and processes, and in solving problems that sit beyond the legal advice itself.<\/p>\n
For lawyers early in their careers, Legal AI and Legal Engineering are a genuine alternative path, one where they still use their legal training while helping shape how legal services get delivered. For the right person, that’s a strong proposition.<\/p>\n
The firms attracting this talent aren’t just buying AI tools or hiring a Legal Engineer and calling it done. They’re building capability, and they understand that getting AI right isn’t only about picking the right platform. It’s about having the right people to lead change, drive adoption and help lawyers work differently.<\/p>\n
Just as importantly, they’re recognising that not every talented lawyer wants the same career. Some want partnership. Some want to specialise. Some are drawn to innovation, technology and transformation. The firms that make room for all three tend to attract the broadest range of talent.<\/p>\n
I don’t think we’re watching the end of traditional legal careers. Far from it.<\/p>\n
What I do think is happening is the start of something new. AI isn’t just changing how lawyers work or what services firms offer. It’s expanding what a legal career can look like. For lawyers who love the law but don’t see themselves following the traditional path, that’s worth paying attention to. And for firms building capability in Legal AI, Legal Engineering and legal transformation, it’s a chance to bring in legal talent whose skills might previously have been overlooked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For as long as I can remember, the legal profession has offered a well-defined career path. Graduate. Lawyer. \u00a0Associate. Senior associate. Special counsel. Partner. For plenty of lawyers, that’s still exactly where they want to end up. But over the past 12 months, I’ve had more conversations with lawyers who don’t want to make partner…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","footnotes":""},"categories":[222,226,230,225],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai","category-career-advice","category-legal","category-recruitment"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bluefinresources.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bluefinresources.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bluefinresources.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bluefinresources.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bluefinresources.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18518"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bluefinresources.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18521,"href":"https:\/\/www.bluefinresources.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18518\/revisions\/18521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bluefinresources.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bluefinresources.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bluefinresources.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}