What Happens When Lawyers Ask AI Instead of Colleagues? | Harvard's Heidi K. Gardner

Dr Heidi K. Gardner is a Distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School and the author of Smart Collaboration and co-author of Smarter Collaboration. An organisational behaviour researcher and former McKinsey consultant, she has spent years studying how professionals share expertise, build trust and work together to solve complex problems. Her work explores a question that is becoming more pressing as AI changes legal work: how do you turn a group of talented individuals into a team that delivers better outcomes for clients?

In this conversation, we explore what happens when lawyers ask AI questions they would previously have taken to a colleague, why bringing people back to the office doesn’t automatically create collaboration, and how junior lawyers can keep learning from the people around them.

We discuss:

* What happens when lawyers turn to AI agents instead of colleagues.

* Why office attendance alone doesn’t create collaboration.

* What juniors learn in the three minutes before and after a client call.

* Why the billable hour can discourage teamwork.

* How trust and shared goals help law firms collaborate better.

Where to find Heidi:

Website: smartercollaboration.com

Heidi’s LinkedIn

Books: Smart Collaboration

My biggest takeaways from this conversation:

1. Getting an answer isn’t the same as learning from someone.

I’m guilty of turning to AI before asking a colleague. It’s convenient, but this conversation made me think more carefully about what that interaction would otherwise have given me. A colleague might challenge my assumptions, explain the context or spot that I’m asking the wrong question. As a junior, I want to keep making room for those conversations alongside using AI.

2. The office is only valuable if we make use of being together.

Heidi challenged the idea that attendance alone creates collaboration. If senior people sit behind closed doors and juniors spend the day on Teams, being in the same building achieves much less than it could. That also made me reflect on my own habits: when there’s a meeting room booked, joining from my desk means missing an opportunity to sit with the team and talk afterwards.

3. A three-minute debrief can be a powerful training tool.

At McKinsey, Heidi would be invited to listen to a partner’s client call and then discuss it immediately afterwards. What was the client really asking? What did the partner miss? What should happen next? Knowing those questions were coming made her an active listener. I liked how practical this was: a short conversation can help a junior understand decisions they might otherwise just observe.

4. “I don’t know, but I know someone who does” is a valuable answer.

It’s easy to feel that credibility comes from always knowing the answer. Heidi’s point was that clients recognise the limits of any individual’s expertise. Being clear about those limits, and having trusted people you can bring in, can build confidence. For me, that makes getting to know colleagues across the firm part of becoming a better adviser.

5. Collaboration depends on the behaviour we reward.

If a firm celebrates individual billing and client wins, it shouldn’t be surprising when people prioritise those things. Heidi’s answer to designing a firm from scratch started with shared goals, developing people and valuing different strengths. It left me thinking that collaboration needs to show up in everyday decisions: who gets recognised, who gets promoted and whether helping someone else succeed counts as success too.

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