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

Tonga's legal sector can't ignore a global wave: generative AI is already reshaping work and is forecast to drive roughly $1.3 trillion in economic impact by 2030, while over 73% of organisations worldwide are using or piloting AI - trends that mean routine research, redlining and document review are increasingly automated (see the global AI impact and adoption statistics).

Leaders and lawyers should treat this as a skills challenge as much as a technology one - the World Economic Forum: AI and the future of work report warns that by 2030 roughly 70% of the skills used in most jobs will change - so upskilling matters for staying competent and protecting client confidentiality.

Practical courses that teach prompt-writing and workplace AI use - such as the Nucamp AI Essentials for Work syllabus - focus on real tasks lawyers face (prompt craft, foundations, and job-based AI skills) and help turn disruptive tools into time-saving “digital scribes” that can pull clauses and metadata in minutes during diligence.

The smart move for Tonga's legal professionals in 2025 is to learn which tasks to augment, which to own, and which to redesign around AI.

“AI will free up workers to focus on people-centric tasks.” - World Economic Forum

Global studies paint a clear picture: AI isn't a niche productivity trick - it's a macroeconomic force that could add trillions to global output, with a McKinsey-backed analysis cited by CNBC estimating up to $13 trillion more economic activity by 2030 and roughly 70% of firms adopting some form of AI by then; for Tonga that means both opportunity and risk, because emerging economies may capture only about half the gains unless investment, training and governance keep pace (see the McKinsey report on AI's economic impact via CNBC: McKinsey report on AI's economic impact (CNBC)).

Generative AI alone could add another $2.6–$4.4 trillion annually (McKinsey/World Economic Forum reporting), and it's already able to automate work activities that today eat up 60–70% of employees' time - a prompt for Tonga's legal sector to shift routine research, redlining and document review into smarter workflows and to adopt practical tools like Diligen contract extraction AI tool for legal teams that can pull clauses and metadata in minutes; the “so what” is simple: without targeted skilling and rules for use, Tonga risks outsourcing the upside of AI while inheriting the disruption.

"This inequality is not given," Seong said. "The future is up to us to shape."

In Tonga the clearest exposure to AI sits with document-heavy, routine legal work: paralegals, legal administrators, contract managers and parts of in‑house teams that handle research, redlining and e‑discovery are most at risk because generative systems and contract‑extraction tools can now pull clauses and metadata in minutes; Tonga's ongoing digital shift and experiments like TongaGPT mean those tools will land locally fast (see Tonga artificial intelligence law overview at Tonga artificial intelligence law overview), while regional analysis warns services roles - especially routine and repeatable cognitive tasks - are vulnerable to displacement (World Bank future jobs report for East Asia and Pacific).

Practical legal AIs such as contract extraction for due diligence already let teams triage work that once meant sifting the tens of thousands of pages an attorney or admin used to process, so expect time‑savings to be concentrated in these roles unless firms retrain staff to supervise, verify and add judgment around AI outputs (Diligen AI contract extraction for due diligence).

“Lawyers are increasingly using AI tools to enhance their efficiency and accuracy, focusing more on complex legal analysis, client counseling, and strategic decision-making,”

For Tonga, the legal roles least likely to be replaced by AI are the ones that depend on nuanced judgment, ethical decision‑making and human connection - think judges, senior litigators, client‑facing counsel and corporate attorneys advising on policy and vendor risk rather than just doing document review; as a careers guide notes, “legal roles require complex interpretation of laws, ethical judgment, and negotiation” (CareerHub SUNY Empire - AI-proof jobs least likely to be replaced by AI).

Harvard Law observers reinforce this, forecasting higher demand for lawyers who can “think like a lawyer” and solve multidisciplinary problems as AI drives more disputes and regulatory complexity (Harvard Law Today analysis on growing demand for lawyers amid AI).

Corporate attorneys in particular are needed at the table to balance innovation with compliance and fairness when organisations adopt AI tools - a role that machines can inform but not replace (iCIMS blog - corporate attorneys' role as AI changes recruitment) - so building judgment, negotiation and vendor‑governance skills will keep Tonga's lawyers indispensable even as AI automates routine tasks.

"Least privilege is no longer going to be sufficient. We've got to start thinking about this in context of least agency," Pollard said.

Practical legal tech for Tonga's lawyers starts with tools that shrink routine work into minutes: contract‑extraction systems (for example, the Diligen contract extraction highlighted in our Top 10 AI Tools list) can pull clauses and metadata in minutes, turning huge diligence piles into triageable summaries, while document‑generation platforms like Law ChatGPT legal drafting and templates offer templates, clause generators and quick export to Word/PDF to speed drafting and boilerplate; specialised GPTs aimed at law - such as LegalGPT specialised legal research GPT or the

AI for Lawyers

GPT described by Clio - help lawyers craft focused prompts, run legal research and summarize case law, and Clio's guide to ChatGPT prompts for lawyers is a hands‑on primer for getting useful, verifiable results; pair these speed gains with caution by following academic guidance (Widener's LibGuides) on strengths and limits - remember: seconds‑to‑draft and minutes‑to‑extract are powerful, but outputs still need a lawyer's judgment before filing or advising clients.

Frame 2025 for Tonga with a clear timeline: the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 says the coming decade could create about 170 million new roles (roughly 14% of today's employment) even as some 92 million jobs are displaced - a reminder that change is simultaneous, not sequential.

In practice this means the near term (2025–2027) will be a high‑velocity period for task automation and job redesign, with studies flagging entry‑level and routine white‑collar roles as most exposed and estimates that roughly 39% of key skills will be different by 2030; by then automation could handle about a third of tasks, shifting many roles toward human‑machine collaboration.

For Tonga's legal sector the “so what” is concrete: without targeted reskilling and governance, firms risk losing trainee pipelines even as new demand appears for AI‑savvy counsel, compliance leads and AI oversight specialists.

Employers worldwide plan heavy upskilling investment, so local firms should act now - blend practical tool training (see our guide on governance and ethics for Tonga lawyers) with on‑the‑job supervision so juniors learn judgment as machines speed document work.

Treat 2025 as the year to pivot from fear to planning: map which roles will be augmented, which must reskill, and which need human judgment to remain indispensable (start with the WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025 for the big picture).

“These technological advances, however, are converging with a broader array of challenges, including economic volatility, geoeconomic realignments, environmental challenges and evolving societal expectations.”

For Tonga's lawyers and paralegals the smartest investment in 2025 is a blended skillset: technical fluency with LLMs and legal AI tools (prompt engineering, tool proficiency for contract extraction and drafting, and basic data hygiene), paired with governance know‑how (confidentiality, vendor oversight and cybersecurity) and the human skills machines can't replicate - judgment, negotiation and client counseling; small practical wins make the case: contract‑extraction tools can pull clauses and metadata in minutes, so juniors should learn to triage outputs and verify, not just produce them.

Short, focused training - like Onit's ninety‑minute practical class on LLM fundamentals and prompt craft - builds immediate, task‑level skills, while modular programs that teach ethics, risk mitigation and tool selection (see Clio's free Legal AI Fundamentals certification) create needed governance literacy; for deeper, structured study the Berkeley course covers prompt engineering, hallucination management and real use cases for counsel.

Start with short, applied sessions, add a governance primer, then practice supervision workflows so Tonga's firms lock in productivity gains without sacrificing professional responsibility.

For legal professionals in Tonga, TO, a practical 2025 checklist starts with a “safety‑first” mindset: segregate confidential workflows from public AI tools, adopt secure vendors and sandboxed pilots, and never feed client secrets into an unvetted model (see best practices on confidentiality at Best practices for confidentiality in law firms - JD Supra).

Formalise an AI playbook - document approved tools, data rules, levels of human review and escalation paths - because firms with a clear AI strategy capture far more upside and avoid costly missteps (AI adoption divide research for legal professionals - AttorneyAtWork / Thomson Reuters).

Train teams on hallucinations, bias and verification routines, require human sign‑off on any filing or client advice, and pilot task‑level automation (contract extraction that can triage large batches in minutes) to prove ROI before scaling; choose vendors that can demonstrate enterprise security and no‑training‑on‑customer‑data assurances for transcriptions and recordings (AI security and data handling guidance for law firms - Trint).

Finally, assign governance ownership, monitor regulatory guidance, and treat 2025 as the year to lock in productivity gains while protecting privilege and professional judgment.

“This transformation is happening now.”

Where to learn more: combine regional connections, digital‑rights expertise and practical training - join the Pacific Legal Network's new Tonga affiliation to tap regional peers and referral channels (Pacific Legal Network Tonga affiliation announcement), lean on global digital‑rights guidance from Access Now's Legal team for vendor, privacy and litigation support (Access Now Legal team digital-rights guidance), and build hands‑on AI skills with a focused course like Nucamp AI Essentials for Work bootcamp to learn prompt craft, tool use and task‑level workflows - pair that with practical reads (see our Top 10 AI Tools piece) so juniors can verify outputs from contract‑extraction tools that pull clauses and metadata in minutes; the right mix of networks, rights expertise and applied training will help Tonga's lawyers capture AI's upside without losing client privilege.

"I am honoured to be a part of PLN and contribute to the growth of our legal community in Tonga. This affiliation opens up new avenues for collaboration and strengthens the network's ability to address the diverse legal needs of our clients."