Will AI Replace Legal Jobs in Sioux Falls? Here’s What to Do in 2025

Sioux Falls in 2025 faces a practical AI reckoning: local family businesses and small firms remain cautious - only 13% have implemented AI and just 18% say they have the skills - yet generative AI is advancing fast and promising immediate ROI if used well, as a local tech futurist noted in a Sioux Falls preview of AI for family businesses (Sioux Falls Business article on AI for family businesses), even urging teams to “automate your hate” by offloading tedious tasks.

At the same time national legal trends show rapid adoption - NetDocuments reports 79% of law firm professionals using AI and a 315% jump in use from 2023–24 - so Sioux Falls firms risking lagging client expectations should prioritize practical upskilling; one accessible option is Nucamp's Nucamp AI Essentials for Work bootcamp syllabus (15-week) that teaches tool use and prompt-writing for nontechnical professionals.

“The future of the legal profession demands that AI sits right inside the workflows, right in the places where people are already working. It's not about bringing your content to AI; it's about bringing AI to your content.” - Josh Baxter, NetDocuments CEO

Sioux Falls' cautious adoption sits against a national legal landscape where AI has already moved from experiment to everyday toolbox: Thomson Reuters' research shows legal teams rely on AI heavily for core workflows - legal research, document summarization, and review - and reports routine-use figures like 73–74% for legal research and summarization and 59% for brief or memo drafting, while Rev's 2025 Legal Tech Survey finds firms reclaiming time at scale (one estimate pegs nearly 240 hours saved per lawyer annually; another reports as much as 12 hours a week, ≈624 hours), and Esquire Solutions notes corporate legal departments using AI daily for contract drafting and review.

These are practical, not theoretical, changes: document review, contract analysis, transcription, and drafting are the first waves reshaping work so lawyers can shift toward higher-value advising - if Sioux Falls firms pair tools with governance.

At the same time, surveys flag familiar worries - hallucinations, data security, and the need for human oversight - so local practices should prioritize secure, professional-grade tools and clear policies as they pilot research assistants, contract reviewers, and speech-to-text workflows already in use elsewhere (Thomson Reuters GenAI report, Rev's 2025 Legal Tech Survey, Esquire Deposition Solutions).

“The role of a good lawyer is as a ‘trusted advisor,' not as a producer of documents… breadth of experience is where a lawyer's true value lies and that will remain valuable.” - Attorney survey respondent, 2024 Future of Professionals Report

In Sioux Falls the most exposed legal tasks are the repetitive, high-volume chores that eat hours and margins: first-pass document review, automated categorization and tagging, contract comparison and extraction of key data points, transcription and basic redaction, and template-driven drafting - all the work that AI-powered tools are already trimming elsewhere.

Research shows firms swapping weeks of manual review for faster, machine-assisted workflows that cut error rates and turnaround times, with AI features like predictive privilege flags, natural-language search, and clause extraction driving the shift (impact of AI on legal document review processes).

Experts note practical approaches - retrieval-augmented generation, fine-tuning, and hybrid pipelines - that make relevance, responsiveness, and tagging scalable but also introduce tradeoffs around cost and explainability (expert guidance on using generative AI for document review); the upshot for small Sioux Falls practices is clear: freeing a paralegal from an avalanche of PDFs into oversight and quality control can unlock real ROI while preserving legal judgment needed for client work (how AI is transforming document review today and tomorrow).

“Choosing not to use it because it doesn't do what you want or introduces intolerable risks may well be the best choice. Ignoring it entirely because of a vague sense it has no use is a mistake, though.” - John Brewer, ComplexDiscovery (paraphrased)

Even as AI trims routine work, lawyers and paralegals in Sioux Falls won't be fully replaced because the profession's ethical duties and the need for human judgment keep people in the loop: national guidance insists attorneys must supervise AI, verify outputs, protect client confidentiality, and remain ultimately responsible for work product (see the ABA/state survey summary in the 50-state ethics guide at Brief Steno legal AI rules by state), and locally the University of South Dakota is already teaching students to “trust but verify” so they can use AI wisely while spotting bias and errors (USD Knudson School of Law AI-focused curriculum).

South Dakota's bar has not yet issued formal AI rules, which means firms that move first must build clear policies, training, and supervision locally; that practical discipline - paired with judges and educators emphasizing that AI can't replace human decision-making - keeps attorneys and senior paralegals essential for oversight, courtroom candor, and the ethical judgment that clients and courts demand, even when AI shaves minutes off billable tasks or clears an avalanche of PDFs into a single, editable draft.

“We can't depend mostly on a machine to decide cases. We can't depend upon a machine to argue our cases. There's so much of a human aspect in what lawyers do and what judges do that we have to make sure that that human aspect isn't lost.” - Chief Justice Steven Jensen

Sioux Falls' AI shift is creating concrete new roles and skillsets rather than vaporizing careers: expect a premium on AI-literate paralegals and legal technologists who can vet outputs and run e-discovery pipelines, contract-specialist attorneys who supervise model-assisted drafting, and compliance or project managers who set local policies - roles already echoed in area job lists that include paralegals, pretrial coordinators, circuit court staff attorneys and civil-process servers (Sioux Falls legal job listings and opportunities), and the State Bar's career board shows openings from community advocacy attorneys to assistant U.S. attorneys that signal demand for hybrid legal-technical skills (State Bar of South Dakota legal career center and job postings).

Small firms should also plan cross-discipline collaboration - cases involving plats, ALTA surveys, and municipal projects will increasingly mean working closely with local surveyors and engineers (JSA Consulting Engineers career opportunities and hiring) - so practical skills like prompt-writing, document-tagging, and supervision will be as valuable as traditional legal analysis; imagine a paralegal overseeing an AI that triages an avalanche of PDFs into one editable draft, freeing time for higher‑value client work.

Practical steps for Sioux Falls legal pros start with focused, practical upskilling and small pilots: learn prompt engineering as a core skill (it's already being called “the new drafting”), build a reusable prompt library, and run tight pilots on high‑ROI tasks like document summarization or contract extraction so a 50‑page lease can be converted into a clause table in minutes.

Consider three proven learning routes - a concise, lawyer‑targeted guide like Mastering Legal Prompt Engineering 2025 (book), skills courses such as AltaClaro's Fundamentals of Prompt Engineering for Lawyers (online course), or the hands‑on Coursera Prompt Engineering for Law specialization (online specialization).

Pair training with governance: use enterprise or legally focused tools, preserve client confidentiality, and adopt frameworks (ABCDE, chain‑of‑thought, iterative prompting) to reduce hallucinations and make outputs reviewable.

Start small, measure time saved (many reports show multi‑hour weekly gains), and scale what works - this approach turns AI from a threat into a tool that frees paralegals and lawyers for higher‑value advising while keeping ethical oversight front and center.

Managing ethics, bias, and privacy in Sioux Falls will be a local exercise in translating national principles into everyday practice: the ABA and state guidance make clear duties remain the same - competence, confidentiality, supervision, verification of AI outputs, and reasonable billing - yet South Dakota still lacks formal bar rules, so firms must lead with policy, training, and vendor vetting rather than wait for directives (see the national 50‑state survey on attorney AI ethics for a clear checklist).

Practical moves include using secure, legally focused tools rather than public chat interfaces; restricting what staff put into models; building prompt and verification checklists so every AI draft is treated as a starting point; and documenting informed‑consent conversations when client data is exposed to third‑party systems.

The stakes are real: hallucinations have produced fabricated citations and sanctions elsewhere, so pairing tight supervision with regular audits and local training (the University of South Dakota convened experts to tackle these exact issues) will keep Sioux Falls lawyers on the right side of ethics while still reaping AI's time‑saving benefits.

“We can't depend mostly on a machine to decide cases. We can't depend upon a machine to argue our cases. There's so much of a human aspect in what lawyers do and what judges do that we have to make sure that that human aspect isn't lost.” - Chief Justice Steven Jensen

Firms and courts in Sioux Falls should act like thoughtful pilots: launch limited, monitored AI projects with clear governance, hire and mentor talent coming out of the University of South Dakota partnerships, and recruit from the new Public Service Pathway cohort so supervised, practice-ready graduates support public‑service hiring needs while firms build trust in tools; see the UJS press release on the pilot program for details on placements in Minnehaha County and federal public defender offices (UJS Public Service Pathway pilot placements).

Partnering with USD's AI-focused curriculum and law‑library training can fast‑track practical skilling and insist on the “trust but verify” habits Justin Huston teaches (USD Knudson School of Law AI-focused curriculum and training).

At the same time courts should pilot efficiency initiatives cautiously - where technology can “shave dollars off legal bills” but never replace supervision - by requiring vendor vetting, confidentiality protections, and clear supervisory checklists so AI reduces mundane hours without risking ethical lapses (Chief Justice and law dean discussion on AI in the justice system).

“We can't depend mostly on a machine to decide cases. We can't depend upon a machine to argue our cases. There's so much of a human aspect in what lawyers do and what judges do that we have to make sure that that human aspect isn't lost.” - Chief Justice Steven Jensen

Students and job‑seekers in Sioux Falls should treat AI fluency as a practical credential: pursue hands‑on learning (law schools are adding mandatory AI modules and simulated practice, per National Jurist's coverage of Suffolk and CWRU), attend local convenings like the University of South Dakota's Artificial Intelligence Symposium in June 2025 to meet industry and academic speakers, and pair tool‑use with the soft skills employers still prize - communication, leadership, and critical judgment - because reports show AI mentions in job listings and demand for AI skills are surging.

Focus on prompt craft, verification, and ethics in coursework or short certificates so search firms and courts see both technical savvy and professional judgment; combine that with networking at USD events to find internships or public‑service placements.

Employers aren't just hiring coders: they want people who can apply AI strategically and explain results to clients and judges, which is the fastest route from classroom learning to a local hireable skillset in 2025 (see Inside Higher Ed on AI skill demand and Autodesk's 2025 AI Jobs Report on growing roles).

“Think of it like a sandwich.” - Dyane O'Leary

The practical outlook for Sioux Falls legal jobs in 2025 is one of transformation, not disappearance: local firms face growing regulatory attention and a patchwork of state rules that will shape how AI is used (see the reporting on state AI and privacy efforts), while the University of South Dakota's weeklong AI events and the USD Artificial Intelligence Symposium are seeding regional talent and cross‑discipline collaboration that courts and employers can tap into; together these forces mean employers who pilot tools with clear governance and hire AI‑literate hires will capture efficiency gains without sacrificing ethics.

Expect more AI‑savvy paralegals triaging an avalanche of PDFs into a single editable draft, contract specialists supervising model‑assisted drafting, and compliance roles focused on vendor vetting.

Practical next steps for Sioux Falls practitioners include structured pilots, documented supervision, and focused upskilling - courses like Nucamp AI Essentials for Work (15-week practical AI for work bootcamp) offer a clear path from risk to capability while local events create hiring pipelines and shared best practices.

“USD is uniquely positioned to lead South Dakota – and the broader region – into an AI-powered future.” - President Sheila K. Gestring