抖阴成年

Key insights:

• • • Law firms have moved from restricting GenAI use (Don鈥檛 use tools that leak client data) to mandating it (Incorporate AI into your practice and market our firm鈥檚 GenAI capabilities)鈥斅燦either phase has given rank and file lawyers what they really need: Guidance on in which instances GenAI actually helps deliver better, cheaper, and faster legal services, where it introduces serious professional risk, and how to tell the difference.

    • GenAI鈥檚 capacity to transform legal work for the better is real, but so is its capacity to degrade it聽鈥擥enAI can significantly boost speed and quality on tasks involving breadth, synthesis, or straightforward analysis, but it can weaken performance on complex judgment and revision tasks 鈥� especially for stronger professionals 鈥� by encouraging overconfidence, missed issues, and superficial reasoning.

    • A use-mode framework can close the聽gap鈥� A proposed governance framework can give law firm leadership a practical tool for identifying in which situations GenAI enhances legal work, where it introduces serious risk, and where professional judgment is non-negotiable.

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This article synthesizes findings from the author鈥檚 paper,

Your law firm undoubtedly has a policy around generative AI (GenAI), which probably tells lawyers to avoid tools that leak client data, admonishes them to look out for hallucinations, and encourages them to incorporate AI into their practice to satisfy client demands.

However, it likely does not tell them which cognitive functions they should delegate to GenAI, which they should not, and where the line between the two is absolute. In the space between restriction and mandate, lawyers are making consequential decisions about GenAI delegation every day. Meanwhile, most law firms have not addressed that space with meaningful governance.

GenAI can make legal work worse

GenAI鈥檚 capacity to transform legal work for the better is real, but so is its capacity to degrade it. Most law firm leaders know that AI can hallucinate; yet far fewer know that it can make expert legal judgment and work product actively worse.

The best evidence of this dynamic comes from a with consultants from the Boston Consulting Group, who were given similar tasks and allowed to use various levels of AI assistance, including no AI. For professional tasks requiring breadth and option generation, GenAI delivered, showing that output quality improved by 40% and consultants worked faster. For tasks requiring judgment and synthesis, however, something unexpected happened. Consultants using GenAI were 19% less likely to produce correct solutions than those working without it.

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Governing GenAI鈥檚 uneven performance requires asking a question that most law firms are not asking: What cognitive function is being delegated to GenAI at each step in the workflow?

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The same pattern appears in research evaluating GenAI use in legal analysis. An empirical in the Journal of Legal Education confirmed that AI dramatically improves performance on straightforward analysis while producing no measurable benefit for complex reasoning. And in the case of complex reasoning, GenAI use also introduced recurring failures, such as jumping to conclusions, missing less obvious issues, and generating confident prose that masks superficial analysis.

from the University of Minnesota focused on legal tasks showed that GenAI assistance on a synthesis task improved performance by nearly 60% and produced a surprising downstream benefit. Those participants who used AI for synthesis outperformed the control group on the subsequent independent reasoning task even after GenAI was removed. However, when GenAI was introduced at the revision stage, the picture changed. GenAI helped weaker performers, but it actively degraded the work of stronger ones. Indeed, the best lawyers in the study produced worse revised work product when they used GenAI than when they worked without it.

A use-mode governance framework

Given all these findings, governing GenAI鈥檚 uneven performance requires asking a question that most law firms are not asking. Instead of determining whether GenAI is appropriate for a particular deliverable 鈥� such as a brief, a contract, or a board presentation 鈥� the governance question instead should be: What cognitive function is being delegated to GenAI at each step in the workflow?

My proposed framework, outlined below, organizes common GenAI uses into seven recurring modes following the sequence in which lawyers actually use GenAI to produce legal work product. Then, governance controls are calibrated to the risk profile of each mode.

Modes 1 and 2: Retrieval and organization

At the mechanical end of the cognitive spectrum are two distinct functions. In retrieval mode (Mode 1), a lawyer reviewing a merger agreement asks GenAI to identify every representation and warranty in the document. In organization mode (Mode 2), a litigator reviewing 50 depositions asks GenAI to construct a timeline from the testimony. The first locates material that already exists. The second arranges it into a usable structure. No new content is created in either case, and both uses are low-risk and should be actively encouraged, subject to modest verification controls. Firms that unduly restrict these use modes are leaving value on the table.

Mode 3: Summarization

Summarization (Mode 3) introduces selection risk. In this mode, GenAI chooses what to emphasize, include, and omit. Consider a lawyer preparing a board presentation on the results of an internal investigation. GenAI can condense dozens of witness interviews into key points and themes in minutes; however, a summary may focus on procedural detail while missing credibility issues that a lawyer would immediately recognize as material. The appropriate control is to mandate meaningful review by a lawyer with first-hand knowledge of the source material. A lawyer encountering the summary cold has no reliable way to evaluate what GenAI missed.

Mode 4: Candidate generation

Mode 4 is exploratory. A lawyer drafting a brief might ask GenAI to generate a list of potential arguments, propose alternative framings, or identify supporting authority. This candidate material expands options and accelerates iteration. The work product is not filing-ready and must be treated as provisional. GenAI can suggest, but a lawyer must decide.

The authority verification obligation at this stage deserves special emphasis. GenAI will identify cases, summarize holdings, and weave them into an argument structure. Thus, the output will read fluently and cite real-looking cases. However, a lawyer cannot assume the model has accurately characterized the holdings or context, and any authority cited in an external filing must be independently read and verified. GenAI can help find the cases, but a lawyer must read and apply them.

Mode 5: Editing and rewriting

In Mode 5, a lawyer asks GenAI to tighten a dense contract provision or restructure a wordy paragraph, risking, of course, unintended meaning change. An edit may read cleanly while subtly narrowing a representation, softening a covenant, or eliminating a carve-out. The revision risk is not hypothetical. The University of Minnesota study referenced above found that stronger performers produced worse work product when GenAI revised their independently produced memos. In this mode, a lawyer must confirm that the edit produced no shift in meaning and introduced no new factual assertions.

Mode 6: Critique and stress-testing

Mode 6 may be the most underutilized GenAI capability. Before filing a brief or presenting to regulators, a lawyer can ask GenAI to identify weaknesses in their argument. In this way, GenAI finds vulnerabilities before adversaries do; and unlike every other mode, the risk here runs in one direction. Lawyers who skip this step are missing one of GenAI鈥檚 core value propositions. Law firms鈥� governance frameworks should not merely permit it but actually require it in appropriate cases.

Mode 7: Evaluation and decision

The boundary against AI delegation becomes absolute when GenAI is asked to evaluate or decide. A lawyer advising a board on whether an event requires disclosure cannot delegate that determination to GenAI. A litigator assessing settlement value cannot outsource probability judgments because these are core expressions of professional responsibility. In this mode, GenAI may inform background analysis, but it may not substitute for lawyer judgment in making the call. This is a categorical prohibition 鈥� professional judgment cannot be delegated.

Going forward with GenAI

Law firm leaders who have moved their GenAI policy from restriction to mandate without governing the space between have not finished the job. Their lawyers are making consequential decisions about GenAI use every day without the guidance they need and deserve.

The use-mode framework presented above gives firm leadership a practical tool for filling that gap. It identifies the instances in which GenAI enhances legal work, where it introduces serious risk, and where professional judgment is non-negotiable. Firms that govern at that level will capture GenAI鈥檚 value; and those firms that do not will have policies that look serious but govern nothing important.

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The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author in his individual capacity and do not represent the views, positions, or opinions of Foley & Lardner LLP, its partners or clients, or the University of Wisconsin Law School.