NBER trial: AI drafting tool benefits senior patent lawyers most

A preregistered three-month RCT by MIT economist David Autor's team and Google gave a custom AI drafting assistant to 133 patent lawyers at 11 US IP firms. Blinded expert ratings showed the largest gains for senior lawyers, with mixed results for novices.

2026-09-19 ~ 2026-09-21 · 2 related posts

Full story(2 episodes)→

• Episode 1: NBER trial: AI drafting tool benefits senior patent lawyers most(2026-09-19, 2 posts)
• Episode 2: NBER RCT: AI Boosts Junior Patent Lawyers' Output but Leaves No Lasting Skill Gains(2026-09-22, 5 posts)

• NBER field experiment: AI boosts patent lawyers' skill, but gains accrue only to senior lawyers — avicgoldfarb · 2026-09-19
• MIT's David Autor and Google ran an RCT on AI at work: juniors gained ~3x seniors, and heaviest AI users learned the least — _akpiper · 2026-09-21