Writing on Reason, Eugene Volokh argues that the analogy between artificial intelligence and a law clerk breaks down once one distinguishes between institutional legal writing and personal scholarship. He says a judicial opinion is valuable because it is an authorised act of the court, not because of the individual hand that typed it, which is why the name on the page matters far less than the panel’s formal power.

Volokh contrasts that with academic work, where the point of authorship is to make a personal intellectual claim. In his view, a law review article is closer to a jazz solo than to a court order: the audience expects a real performance from the named author, not a polished playback of someone else’s work. If a scholar relies on AI to produce the substance of the argument, he suggests, that is not the same as using a clerk to prepare a draft for review.

That debate comes as the legal profession is already embracing AI in ways that are reshaping daily practice. The American Bar Association says a survey found 69% of legal professionals use general-purpose AI for work tasks, while firms increasingly prefer legal-specific systems built around security, reliability and professional workflows. LexisNexis and other legal-technology providers make a similar distinction, arguing that consumer AI tools are not designed for the demands of legal work and may not provide the source-backed accuracy lawyers need.

Academic researchers are also testing where machine assistance belongs in legal settings. A University of Chicago Law School study led by Eric Posner examined whether AI could grade law school exams with fairness and consistency, while his broader writing on AI judging has highlighted both the promise of pattern recognition and the limits of machine reasoning. That wider conversation reinforces Volokh’s point: the real question is not whether AI can help produce legal text, but whether the setting treats authorship as an institutional function or a personal one.

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Source: Noah Wire Services