Why Law Needs Tech Literacy
3 min
My internship showed me that law is more than doctrine, it's managing complex, behind-the-scenes work. I now see the next three years as a chance to turn that experience into real impact.
By: Malvavika Bharath Vasudevan
August 5, 2025
My summer internship taught me something I didn’t expect: knowing the law is only a pieceof the legal puzzle. The rest? It’s far more complex. Legal education may emphasize doctrine and precedent, but the day-to-day reality is so much more. There’s a steady hum of tasks: from intake, to combing through medical records, to building timelines, to drafting proposals, extracting the key points from endless transcripts, and summarizing hours of testimony into clear, client-focused stories. There are a lot of bees buzzing around any legal matter, but someone still needs to make the honey – a job once delegated to armies of paralegals and junior lawyers. This is where I envisioned the next three years of my work experience being.
But increasingly, AI tools like KLIP automate the tedious groundwork, transforming raw information into actionable, organized insights so legal teams can focus less on the busywork and more on what really moves the case forward. With every routine aspect of the case–documents, facts, analyses, records, and key deadlines– in sync, legal tech doesn’t just speedup the workflow, but ensures that every crucial piece is exactly where you need it when you
need it.
Despite this, the legal world as a whole –steeped in tradition and methodologies built on the very precedent of upholding rules– has been rather slow to accept change, especially as it involves risk. And there is no doubt that AI and automation (for all their positives) are fraught with risks. Yet as automation rises, so does the pressing need for more “legal technologists” – attorneys, students, and professionals who don’t just learn the law but speak the language of technology, translating between code and courtroom to deliver more effective justice.need it.
The paradox? As AI expands service capabilities and efficiency, intrinsically human characteristics or “natural intelligence” so to speak only gain value. Listening, negotiation, advocacy, understanding shifting client priorities, and ethics cannot be coded and this is what the future of law is likely to hinge on. As someone yet to begin my legal career, I see my best chance to thrive is not to fear being replaced by tech but to fully embrace it – learning how and when to leverage it will free up brainpower to learn the kind of advocacy and human judgement that will one day become the crux of my role as a lawyer.
Because let’s face it: clients don’t just want faster answers, they want better advice. Tech brings speed and scale. Human lawyers bring empathy, ethics, and strategy. In law, both are essential and for the first time, the tools to get started are right at our fingertips. How will you use them?