As of late 2025, available evidence broadly supports Sacks’s prediction that (1) AI tools are making lawyers and accountants more productive and (2) this has not translated into a clear reduction in overall demand for these professionals.

1. Productivity gains are real and measurable

• A 2024 Thomson Reuters Future of Professionals report surveying legal, tax, and accounting professionals finds they expect AI to save about 4 hours per week in the near term and up to 12 hours per week within five years, with 77% saying AI will have a high or transformational impact on their work. (thomsonreuters.com)
• Multiple 2025 surveys of legal professionals (e.g., Everlaw’s Ediscovery Innovation Report) report that nearly half of respondents are already saving 1–5 hours per week with generative AI, with heavy users reclaiming up to ~260 hours per year (about 32.5 working days). (everlaw.com)
• A 2024–25 St. Louis Fed analysis of U.S. workers using generative AI finds average time savings of 5.4% of work hours among users, confirming that genAI yields nontrivial productivity gains at the worker level. (stlouisfed.org)

2. Lawyer employment and demand have not fallen

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data show that lawyers held about 859,000 jobs in 2023 and about 864,800 jobs in 2024—an increase, not a decline, during the initial phase of wide genAI adoption. (bls.gov)
• A 2025 BLS Monthly Labor Review article that explicitly incorporates generative AI effects projects that overall legal occupations will grow 3.7% from 2023–2033, with lawyers specifically projected to grow 5.2%, even while acknowledging that genAI can substantially increase productivity in legal research and document review. (bls.gov)
• Industry data show that demand for legal services is rising: a 2025 LawCrossing analysis reports that legal demand at firms grew 2.8% in 2024, the fastest growth since 2021, with broad-based increases across litigation and corporate work. (lawcrossing.com)
  These patterns match the prediction: AI is boosting productivity, yet law remains a growth field rather than one clearly shedding lawyers because of AI.

3. Accounting: productivity plus shortage, not surplus

• BLS data show accountants and auditors held about 1,538,400 jobs in 2022 and about 1.6 million jobs in 2024, with projections of roughly 5% growth from 2024–2034 (1,579,800 to 1,652,600 jobs). (scribd.com)
• The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook explicitly states that while platforms such as cloud computing, AI, and blockchain will automate routine accounting tasks and increase efficiency, this change is not expected to reduce overall demand for accountants; instead, their advisory and analytical duties are expected to become more prominent. (bls.gov)
• A 2025 CPA Journal article, drawing on BLS projections, notes that accounting and auditing jobs are expected to grow about 5.8–6% from 2023–2033 and argues that this job growth is tied to new roles that require collaboration between humans and AI models. (cpajournal.com)
• At the same time, several analyses describe a shortage of accountants: CPA Journal and Fortune both cite BLS-based estimates that the U.S. accounting workforce has shrunk by roughly 300,000–340,000 over the past five years, mainly due to retirements and fewer new entrants, not because AI eliminated the need for accountants. CFOs report difficulty hiring and are investing in AI and automation partly to cope with this shortage, while still emphasizing the need for experienced human talent. (cpajournal.com)
  This is important context: the total headcount of accountants has been pressured downward by demographic and pipeline issues, but the underlying demand remains strong or growing; AI is being used to stretch scarce talent, not because firms no longer “need” accountants.

4. Localized AI-related cuts exist but don’t overturn the aggregate picture

• Some high-profile firms have cited AI when restructuring: for example, Clifford Chance is cutting about 10% of its London business-services workforce (finance, HR, IT), partly due to increased AI use, and PwC has abandoned a global plan to add 100,000 staff by 2026, cutting 5,600 jobs and reducing graduate hiring while simultaneously investing heavily in AI and seeking large numbers of technologists. (theguardian.com)
• U.K. employer surveys from the CIPD show that a minority of large firms in sectors like legal, accounting, and consultancy anticipate AI-driven staff reductions, especially in junior and support roles. (ft.com)
  These examples show that AI can reduce staffing in specific firms or support functions, but they do not amount to a broad, AI-driven collapse in employment for lawyers and accountants as occupations.

Overall assessment

• The core of Sacks’s prediction was that as AI tools improve, lawyers and accountants would “be able to get more done” but that this would not necessarily mean “we’ll need less of them.”
• Current evidence shows (a) clear productivity gains from AI for legal and accounting professionals, and (b) continued or projected growth in overall employment and demand for lawyers and accountants, with shortages and pipeline issues in accounting driven mainly by demographics and career-choice trends rather than by AI substitution. BLS explicitly expects AI-enabled efficiency to change the nature of accounting work, not to reduce overall demand, and projects positive growth for both accountants and lawyers under scenarios that factor in AI. (bls.gov)
  Given the time elapsed (roughly 2.5 years since mid-2023) and the available data, Sacks’s view matches the direction of observed trends: AI has boosted productivity without clearly reducing the total “need” for lawyers and accountants at the occupational level. It remains possible that long-run dynamics will evolve, but as of November 30, 2025, the prediction aligns with the evidence well enough to count as right (so far) rather than inconclusive.