A three-month field experiment with 133 patent attorneys found that AI instantly improves work performance, with junior lawyers gaining the most. The problem appears when the tool is taken away. According to The Decoder, only senior attorneys keep the benefits once AI is removed. This means that rolling out AI on its own does not build skill if the employee lacks a solid knowledge base beforehand.
The study measured two moments: output with an AI assistant and output after it was removed. In the first measurement, juniors made the biggest jump, which confirms that AI shortens the path to a correct draft and faster analysis. In the second measurement, the advantage remained only with seniors. The conclusion of the source is clear: baseline expertise is a prerequisite for AI-assisted practice to turn into lasting skill. However, The Decoder describes the results briefly. The method for assessing work quality and the exact criteria for classifying someone as a junior should be checked in the original research publication before they inform company decisions.
The mechanism is simple. A junior who receives a ready claim draft or a finished argument rarely has to work through the reasoning alone: choosing the legal basis, checking the prior art, assessing risk. The effect shows up in the results, but not in the employee's own skills. The trap is that productivity indicators rise, so management sees success while competence does not grow with them. When the tool, the vendor or the scope of a case changes, the team may suddenly have nothing solid to fall back on.
A company can deploy AI without giving up learning if it adopts a few principles:
The first principle matters most, because without it the other three become a formality.
The risk has two dimensions. The first is operational: a team that does not understand the fundamentals will not catch an error when AI gives a plausible but incomplete answer. The second concerns staffing: after several years, the firm has seniors who are hard to replace and juniors who have not grown into their roles. Such a structure is costly to rebuild.
AI may be the fastest route to better results for juniors, but on its own it cannot replace baseline knowledge. Companies should treat tool rollouts as part of a staff development program, with clear competency criteria and periodic reviews of work done without AI.
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