Good legal writers use AI as an amplifier, not an author

By a strange twist of history, baby boomers-the generation once ridiculed for technophobia-have become the loudest evangelists for artificial intelligence in law and business. They fill LinkedIn with tales of efficiency, celebrating how easily artificial intelligence turns rough notes into finished drafts and reports. To them, it feels like long-earned liberation from tedium.

Yet their children and grandchildren-the Gen Zers now entering the workforce-greet the same technology with suspicion. They see not freedom, but displacement. Their unease reveals a deeper struggle over what mastery still means.

The first explanation is economic. Gen Z has entered a job market where entry-level work disappears as automation expands. Algorithms now draft plans, summarize research and even write code-tasks that once forged apprentices. For a generation already unsure of stability, AI threatens to erase the learning stage itself. Still, while employment fears are real, they don't explain the deeper moral unease that shadows this generation's view of technology.

One cause is practical: They were trained to shun it. During college, AI was off-limits. Every syllabus warned that chatbot use was plagiarism, a violation of integrity. Students learned to equate automation with cheating, effort with virtue. Then, immediately after graduation, the adults who enforced those rules reversed course.

Professors once disparaged AI for research; employers now demand "prompt fluency." Yesterday's contraband was suddenly the office essential. The conversion felt less like progress than betrayal. Habits forged in fear rarely vanish.

Recent surveys bear out this ambivalence. Young adults report some of the highest rates of AI usage, yet also some of the highest anxiety about it, especially around thinking and jobs. Large majorities of Gen Z users say AI makes people lazier and less smart, even as most of them now use chatbots regularly in school, work or personal life. Many worry about job displacement at far higher rates than older workers, yet they also lead in experimentation with the tools. That combination-dependence mixed with distrust-creates a uniquely tense relationship with a technology they can't easily reject.

Older professionals view that reversal differently. To boomers, AI continues a familiar pattern: another tool in a long chain stretching from typewriters to spreadsheets. They see continuity where their juniors see contradiction. Yet those younger workers, conditioned to suspect shortcuts, find the new gospel of automation morally confusing. When yesterday's taboo becomes today's requirement, enthusiasm feels hypocritical. The result isn't curiosity but hesitation.

A deeper reason surfaced for me while teaching an advanced legal writing seminar. I showed my students an AI-generated holographic will-perfectly drafted, legally correct, almost elegant. It astonished me.

They barely reacted. One said something memorable: "Professor, you've seen dozens of wills. We've only seen fragments. We don't know enough to be impressed."

She was right. Wonder depends on comparison. To admire automation, one must know the labor it replaces. Those who've never drafted by hand cannot perceive the miracle. For older lawyers, AI represents mercy; for novices, just another tool.

When I demonstrated how a skilled user could produce in 30 minutes what once took two days, the students still looked unconvinced.

"So the advantage is speed?" one asked.

Another said, "I want to be a professional writer, not a professional prompter."

That tension defines the generational divide. Older workers measure achievement by results; younger ones measure meaning by process.

Writing, and by extension legal drafting, has always been a slow apprenticeship. Repetition teaches judgment; difficulty builds identity. Clients once paid for the long climb toward fluency. Now the climb itself seems obsolete. AI grants polish without practice. Those already secure-boomers-welcome relief. Those still learning see erasure. Their resistance isn't technophobia but defense of identity.

The situation recalls the 19th century, when artisans watched machines mimic their skill. They lost not just income, but recognition. Speed cheapened mastery. Today's young professionals sense the same danger: that efficiency may replace experience as the badge of worth. Their elders call it progress; they call it loss. Both are partly right.

When I train lawyers now, I present AI as a precision instrument, not a magician. Used well, it strengthens clarity; used carelessly, it multiplies confusion. Crafting an exact prompt demands insight. Poor wording reveals shallow understanding. And you must be willing to say whatever displeases you in a given draft, asking for another. This might happen a dozen times, as thoughts and expression get refined. Each "time," mind you, might take 15 seconds. Imagine going through that many full drafts in the pre-AI days.

The process forces users to confront what they actually mean-a modern form of the Socratic method. Yet students still carry the stigma of "cheating." They must unlearn shame before they can learn control. Judgment, not fluency, remains the mark of authorship.

The greater risk is subtler: erosion of endurance. Writing breeds patience through frustration; that friction hardens intuition. Remove it, and intellectual muscle softens. Perfect first drafts produce shallow minds.

When no one struggles, no one toughens. Gen Z senses this even as they envy efficiency. Their anxiety hides an instinct that friction shapes character.

AI's greatest seduction is its surface. Its sentences arrive with a patina of care and exactitude-grammatical, neatly structured, tonally confident. That polish suggests a level of thought that often isn't there. Many readers, relieved by the smoothness, stop interrogating the substance. They mistake coherence for correctness, cadence for logic and style for argument. The danger is not only that errors slip through; it's also that nobody remembers to look for them. A generation raised on this kind of frictionless prose may lose the habit of checking what lies beneath the gloss.

Consider music. A pianist who lets software fix mistakes may play cleanly but never develop timing or strength. Likewise, a lawyer who delegates drafts to AI may draft quickly but think superficially. Skill without struggle becomes style without substance. Boomers, having wrestled through the hard years, see only the advantage; the young, still climbing, see the theft of difficulty.

For the older generation, automation arrives as earned comfort. They've already proved themselves, so delegation feels safe. For youth, delegation feels premature, denying the rite of passage that mastery once required. The divide, at heart, is chronological. Boomers automate after experience; Gen Z automates before it. The timing alters the psychology of work itself.

Bridging that gap means teaching a new literacy. Society can't afford either denial or dependence. Education must show how to use AI without losing ownership of thought-how to decide when human discernment still matters. Had universities embraced that goal earlier, today's graduates might trust these tools instead of resenting them.

That literacy will define professionalism in the years ahead. We must teach lawyers, writers and analysts to decide which tasks need human thinking, and what responsibilities can move to machines. The art will lie in keeping judgment alive amid speed. If we hand off all difficulty to algorithms, we risk raising a generation fluent in polish but barren in depth. The old apprenticeships forged conscientiousness through effort. Without effort, conscientiousness means nothing.

Every technological revolution tempts that exchange. The printing press multiplied knowledge but dulled memory. The typewriter quickened prose but shortened patience. The word processor expanded reach but weakened revision. AI now completes the arc, offering instant perfection without struggle. Whether that yields wisdom or mere efficiency depends entirely on how firmly we remember ourselves in the process.

For the moment, the divide remains absolute. Boomers trumpet AI as deliverance from monotony. Gen Z treats it as betrayal of meaning. Each perspective contains truth. The machine magnifies discipline when guided wisely and amplifies laziness when left unguarded. What distinguishes mastery from surrender is attention-the human habit of seeing beyond the shortcut.

If that habit endures, AI may enrich rather than erode us. But if we forget the taste of effort, even the best technology will thin our minds to gloss. The future won't go to those who write fastest but to those who still know why they're writing at all, who treat the machine as an amplifier rather than an author, and who refuse to mistake fluency for understanding.

Bryan A. Garner is the author of The Winning Brief, Garner's Modern English Usage and Legal Writing in Plain English.