by: Eric Rose/BIS
During his Official Remarks at the Opening of the Law Society at the University of The Bahamas’ Legal Week 2026, Prime Minister and Minister of Finance the Hon. Philip Davis told the students present that, when they enter the law profession, they must know how to correctly use the tools they would be using.
“You will have tools that summarise, predict, draft and recommend,” Prime Minister Davis said at the event held in the Harry C. Moore Library and Information Centre Auditorium, on February 2, 2026, under the theme “Tradition and Innovation: Redefining Law for Today”.
He added: “Some of those tools will be very useful. They will save time. They will help you notice connections. They will make it easier for people of modest means to access legal information. They already play a part in modern practice, and their role will probably grow.”
However, Prime Minister Davis stated, the real danger was somewhere else.
“The real danger is that the tools begin to think for you,” he said.
“If you accept every suggested case without reading it for yourself, the tool is thinking for you,” Prime Minister Davis added. “If you accept a proposed sentence, or a risk score, or a contract clause without asking who designed the system, what data was used, and who might be harmed by those choices, the tool is thinking for you.”
Prime Minister Davis continued: “If you allow a first draft that appeared on your screen to become a final position without asking whether it reflects your understanding of the law, the facts and your ethical duties, then the tool is thinking for you. At that point, you are not really practising law. You are simply managing output.
“Law school exists so that you learn to avoid that.”
Prime Minister Davis told the students that the point of their legal education was not to turn them into a person who remembers the most information. The point, he stated, was to train their mind to handle conflict, doubt and consequence.
“You are learning to hold a statute in one hand and a messy set of facts in the other, and to work your way through the tension between them until you reach a result you can defend in court, to your client, and to yourself,” he said.
He added: “You are learning to say to a client, ‘I understand what you want, but this is what the law allows, and this is what is wise’. Those two sentences are related, but they are not identical. Technology can accelerate the search for information. It cannot decide what is wise. It cannot feel the weight of a woman who is about to lose her home. It cannot stand in a busy courtroom and make a split second decision about whether to ask one more question or to just sit down.”
Prime Minister Davis asked them to consider what that meant for them, as students at the University of The Bahamas.
“It means you should start building certain habits while you are still here, before practice pulls you into its deadlines and its pressures,” he said.
Prime Minister Davis pointed out that, first, when a tool gave them an answer, they should “return to the source”.
“If software produces a list of cases, choose the important ones and read them fully. Look at the facts, the reasoning and the orders, not just the headnotes,” he said. “If it quotes a section of an Act, open the Act, read the whole section, and then read the sections around it. Develop the habit of dealing with primary legal materials directly.”
Prime Minister Davis added: “Second, when a system presents you with patterns, ask who might suffer if that pattern is wrong. If a model tells you that certain neighbourhoods contain higher risk borrowers, ask whether those neighbourhoods have faced years of underinvestment, higher interest rates or limited access to credit. If a program claims that certain groups offend more, ask whether those groups have been policed and charged more aggressively than others. Patterns in data often reflect decisions made by people in power.”
He stated that not every pattern deserved to be repeated.
“Third, own your advice,” Prime Minister Davis suggested.
He added: “One day soon, your name will appear at the bottom of written opinions, and your words will be recorded in court transcripts. When that happens, remember that you are responsible for every argument you put forward. A tool may help you prepare, but it cannot carry the responsibility that attaches to your licence to practise. That responsibility sits with you.”
He pointed out that, in The Bahamas, those issues were already pressing.
“Our country sits inside networks of finance, security, trade and regulation that cross borders,” Prime Minister Davis said. “We face climate risk, cybercrime and fast moving demands from international standard setters.”
He continued: “The choices we make about data protection, digital identification, surveillance powers, online commerce and digital assets will shape daily life for Bahamians across all our archipelago. We need lawyers who can sit at negotiation tables in regional and global forums, understand the technical proposals being discussed, and still ask simple but profound questions: how will this work for Bahamian people, does this respect our Constitution, does this reflect our sense of fairness.
“No software will ask those questions for us. If our own lawyers and judges do not raise them, they will not be raised at all.”
Prime Minister Davis stated that he knew the attraction of technology.
“It replies instantly,” he said. “It sounds confident. It makes complex material seem easy. But confidence is not the same as accuracy, and speed is not the same as justice.”
He added, “There is genuine courage in saying, ‘Slow down. Show me the sources. Give me time to think’.”
Prime Minister Davis pointed out that, although a tool can find patterns in the data, it could not decide whether a particular pattern amounts to discrimination under Bahamian law.
“It cannot decide whether the structure of the product is fair to people who have never been treated fairly by financial institutions,” he said. “Once again, those questions belong to you.”
Prime Minister Davis added: “This is where your theme comes alive. Tradition and innovation are not rivals. Tradition gives you the tools to ask hard questions and to insist that power, whether human or digital, operates within limits. Innovation brings new tools, new facts and new forms of evidence into the conversation.
“Your task, as the next generation of Bahamian lawyers, is to hold both in view.”
He encouraged the students to “let technology serve you”.
“Let it expand what you can see and how quickly you can see it,” Prime Minister Davis said. “But do not let it decide what is right.”
He continued: “So much has changed from when I started law. The tools, the pace, the pressures are different. Yet the heart of the work has not changed. Someone will come to you with a problem they cannot solve alone, and they will trust you with it.”
Prime Minister Davis pointed out to the students that a court will listen to them because “it hopes you can help it see clearly through confusion and noise”.
He said, “In those moments, the essential question will be very simple: “Did you do the hard work of thinking?’”
Prime Minister Davis encouraged the students to enjoy the lectures, the panels, the moots and the debates during that Legal Week.
He said: “Ask your questions. Test your ideas. But sometime this week, when you have a quiet moment, I encourage you to ask yourself one personal question: ‘In my career, who will think for me?’”
Prime Minister Davis added: “If your answer is that no tool will ever think in your place, that you will always return to the sources, to the principles and to your own trained judgment, then technology will serve you well. It will serve your clients, it will serve our courts, and, at the end of it all, it will serve The Bahamas.
“That is the kind of lawyer our country needs. That is the kind of lawyer you have every chance of becoming.”
(BIS Photos/Eric Rose)
