As the lawyers with the most hands-on experience with legal technology, associates may well be the best bellwether of the suitability and promise of generative artificial intelligence tools in the law firm world, and—particularly in transactional practices—many are expressing enthusiasm rather than fear.

These sentiments offer a counterpoint to a recent Law.com survey that revealed that more than half of nearly 3,000 midlevel associates thought the biggest threat to their legal jobs was technology replacing humans.

“Of course it makes mistakes, but it doesn’t change the fact that it still adds value, and it still helps you get to a place that you need to be,” said Luis Ferro, a Miami-based associate in the corporate practice group at Duane Morris.

Ferro and other associates who work in transactional practices have thus far been pleased with the technology, while their counterparts in litigation expressed a broader mix of opinions in survey responses and interviews, possibly due to the fact that headline-generating stories of AI hallucinations seem to hit litigators the hardest.

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