Please use first principles to argue why people starting to study law or medicine today won't matter, because AI will make these jobs obsolete by the time they graduate.
A First Principles Analysis: Why Starting Law or Medical School Today May Be Strategically Questionable
Let me break this down using fundamental reasoning about AI capabilities, educational timelines, and economic forces.
Law Students Starting Today:
- Graduate in 2028 (3-year program)
- Enter a market where experts predict entry-level lawyers will be replaced within 5 years[1]
- Face a profession where 80% of legal professionals believe AI will have transformational impact within the next five years[2]
Medical Students Starting Today:
- Complete education by 2032-2036 (7-11 years including residency)
- Enter a field where AI is already accelerating drug discovery from years to weeks and providing accurate diagnoses by analyzing complex datasets[3]
Breaking down legal practice to its core components reveals high automation potential:
- Document Review & Analysis: AI tools already process vast volumes of contracts and identify risks with remarkable accuracy[4]
- Legal Research: Traditional research taking hours now completed in minutes through AI analysis of case law and precedents[4]
- Document Creation: Contract drafting and legal forms can now be automated using predefined templates[4]
- Case Prediction: AI can analyze historical data to forecast case outcomes, providing strategic advantages[4]
Current reality: Goldman Sachs estimates 44% of legal tasks could be performed by AI - higher than any other profession surveyed except clerical work.[5]
Medical practice core functions show similar vulnerability:
- Diagnosis: AI already provides accurate diagnoses by analyzing medical images and patient notes[3]
- Treatment Planning: Systems can generate personalized treatment programs identifying the most effective treatments for individual patients[3]
- Patient Monitoring: AI analyzes data from wearable devices providing early warning signs[3]
- Drug Discovery: AI assistance enabled creating the first immunotherapy drug, completing research in weeks that would have taken years[3]
- Minter Ellison's AI tool can prepare basic legal advice in 15 minutes - work that takes graduate lawyers up to eight hours[5]
- Economic pressure to change billing practices as AI does the work of multiple young lawyers[5]
- Firms will need fewer young lawyers for traditional "grunt work," changing hiring practices and partner-to-associate ratios[5]
Healthcare systems face enormous pressure to reduce costs while improving outcomes. AI offers:
- Virtual medical assistants providing triage and gathering patient data[3]
- Faster, more accurate diagnostics[3]
- Synthetic drug testing eliminating expensive human trials[3]
By the time today's students graduate:
Law (2028): Students will have learned research methods, document analysis, and case preparation techniques that AI systems already perform more efficiently. The "tyranny of the hourly rate may disappear with flat fees" as firms adopt AI-driven pricing models.[5]
Medicine (2032-2036): Students will have memorized diagnostic patterns and treatment protocols that AI systems can already execute more comprehensively by analyzing vastly larger datasets than any human physician could process.
While proponents argue AI will "augment" rather than replace these professionals, first principles analysis reveals this as a transition narrative:
- Initial Phase: AI augments human work (current state)
- Optimization Phase: Humans become quality controllers for AI output
- Replacement Phase: AI systems achieve sufficient reliability to operate with minimal human oversight
We're already seeing law firms downsizing staff or reassigning lawyers to quality control while AI agents execute full workflows autonomously.[1]
Both professions exist because of information asymmetries and specialized knowledge access. AI democratizes this expertise:
- Bill Gates predicts AI will make "great medical advice, great tutoring" effectively "free" and "commonplace"[6]
- Legal expertise becomes accessible through AI systems that can process more precedents and regulations than any human lawyer
When the core value proposition (exclusive access to specialized knowledge) becomes commoditized, the economic foundation of these professions erodes.
Students entering law or medical school today are investing 3-11 years learning skills that AI systems are rapidly mastering more efficiently. By graduation, they'll enter markets where their fundamental value propositions have been automated away, competing not with other humans, but with systems that can work 24/7, process vastly more information, and deliver results at near-zero marginal cost.
The question isn't whether these fields will change - it's whether the traditional roles these students are training for will still exist in economically viable forms by the time they're qualified to fill them.