The Human Touch Lawyers Need to Succeed in an AI-Driven World

This article was originally published in Bloomberg Law. Reprinted with permission. Any opinions in this article are not those of Winston & Strawn or its clients. The opinions in this article are the authors’ opinions only. This article was co-authored with PrincetonComms founder Matt Eventoff. 

Early career associates spend much of their time preparing initial drafts, performing legal research, and conducting factual analysis. Artificial intelligence empowers lawyers to quickly produce good first drafts and gives them the ability to process and harness massive amounts of data.

But as generative AI increasingly becomes a crucial tool for the legal industry, the ability to communicate, persuade, and connect with people “in the room” will define the next generation of legal excellence.

AI can raise the technical quality of written work product and analysis, but what the very best lawyers will uniquely bring to the table is their ability to frame, explain, and defend ideas in person. They will adjust on the fly and explain with simplicity, empathy, and the insights of emotional intelligence. These durable, human skills—often called “soft skills,” will become the main differentiator for emerging future leaders.

Here are five skills for new lawyers to practice, beginning today, in this age of generative AI:

Read the silent signals in a room and pivot. The ability to read a room is one of the most overlooked skills—and one of the most critical in practice. Reading silent signals in a room means knowing when to talk and when to listen. It’s an ability to spot the person in the room who has the most influence (hint: It’s often not the person at the head of the table). It’s how we notice posture, facial gestures, wandering eyes, and shifting tone. It’s noticing who glances at someone else when asked a question. Reading a room means noticing not only when others send silent signals, but when you do, too.

The ability to read a room and pivot can be practiced in almost any situation—a law school class, an early career meeting. Law school teaches students to read cases. Life teaches lawyers to read people.

Present with simplicity. New lawyers with strong presence and presentation skills are more likely to have earlier opportunities in front of clients and partners. Speaking persuasively and confidently inspires trust and can open doors to higher-stakes, higher-value work.

Strong oratory skills are critical in getting messages across, whether that is in a negotiation, hearing, video, an internal meeting, or a client briefing. And the best presenters are those who can take complex inputs—even when compiled with the help of AI—and present them in a persuasive, simplified manner that connects and persuades. Practice doing this in any setting by taking complex material and boiling it down to three or four simple points. Make those points your presentation roadmap, digging deeper only after you have simplified the path.

Make a phone call. You read that right. Use a phone for… a phone call. Not every message should be sent by text or email. Not every message needs a pre-determined meeting on Teams or Zoom. Making a phone call is a skill, and one every person can learn. Like anything else, it takes practice. Try checking in with a phone call to a classmate or colleague and do it with no agenda. Skip the text, make a call.

Use emotional intelligence to spot problems and opportunities early. The subtle comment in a text. Rolled eyes in conversation. An odd sentence in an email from a key client. All are early signs of an emerging issue—positive or negative. And all are opportunities for training in emotional intelligence, a skill that comes through experience. High EQ is like an early warning system, a detector of both problems and opportunities before they materialize. Want to learn about EQ? Talk to people in the hospitality industry—they know exactly how to gauge the energy in people and how to adjust in real time before problems and opportunities rise to the surface.

Connect with empathy. Briefs and memos aren’t the hardest things to draft. It’s harder to write a note to a longtime client who has lost a parent or a congratulatory message to a classmate who made partner before you did. Yes, AI can draft a memo. But it can’t handwrite a note that makes someone feel seen or remembered. It can’t do a quick check-in with a colleague who is struggling. Those human interactions, made with empathy, are remembered and build enduring connections.

Technology has produced seismic changes in the way we practice law. And yet some things never change, and these are the durable, human skills that law students and new law firm associates can begin to master today.