---
title: "AI is reshaping the landscape for legal graduates trying to learn on the job"
description: "The traditional path to go from legal apprentice to admitted attorney or advocate is changing as automation threatens developmental roles."
type: "NewsArticle"
publisher: "Daily Maverick"
site: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za"
section: "TRAINING GROUNDED"
author: "Holly Munks"
author_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/author/holly-munks/"
canonical_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-11-09-ai-is-reshaping-the-landscape-for-legal-graduates-trying-to-learn-on-the-job/"
published: "2026-11-09T19:30:00"
lang: "en-ZA"
word_count: 1117
---

# AI is reshaping the landscape for legal graduates trying to learn on the job

> The traditional path to go from legal apprentice to admitted attorney or advocate is changing as automation threatens developmental roles.

By Holly Munks · Published 9 November 2026, 21:30 SAST

## Key points
- AI is reshaping legal work, raising fears that fewer entry-level roles will remain for graduates learning through routine tasks.
- Although firms insist technology will augment rather than replace lawyers, cost pressures, remote work and clients bringing work in-house are squeezing junior opportunities.
- Experts warn that automating the “drudgery” risks removing the training ground that turns graduates into experienced attorneys and advocates.
- Cutting junior hiring may deliver short-term efficiencies but could create “talent debt” and erode the profession’s future pipeline.

## Content

Law firms and their software providers are at pains to tell the world that AI will augment and not replace humans. But are they protecting the processes that transform ­junior-level caterpillars into partner-level butterflies?

In the US, data showed that the overall employment rate for law students who graduated in 2025 was the second highest ever, but there were fewer graduates in total. Put another way, if the class of 2025 had been larger, employment outcomes would have been weaker.

One advocate who spoke to Daily Maverick on condition of anonymity said that there was “a significant level of disagreement between people in terms of what their predictions are”.

“Undoubtedly, AI will change the nature of people’s roles. It will change the composition of what we do on a daily basis.”

The source has heard anecdotally that it is becoming much harder for law graduates to land jobs, but said that at the commercial law Bar level, junior staff had plenty to do.

The issue, however, was that “law firms are incredibly cost-conscious and… there’s real uncertainty about whether investing in human capital will have the return that it used to have”.

Retha Beerman, head of knowledge management at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr, said the company was not hiring less as a result of AI.

“It’s not that AI has had no effect on hiring, but it’s a continuation of an earlier trend where the skill sets that we’re looking for have expanded into people who can think laterally,” Beerman said.

She acknowledged talk among other companies that juniors could become less valuable if “incentive structures” point in that direction.

“Until we’ve managed to get our heads around how to improve efficiencies, it’s very hard to make decisions around staffing because we just don’t know.”

![groundup bloem master](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/M0S8ldsLUSk4d0KwOJXJVDP3bDE=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/bloemmaster_875422.jpg)

*The Bloemfontein Master’s Office on 12 March 2026. Junior attorneys frequently draft and submit estate documentation and apply for letters of executorship or authority, as well as similar tasks, as part of their training. (Photo: Justin Brown / GroundUp)*

### No more drudgery?

Entry-level law jobs have been singled out as being exposed to AI replacement because learning is based on an apprenticeship model, where routine tasks like proofreading endless documents is key to development.

Advaita Naidoo, managing director for Africa at recruitment firm Jack Hammer Global, said that “accounting, audit, consulting, software development, engineering, anywhere that people learn by doing routine work first is going to be particularly vulnerable”.

This was because “repeatable workflows” suited AI, said Jarryd Strydom, cofounder of Sandstone, an AI software provider to the legal sphere.

But AI is not the only thing hitting the apprenticeship model – there are other factors, like remote work offering less opportunity to learn from colleagues.

Beerman argued that AI could be a bit of a “red herring”. In the UK context, she said there had been a general shrinking of junior hires as a result of a whole lot of economic factors. Companies might be “reducing new hires to align with profit reporting” and “manipulating hiring patterns around other economic incentives”, though Beerman stressed that Cliffe Dekke Hofmeyr was not one of them.

One thing that could be putting more pressure on junior roles could be clients ­taking legal work in-house, Beerman said. This meant a company would let its own legal staff take care of more entry-level tasks and then just look to an external law firm for “higher-order” advisory work.

Sandstone’s Strydom argued that things like routing a request to the right team could easily be automated. He was keen to point out that AI was augmenting existing workforces and “not replacing lawyers”.

But if companies are bringing more AI-suited legal work in-house, doesn’t it amount to AI taking over at least some functions of junior lawyers?

### Reliance on data

In this climate, Daily Maverick asked Strydom whether the onus then fell on law firms themselves to invest in junior talent. Strydom declined to answer the question, or to point out examples where AI was making the existing workforce stronger, but not taking over roles.

Beerman said e-discovery platforms had not taken off in South Africa as much as in other markets, like the US or UK, because they relied on large amounts of data being available online to actually be beneficial.

“It’s not as easy to gain the efficiency with a smart trained tool when you only have one precedent and 10 examples.”

A former associate at one of South Africa’s big five law firms said this depended on the area of law. In their area of practice, reportable judgments were pretty accessible, though South Africa overall had less data in the public domain.

Naidoo said companies needed to be cautious about falling into the trap of “talent debt” by being too quick to dismiss staff to gain efficiency. “Some companies are hiring less and they are asking much harder questions about the roles that they’re filling before filling them,” Naidoo said.

But plenty of companies had also started to admit regret for dismissing staff too hastily, she added.

“A year ago, AI was like something of a rebranded blunt instrument. Organisations were really shoehorning all sorts of solutions without problems into place,” Naidoo said.

“Now, at executive level, certainly the technical AI skills matter, but what’s really in demand is the judgement… At leadership level, boards really are looking for people who can lead AI transformations without breaking the organisation in the process.”

Naidoo sees the biggest impact on junior roles being in smaller to medium-sized companies.

“I think the logic there is easy to follow – that AI is very good at the routine work that we’ve traditionally given to junior people… So then companies are asking ‘Why hire graduates?’ But they’re overlooking the fact that the routine work was a good training ground. It was never just about the output.”

The former big five associate who spoke to Daily Maverick said larger firms did not appear to be hiring less because of AI, but their smaller counterparts could be under more pressure.

Ultimately, by failing to invest in juniors, Naidoo said, companies were “eroding a talent pipeline”. “The problem with a lot of the decisions is the consequences are so far in the distance that people are really needing to squint to see them.”

It came down to this, she said: “If you see a fence across the road and you don’t know why it’s there, don’t tear it down until you find out.” **DM**

*This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R39. The e-edition of Daily Maverick’s weekly newspaper, DM168, is now free for readers who are signed into their Daily Maverick account. Click*[*here*](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/168/)*to access the latest e-edition.*

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