# AI can cut routine work while expanding what skilled workers do

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/ai-can-cut-routine-work-while-expanding-what-skilled-workers/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Scott Galloway](https://realalpha.app/people/scott-galloway/) · Scott Galloway is an NYU Stern professor of marketing, entrepreneur, and host of The Prof G Pod and Pivot.
- Host: [Steven Bartlett](https://realalpha.app/people/steven-bartlett/) · Host, The Diary Of A CEO
- Show: The Diary Of A CEO
- Episode: [Scott Galloway: The Rich Are Quietly Preparing For The AI Collapse](https://realalpha.app/v/NdU6UdUKaYc/), May 4, 2026
- Moment: 24:09 to 30:22 of the episode (6 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/ai-can-cut-routine-work-while-expanding-what-skilled-workers/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/NdU6UdUKaYc/?t=1449

## Quote

> “I've probably spent $100 to $300,000 a year on legal fees across my organization. I think I'll **cut that easily by a third** this year.”
> — [Scott Galloway](https://realalpha.app/people/scott-galloway/) at [25:58](https://realalpha.app/v/NdU6UdUKaYc/?t=1558) · The Diary Of A CEO

## Takeaways

1. He expects AI to cut his organization's legal bills by a third.
2. One AI-enabled analyst can screen opportunities and prepare them for investment review.
3. Workers need to learn AI tools as routine tasks become easier to automate.

## About this segment

Scott Galloway describes using AI to review contracts and explains how it can let one analyst or assistant handle work once spread across several hires. The examples show how jobs may be reshaped, not simply erased.

From “Scott Galloway: The Rich Are Quietly Preparing For The AI Collapse”, May 4, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/NdU6UdUKaYc/)

## Transcript

From the transcript The Diary Of A CEO publishes with the episode.

[24:21](https://realalpha.app/v/NdU6UdUKaYc/?t=1461) Tesla is a great auto company. It should be trading at about a fifth of the valuation it is now. On that point, what jobs do you think will be impacted by AI? If I could talk about logistics and transport, I think London have just announced that Waymo and Tesla's full self-driving technology are on the way. They've green-lighted Waymo, for example. I'd hate to be a truck driver. To me, a long-haul truck driver is the first place. Trunks can drive between 10 p.m. and 4 p.m., where there's no traffic on the road. I don't think it's a very good job. One of the things interesting about truck drivers is the biggest employer of non-high school grads in America, of non-high school graduate males. It's the biggest employer. It's actually one of the two or three I think biggest jobs by a number of people in the United States. I would think within 10 years

[25:05](https://realalpha.app/v/NdU6UdUKaYc/?t=1505) we're going to have very few long-haul truckers. Obviously customer service, it feels like that will likely go away. Where I see job destruction in my world is that I used to, anytime I got an agreement from anybody, an advertiser for a contract, an employment agreement, whatever it is, I send it to my lawyer and say, can you review this? Because the bill is, there's latency in the bills. It's probably a customer between $400 and $2,000 to review every contract. I'm a narcissist and I think I signaled by having a name brand law firm. They hire some kid at 120 or 80 to 120 bucks an hour and they charge $24 to 500. Now I say to the person in charge of that project and they say, well, I'm sending their contract to a lawyer. I'm like, no, no, no.

[25:49](https://realalpha.app/v/NdU6UdUKaYc/?t=1549) Put it put the agreement. Describe what we're looking for. Ask cloud or chat GPT to pretend it's a $1,200 lawyer, an hour lawyer, employment lawyer or contract lawyer and ask them to review this document, redline it and do the same thing at another LLM and then you make those changes. Congratulations. You are now a senior associate at a law firm. I've probably spent $100 to $300,000 a year on legal fees across my organization. I think I'll cut that easily by a third this year.

[26:19](https://realalpha.app/v/NdU6UdUKaYc/?t=1579) So that's one way I see it. But I have a podcast company, not nearly the industrial behemoth this thing is, but I keep asking everybody, how do we use AI to do this? And I find that they're getting better at it and it enhances our work, but we're still hiring. Again, I think it's a supplement and if you want to protect against AI, it's pretty easy. I've said this for a while, AI is not going to take your job. Someone who understands AI is going to take your job.

[26:47](https://realalpha.app/v/NdU6UdUKaYc/?t=1607) So what I tell people is have a second screen and that is always have a second screen open that has nothing but AI on it, LLMs and anything you get digitally, port it into your AI screen and start playing with it. Just that quite so interesting because I've heard that quite a lot that AI will take your job. Someone that understands AI will take your job. And as you said it then, I thought, you know, I was thinking about different roles in my team and my open roles that we haven't hired for. And I thought someone with AI will take your job, but they won't just take one job. They'll take five of those jobs. And so if you think about an analyst, right, we've got Molly downstairs analyst for my investment fund. We will well intent on hiring maybe five analysts for my second fund. We only need Molly now because Molly's got two agents that she works

[27:29](https://realalpha.app/v/NdU6UdUKaYc/?t=1649) with in two Mac minis. And she's got a set up that screens the inbound interest and also goes proactively into the market looking for new opportunities and pulls them back into her, runs them to her framework, scores them, prepares them for the IC. So Molly enabled by AI. She's probably taken out five jobs. And this is, I think even with the lower example, that lawyer that's using these models probably doesn't need to have five junior lawyers now. If they're really, really competent with and if you think about an executive assistant. So with executive assistants, we might for our executives would have hired maybe probably 10 EAs in total. Now you really need one that has is powered by AI to do all of travel. One that does all of the scheduling and then one that meets people at the door. So you need three versus potentially 10. And this is kind of what I'm broadly

[28:17](https://realalpha.app/v/NdU6UdUKaYc/?t=1697) seeing in most roles, but not all of them. There are still some roles when I look to draw a chart where I go, actually, you know, this sales, a lot of the sales we do from a media perspective, I'll take someone for lunch, wine and dine, call them relationships, pitch the deck. Those kinds of things seem to be completely untouched. But let's continue down that path. You know, I'm going to need five models you need one. Yeah. That creates additional EBITDA on margin. You create some more profitable diary of a CEO empire means you can raise more money and then you go buy more podcasts or invest in them who hire more people. So and it creates a faster cycle of money and new ideas. And when we were walking in here, you're talking about acquiring podcasting and you're getting into CPG and you're getting into different forms of media and you're driving growth and innovation.

[29:01](https://realalpha.app/v/NdU6UdUKaYc/?t=1741) Well, some people be on the wrong end of it. My mom was a secretary. She started as a typist. Typhus went away. She oversaw that the secretary of the typist pulled a law school downtown and I worked in the mail room in high school. But my mom realized that the hard part of her job was interacting with a senior level executive and she became an executive assistant. And she never made a lot of money, but she made good money realizing the typing was the easy part of her job. The hard part was managing some dude's life. Right. So accounting should go away. But what you're saying is there's actually more accounts this year than there was last year because accounts the smart ones are moving into wealth management and tax optimization, which keeps getting more and more complicated.

[29:42](https://realalpha.app/v/NdU6UdUKaYc/?t=1782) So yeah, do you have an honest to update your skills to understand you? I remember when I first moved to New York and they hired an assistant for me and she came in and said, oh, I don't use computers. No, I'm like, well, you can't work here. So it's like to say, you're not going to learn AI or at least the basics on how to use it. It's like being a 1998 and saying, well, I don't use PCs. So I don't yeah, you got to update your skills. The cycle times decreasing. A lot of people will find themselves on the wrong side of the trade. I have to force myself to use AI. I don't,