Plumbers and lawyers earn about the same, that's why I compared them.MyLittleStudPony wrote: Wed May 06, 2026 2:02 pmMy partner uses AI for legal work. It's helpful but it's no-where near ready to do it all itself yet. She thinks she'll be retired before that happens.IccyV2 wrote: Wed May 06, 2026 12:11 pmFortunately AI will take over soon and the law will be balanced properly, rather than left to a room full of chancers.MyLittleStudPony wrote: Sun May 03, 2026 12:18 pm I suspect the legal profession have a robust, defined and well understood grasp of what on the balance of probability and beyond reasonable doubt mean.
If I were a solicitor or barrister now I'd start retraining as a plumber, their days are numbered.
Just as well, I don't think she'd be very good at plumbing. Nor I suspect do most plumbers earn what a senior director or equity partner of a major international law firm earn.
Back when I was working for the major corporate multinationals, about five years ago, we trialled an allegedly cutting edge AI system for bidding large scale contracts. At that point it was worse than useless. I imagine it'll get there but probably not for a while yet.
A junior plumber earns the same as a junior lawyer and then they're about equal all the way up to senior director roles.
Five years is a very long time in this sphere, five years ago no one was using even ChatGPT type stuff to write documents, now everyone is.
Back then even RPA wasn't being used properly, now it's taken jobs because one person using attended automation can do what five people used to do in the same time.
We have stuff in place now using unattended automation using it's own logic and it just needs oversight.
The process is slow if you're building your own closed system, you can't use open learning because you'll give your IP away, so you have to input the data just like you're teaching a trainee how to do the job.
I think we'll see job losses at scale due to unattended automation tech within a few years, it's already doing what most junior office employees do. Most people that aren't running a business at a strategic level will be quite surprised when it takes their jobs.
What it can't do is fix your gas boiler, so a self-employed gas safe plumber on £100k+ is safe for a while yet.
