The White Page Still Matters
I do not use GenAI because I think it can replace lived legal judgment. I use it because it is a powerful tool that can understand my original thought and help me develop it. The starting point still matters. In my case, that starting point comes from years of practicing law, serving as a judge, and learning through experience what GenAI cannot experience for itself.
The tool may help sharpen the phrasing, tighten the structure, and even push the argument further than I might have pushed it on my own. But the original thought still has to come from somewhere. It comes from seeing a tension others have missed, recognizing a risk before it fully arrives, or understanding that a current event is actually pointing to a much larger problem. That is not something I pulled from a prompt library. It is not something GenAI came up with for me. It comes from having practiced law long enough to know that the real issue is often not the one most people first notice.
That is why the conversation about GenAI and writing often misses the point. The question is usually framed as whether the machine wrote the words. That is not unimportant, but it is not the most important question either. The better question is who supplied the judgment. Who had the instinct to spot the issue in the first place. Who understood that the story was not really about the gadget, or the app, or the feature, but about legitimacy, authority, evidence, privacy, or due process. Who saw which distinction mattered and why.
GenAI can predict language. It can synthesize patterns. It can mirror structure. It can even sound wise. But sounding wise is not the same as having acquired wisdom. The law has always depended on something deeper than fluent language. It depends on formed judgment. It depends on people who have spent enough time in the profession to recognize not only what can be done, but what should not be done. It depends on people who understand that the cost of error in our system is not abstract. It lands on real people, real rights, real cases, and real institutions.
That is why I view GenAI as an amplifier, not an originator.
Used well, it can help someone with a well-formed point of view express that point of view more clearly and more efficiently. It can help surface implications, test language, and build a more complete argument. But it is still working from a foundation it did not lay.
And that has consequences for the profession.
What concerns me is not simply that younger lawyers will start using these tools. They will. Many already have. The deeper concern is what these tools may do to professional formation if we are not careful. The legal profession has always depended on more seasoned attorneys intentionally raising the next generation. That was never a frictionless process. It involved hard drafts, correction, repetition, explanation, and the slow shaping of judgment. It required younger lawyers to wrestle with the work instead of skipping straight to the polished answer.
That is one reason I often say that no one should use GenAI to avoid the white page problem. The white page is where the lawyer’s own thinking is supposed to begin. It is where the first framing, the first instinct, and the first effort to identify what matters actually takes shape. If the tool is used to bypass that moment altogether, then it is not just helping refine the work. It is replacing a stage of development the profession has traditionally relied upon to form judgment.
These tools make that handoff harder when they are used carelessly.
They can make it easier for more experienced lawyers to stop teaching because the work product looks good enough on the surface. They can make it easier for younger lawyers to stop wrestling with the problem because the answer arrives before the understanding does. In that sense, these tools discourage the first and encourage the second. They can discourage the intentional investment seasoned lawyers must make in teaching judgment, and they can encourage the kind of shortcut-taking that feels productive in the moment but leaves the underlying development unfinished.
That is a dangerous combination.
The next generation of lawyers does not just need faster tools. It needs formed judgment. It needs mentors who will explain why one fact matters more than another, why one argument is stronger than another, and why one shortcut is harmless while another quietly corrodes credibility. It needs younger lawyers who understand that assistance is not the same thing as growth, and that generating a clean paragraph is not the same thing as learning how to think like a lawyer.
It can also help me develop an idea, say it better, and expand a thought that began with me. But it cannot live the life that produced the thought. It cannot practice law for twenty years. It cannot stand in court, sort through weak and strong arguments, watch systems fail in familiar ways, and slowly develop the instincts that tell you where the real issue is hiding.
It can expound on judgment.
But it still takes human experience to form it.
