Jurists of the Gaps: Large Language Models and the Quiet Erosion of Legal Authority

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.