Is the growing prevalence of lying and misinformation in public life spilling over into the courtroom, threatening the integrity of the legal system? The legal system faces an unprecedented challenge: how to uphold the rule of law in a world increasingly indifferent to truth.
Research indicates a significant increase in lying and misinformation among public figures in the U.S. There
Continue Reading The Erosion of Truth: Are Lies Are Threatening the Legal System?
A CES panel last week considered the future of work as AI becomes more and more engrained. Like most businesses, law firms need to think about what the AI tools mean for the future of legal work. What do law firms and, for that matter, lawyers and legal professionals need to do to prepare for the brave new world that
Continue Reading AI, Gen AI and Agent AI: What Do They Mean for the Future of Legal Work?
Lies. Scams. Disinformation. Misinformation. Voice cloning. Likeness cloning. Deepfakes. Manipulated photographs. Manipulated videos. They all pose tough questions for lawyers, judges and juries.AI has exploded the possibilities of all these things to the point that it’s almost impossible to trust anything. Lack of trust has enormous implications for lawyers, judges, and the way we resolve disputes. Authentication can no longer
Continue Reading Sex, Lies and Deepfakes: CES Panel Paints a Scary Portrait
CES may be a strange place to learn some law practice management lessons but I did. Here’s my post for Above the Law on just this subject.
Continue Reading What I Learned At CES Abour Law Practice Management
I’m happy to once again by in Las Vegas for the world’s biggest consumer electronics and technolgy show, CES. Like last year, I’m covering the show for Above the Law. Here is my preview of this year’s Show, along with my thoughts on why the Show is so relevant to legal. I wll be offering more insights and analysis
Continue Reading CES 2025: Insights for Legal
To whom much is given, much is required.
Several years ago, my firm held a departure party for me as I transitioned from the full-time practice of law to full-time blogger and legal tech commenter. One of my peers, who I had practiced with for most of my career, walked up to me and said, “I sure wish I could
Continue Reading Why Lawyers Can’t Let Go: Identity, Privilege and The Impact on Clients
With any new technology, questions of discovery and privilege inevitably arise. As a recent New Mexico case demonstrates, that’s certainly true of Gen AI.
The Tremblay Case
The case, Tremblay v. OpenAI, Inc., is pending in California District Court. The case involves claims that OpenAI was trained by using plaintiffs’ copyright materials. OpenAI sought to compel the plaintiffs to
Continue Reading Privilege In the Age of Gen AI: Lots of Questions
Bloomberg Law recently reported that the venerable firm Steptoe would allow associates to choose their own billable hour targets. The program will start next year. An associate can choose to bill 2200 hours and receive top pay, or they can opt for 2000 hours and make less, or 1800 hours and make even less. Associates reportedly elect to move to
Continue Reading Billable Hour Tiers for Associates: Progressive or Lipstick on a Pig?
As I recently wrote, I attended the Summit AI New York last week (which, as the name suggests, was in New York City). Summit AI is a global conference and exhibition focused on the application of AI in business in general as opposed to legal in specific. The numbers from the 2-day Conference are impressive: more than 4000 attendees, 400
Continue Reading AI Insights for Legal: Ten Key Takeaways from Summit AI New York
This week, I am attending Summit AI New York. Summit AI is a global conference and exhibition focused on the application of AI in business in general as opposed to legal in specific.
As I have mentioned before, I like attending nonlegal tech conferences because they often yield insights we don’t get in our legal tech cocoon. That
Continue Reading The AI Summit Keynote: Don’t Let the Perfect Be the Enemy: Lessons from NYC’s AI Initiatives
It’s a common theme among law firm leaders, particularly big law firm leaders, to claim that their firms have some sort of vaunted “culture” that has been painstakingly developed over many years. This incredible culture, the theory goes, imbues the firm with some kind of wonderful familial aura, enabling the firm and its lawyers to respect a time-honored profession.
Based
Continue Reading Have Big Law Firms Lost Their Cultural Soul?
One GenAI legal disruption that’s not talked much about is its potential to head off disputes and problems in advance. Elimination of disputes means less need for lawyers, particularly litigators. I have written about the potential for technology to do just this before. But GenAI and AI have the potential to advance preventive lawyering in ways we haven’t thought of.
Continue Reading Generative AI and the New Era of Preventive Lawyering
The NetDocuments user conference, Inspire 2024, took place in Atlanta this week. NetDocuments is a sophisticated cloud-based document management system. It offers an end-to-end platform for document and email organization and management. NetDocuments has over 7,000 customers globally.
Three things stood out from the Conference.
AltaClaro, an innovative provider of interactive, experiential legal training (about which I have written before), recently announced the launch of a new course, Guiding Effective Use of GenAI: A Supervisory Course for Law Firm Partners.
The launch is noteworthy for several reasons. The course is unique in that it focuses not on summer associates or even associates
Continue Reading Empowering Lawyer Leadership: K&L Gates and AltaClaro’s GenAI Supervisory Course for Partners. Yes, Partners.
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One of the central themes of the recent Clio user conference held in Austin was the anticipated death of the billable hour. Jack Newton talked a lot about this in his keynote, as did other Clio executives in presentations and their talks with me.
The idea is based on one of the more startling findings announced by Clio at
Continue Reading Clio’s Legal Trends Report 2024: AI, Automation and the Death of the Billable Hour?