AI can make junior professionals look much better at the work without making them better at the underlying judgment.

That is the uncomfortable result from this three-month randomized trial with 133 patent lawyers across 11 U.S. IP firms. AI-assisted lawyers produced better patent drafts at both 10 and 90 days, and juniors got the largest gains: +0.58 SD and +0.60 SD respectively.

At 90 days, juniors gained 0.60 SD on AI-assisted drafting, while seniors gained 0.30 SD.

Then the researchers removed AI and tested a judgment-heavy redlining task.

The pattern reversed: seniors who had used AI scored 0.45 SD higher than senior controls, while juniors showed essentially no average gain at -0.03 SD.