Here’s my post for Above the Law on Gina Passarella’s (Centellic ’s Chief Content Officer), powerful 10 minute talk at LegalGeek 2026 on the state of the business of law. Her takeaways were that business people and in house counsel are going to be calling more shots, that there is an increase in competion for traditional law firms and that if these firms aren’t more careful and forward thinking, they may soon be running out of gas. More sophisticated in-house counsel are already not waiting on outside providers to make changes in light of the efficiencies AI and automation can provide.

Another law firm sued for a data breach. This time it’s not the firm’s clients but a class action brought by those who had no relationship with the firm other than their personally identifiable information was in the firm’s files and was exposed. The risks and disruption from cybersecurity lapses by law firms are real and growing. Here’s my discussion for Above the Law.

Courts are starting to outright ban so-called smart glasses that can record audio and video from courtrooms. The impulse is understandable but how they are dealing with it could a problem.

The orders have definition problems. They ignore the broader wearable ecosystem: necklaces, AirPods with cameras, smartwatches, even mobile phones. And they miss an even bigger issue: what to do about glasses that can’t record but can feed AI-assisted information to lawyers and witnesses in real time.

Courts have tried this before. Remember when courts issued blanket AI bans on court filings that, read literally, would have prohibited Google and Grammarly?

The answer isn’t more bans. It’s education. An educated judge can ask the right questions, identify when lines are being crossed, and impose meaningful penalties. That’s a better investment of time and energy than knee-jerk orders.

My post for Above the Law.

Based on what I heard at a CLOC conference facilitated audience conversation, a lot of outside counsel still don’t know what legal ops is. And when the audience was asked what outside counsel do right there was mostly silence.

According to this audience, the divide between many outside counsel and legal ops isn’t narrowing. But legal ops’ influence is growing with in house legal. So outside lawyers who ignore legal ops may eventually be doing so at their peril.

Here’s my discussion of the issue for Above the Law.

Zach Cass opened the CLOC Global Institute this week with a question: if you could automate everything, what would you leave in? It’s a critical question for legal ops and for the legal profession .

I’ve been told C-suite executives are already wondering how to build agentic workflows that reduce the need to consult in-house counsel. Asking outside counsel for something will be a last, last resort.

So what’s left? What do we leave in? Where will human lawyers still add value? Hard questions.

Here’s my post on the keynote and the questions for Above the Law.

I recently attended another legal tech conference celebrity keynote that left the audience wondering “what does this have to do with me?” Here’s my post for Above the Law on why celebrity keynotes at legal tech conferences sometime miss the mark. And what conference organizers and, for that matter, the celebrity speakers should be focusing on: application of the presentation to legal, making the talk relevant to what we do everyday, and not talking about being a celebrity for the sake of being a celebrity.

Legal ops’ biggest annual gathering, CLOC’s Global Institute, is moving to McCormick in Chicago this week and, as can be expected, AI is shaping the agenda. One big question: how will AI reshape legal ops in particular, and how do its practitioners prepare? Not to mention how attendees will deal with the new venue (we aren’t in Las Vegas anymore!). Here’s my preview for Above the Law.

The Smokeball/Thomson Reuters partnership is the latest effort to better tie the legal research and substantive side of the business to the administrative side. What’s unique about it is that TR and Smokeball both say their partnership is purposefully directed toward the smaller law firms. It’s particularly timely as smaller law firms are struggling to compete with bigger law firms with more resources.

My post for Above the Law.