Next week, I’m participating as a presenter in a unique legal conference.
The conference is being put on by AffiniPay’s legal brands (AffiniPay is the parent company of LawPay, MyCase,Docketwise and CASEpeer). It’s been billed as a live webinar. Unlike traditional conferences, this one blends in-person and virtual elements: the presenters will gather live in Austin, but attendees will tune in remotely.
As reported elsewhere, vLex, a legal research and database provider, recently announced significant enhancements to its AI tool, Vincent. These upgrades are designed to provide lawyers and legal professionals with enhanced practical solutions, address knowledge gaps, and offer valuable insights.
With the release, vLex is offering significant new workflows. The new features will be particularly helpful for litigators. What I like about the vLex products is that they seem to offer options in ways that can help litigators with real-world problems and improvements. The new enhancements seem to be consistent with this approach.
Continue Reading Practical AI for Litigators: Vincent is Closing Knowledge GapsIn his 2019 book Online Courts and the Future of Justice, Richard Susskind explored the potential for AI to revolutionize dispute resolution. He posed an interesting question: Do litigants always want judicial decisions, or do they simply want their problems resolved swiftly, efficiently, and fairly? Susskind suggested that automated systems could, in the future, in many cases, provide quicker and more consistent outcomes than traditional courts, even if they are not perfect.
Enter Arbitrus.ai, co-founded by Brian Potts. Arbitrus.ai is providing a new platform that may bring Susskind’s vision to life—at least in the realm of arbitration. (Some of you may remember that Potts founded the company that made the keyboard for lawyers, LegalBoard, several years ago. I still have one).
Continue Reading AI-Powered Arbitration: Is Arbitrus.ai the Future of Dispute Resolution?The debate over remote work in law firms isn’t really about productivity, training, or collaboration It’s about control and convenience. Exacerbated by a cash basis business model, individual partners often prioritize their own convenience and short-term gains over the firm’s long-term success, making resistance to remote work all but inevitable.
A lot has been written about the remote work debate within law firms. Law firm management, typically made up of either boomers or Gen X partners, usually wants more in-office work by younger lawyers, associates and legal professionals.
The argument is grounded on the theory that younger lawyers can’t be adequately trained without in-office work. If younger lawyers aren’t in the office, they will miss the random water cooler conversations that are supposedly critical. And finally, older lawyers believe younger lawyers just aren’t as productive when out of the office and will not produce the same quality work.
Continue Reading Why Law Firms Won’t Fully Embrace Remote Work: Hint, It’s the Business Model
A new study from the Blickstein Group reveals some disturbing trends for law firms that represent businesses, particularly large ones. The Study is entitled Legal Service Delivery in the Age of AI. The Study was done jointly by FTI Technologies, a consulting group, and Blickstein. It looks at law department legal operations.
Continue Reading GenAI, Legal Ops, and The Future of Law Firms: A Wake-Up Call?“Bad news is a headline, and gradual improvement is not.”
Bill Gates
All too often, those of us in the legal tech writing community report on things that won’t happen but should, things that aren’t being adopted but should be, or things that are outright failures. This tendency is particularly true when it comes to access to justice issues. We often cite the failure of technology to make any dent in the problem.
Granted, we have a serious access to justice gap that may get worse before it gets better.
But as I have written before, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about the good things that are going on that do impact access to justice for the underprivileged and, for that matter, everyone. I recently wrote about New York City’s use of AI to help people in various small and doable ways. I recently came across another tool called descrybe.ai that is doing the same.
Continue Reading descrybe.ai: Bridging the Access to Justice Gap One Piece at a Time With Democratized Legal InformationAs most of you know, I covered the world’s largest consumer products show, CES, in early January for Above the Law. I offered various stories on what I thought was important from a legal standpoint, which you can find here.
One thing I didn’t mention in my coverage was quantum computing. CES offered some 3 hours of presentations on quantum computing. I didn’t write on it. It’s because a), like most of you, I don’t really understand it, and b) I’m not sure what it can and can’t do for legal that’s different than what we have now. The second question begs the question about its impact on lawyers and legal.
Recent Developments
Continue Reading Quantum Computing: It Giveth. But May Taketh AwayWe have all heard over and over again about lawyers who use Gen AI and fail to check the citations the tools provide. The dangers of hallucinations and inaccuracies when using Gen AI tools are well known, and a Court will likely have little sympathy for the lawyer who fails to check sources.
But what if an expert witness uses Gen AI to come up with nonexistent citations to support their declarations or testimony?
That very thing just happened in a case pending in Minnesota federal court, as reported by Luis Rijo in an article in PPC Land. Ironically, the expert in question, Professor Jeff Hancock, the Stanford Social Media Lab Director, offered a declaration in a case challenging the validity of a Minnesota statute regulating deepfake content in political campaigns. Hancock subsequently admitted using ChatGPT to help draft his declaration. The declaration included two citations to nonexistent academic articles and incorrectly attributed the authors in another citation.
Continue Reading Did Your Expert Use ChatGPT? You Might Want to AskIs 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 is a growing perception of dishonesty among politicians, with findings suggesting that both parties justify falsehoods to maintain partisan trust. Another study revealed that people often dismiss falsehoods when they align with their political beliefs, indicating a troubling acceptance of deceit in politics.
Continue Reading The Erosion of Truth: Are Lies Are Threatening the Legal System?It’s a wrap. CES 2025 is finally over. Here’s my post for Above the Law summarizing my ten top takeaways in general. And the three things I think may most impact legal over the next year or so: the advent of AI agents, deepfakes and how AI will affect law firm managment and supervsion of lawyers and legal professionals.