Sotomayor Says AI Will Significantly Impact ‘How We Lawyer’

US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said artificial intelligence will have a “huge” effect on the legal industry.

“It may not take over lawyering completely, but it is going to change a lot of ways of how we lawyer,” Sotomayor said Thursday when asked during the New York State Bar Association’s civics education convocation how the legal profession has changed since she began her career.

Sotomayor, speaking remotely to an audience in Albany, urged high school and college students at the convocation to not let technologies like AI “that will revolutionize our futures” pass them by.

Sotomayor’s comments come four months after Chief Justice John Roberts predicted in his end-of-year report that AI will “significantly affect” judicial work, especially at the trial level.

“AI obviously has great potential to dramatically increase access to key information for lawyers and non-lawyers alike,” Roberts said. “But just as obviously it risks invading privacy interests and dehumanizing the law.”

At the same time, Sotomayor said the court can be slow to change, attributing that in large part to lifelong appointments for justices. That, she added, likely means there won’t be a female chief justice anytime soon.

“Kids often ask me when will there be a woman chief justice. And I go, ‘Maybe not in my lifetime.’ I don’t know because Chief Justice Roberts is younger than I am,” said Sotomayor, 69, who joined the court in 2009.

It’s hard, she added, to predict when any of the justices will leave and whether that will be the moment the president—whoever it may be—will pick a woman to lead the nation’s highest court.

“Since I’ve been there—16 years now—there are five new members,” Sotomayor said. “But when you have an institution in which you’re building up that much tenure among people, it can feel more static than institutions like the presidency that change every eight years or other political institutions that change more regularly.”

Sotomayor, an Obama appointee, recently made comments about being “tired” and “working harder than I ever had” due to the Supreme Court’s growing workload, prompting discussions about a potential retirement.