The legal world is buzzing with predictions about artificial intelligence, but history suggests that the most profound changes will be ones nobody has yet imagined.
That lesson comes from an unlikely source: the 70th anniversary of the American interstate highway system, explored in a recent USA Today piece by Leslie D. Rose.
The interstate network was originally built at the urging of the army primarily as a national defence infrastructure, but it quickly morphed into something far more expansive and unexpected.
Chief among its unintended consequences was the transformation of commercial transport, with interstates creating long-haul trucking on a scale that had never existed before.
That shift in turn enabled just-in-time supply concepts, which fundamentally altered manufacturing systems across the country in ways nobody predicted at the outset.
The interstates also changed human perception of time and distance, with what once seemed a long journey of 50 miles becoming a relatively short commute for millions of people.
Suburbs grew, car culture took hold, reliance on public transportation declined, and holiday habits shifted dramatically as a direct result of those four lanes of tarmac.
There was also a darker legacy, with experts noting that interstate routing frequently ran through areas with little political power, hollowing out smaller communities and local businesses that once lined the old roads.
Too many small towns, bypassed by drivers drawn to faster routes, have since become virtual ghost towns with declining populations and rampant drug use.
If the consequences of something as seemingly predictable as a highway network proved so difficult to foresee, the challenge of anticipating AI’s full impact on the legal profession becomes considerably more daunting.
The most visible effects of AI on legal services are already generating debate, but as with the interstates, the deeper disruptions may only become apparent years or even decades from now.
It is not farfetched to believe that AI will drive entirely new ways of delivering legal services that we haven’t even seen or thought of yet.
Just as interstates eroded local economies, AI may accelerate the decline of the small-town lawyer, a figure who once served on school boards and led local government while billing modest hourly rates.
Contingency fee cases that once sustained solo practitioners and small firms are already being absorbed by national firms with far greater resources and reach.
The local businesses that once paid those billable hours are disappearing too, leaving a growing vacuum in community leadership that smaller legal practices traditionally helped to fill.
That tradition is embodied in the figure of Atticus Finch, the lawyer who practised, lived, and cared about the local community, a romantic but meaningful archetype of what the profession once represented.
AI could hasten the loss of the Atticus Finches of the world and the culture they represented, at a moment when the law has already moved far beyond being a learned profession to a business like any other.
The honest conclusion is not that AI will or will not destroy legal jobs, restructure the profession, or unleash new services entirely, but simply that its ultimate impact remains a known unknown.