Master Sword 🛡️

Andrew Yang just dropped a warning that every pre law student needs to hear. Law school applications are up 44% in two years. Hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing economic uncertainty straight into a profession that AI is dismantling in real time. A law firm partner told @AndrewYang directly that AI is now doing the work of first through third year associates. A motion that used to take a junior associate a full week, AI delivers it in an hour. The partner said the AI version was better. Think about what that means for the person who just borrowed six figures to become that associate. You are being trained for a job that is being automated before you graduate. Law firms make money by billing clients for hours worked. The old model required armies of junior associates to justify those bills. Now one partner with an AI tool can replace what used to take an entire floor of people. Here is the part that nobody is saying out loud. First and second-year associates are not profit centers at law firms. They are cost centers meaning the firm absorbs losses training them for two years before they ever generate revenue. Why would any firm keep absorbing that cost when AI eliminates the need entirely? The answer is they won't. Law firm Clifford Chance already cut 10% of its London staff and cited AI adoption as the reason. Half of all law firms with 500-plus attorneys are already using AI in their workflows. The adoption doubled in a single year jumping from 14% to 26% of lawyers using AI tools, then to 53% of small firms a year later. And yet, applications to law school are at a 41-year high. People are running toward a burning building because it looks like the safest place on the street. Yang called it a "flight to safety." But structured, process-driven, document-heavy work is exactly what AI was built to devour. The people who will survive this are not the ones memorizing procedure. They are the ones who understand strategy, judgment, and client relationships , the parts AI still cannot replicate.