Has AI Begun Transforming Employment in the Colorado Legal Services Industry?

By Mike O’Donnell | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

The two biggest ongoing threats to democracy in Colorado are the less-than-competent Secretary of State, Jena Griswold, and Colorado’s Supreme Court. You will recall that last year both blocked the inclusion of Donald Trump’s name on the November 2024 presidential ballot in Colorado only to have the nation’s Supreme Court definitively overrule both.

I didn’t notice anyone getting into trouble or apologizing for those blatant attacks on democracy but it managed to get me thinking (no mean feat) about the legal profession in general and whether it was changing in Colorado in the face of artificial intelligence (AI).

Admittedly, I’m personally not a big fan of AI because, just like history, it is crafted by the victors / the people in charge, so, to me, AI will tell you what “someone” wants you to know but not necessarily what you should know.

As a case in point, many people have already lost the ability to navigate a vehicle using a street atlas, surrendering that ability to an app that may or may not have the driver’s best interests at heart. (I might trust but not blindly.)

I imagine the legal industry is one that is or will be heading that way big time in the near future, for better or worse, so having a curious bent, I wanted to see if, just like in other key professional services industries, there were signs that this was already happening either in Colorado or elsewhere across the nation.

China appears to be the world leader when it comes to incorporating AI into their legal system, although China is a totalitarian state and can do whatever it wants (with some obvious parallels to Colorado). China has built ‘smart court’ systems used nationwide—courts now process tens of millions of cases annually, many via online platforms that facilitate digital mediation, judgment drafting, and blockchain-based evidence.

In 2019, the Supreme People’s Court said its WeChat ‘mobile court’ platform had already handled more than 3 million legal activities within months of launch; by 2023, courts overall concluded about 45 million cases.

Other countries like Estonia, the Netherlands, the UK, Canada, and Germany are also experimenting with robot AI judges but that isn’t yet happening in the U.S. 

Although AI is embedded in predictive policing algorithms and other programs like the COMPAS system used in many states (but not Colorado, naturally) to predict the likelihood of a defendant reoffending. But because these sorts of programs involve modeling based on past history (AI does a lot of that) many contend that these approaches are tantamount to profiling and are thus unfair and violate due process. (Good fodder for more legal challenges and “jobs for the girls”.)   

Legal-technology startup firms are nonetheless booming, with AI-powered tools gaining traction for contract analysis, research and litigation strategy. In 2023, legal-tech companies raised about $3.4 billion globally, and 2024 set a record at close to $5 billion. Law firms can now access tools like Harvey AI to analyze contracts, do case preparation and eliminate the need for as many legal assistants as were once employed. 

When you look at the national data around employment in the Legal Services industry sector, the growth in legal services employment began to slow after the economy finally began recovering in the mid twenty-teens—and big firms began getting bigger. 

National trend: Legal services jobs grew 11.9% between 2001 and 2025, compared to 22.0% growth across all U.S. jobs.

So far this century, national employment in legal services firms has grown at almost half the rate that overall job growth has occurred and the data shows that gap will continue to widen.

Colorado paints a completely different picture although the pattern of overall employment growth basically matches the national situation.

Colorado trend: Legal services jobs grew 36.7% between 2001 and 2025, slightly outpacing overall job growth of 35.7%.

Growth in the legal services field has outstripped overall job growth rates in Colorado for the entire century mostly because Colorado’s population has been growing at a much faster rate, at least until recently, than the overall population of the U.S. 

Another reason for the sustained and above-average growth in the legal services sector has to do with the number of increasingly complex laws being enacted in Colorado and the need for companies and residents alike to constantly navigate the tsunami of new regulations dealing with employment, housing and other areas that tend to interfere with the free flow of market forces.

Demographically, Coloradans are more likely to own a home than residents of most other states, hold more consumer debt than residents of any other state, have experienced the fastest increase in violent crimes since 2017, and have suffered though a higher rate of inflation than residents of any other state from 2021 to 2024. 

All these factors have also helped buoy the legal services sector in Colorado, although the latest U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics employment numbers show fewer Coloradans working in the legal services sector in August 2025 than at any time since January 2024. 

AI is definitely beginning to make an impact on Colorado’s legal services sector, and that impact will get bigger.

We continue to live in interesting times. 

Mike O’Donnell is a small business advocate, nonprofit executive and economic development leader based in Kirk, Colorado. He currently serves as Executive Director of Prairie Rose Development Corp., a mission-driven lender supporting underserved entrepreneurs across the state.

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.