alt Hacker NewsDo you really see lawyers being replaced? I don't see anything special in their work but since it's a regulated industry I doubt it will be so affected.
At best some layers will work faster, but automating their work or people not requiring them? Usually when you contact one there's a lot at stake. Same with accountants.
Software engineering and translators is a different story. Most of the times if something goes wrong nobody cares.
Some lawyers (the worst ones?) might just do the easy or normal things like writing a 'lawyer' letter to someone not paying. This is no risk to automate away.
The avg Lawyers might do more complex but again a lot of 'normal' things. Day to day things the next SaaS AI company wants to 'fix' and they might also accept basic liability.
Then you have the 'tv lawyers' the ones who do non normal things, they have A LOT of apprentices and young lawyers going through papers, research etc.
They will for sure have the expert as a human, but that person will need a lot less support.
You shouldn't need an accountant today already. If you have an digital order and a digital bill and a digital signed delivery note, it can be booked automatically. AI will find risks, summarize them etc.
AI is already helping here closing the gap with better OCR etc.
I really think, that when big companies introduce the agentic layer to their products, there will be less people needed and if you need people, they get less paid because they will need to understand less.