# Google Research — Does better work always mean better workers?

- Company: Google Research (research.google)
- Announced: 2026-10-07T20:19:57+00:00
- Category: research-paper
- Coverage: not counted
- Announcement: yes
- Group: announcements
- Source: https://research.google/blog/does-better-work-always-mean-better-workers/
- Record: https://forck.live/items/16462-does-better-work-always-mean-better-workers
- Subject: Research

A three-month randomized controlled trial with patent attorneys found that AI assistance consistently improves drafting quality, but its effect on unassisted judgment depends on seniority: senior lawyers showed significant skill gains, while junior lawyers showed no average improvement and greater score variance.

## Evidence

Verbatim from https://research.google/blog/does-better-work-always-mean-better-workers/:

> When the AI assistant was removed for the 90-day redlining task, the leveling effect vanished. Lawyers given AI tool access outperformed controls by 0.32 SD on this unassisted task (a 9-point equivalent climb in percentile rankings), but this effect was driven entirely by senior lawyers, who outperformed control subjects by 0.45 SD

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Record: https://forck.live/items/16462-does-better-work-always-mean-better-workers
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