
The Lawfare Podcast Lawfare Daily: Why AI Won't Revolutionize Law (At Least Not Yet), with Arvind Narayanan and Justin Curl
Feb 12, 2026
Justin Curl, a Harvard J.D. student and law researcher, and Arvind Narayanan, Princeton CS professor focused on tech policy, discuss why AI may not cut legal costs soon. They explore AI diffusion versus capability, law’s unique structural barriers, litigation arms-races, human oversight limits, and regulatory reforms like sandboxes and markets.
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Electricity Analogy For AI Timelines
- Arvind compares AI to electricity, which took decades to yield productivity gains.
- Factories reorganized over 40 years to exploit electricity's portability.
Why Legal Services Stay Expensive
- Legal services are costly because law is a credence good, often hard to evaluate even for experts.
- Relative value and professional regulations further distort markets and raise prices.
Regulations Shape Legal Business Models
- Professional regulations like UPL limit who can provide legal services and who can own firms.
- Those constraints make business models inefficient and raise consumer costs.





