By Chisom Obiudo
There is growing anxiety in the legal profession that artificial intelligence will replace lawyers. That is a legitimate concern, but it is only part of the story.
AI is not replacing lawyers so much as changing what lawyers do, and that change is already visible in the kinds of work AI is beginning to absorb.
AI is replacing some traditional legal work, particularly high-volume, lower-judgement tasks that once kept junior lawyers busy for long hours: first-pass document review, basic contract vetting, summarising large volumes of material, and initial legal research.
AI can now do much of this faster and at lower cost. Pretending otherwise does not help junior lawyers. The volume of routine work is declining, while the need for judgement, oversight, and new forms of legal expertise is growing.
There is also a limit worth acknowledging. These new roles will not employ as many lawyers as the routine work that AI is replacing, especially in a market the size of Namibia, where the lawyers currently working on AI governance would fit around one table.
You do not move towards the new roles because there are plenty of them available. You move because the alternative is worse: if you avoid AI, you only delay the day when a colleague or a competing firm learns to do your work with it and gets there without you.
Better to pivot towards the work that is expanding, even while it is still in its nascent stage.
The shape of that shift is already happening. In May 2026, Garfield AI, a UK-based AI law firm, was reported to have helped a freelancer recover £7,000 in unpaid fees at Wandsworth County Court in England, in what was described as a landmark moment for AI-supported legal services.
The claimant paid around £400, while the opposing party, who had instructed both a solicitor and a barrister, still lost the case.
What matters is the division of labour. The AI handled much of the preparation: demand letters, witness statements, court documents, and the trial bundle.
It did not argue the case. Garfield instructed a human barrister to do so, because advocacy still requires judgement, persuasion, and professional responsibility.
That is the change worth noting. AI is moving into the mechanical parts of legal work, while creating new demand for lawyers who can supervise, govern, and apply judgement to its use.
Consider three of these emerging roles.
The first is the lawyer who oversees the AI used by the profession.
When a law firm or legal department deploys an AI tool to review contracts, draft clauses, summarise documents, or conduct research, someone must be accountable for the tool’s reliability. A confident but incorrect AI response that finds its way into legal advice is not simply the vendor’s problem. It becomes the firm’s risk.
Picture a lawyer reviewing AI-drafted clauses before a closing deadline. The real question is not whether the tool got the clause right today. It is who is best placed to catch it when it does not.
That is a new legal function: a lawyer who understands how these tools can go wrong, supervises their use, decides what may and may not be delegated, and stands behind the final output.
The second is the lawyer who advises organisations on how to govern their use of AI. Every organisation deploying AI will need to understand its legal exposure: what a proposed data protection framework may require, who is liable when an automated decision harms someone, how to contract with AI vendors, and how to ensure the organisation does not assume risks it never anticipated.
This advisory work barely existed at scale a few years ago, and demand for it is already outpacing the supply of lawyers who can do it well.
The lawyers building this expertise now are doing so while the field is still being defined. That is often the only time when being early is an advantage.
The third role sits closer to policy and regulation.
As jurisdictions develop AI laws, standards, and governance frameworks, someone should serve as a translator between technology and law. Someone must help draft rules that are technically sound, legally defensible, and practical for real organisations.
This requires more than general legal knowledge. It requires a lawyer who understands how AI systems are developed, procured, deployed, monitored, and challenged when things go wrong. Few lawyers understand both domains well enough to speak with authority.
That scarcity is exactly why the opportunity is real for those willing to learn the technology well enough to advise on it.
All three roles point to the same underlying truth, which touches every lawyer, not only those who specialise in AI.
As AI takes over the mechanical aspects of legal work, what remains and grows in value is the distinctly human element: judgement, advocacy, ethical reasoning, and counselling a client through a difficult decision.
A tool can tell a client what the law says. It cannot sit with the client, weigh the consequences, accept responsibility, or advise on what should be done.
Technical fluency with AI will matter, but it will not be the real differentiator. Judgement will, because it is the one part of legal work that a tool cannot fully assume and that a client cannot do without.
The question for every lawyer today is no longer whether AI will affect the profession. It already has. The more useful question is which of these new roles to pursue.
That does not start with a course or a certificate. It starts with getting close enough to see whether your own practice, your firm, your institution, or your clients are already using AI.
It starts with asking where judgement is still needed, where risk is being created, and where legal accountability must sit.
That is where the new role is being built. The profession is not disappearing. It is changing. The lawyers who learn its new shape early will be the ones who fit it.
*Chisom Obiudo is an admitted legal practitioner of the High Court of Namibia with specialisation in corporate governance and AI governance. She serves on the NCRST National Artificial Intelligence Technical Advisory Committee on law and governance. Chisom holds a master’s degree in Corporate Governance and professional certificates in Non-Executive Directorship, AI Professional Skills, AI Governance and Legislative Drafting. She can be reached at: chisomokafor11@gmail.com
