The Railroad Moment: Why AI Is the Turning Point Our Profession Can't Afford to Watch From the Platform

I believe we're living through one of those rare moments in history that people will study generations from now.

When the transcontinental railroad connected America in 1869, it wasn't simply a faster way to travel. It transformed commerce, created industries that hadn't existed, changed where people lived, accelerated the economy, connected communities that had been isolated for generations, and fundamentally altered what was possible for businesses and families alike. The people living through that transformation couldn't fully see where it was leading. They simply knew something big was happening.

We felt something similar in our own lifetimes with the internet. It connected people all over the world who had never before had access to information, opportunity, or each other. A student in a remote village could suddenly read the same materials as a student at a great university, and a small business could reach customers on another continent. Knowledge that had been locked away in libraries and institutions became available to anyone with a connection, and it changed commerce, communication, and daily life in ways we're still absorbing.

AI is one of those moments, and I believe it may prove to be an even bigger one. The internet gave people access to information, but AI gives people access to understanding. The internet handed us the world's largest library, while AI hands us a guide who can walk through that library with us, translate what we find, and help us apply it to our own lives and our own problems. That is a fundamentally different kind of power, and a far more personal one. This isn't just another useful piece of software, the kind we've seen come and go for decades. AI has the potential to become foundational infrastructure, the kind that changes how nearly every profession operates. Healthcare is already showing us what that future looks like, and law is close behind. Education, finance, engineering, accounting, manufacturing, government: every field will be touched in some way.

The most compelling promise of AI isn't that it will make professionals more productive. Productivity gains are real and they matter, but the far greater promise is that AI can make professional knowledge more accessible.

Consider the scale of the problem we're facing. The Association of American Medical Colleges projects a shortage of up to 86,000 physicians in the United States by 2036, driven by an aging population that will need more care, not less, and a physician workforce nearing retirement. The picture in law is just as sobering. The Legal Services Corporation's Justice Gap study found that low-income Americans received no legal help, or inadequate help, for 92% of the civil legal problems that substantially affected their lives, problems involving housing, healthcare, domestic safety, and veterans' benefits. Researchers estimate that in roughly three out of four civil cases nationwide, at least one party walks into court without a lawyer, which amounts to millions of Americans every year navigating the legal system entirely on their own.

Millions of people never receive the help they need, not because professionals don't care, but because of cost, geography, availability, or simply not knowing where to begin. AI doesn't eliminate those challenges, and it certainly doesn't replace licensed professionals. But it can help close the gap.

This issue is personal for me. I've been involved in access to justice initiatives here in Maryland, and I've seen both how much progress is possible and how far we still have to go. Maryland became the second state in the nation to guarantee income-eligible tenants access to counsel in eviction proceedings. That law mattered because the imbalance in our rent courts was staggering: roughly 96% of landlords appeared with a lawyer, while 99% of renters faced eviction without one. The results speak for themselves. In the program's early implementation, 76% of tenant households that received full representation avoided disruptive displacement. Yet even the best programs face capacity constraints, waiting lists, and funding battles, and that's where I see AI making a real difference, not as a substitute for these initiatives, but as a force multiplier for them.

Imagine a person facing eviction who can't afford legal representation and doesn't have time to wait for legal aid. Immediate, plain-language guidance could help that person understand the notice they received, know that they must show up to their hearing, and learn that free counsel may be available and how to reach it. That guidance could be the difference between staying housed and losing everything.

Or imagine an immigration client who is barely making ends meet, can't afford an attorney, and can't wait weeks for pro bono help. Deadlines in immigration matters are unforgiving, and a missed filing can upend a life. Access to clear information about their documents, their deadlines, and their options means that when they do connect with counsel, they arrive informed and prepared. These are people trying to protect themselves and their families and build a better life, and helping them understand their own situation is not a luxury. It's justice.

The same is true across professions. A patient who understands their medical diagnosis before their appointment spends fewer days frightened and confused. A person who receives a lawsuit, a foreclosure notice, or bankruptcy paperwork can finally understand what they're reading before they ever sit down with an attorney. That's not replacing professionals. That's empowering people.

Step back and consider what this access actually means in a human life. Healthcare and legal help are not conveniences. They sit at the foundation of everything else: a person's health, their home, their livelihood, their family, their freedom, their basic human rights. When someone who could never afford a consultation can finally understand a diagnosis, a lease, a custody order, or an immigration form, the effects ripple through their entire life. A family stays housed and their children stay in the same school. A worker keeps the license or the wages a legal problem threatened to take. A patient catches a condition early instead of late. A parent maintains status and keeps their family together. For generations, that kind of understanding belonged only to people who could pay for it, and now, for the first time in history, it can reach nearly everyone. That is a genuinely amazing thing, and it's the measure I keep coming back to when people ask why this technology matters.

It empowers professionals, too. When doctors and lawyers spend less time translating terminology and gathering basic information, they can devote more of themselves to what only they can provide: diagnosis, strategy, advocacy, counseling, and the nuanced judgment that comes from years of experience. The irreplaceably human work. And this isn't only an American story. The gap between people who need professional guidance and people who can access it exists in every country on earth. The potential for AI to help close that gap is global, and we haven't even scratched the surface yet. That's a future I can get excited about.

Look at what the medical community has already built. In January 2026, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Health, a secure, encrypted space where people can connect their medical records and wellness apps and ask questions grounded in their own lab results, visit summaries, and clinical history. The demand was undeniable: more than 230 million people were already asking health questions on the platform every week. Amazon followed with its Health AI assistant, which began with One Medical patients and now helps customers across its website and app schedule appointments, understand lab tests, and manage prescriptions. In March, Microsoft launched Copilot Health, developed with an advisory panel of more than 230 physicians across 24 countries, bringing together health records, wearable data, and health history in one place. These tools connect people directly to their own providers, their own records, and their own information, and each was designed to support medical care rather than replace it. The medical community didn't watch this transformation from the sidelines. It leaned in, put physicians at the center of the design, and built strong, robust tools that are already reaching millions of people. That embrace is exactly the model our profession should be studying.

If you think this transformation is still years away, the data says otherwise. The 2026 Legal Industry Report found that nearly seven in ten legal professionals now use generative AI tools in their work, more than double the rate from just one year earlier. In a profession famous for its caution, that pace of adoption is remarkable. But a second number should give every managing partner and bar leader pause: more than half of those same professionals report that their firms have provided no training on responsible AI use, and many firms still have no formal AI policy at all. Adoption is outpacing governance, and enthusiasm is outpacing structure.

Our ethical obligations haven't changed. Competence, confidentiality, supervision, and candor to the court remain constant regardless of the technology in our hands. What has changed is the urgency of applying them thoughtfully to tools that most of us are already using.

We're standing at the edge of a transformation that many people still underestimate. Someday we'll look back on this period the way we look back on the arrival of the railroad, electricity, or the internet, not as isolated inventions, but as turning points that reshaped everyday life. We don't know exactly what the world will look like ten years from now. Nobody standing on a railroad platform in 1869 did either. But we have something they didn't fully appreciate at the time: the extraordinary opportunity to help shape what comes next.

For those of us in the legal profession, the question is no longer whether AI is coming. It's already here, in our research, our drafting, and our clients' hands. The real question is whether we'll choose to lead this transformation thoughtfully, ethically, and with our clients' best interests at heart. Whether we'll build the guardrails while we build the tools. Whether we'll use this moment to finally narrow a justice gap that has persisted for generations.

Most of us grow up reading about moments like this one. We study the people who laid the rails, strung the first wires, and built the early web, and we wonder what it felt like to stand inside history while it was still being written. We don't have to wonder. This is that moment, and we hold something those earlier generations never had: the awareness that we're in it.

We have the knowledge, the tools, and the professional responsibility to shape this transformation deliberately rather than simply watch it happen to us. The lawyers who step forward now, who help set the standards, expand access, and show what responsible innovation looks like, will leave a mark on this profession and on the lives it serves that lasts long after the technology itself feels ordinary.

That is the opportunity sitting in front of every one of us. Personally, I can't think of a more exciting time to be in this profession. :)