Confessions of a cyber conveyancer: ‘Forget doing the law – you need to learn how to prompt AI’

As lawyers continue to be bombarded with messages urging them to embrace AI, Today’s Conveyancer columnist Peter Ambrose says it’s time to get on board – but strictly on your own terms. 

As a property lawyer, you will be used to people assuming you have superpowers that transcend mere mortals. Your crystal ball-gazing skills clearly extend to knowing exactly when the other side will reply to enquiries, when a mortgage lender will reissue an offer and if the mum of the first-time buyer two up the chain will pass their source of wealth checks.

With such wizardly powers, it’s no surprise that some are suggesting that lawyers should now start dabbling in the dark art that is ‘AI Prompting’.  Given that, as the cliché goes, lawyers are not going to be replaced by AI, but by lawyers who use it, it makes sense to suggest you should spend any spare waking hours learning how to write prompts, rather than taking a breather from the hamster wheel that is Conveyancing 2026.

After all, if you are to stave off your allegedly impending irrelevance, instead of studying the finer intricacies of the Renters’ Rights Act, you should be signing up to an online course and learn about adopting ‘personas’ and ‘few-shot prompting’. But is this right?

We’ve seen this before

It’s not the first time that people have tried to steamroll lawyers into dabbling with technology.  A few years ago it was suggested they should train as engineers and write applications to exploit their legal knowledge. This concept was somewhat undermined by the fact that lawyers typically study and train to offer legal advice, rather than work out why their nifty little apportionment calculator claims there are 31 days in April.

That said, while the idea of a lawyer becoming a software developer might seem far-fetched, there is some similarity between the two skillsets.  The most talented engineers are those who, like expert lawyers, have an ability to identify and cater for all possible outcomes.  However, there are also fundamental differences, that whilst lawyers must provide their clients with the options of the least risky outcome, with software, there’s usually a single outcome – either it works as expected or it fails.

The arms race between lawyer and client

While we can suggest that lawyers should not be indulging in efforts to learn how to get ChatGPT to interpret the alienation clause in the lease of a Victorian conversion, we cannot ignore the fact that you are having to deal with the ever-growing problem of clients using AI themselves.  Despite the vocal divisions we see on LinkedIn, lawyers do seem unified in the knowledge that this threat is only set to increase.

If you’ve got a client who’s just uploaded the leasehold management pack you sent him into Google Gemini and is demanding you raise the spurious questions it suggested, it’s obviously tempting to do the same yourself and use Microsoft Co-Pilot to cast its virtual beady eyes over the 300 pages of accounts and irrelevant meeting minutes.

Ignoring the fact that you’ll be breaching client confidentiality, as a recent case has shown (despite your client already doing it), the reality is that you’re pretty much fighting fire with fire. Unless you can use AI in a significantly more advanced manner than your clients, it’s a bit of a waste of time.

We’re living in an arms race with the stark reality that lawyers need to use more advanced technology than their clients have, if they are to be successful in defending against their claims.

What should lawyers be doing?

Instead of playing Russian roulette trying to write prompts that may or may not identify relevant issues or randomly pick ‘facts’ out of thin air, lawyers need to investigate solutions written by people with expertise in both law and technology.

The time and effort involved trying to keep up with the latest versions of AI and gaining an understanding of an ever-changing process is better applied in finding efficiencies elsewhere in the process, especially where it involves rather less unpredictable outcomes.

After all, whilst it’s understandable that clients expect you to be an expert at crystal-ball gazing, trying to harness the bucking bronco that is the ever-evolving technology spiral right now is probably a step too far. Even for conveyancers with superpowers.

About the author

Peter Ambrose is the managing director of The Partnership, a company modernising the conveyancing process. With a legal background and strong technology expertise, he founded the firm to transform traditional residential transactions. Over the past decade, he has built the company into a respected brand with offices in London and Guildford, a team of over 80 employees, and more than 3,000 cases each year.