The emergence of legal technology has attracted two equal and opposite reactions.
On one side, over-enthusiasm: the belief that new tools are miracle machines capable of replacing junior lawyers, collapsing years of training into a single interface. On the other, deep scepticism: the view that the old ways are better, or that because these tools cannot do everything, they are not worth engaging with at all.
Both positions misunderstand the nature of legal work.
Law is not a domain of certainty. Litigation outcomes turn on judgment, interpretation, and the application of authority to specific facts. As a result, any technology presented as a substitute for professional judgment is inevitably oversold. No system can predict litigation outcomes with confidence, nor can any responsible tool replace the role of a lawyer.
This point is often acknowledged. What is less frequently recognised is the other side of the coin: expecting legal technology to function as a complete, catch-all solution is just as misguided as rejecting it outright.
Problems arise when legal technology is marketed as a “miracle machine”.
For vendors, this approach is attractive because it drives attention and adoption. For buyers, it is appealing because it promises certainty, speed, and the removal of difficult professional judgment. In effect, it offers an easy way out.
Legal work, however, is rarely that simple. Even where a tool produces a plausible answer, lawyers must still independently assess whether it aligns with the facts, the authorities, and the strategic posture of the matter. Legal technology should function as an assistant — and a highly skilled one — not as a replacement.
The practical consequence of hype marketing is disappointment. When tools are sold as transformative cure-alls, ordinary limitations are perceived as fundamental flaws. Expectations become inflated, trust erodes, and the genuine value of the technology is lost — not because it lacks utility, but because it fails to meet an unrealistic promise.
Scepticism, particularly in Australia, is often a rational professional response. Lawyers are trained to be cautious, and for good reason. The standards of accountability are high, and the risks of error are real. Against that backdrop, scepticism toward emerging tools is sound risk management.
The problem arises when scepticism hardens into blanket rejection or passive inertia.
Some firms set the bar impossibly high: if a tool cannot deliver absolute certainty (which does not exist in law), it is deemed unworthy of adoption. Others assume that traditional approaches will remain sufficient indefinitely. At a time when the profession is undergoing structural change, this posture risks strategic stagnation.
The AI shift is already here. Some practices are benefiting significantly from reduced friction and improved efficiency. Others are falling behind, not because the tools are perfect, but because they have declined to engage with them at all.
When used properly, AI legal technology performs an interesting function in relation to work that is often non-billable, highly manual and yet important to the functioning of a firm.
It reduces friction in legal workflows. It shortens the distance, in time and effort, between a question and relevant authority. It helps organise material, surface relevant reasoning, and structure research in a way that is faster and more transparent.
This is where the real value lies: not in replacing judgment, but in supporting it.
At Habeas, we aim to avoid both overhyping our product and underselling its genuine utility. Our focus is on building tools that assist lawyers in doing what they already do well, just with greater efficiency and clarity.
A sustainable approach treats legal technology as supporting infrastructure, not as a magic eight-ball.
Rather than promising to eliminate complexity, good legal technology supports high-quality professional work. It enables lawyers to move faster, stay organised, and reason more effectively (without pretending that the law itself can be reduced to deterministic answers).
That philosophy underpins how we think about legal intelligence at Habeas. The goal is not to predict outcomes or automate judgment, but to support legal reasoning by making research intuitive, transparent, and defensible.
If you would like to see what that looks like in practice, you can contact us or book a demo to explore how Habeas fits into your existing workflows.
