I read the government’s Professional and Business Services Jobs Plan, published on 19 October 2026, for what it says about AI and entry-level legal work, and it says more than I expected. Most of the plan concerns apprenticeships and recruitment. One page, headed AI is reshaping entry level work, speaks to every partner who decides what a trainee does on a Monday morning.
Drawing on Office for Budget Responsibility evidence, the plan reports that AI stands to substitute around 14 per cent of jobs and to complement 53 per cent, and it ranks professional services among the sectors most exposed. Legal review and contract analysis appear among the tasks where AI is already embedded.
What happens to the first year
The figures that matter to a small firm sit under that heading. Junior roles most exposed to AI are seven times more likely than the least exposed to ask for skills usually expected of senior staff, such as leadership and strategic thinking, and their skill requirements are changing twice as fast. Early-career job postings have flatlined in the sectors most exposed, while what the plan calls seniorised entry-level roles have grown by 35 per cent since 2019. Its advice to employers is to rethink how they mentor and train junior staff, so that juniors step up to complex decisions earlier in their careers.
The tasks a trainee once learnt a file on, the first draft and the first pass through the documents, are the tasks a tool now finishes fastest. The plan puts the government’s name to the worry set out in AI dependence and what juniors stop learning.
The plan is frank that the pressure falls hardest on smaller firms. Larger firms are better placed to invest in tools and training, while smaller firms face barriers of cost, capacity and access to upskilling, and the plan warns that this risks widening gaps in skills and productivity unless government and industry act together. Employers, particularly SMEs, have also raised concerns about access and progression since January 2026, when funding for Level 7 apprenticeships, the level of the solicitor apprenticeship, was confined to learners under 22.
What to change in how you train
The plan describes three groups of skills that firms now look for. Beside the use of the tools themselves, it lists the ability to explain AI-derived work to clients, and a third group of responsible and ethical AI skills covering regulatory obligations, auditing AI-assisted decisions, managing bias and exercising professional judgement over AI outputs. That third group is the one a small firm teaches best, because it is learnt by checking real work under supervision, and the SRA’s draft update to the statement of solicitor competence adds a section on supervision that covers oversight of technology and AI.
Help from outside will take time. The Judicial and Legal Diversity Board, co-chaired by the Lady Chief Justice and the Lord Chancellor, agreed in May 2026 to set up a Legal Education Task and Finish Group. It will consider whether legal education and training pathways meet the needs of the sector and the judiciary. The government also plans to add pathways for professional services roles to its free foundational AI training from spring 2027. Neither changes what your trainee does next week.
So give each junior one AI output a month to check on a live matter, with the supervising solicitor’s own review set beside it and a note of what the junior caught. Bring your trainees into the client call where advice is explained, since the plan counts that skill alongside the technical ones. When you next recruit, write the job description for the role the plan describes, someone who checks and explains, and use training your legal team to use AI responsibly to keep the sessions short.
The Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade published the Professional and Business Services Jobs Plan on 19 October 2026, open to read on gov.uk as a PDF, and Legal Futures reported the legal education group on 26 October.
If you want a training plan for your juniors that fits the work AI now does first, talk it through with us.
