What is a lawyer's expertise worth when AI drafts in seconds?

You are fluent with AI now, and it drafts in seconds what took you years to learn, so you are confronting what your expertise is even worth. It is an honest reckoning. But the drafting was never the whole of your expertise, it was the visible output of something deeper the machine does not have. What you bring is judgment: knowing which argument will actually work, reading a client's real situation, weighing risk, being accountable for advice a life or a business depends on. The AI can produce a document. It cannot decide whether it is the right document, or take responsibility for being wrong. Your years bought discernment, not just drafting speed, and discernment is the scarce thing now. So your worth does not fall; it moves up the ladder, from producing text to judging it. This week, take one AI draft and add the layer only your experience can, the strategic call the machine cannot make. That judgment is your expertise, and it is worth more, not less, in a world where anyone can generate the words.