Frank Ramos, a partner at Goldberg Segalla in Miami, argues that knowing how to use AI is simply not a career plan for young lawyers entering the profession today.
Neither is the opposing mistake of assuming a legal career can be built without engaging with artificial intelligence tools at all, Ramos says.
Ramos, who practices commercial litigation, products, and catastrophic personal injury law, believes the smarter path is developing two sets of skills simultaneously rather than treating them as competing priorities.
Those two sets are the skills that make someone a good lawyer and the skills that help them use technology to perform better, more efficient work for clients and colleagues.
“One does not excuse neglecting the other,” Ramos writes, stressing that together they position a young lawyer to earn trust and take on real responsibility.
The goal, he argues, is not to compete with software at generating a first draft of a document or contract, which AI can already do quickly and cheaply.
Rather, the objective is to become the kind of lawyer who can decide what should be drafted, explain why it matters legally, and take full responsibility for the result delivered to a client.
Ramos recommends that junior lawyers set a weekly routine that is genuinely sustainable, built around practising one legal skill, testing one AI application, and discussing one decision with a more senior colleague.
He also urges young lawyers to seek out concrete courtroom and client experience, including observing hearings, attending client meetings, and handling defined parts of matters under proper supervision.
“Spending every spare hour experimenting with software will not teach you how to handle a difficult witness,” Ramos notes, adding that ignoring the software entirely will not prepare anyone to help a team use it responsibly.
The balance Ramos describes requires knowing where AI genuinely helps, recognising clearly where it fails, and being able to explain that difference to colleagues who may be less familiar with the technology.
He is direct that no permanent certificate or technical credential can make any legal career fully safe from the pace of change sweeping through the profession right now.
Instead, Ramos frames career resilience around becoming the lawyer that others instinctively trust when the next difficult problem arrives on the firm’s desk.
“Know the facts. Write clearly. Listen. Meet your commitments,” he writes, offering advice that has remained consistent throughout the history of the legal profession regardless of the technology available at the time.
Ramos, who has built a LinkedIn following of approximately 80,000 people, concludes that young lawyers who keep asking for harder work and honest feedback are the ones best positioned to build careers that genuinely last.