NBER field experiment: AI boosts patent lawyers' skill, but gains accrue only to senior lawyers
avicgoldfarb · x · 2026-09-19
A pre-registered 3-month RCT by David Autor and co-authors gave 133 patent lawyers at 11 US IP firms a custom AI drafting assistant, with work blind-scored by expert patent attorneys.
- With AI: benchmark drafting quality rose 0.34 SD at day 10 (p=0.03) and 0.38 SD at day 90 (p=0.01), with larger gains for junior lawyers.
- Without AI: after three months, treated lawyers outperformed controls on a redlining task by 0.32 SD (p=0.04), but the advantage was concentrated entirely among senior lawyers (0.45 SD); junior lawyers showed no average gain, with scores bifurcating into fewer mediocre but more poor and more good ones.
The authors conclude that foundational expertise may be a prerequisite for extracting durable skill from AI-assisted practice — the largest gains accrued to those who relied on it least.
Related event: NBER trial: AI drafting tool benefits senior patent lawyers most(2 posts)→
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