the Zealous

There aren't many songs in which lawyers are portrayed in a positive light.

At best, lawyers are mentioned in order to depict someone in dire straits and desperate for legal help. Warren Zevon's Lawyers, Guns & Money (1978) is probably the best representative of this:

Now I'm hiding in Honduras
I'm a desperate man
Send lawyers, guns and money
The shit has hit the fan.

This is from an actual present-day huge-firm client engagement letter, of 2017 vintage (emphasis added):

The Firm and its affiliated entities represent clients in a broad range of industries and in a wide variety of legal matters. Absent an effective conflict of interest waiver, conflicts of interest could arise that could deprive you or other clients of the right to select the Firm as their counsel, and preclude us from representing you or other clients in ongoing or future matters.

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This is the prophecy of Udo Gollub, as a result of his trip last year to the Singularity University Summit. (The singularity is the point at which computers design and manufacture the next generation of computers, leaving humans out of the loop. Supposedly this is a good thing. Some say this will happen in 2029; some say earlier; some say never.)


Buried in Udo's list of fascinating near-term predictions is the following observation:

In the US, young lawyers already don't get jobs. Because of IBM Watson, you can get legal advice (so far for more or less basic stuff) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans.

His advice?