Clients unearthing invented case law, disputes caused by erroneous conclusions, the pending future of young colleagues dedicated to research tasks: the rise of artificial intelligence is shaking up the world of lawyers. “We see more and more clients who come to the firm saying: Look Master, I found that,” observes François Girault, president of the Prospective innovation commission of the National Bar Council (CNB). With results that are sometimes relevant, but also sometimes completely inaccurate.
The problem: “they sometimes believe the AI more than us and we are obliged to show them that the reasoning or the case law do not hold,” this business lawyer based in Montpellier told AFP. Same analysis from the President of the Paris Bar, Louis Degos, who evokes a “Doctissimo syndrome”, like these patients who self-diagnose on the internet. “The generative AI used by litigants is not trained to answer legal questions, it does not necessarily have the right databases. And she continues to +hallucinate+, to create things that do not exist to satisfy the human who is waiting for a response,” underlines Me Degos.
The client who feels he has pre-done the work may wish to discuss the fees. While the analyzes carried out “can sometimes cause us to waste time because we have to unravel everything that has been done, recheck everything,” notes Me Girault.
These “hallucinations” can also be found in lawyers’ conclusions, according to the President. When the opposing counsel realizes this - the most frequent case - the dispute can be settled between colleagues or within the bar. But “when it is the jurisdiction which notices it and which seizes me, it becomes much more annoying”, notes Me Degos, who mentions “a few cases” of this type. “There is a clear increase in decisions sanctioning lawyers”, underlines Mr. Girault, rather lenient decisions for the moment, but “the next step will be convictions”.
The future of young employees also raises questions. The tasks that were traditionally entrusted to them, legal research or preparation of summaries, can now be carried out by AI. Consequence: “recruitment is a little frozen,” observes François Girault. But, he warns, “if we don’t recruit juniors and train them, we will have a problem in the long term.”
For Parisian counsel Philippe Meilhac, if AI is a “formidable tool” for doing research, “roughing out” a file, “the lawyer's know-how is being able to identify the points on which there are uncertainties and play on them”. And this is what young people must learn. For Me Degos, “what firms are now looking for are young employees capable of using AI, of understanding its limits, of having a critical eye”.
For some observers, the risk induced by AI is also that of a two-speed bar: according to a CNB survey, in May 2025, 57% of lawyers practicing alone used it, compared to 86% of those working in firms of more than 100 lawyers, with greater resources to develop their own tools. But Louis Degos is optimistic, estimating that small firms have agility compared to large ones - where validation procedures can be rigid - and have access to "largely affordable" subscriptions, with the French "Legaltech" market specifically targeting small structures.
An opinion shared by Meilhac, who works with a single collaborator: “access to AI is quite broad”, thanks in particular to the initiatives of the Order. The CNB has thus developed practical guides or a comparison of tools respecting professional secrecy, the “backbone of the profession”. In Paris, the bar is organizing a “Digital Week” in March, a week devoted to digital tools.
And in November it will launch an “AI Academy”, a free training program with practical workshops and presentation of the tools available, from anonymization software to different AI, with a particular emphasis on data protection and digital sovereignty.
