AI Can Draft a Submission. Can It Exercise Judgment?

A lawyer today can generate a draft submission in seconds. With a carefully crafted prompt, Artificial Intelligence (AI) can summarize witness statements, prepare chronologies, identify legal issues and generate arguments that resemble the work of a junior lawyer. Tasks that once required hours of research and drafting can now be completed in a matter of minutes.

For the legal profession, however, the most important question is not whether AI can draft legal documents. It clearly can but the more important question is whether AI can exercise judgment. That distinction goes to the heart of what it means to be a lawyer.

The Legal Profession Is Not a Knowledge Profession

Much of the discussion surrounding AI focuses on information.

“How quickly can AI retrieve authorities?”

“How accurately can it summarize documents?”

“How efficiently can it prepare drafts?”

These are important questions, but they overlook a more fundamental reality. The legal profession is not fundamentally a knowledge profession but it is a judgment profession. Lawyers are not engaged merely because they know the law.

In an age where legislation, judgments and legal resources are increasingly accessible, information alone is no longer the scarce commodity it once was. What clients seek is something different, they seek guidance when the law is uncertain; they seek advice when risks must be weighed and they seek practical solutions where there is no perfect answer. Most importantly, they seek someone willing to stand behind that advice.

The value of a lawyer has never been measured solely by the ability to locate information. It lies in the ability to exercise sound judgment when facts are disputed, risks are evolving and consequences matter. By reason thereof, the information informs judgment but it does not replace it.

Why Common Law Still Requires Lawyers

Malaysia operates within the common law tradition and adopts an adversarial system of justice. Unlike legal systems that rely primarily upon comprehensive statutory codes, the common law develops through judicial decisions, evolving principles and the application of precedent to new factual situations. Legal disputes rarely turn solely upon what the law says. They frequently turn upon how the law should be interpreted, distinguished or applied.

The adversarial nature of our legal system further reinforces the importance of judgment. Courts do not investigate disputes on behalf of litigants. Rather, parties present competing cases through their legal representatives, who must identify issues, assess evidence, evaluate risks, select authorities and determine litigation strategy. These are not merely exercises in information retrieval. They are exercises in professional judgment.

In a common law system, lawyers are not merely conveyors of legal information. They are participants in the development and application of the law itself. AI may identify ten possible arguments; a lawyer must decide which argument should be advanced. AI may locate a line of authorities; a lawyer must determine whether those authorities are binding, distinguishable or strategically useful. AI may predict possible outcomes; a lawyer must advise a client whether pursuing those outcomes is commercially sensible. That responsibility cannot be outsourced to technology.

What Happens When Lawyers Stop Thinking?

Perhaps the most significant warning regarding AI has come not from technology critics but from the judiciary itself. At the Opening of the Legal Year 2026 in Singapore, Chief Justice of Singapore, Sundaresh Menon cautioned that as AI increasingly displaces opportunities for lawyers to develop foundational legal skills, “skills degradation” may occur and could eventually affect “our ability to check the accuracy of AI-generated work product.”

The concern is not merely that AI may occasionally produce inaccurate work. The deeper concern is that lawyers who become overly dependent upon AI may gradually lose the ability to identify those inaccuracies. In other words, the safeguard against technological error may itself be weakened.

For generations, lawyers developed professional judgment through research, drafting, analysis and correction. Junior lawyers learned by reading authorities, testing arguments, identifying weaknesses and receiving guidance from more experienced practitioners. Those activities were never merely administrative exercises; they were the means through which lawyers learned to think.

If AI increasingly performs these functions, an important question arises: “how will future lawyers develop judgment if they no longer perform the work through which judgment is traditionally acquired?” This question goes beyond technology and it concerns the future development of the legal profession itself.

A Global Consensus Emerging

What is striking is the consistency of the guidance emerging from different jurisdictions. In Malaysia, the Malaysian Bar’s Circular No. 242/2025 recognizes the utility of generative AI while reminding practitioners that professional obligations relating to competence, confidentiality, accountability and verification remain unchanged.

In Singapore, the Ministry of Law has emphasized that generative AI should be used in ways that “uphold and strengthen professional competency, keeping core legal skills and independent judgment central to legal practice.”

In the United States, the American Bar Association’s Formal Opinion 512 similarly emphasizes that lawyers using generative AI must continue to “fully consider their applicable ethical obligations”, including duties relating to competence, confidentiality, communication and professional responsibility.

This message is remarkably consistent as AI may assist legal work, but the ultimate responsibility for professional judgment remains with the lawyer.

The Lesson From the AI Hallucination Cases

The well-publicized American cases involving fictitious authorities generated by AI are often cited as examples of technological failure. In reality, the problem was not that AI generated non-existent authorities. The problem was that qualified lawyers relied upon those authorities without proper verification.

The lesson is therefore not that AI should never be used. Rather, it is that AI-generated output must be verified in the same manner that any secondary source must be verified before it is relied upon.

Undoubtedly, technology may accelerate legal work but it does not eliminate the lawyer’s responsibility to ensure that the work is accurate.

Why Clients Still Need Lawyers

If drafting documents were the sole purpose of legal practice, AI would already pose an existential threat to the profession. Yet clients continue to seek lawyers because what they require extends far beyond document production.

Clients require trusted counsel. They require someone capable of navigating uncertainty, assessing risks, identifying practical solutions and making difficult decisions where there is often no perfect answer.

This distinction was highlighted by Chief Justice of Singapore, Sundaresh Menon in his keynote address at the Asia-Pacific Legal Congress 2026. Reflecting on the future of the legal profession in an era increasingly shaped by AI, the Chief Justice observed that the lawyers of the future would continue to be distinguished not merely by technical knowledge, but by their ability to provide trusted counsel, bridge the intersection between legal risk and commercial reality, and maintain ethical leadership when navigating uncertainty.

Those observations go to the very heart of legal practice. Clients rarely seek lawyers because they cannot access information. They seek lawyers because they require judgment. Every experienced practitioner has encountered situations where the legally available option was not necessarily the most sensible option.

AI can assist in identifying authorities and generating arguments. It cannot assume responsibility for making those decisions, nor can it bear the consequences when those decisions prove wrong. That responsibility remains with the lawyer. For that reason, the future value of lawyers will not be measured by how quickly they can produce documents. It will be measured by the quality of the judgment that stands behind those documents.

The Future Lawyer

The future does not belong to lawyers who reject technology nor does it belong to lawyers who blindly depend upon it. It belongs to lawyers who understand both the capabilities and limitations of AI.

None of this diminishes the significant benefits that AI can bring to legal practice. The challenge is not whether AI should be adopted, but how it should be integrated without weakening the development of professional competence, independent reasoning and legal judgment. Chief Justice of Singapore, Sundaresh Menon perhaps captured this reality most succinctly when he observed that AI does not mark the end of lawyers, but the emergence of a different kind of lawyer.

AI can draft a submission and yet the true measure of a lawyer has never been the ability to produce words on a page. It lies in the ability to exercise judgment when the law is uncertain, the facts are disputed and the consequences matter.

At LV Partners, we believe technology should elevate legal practice, not redefine its purpose. While the tools may evolve, the values that underpin good lawyering remain constant: integrity, competence, independent judgment and service to the client. AI may change how lawyers work, but it must never replace the judgment that makes lawyers worth trusting. “Think of Law, Think of LV Partners.”

This article is written by

Jackson Chung
Lv Partners