A human voice in an AI world: life, law, nappies, lycra and labrador chaos

I was asked to write something about a day in my life as a busy employment lawyer. I could, of course, tell you exactly what time I get up, how many emails are waiting, which calls I take, what documents I review and how much coffee is required before I become properly operational. But even I’m not convinced that would make gripping reading.

So, this is not a minute-by-minute account of diary management, Teams calls and legal drafting. It’s really about how I try to do the job, why the human element still matters and how I combine being a lawyer with a life outside work — which, in the legal world, can sometimes feel like a mildly subversive activity.

The legal bit, briefly

In work terms, I help clients deal with employment issues: difficult conversations, disputes, exits, settlement agreements, restructures, grievances, disciplinary matters and the commercial risks that come with managing people. Sometimes the answer is legal. Quite often, the better answer is a practical one: what is the objective, what is likely to happen, what will it cost in time, money and management effort and what is the sensible route through it?

What clients generally want from me is not a recital of every possible legal argument. They want judgment, perspective and a clear steer.

Why the human voice still matters

This has become even more important in the age of AI. I’m not remotely anti-AI. Used well, it’s astonishingly useful. It can summarise, organise, draft, compare, prompt and produce an answer to almost anything in seconds. It’s like having an extremely diligent assistant who never sleeps, never complains and, rather suspiciously, never asks for holiday.

But that’s also the problem. It can give you everything, and everything is not always what you need. In employment law, as in most commercial situations, the hard part is not usually finding some possible answers; it’s knowing which points matter, which risks are real, which are theoretical and what is likely to happen when actual people become involved.

An AI-generated response will often be admirably careful. It will say ‘on the one hand’ and ‘on the other hand’ until you begin to wish it had fewer hands. Of course, caution has its place. But if you’re the person who has to make a difficult decision by Friday afternoon, what you often need is not a perfectly balanced lecture. You need someone to say, “In the real world, this is what I think is likely to happen.”

That’s where experience counts. After you’ve seen enough situations, you start to recognise patterns: the dispute that looks explosive but will probably settle; the grievance that’s really about something else; the proposed exit that needs careful handling because the personalities are more important than the process; the ‘quick question’ that’s anything but and should come with its own warning label. You also learn that there’s a difference between being technically right and being commercially sensible.

People want someone who can cut through the weight of information and separate the wheat from the chaff. They want human contact, a human voice and sometimes a human face. They want someone answerable to them, not just a carefully worded output. Above all, they want the confidence that comes from hearing a clear view from someone who has dealt with enough situations to know how they tend to play out.

Life outside the law

My life outside work matters a lot. Cycling is a big part of that. It gives me time away from the desk, time to think and occasionally time to wonder why I thought riding up a particularly steep hill was a good idea – the answer usually comes when I get to the top!

Then there’s home life, which has become rather more lively of late. I will have my 60th birthday next month and some people might think that’s the point at which I should be beginning to think about retirement.

Not me. My wife and I have a 10-month-old son, Hector, to add to our other baby, Miley, a five-year-old fox red labrador who remains firmly convinced that every walk, meal and passing squirrel is a major life event. Between them, Hector and Miley provide perspective, entertainment, unpredictability and a regular reminder that emails are not always the most urgent thing in the room.

So retirement? Why would I? I still find my work rewarding, I still think experience has value and I now have a young son who is going to need rather a lot of my time, energy and attention. My theory is that I’ll be in better condition to provide that if I keep my mind and body active, rather than taking up a permanent position in an armchair and muttering at the news.

Work-life balance, without the slogan

For me, work-life balance is not about pretending that every day falls neatly into equal portions of law, family, cycling and dog walking. Some days the job wins. Some days the dog appears to be in charge. Quite often, Hector is. The point is to make sure the work doesn’t swallow the rest of life whole.

I think I’m better at what I do because I have interests, family, fresh air, a bike, a dog that needs walking and a small child who has no interest whatsoever in whether I have cleared my inbox. Those things don’t distract from the work. They stop me taking the work, or myself, too seriously.

I genuinely believe that perspective also matters for clients. Employment issues are rarely just technical. They involve people, pressure, reputations, relationships and decisions that may affect someone’s livelihood or a business’s direction. A lawyer who understands that life exists outside the file is, I think, more likely to give advice that works in the real world.

And in a world where AI can produce an answer to almost anything, I think there’s still real value in experienced human advice: someone who will listen, understand the commercial reality, give a clear steer and stand behind it. Ideally, someone who can do all that without sounding like a terms and conditions document. That, for me, is still the heart of the job.