Christopher Nolan worked with physicist Kip Thorne on Interstellar. Yet, he has said he does not use a smartphone. The man explores black holes; I am still trying to escape my WhatsApp groups.

For me, the lesson is not to reject technology. It is to protect the mind that uses it. A director can embrace extraordinary filmmaking technology without making himself available to every notification. A lawyer should be permitted the same ambition.

Ask a lawyer a difficult legal question and you will usually receive an argument. Ask for their screen-time report and you may receive an application for adjournment. I include myself in the second category. This is not a sermon from someone who has achieved enlightenment by switching to a basic phone.

Learn to use AI well and learn when to leave technology alone. Be ready for change without making everyone else pass a compulsory examination in enthusiasm.

During my years working with the late Shanti Bhushan, I was told to put my laptop away and look at his library. Read the books. Understand the principles. Work through the problem. For six years, my search engine had shelves.

When I suggested finding judgments online, his point, as I understood it, was that those judgments answered questions already adjudicated. Our work also required us to interpret and develop the law, sometimes where an answer was not already waiting. That was not permission to disregard precedent. It was an instruction not to mistake finding a precedent for having an argument.

There is a difference between asking which judgment supports the result we want and asking why the law should produce that result. Research must serve the reasoning, not conceal its absence. I would not require a junior today to reproduce those years of research in exactly the same way. The lesson worth preserving is intellectual independence.

As a first-generation litigating lawyer, I welcome the help AI offers with research, document review and initial drafting. A young lawyer with limited support can get a foothold in unfamiliar material. There is nothing noble about spending an afternoon rearranging paragraphs rather than understanding why the argument fails.

I would encourage juniors to ask AI to challenge their position, identify an overlooked question or suggest a counterargument. Then investigate the response. The benefit lies in another opportunity to think, not another excuse to stop.

Imagine an elegant research note arriving in record time. Everyone is pleased until someone asks, “Why is that our strongest point?” A pause follows. The heading, regrettably, is unavailable for cross-examination. The note may be correct. Producing it and understanding it remain different achievements.

But chambers must distinguish drudgery from the work through which a lawyer learns. Ask juniors to explain a case without their notes, discuss rejected arguments and try drafting independently. A senior cannot outsource the assignment to AI and responsibility for learning to the junior, then complain that nobody develops judgment anymore. The useful question is not merely, “Did you use AI?” It is, “What did you verify, reject and understand?”

When then Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and other judges encouraged paperless hearings, some senior advocates accustomed to physical briefs initially resisted. The seniors were not wrong to need time; nor was the Chief Justice wrong to encourage change. Both sides had good intentions and were learning and adapting to each other. Progress needed encouragement; people needed patience. Justice L Nageswara Rao is a fitting example: as our go-to senior counsel on this side of the Bench, he too preferred physical files. Since his Supreme Court retirement, I have watched him navigate voluminous arbitration records effortlessly on his iPad. The medium has changed; the rigour has not.

Decades of thinking with a pen and a paper-book need not yield instantly to a stylus. Equally, an iPad user need not establish intellectual seriousness by carrying enough paper to require physiotherapy. Offer training, not judgments about age or ability. Reluctance is not incompetence; enthusiasm is not wisdom.

The same courtesy should extend to AI. To each their own: use it responsibly, selectively, or prefer another competent method. Openness should not become compulsion. That freedom sits within court directions, client instructions and our duties of competence and confidentiality.

Then there is the junior who submits a polished draft and hears, “This looks like AI.” What lands is something more painful: “They do not believe I am capable of this.” That feeling is understandable. Still, I would urge patience before taking every doubtful reaction as a verdict on one’s ability.

Someone used to watching a note emerge through several drafts may wonder what happened in between. Explain the process. Show the facts you selected, the instructions you gave, what you discarded and the authorities you checked. That does not mean a clever prompt guarantees a correct answer. Nor should we pretend that AI contributes nothing. Assistance can be substantial; the lawyer’s understanding and responsibility must be substantial too.

The most persuasive response to suspicion is often a calm explanation of the argument. Open the judgment. Identify the relevant passage. Explain the qualification. Show why an attractive alternative was rejected. Let the substance become visible. If AI was used, be truthful about it when asked and comply with applicable disclosure requirements. If it was not, say so plainly. There is no need to become apologetic about writing well.

Juniors should give judges and seniors room to adapt; judges and seniors should give juniors room to demonstrate competence. A neat heading is not evidence of intellectual outsourcing. Good grammar should not become a suspicious circumstance.

In running my practice, I try to begin with a question that precedes research: what does the client actually need to achieve? A client may ask for an aggressive notice but need a relationship preserved. A business may want an emphatic victory but need operations to continue next week. Clarify the objective before producing an immaculate answer to the wrong question.

That requires attention. Consider an evening with a brief. A message arrives. You answer because it will take only a moment. Another message concerns another matter. You check the listing. Someone sends a video. You return to the paragraph you had almost understood. The evening has been full. Whether the brief has received sustained thought is another question.

Deliberate use of AI for a defined task is not the same as endless scrolling. My objection is not to screens. It is to giving away control of attention while congratulating ourselves on being busy.

Seniors have a role here too. We cannot demand an immediate reply to every message and then complain that juniors lack concentration. Protecting attention has to be a shared practice. Protect an hour for the important judgment. Watch an argument without checking the phone at every pause. Let the person across the conference table finish a thought without competing with whoever happens to be typing.

And sometimes sit with a question before asking a machine. Our own minds deserve a reasonable opportunity of being heard.

Checking that a judgment exists is only the beginning. Read it. Check the proposition, its context and subsequent treatment. A genuine citation can still support a thoroughly bad argument. Check safeguards and necessary authorisation before uploading client material. The client’s brief is not experimental material merely because uploading it is easy. Do not put your name to an argument you cannot explain or a factual assertion whose source you cannot identify. A confident answer is not a certificate of accuracy.

“Human in the loop” should describe someone exercising judgment, not someone scrolling to the bottom and clicking approve. Automate the routine, not the responsibility.

The anxiety about being mistaken for an AI-dependent lawyer belongs to a larger anxiety: what will people think of us? As a practice grows, people may attribute its progress to ability, connections, luck, publicity or shortcuts. Some may question ethics. A young lawyer can spend considerable energy trying to answer every interpretation of their success. Every rumour does not require a rejoinder.

Have patience with people who are learning to understand you. But young lawyers must also learn where to draw the line between constructive criticism and persistent negativity. One helps you see how to improve; the other keeps telling you that you are not good enough. The difference is not simply whether a remark hurts. Honest criticism can sting. Ask whether it identifies a real problem and gives you something to work on. A pattern of ridicule, shifting objections or dismissing every effort is something else.

Let criticism sharpen your work. Do not let contempt write your self-worth.

Of course, “do not let it affect you” is easier to write than to live. One unkind remark can cross-examine us long after its author has gone home. When that happens, speak to someone whose judgment you trust, take whatever lesson is useful and return to the work. You do not have to win an argument with every negative person to keep moving forward.

Genuine concerns about misconduct must be answered honestly. Success is no defence to wrongdoing; equally, an unkind impression does not become true because it has acquired an audience.

I have more faith in a sustained record of work than in the labels attached to it. Perception may secure an introduction, but it cannot prepare the next case, answer the difficult question or honour a commitment. Merit has to do those things repeatedly. A lawyer can be noticed in a day. I would rather be trusted over the years.

If AI saves an hour, spend some of it reading more deeply, discussing the case with a junior or listening properly to the client. Do not automatically fill it with enough additional work to leave everyone just as exhausted, only with more documents.

And allow some saved time to belong to you. Read outside law. Take a walk without converting it into a call. Talk to your family with the phone out of reach. Remember which ambitions are yours and which you have absorbed from watching everyone else announce theirs.

There should be a person left at the end of all this professional development. And to return to Christopher Nolan: whatever technology is on the set, somebody must still direct the film. Use the tools. Keep the director’s chair. And every now and then, put the phone away.

Kartik Seth is an advocate practicing before the Supreme Court of India.

This column is adapted and expanded from the author’s remarks at the session “Emerging Lawyers in the Age of AI and Geopolitical Shifts” at the 39th LAWASIA Conference, held in Seoul, South Korea, in September 2026.