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THE GREAT RESTRUCTURING

The end of prestige: How AI is quietly dismantling the elite professions

Death by unbundling: The quiet dismantling of the elite professions.

Samuel Z. Alemayehu

6 min read

·

Jun 8, 2025

By Sam Alemayehu

Let’s call him Johnathan Sterling.

A partner at one of New York’s top law firms, Sterling had spent decades billing clients thousands of dollars per hour for his legal judgment. He once believed his most powerful tools were his instincts and a Montblanc pen. But today, it’s a chat window.

When a multinational merger raised a nuanced question about regulatory exposure in four jurisdictions, Sterling typed the query into CASEY — a generative AI platform his firm quietly licensed last year. Forty-five seconds later, it returned a synthesis of precedent, statute, and risk assessment more comprehensive than any junior associate could have produced in a week. Sterling reviewed it, added a comment or two, and forwarded it to the client.

His young associates, the ones taking on six-figure debt for the privilege of doing this work, never touched the file.

This is not a story about the future. It’s already happening — in medicine, in law, in finance, in engineering. The disruption of prestige is underway. And…