The Ambition Effect
The prevailing narrative surrounding Generative AI in the legal sector is one of unprecedented efficiency. The sales pitch is seductive in its simplicity: automate routine drafting and research, compress hours into minutes, and liberate attorneys for higher-value strategic thinking.
Yet, as the initial wave of adoption settles, a distinct counter-narrative is emerging from inside law firms. Many practitioners are discovering that integrating AI “powertools” into their workflow is not resulting in earlier departures from the office. In fact, they are often spending more time on a given project, not less.
The immediate, practical assumption is that the technology is simply immature. As documented recently by outlets like Quartz, the “hallucination” problem requires significant human intervention. The output is fast, but cleaning up the errors—fact-checking citations and smoothing out robotic prose—incurs a heavy “cleanup tax.” While experts like Carolyn Elefant have rightly pointed out strategies to mitigate this friction, the reality remains that current AI models are often timesinks disguised as accelerators.
However, if debugging were the primary issue, one could assume efficiency would inevitably win out as the models improve. There is a more nuanced, psychological shift occurring that suggests AI may never truly reduce total working hours for top-tier professionals.
Call it the “Ambition Effect.”
When you equip a highly motivated professional with a tool that dramatically lowers the barrier to execution, their horizon shifts. They do not look at the tool and think, “I can now do my usual standard of work in half the time.” They think, “I can now achieve a vastly superior standard of work in the same amount of time.”
In a pre-AI world, “sufficient” research or a “competent” first draft was often dictated by the sheer constraints of time and budget. Now, with an AI powertool, those constraints have loosened. Suddenly, it is feasible to explore three obscure alternative legal theories instead of just the primary one. It is possible to run deeper semantic analyses on opposing counsel’s previous filings, or to refine the rhetorical structure of a brief until it is not just accurate, but compelling.
The goalpost hasn’t moved; the attorneys have voluntarily pushed it further back.
The irony of this “labor-saving” revolution is that it is fueling an escalation in quality. The end product delivered to the client is undeniably better, deeper, and more polished. But for the lawyers themselves, these tools are not a shortcut to the weekend. They are simply an engine that allows them to drive much further down the same demanding road.