Jurists of the Gaps: Large Language Models and the Quiet Erosion of Legal Authority
Vol.19,No.2(2025)
Philippe Prince Tritto
Ilsse Carolina Torres Ortega
Large Language Models (LLMs) are not merely tools to assist legal professionals—they represent a deeper epistemic and normative challenge to the foundations of legal authority. While LLMs allow humans to produce outputs that convincingly simulate legal reasoning, they lack the embodied judgment, ethical intentionality, and contextual awareness that define legitimate legal decision-making. This paper argues that the social legitimacy of the legal profession relies on capacities that are not reproducible through computational systems. We first examine the epistemological limitations of LLMs, drawing on Kantian philosophy and complexity theory to show that their outputs are simulations, not acts of understanding. We then analyze how this technological shift risks reducing legal professionals to jurists of the gaps – filling in only where machines fall short – thereby hollowing out the humanistic mission of law. Against this backdrop, we call for a renewed professional ethic centered on interpretation, creativity, and normative judgment, rather than technical supplementation. The automation of law is not the end of the profession, but it could be the end of its authority – unless its practitioners reclaim what cannot be outsourced.
Large Language Models; Legal Profession; Professional Legitimacy; Artificial Intelligence and Law; Legal Epistemology; Legal Judgment
179 – 204
Philippe Prince Tritto
Law and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Universidad Panamericana, Mexico City, Mexico.
Doctorate student in Artificial Intelligence at Universidad Panamericana (UP) (Mexico City, Mexico). Master of Law from the University of Toulouse 1 Capitole (France). Research professor at the UP Law and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Ilsse Carolina Torres Ortega
Department of Sociopolitical and Legal Studies, Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Occidente, Jalisco, Mexico.
Research Professor in the Department of Sociopolitical and Legal Studies of the Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Occidente (ITESO) (Jalisco, Mexico).
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