Lawyers have incorporated a number of technologies into their practices since the 1990s, but generative AI will reshape how lawyers work, Michael Gerstenzang said on this week’s Drinks With The Deal podcast.

Innovations such as email, word processing and Zoom have “made it easier, faster and more efficient to do things,” said Gerstenzang, managing partner of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP in New York, but they didn’t amount to “a fundamental change in how we operate.”

Generative AI, he believes, “is going to affect every practice and every person. The only question is the time frame, not the direction that we’re on in incorporating generative AI into our practice.”

In 2022, Cleary announced the launch of ClearyX as a standalone business within the firm run by CEO Carla Swansburg that provides services “across a broad range of transactional practices,” Gerstenzang said. “I think there is almost no practice that does not lend itself to using technology to be more efficient and to free up lawyers to do higher value-added tasks, particularly more junior lawyers.”

He continued: “The legal industry in terms of organization and the way it works hasn’t changed very much over the course of my career. You can contrast that with any of our clients. That suggests to me that we’re due for some changes. What those changes look like is a developing question.”

Listen to the podcast with Michael Gerstenzang below:

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