A human lawyer takes on the challenge against Android lawyers!

Sending an analogue message in an age when true emotion feels out of style

It's 2077, where trials have become a grand reality show, and the court has descended to a mere stage for entertainment. People trust Android lawyers over human lawyers, and Android doctors over human doctors, believing that Androids think more rationally and move more precisely than humans do. In an era where everyone reveres new technology and has no doubt in AI’s capabilities, there comes a challenger who insists on being a “human lawyer”: Lee Nanyeong.

Nanyeong's office sits at the top of an old building on a street that’s no different from a slum. The bookshelf is crammed with paperbacks and vinyl records, while a stove with a kettle occupies one corner. Additionally, notebooks, fountain pens, giant copy machines, and film cameras there may give the impression that the owner of the room is an “embodiment of the analog,” even if you were to visit the place this very instant, and not in 2077. And then there’s her tone of speech. If you listen to her confident dialect and fearless expressions, you will immediately recognize what type of a person Nanyeong is.

“How could you ever trust and assign a task to AI? When your feeling frustrated as hell, just leave it up to me, the human lawyer Lee Nan-young! I’ll prove how there's a huge difference between a responsible human lawyer and an empty-headed Android that does nothing but boast all the time!” 15p.

She wants to contend for victory exactly as herself; she’s bolder than anyone else and is willing to take action; she refuses to remain under the safeguard of others. That’s who Lee Nanyeong is. In an age of advanced technology that many people benefit from, Nanyeong insists on the analog and cherishes “human traits,” earning herself the label “old-fashioned technophobic”. When they say sincerity has become old-fashioned, it means it has become rare. In a world like this, Nanyeong doesn’t stop striving to express her raw and unfiltered “true heart.” Because one may forget about one’s “heart,” but can’t lose it.

Questioning what it means to “be human” in an age where you coexist with Androids

Future Lawyer Lee Nanyeong starts out with a scene that anyone today might well imagine: ChatGPT writing novels and AI creating paintings and music. What would happen if highly intelligent Androids were to actively engage in society? What if you could eliminate the memories you wish to forget? What if you could leave your ailing body and live in a virtual space?

Future Lawyer Lee Nanyeong addresses such issues by illuminating both “Lee Nanyeong the lawyer” and “Lee Nanyeong the mom”. Nanyeong’s daughter, Morae, who suffers from a malignant brain disease, yearns to escape the pain by uploading her consciousness to the cloud. However, as her mother, Nanyeong can never accept this, since being unable to hold her, grab her hand, or even stroke her would mean the same as losing her. Yet, for Morae, being trapped in an ill body might feel more inhuman. This situation prompts readers to contemplate deeply what it truly means to “be human”. Also, in a scene where Nanyeong, who used to be technophobic, finds herself confiding her true feelings to C5 and getting comfort from it, she sends a message to readers that maybe the mind isn’t the exclusive preserve of humans after all. While an Android’s mind might operate differently, if it can be conveyed to humans, then it, too, is a mind.

Then, why is Lee Nanyeong, who’s all about the analogue, called “the future lawyer” instead of “the past lawyer”? Perhaps the “future” in The Future Lawyer Lee Nanyeong may be referring to “the future of our future”—an era where Androids and humans coexist and communicate their emotions to one another. The world is like a single organism, constantly changing rather than remaining static. Nanyeong’s sincerity will gradually but surely change the future of our future.

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