Pérez de Ayala (Cuatrecasas): we cannot let young lawyers learn from AI

Luis Pérez de Ayala, non-executive president of Cuatrecasas since January, has made one of the clearest defences of traditional training inside large law firms since artificial intelligence entered the debate, in an interview with El País: "We cannot let young lawyers, instead of learning from the veterans, learn from AI."

The sentence sums up the tension the profession is living through in 2026. If AI drafts the first versions, does the research and summarises case law, how does a junior lawyer acquire the judgment that used to be earned by doing exactly that work? Pérez de Ayala does not frame it as a rejection of technology, but as a question of craft: the profession is "radically not" in danger, he says, because "we are necessary", but he warns of two likely changes: "Will there be fewer lawyers? Perhaps. Will structures change? Perhaps."

No layoffs for now, but a different billing model

On the direct labour impact, the Cuatrecasas president is cautious: "AI is a revolution whose reach is not yet clear. Every firm has its strategy. Can it affect us in the medium term? We do not know. So far we are not considering staff reductions."

Where he does anticipate structural change is the business model. For Pérez de Ayala, the debate is not whether to raise or lower fees, but how to change the service model: "It would be a mistake to think that all the benefit of AI should go to clients, just as it would be a mistake to think that law firms are going to keep it all. We will have to change the billing model and think about the value that firms bring to clients. Billing based on time will cease to be a reference."

The context: a 447-million firm driven by M&A

Cuatrecasas billed 447 million euros in its last financial year, with mergers and acquisitions as its main revenue engine, followed by tax and by litigation and arbitration, as Pérez de Ayala himself details in the interview. On 2026, he says that "forecasts are being comfortably met", although he insists the future lies in improving efficiency rather than necessarily growing revenue.

The interview also covers the competition from American and British firms (Pérez de Ayala notes that "Spain is the country that has best survived" their arrival), the Almagro headquarters, which will not move "for two or three years", and the rebound in energy work, with Spain's arbitration battle over the energy reform in the background. But it is the AI passage that will set the sector's conversation this week.

Why it matters for the rest of the profession

When the president of one of Spain's largest firms says in public that young lawyers must not learn from AI, he is drawing a line that many medium-sized and small firms will have to translate into their own reality: which tasks are delegated to the machine, which are reserved as the school of the craft, and how to evaluate a junior who no longer does the work that juniors were once evaluated on.

It is the same question that runs through our guides on compliance with the AI Regulation, such as the practical guide to the AI Regulation for high-risk cases, and the debate over which tools are reliable enough to work with, which we measure in the Observatorio Legal ranking of legal reliability of AI assistants. And it has a direct labour reading: if there will "perhaps" be fewer lawyers, careers and professional transition become central issues, something we cover every day in our Legal jobs and Legal AI sections.