Law Firms Are Hiring Fewer Interns as AI Replaces Junior Work
In a conversation during Calcalist and Google’s AI Week, Reichman University president Prof. Boaz Ganor said higher education must adapt to artificial intelligence by teaching students “thinking tools, not knowledge tools.” He argued that academia, one of the oldest and most conservative institutions, must rethink how it prepares students for a labor market that is changing faster than universities usually do.
Ganor said there are two camps, alarmists and those who say the disruption is exaggerated, and identified himself with the alarmists. In his view, AI’s exponential pace means universities cannot wait to see the effects and then react, because by then the technology will already have reshaped work. He said students entering university now will graduate in about three years, so institutions must try to predict what employment will look like by then.
He described a “junior paradox” at the first job-interview stage, especially in computer science. Startups that once hired 30 junior engineers now hire four, because AI does the junior work “better and more efficiently.” He said the shift is spreading beyond tech into softer professions such as law, accounting and communications. Law firms that previously took on dozens of interns now settle for three or four, again because AI can do the work better.
Ganor said these professions will not disappear, but will shrink and change. He said students now need AI literacy and must learn to use AI as a force multiplier, which could even improve their chances in interviews if they have the right tools. On ethics and regulation, he said the issue is unprecedented and that governments, not universities, must take responsibility for regulation, ideally through international legislation. He criticized governments and international bodies, including Israel’s, for not acting fast enough.
As an example of how universities should respond, he said Reichman is piloting a new multidisciplinary degree nicknamed “the Rubik’s Cube,” allowing students in communications, law or computer science to pair their major with a broad social-science track. The goal, he said, is to give them cross-disciplinary thinking skills for an AI-shaped future.
