Make Law Great Again
Practicing Law in the Age of AI
As AI transforms the legal field, I question the call to “double down” on human traits like judgment and empathy. I’m not a lawyer, but from my perspective, those traits have already been commodified by the system. Practicing law now requires more than mere compliance—it calls for clarity, care, and a sense of purpose. AI didn’t steal the soul of the law. Like many of us in the professional services industry, we gave our souls away. I’m ready to reclaim it.
Introduction
Kate Barton, in her Fortune article, “I’m Leading the Largest Global Law Firm as AI Transforms the Legal Profession” (July 14, 2025), offers a reassuring message:
AI will change how we work, but not what makes us human.
Judgment, empathy, trust, and persuasion still matter.
Click here to read the article.
It’s the kind of message we professionals love to hear: steady, affirming, human-centered.
It sounds wise. And maybe it is.
But from where I sit, it also sounds like conventional wisdom—and in our age of collapse, that might not be enough.
The System Beneath the Skills
Barton speaks of human traits—judgment, trust, empathy, persuasion—as if they exist in a vacuum. But under Private Equity State Capitalism (PESCism), those very traits have already been extracted, repackaged, and sold back to us.
In the world Barton describes, AI supports the human. But in the world many of us live in, AI reveals what the system has already done to “the human.”
Judgment becomes predictive analytics.
Trust becomes a reputational score.
Empathy becomes user interface design.
Persuasion becomes algorithmic optimization.
Barton urges us to double down on our distinctly human capacities. But from my outsider’s view—I don’t practice law—that doesn’t sound like empowerment. It feels more like spiritualized compliance: a polished way of saying, “Keep performing. Keep adapting. The system will take care of the rest.”
But this system hollowed us out long before the bots showed up.
Three Stages of “The Human”
Let’s look at Barton’s values developmentally—not just as ideas, but as stages of consciousness shaped by history, context, and power:
Stage 1: Pre-conventional
Judgment as ancestral wisdom.
Trust as survival bond.
Empathy as co-feeling.
Persuasion as testimony.
Stage 2: Conventional
Judgment as professionalism.
Trust as reputation.
Empathy as interpersonal skill.
Persuasion as influence.
Stage 3: Post-conventional
Judgment as ethical clarity in community.
Trust as relational integrity.
Empathy as resonance.
Persuasion as prophetic voice.
Barton lives in Stage 2—the conventional frame. In her Fortune article, she urges legal professionals to double down on one skill: judgment. She frames it as the decisive trait distinguishing lawyers from machines. That fits neatly within Stage 2 logic: preserve human professionalism by sharpening its most defensible edge. For a time, that was its strength.
However, Stage 2 is now facing a contradiction. Its promises of professionalism are running up against their limits—efficiency without depth, order without justice, human traits managed like inputs.
Stage 3 arises not as a rejection of what came before, but as a synthesis—preserving the deep roots of Stage 1 and the structural clarity of Stage 2, while pointing beyond both.
It doesn't erase the law. It reclaims its soul.
It doesn't abandon standards. It reminds us why we had the standards in the first place.
It’s not nostalgia, and it’s not reform. It’s emergence.
Stage 3 arises not as a rejection of what came before, but as a synthesis—preserving the deep roots of Stage 1 and the structural clarity of Stage 2, while pointing beyond both.
Stage 3 doesn't erase the law. It reclaims its soul.
It doesn't abandon standards. It remembers why we had the standards in the first place.
It’s not nostalgia, and it’s not reform. It’s emergence.
The post-conventional human isn’t arriving with new credentials. They’re arriving with new questions.
Contested Terrain: The Pull of the Pre-Conventional
Stage 3 doesn’t arrive cleanly. It arrives through contradiction. The collapse of Stage 2 professionalism creates not just confusion, but yearning. And in that vacuum, we don’t always move forward. Sometimes, we swing back.
When the conventional falters, nostalgia rushes in. People reach for the pre-conventional—not because it works, but because it feels familiar. We see it in the romanticism of “lost professionalism,” the longing for hierarchy as certainty, the myth that old forms of order once kept us safe.
Strangely and subtly, Barton wants to Make Law Great Again. Not with slogans or spectacle, but with a polished, credentialed version of the same impulse: To retreat into form when meaning falters. To turn back toward structure when spirit is rising. To elevate “what we used to believe” over “what we now must become.”
But nostalgia isn’t restoration. And collapse isn’t the end.
It’s the dialectic at work.
Stage 3 doesn’t discard the past. It remembers it differently. It brings the ancestral clarity of Stage 1 and the systemic rigor of Stage 2 into a new kind of presence—a presence that cannot be simulated or scored.
The post-conventional is not a clean slate. It’s a re-weaving of rhythm, relationship, and refusal. It’s not just evolution. It’s recovery.
Still Showing Up—And Reclaiming the Soul of the Law
Barton aims to safeguard the human element of legal practice. In that, we align.
But where she sees human traits as tools to preserve the system, I see them as threads of emergence—already tugging us into something deeper.
She says:
Don’t let AI replace what makes us human.
I say:
Don’t let the system define humanness in AI’s image. Don’t let professionalism become the final form of care. Don’t mistake order for meaning.
So yes, lawyers will still practice law. But now, more of them ask what purpose that practice truly serves.
Not to comply—but to care.
Not to dominate—but to discern.
Not to preserve precedent—but to protect people.
No going backward here.
The path opens in the direction of wholeness.
What rises are the pieces we were told to forget:
The sacred. The relational. The prophetic.
Sacred, relational, prophetic. That’s what it means to be human within the dialectic. That’s what it means to still show up.
And that’s how we begin to recover the soul of the law—
Not by resisting AI, but by transcending the illusion that we were ever fully human within the system it now replicates.
Double Down With Us
If Kate Barton’s call to “double down on judgment, empathy, trust, and persuasion” resonated with you, reach out. We go deeper.
At Jerome S. Paige & Associates, we take those very traits and ground them in practice. Through our MindWorks consulting, we help individuals, teams, and organizations treat judgment, trust, empathy, and persuasion not as traits, but as behaviors.
And behavior is choice.
We teach people to see these “traits” as skills—skills that can be honed, aligned, and deployed with clarity and care.
Whether you’re navigating conflict, cultural change, or complexity, we help you build your capacity to make informed choices and show up fully.
Because how we behave is how we lead and live
→ Contact us: info@paigeandassociates.com
→ Let’s build that muscle. Together.
How Private Equity State Capitalism Consumes Democracy, From Extraction to Resistance in the Age of Authoritarian Rule, James. E. Paige, Jr., and Jerome S. Page. Click here to purchase our book.
Making Trust Happen! How To Think and Talk About Trust & Experience and Create It, authored by Jerome S. Paige and Cynthia O. Pace. eBook Book