AI’s Doesn’t Just Produce Faster Legal Work, It Produces Better Work: Insights from Daniel Schwarcz

Episode notes

We’ve all heard that AI can make lawyers bette r at their jobs. But now there’s data-backed research to prove it. And now, there’s research to prove it. In the latest episode of Between the Briefs by Steno, hosts Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens welcome Daniel Schwarcz, Professor at University of Minnesota, to discuss the groundbreaking paper, “AI-Powered Lawyering” and its empirical findings on how certain AI tools are reshaping legal practice. What You’ll Learn: How retrieval-augmented generation transforms legal research Why reasoning models like O1 Preview outperform traditional language models for legal analysis The critical distinction between efficiency gains and quality improvements How to identify tasks where AI adds meaningful value versus areas requiring caution Why relying on AI without domain expertise creates ethical liability The emerging labor market realities for junior attorneys Every lawyer needs proof - this study is all the evidence you could need about AI use in today’s legal landscape.