Last week I had lunch with a bunch of lawyers of different ages and experience levels. At some point, as it usually does, the conversation turned to the state of legal education in the U.S. To a person, every lawyer at the table (myself included) lamented the poor training law schools provide. To a person, every lawyer opined that law school does almost nothing to teach students how to practice law.

That observation has been repeated so many places and so many times that it has become accepted as gospel. And seems to be accepted that it can’t be changed. But think about what that means. You go three years of law school, accumulate thousands if not hundreds of thousands dollars of debt. When you graduate, you take an exam that’s supposed to test whether you are competent to practice law. But despite all this, you aren’t ready to do the job you have gone to school to presumably learn how to do. You have no training on how to earn a living or really how to do anything. And you have to pay off your debt. WTF???Continue Reading It’s High Time to Reimagine Law School

60 Minutes, the CBS weekly news show, did a segment this past Sunday on the powers of so-called deepfakes. Deepfakes refers to the use of AI to alter how a person looks or sounds on video. It can also be used to make one person appear to be and sound like another.

According to Wikipedia. Deepfakes (a combination of “deep learning” and “fake”) are synthetic media in which a person in an existing image on a video is simply replaced with someone else’s likeness. Deepfakes use machine learning and artificial intelligence to manipulate or generate both visual and audio content.Continue Reading Deepfakes and the Litigation Risk

A new Survey reveals that close to 70% of lawyers are not even adequately competent with technology or are at least perceived not to be.

On Wednesday, Relativity Fest 2021 featured a panel discussion of Ari Kaplan’s annual General Counsel Survey. This Survey is the third such Survey done by Kaplan jointly with Relativity and FTI Technology. On the panel with Kaplan were Wendy King, Senior Managing Director of FTI Technology, and Monique Ho, General Counsel of Course Hero.

Kaplan surveyed GCs in a wide array of companies in virtually every type of business, employee count, and revenue. Kaplan spent over 40 hours interviewing in-house counsel to complete the Survey.Continue Reading Lawyers’ Technological Incompetence: Ethics and Clients Be Damned

A Relativity Fest Panel today provided their top takeaways of the impact of Covid on the legal profession. Here’s the Panel’s top ten and my top three.

Relativity Fest 2021 kicked off today. Like last year, this year’s version is a completely virtual. (Will we ever have a live conference again?). Relativity provides secure, end-to-end legal & compliance software to analyze data for e-discovery, litigation, investigations, and other uses. It’s a giant in the industry. Relativity Fest is its annual conference designed to educate and connect with customers and others in the field.Continue Reading Top Ten Impacts of Covid on Legal: Relativity Fest Panel Weighs In

Jessie Yount of law.com posted a fascinating article about why legal talent is still flocking to virtual law firms earlier this week. It was initially assumed that virtual firms’ opportunity for remote work was the catalyst for their growth. But virtual firms remain attractive even though many traditional law firms have by now embraced, however reluctantly, remote work.
Continue Reading The Great Resignation: Will It Drive a Stake In The Billable Hour?

Level Legal today announced some impressive new hires. Level Legal provides global legal services supporting law firms, in-house legal departments, and government agencies. It specializes in privacy, compliance, regulatory, antitrust, and eDiscovery issues. According to its recent press release, “Level Legal is a modern law company delivering strategic and technological data solutions that clear the runway for attorneys to focus on their clients.” Its work is accelerating.
Continue Reading Joey Seeber and Level Legal: Going Great Guns