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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 produce and obtain the prompts and responses the OpenAI tool used in pre-suit testing, including those responses the plaintiffs did not use to support their claims. Continue Reading Privilege In the Age of Gen AI: Lots of Questions

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 speakers across 11 different areas, and over 100 sponsors and exhibitors.

The Conference has been held for several years. Summit AI is a series of conferences that, in addition to New York, are held in London, Las Vegas, Singapore, and other locations. (There was one law firm with a booth by the way. Foley and Lardner, a full-service lawyer with some 26 offices, had a well-staffed booth and told me they are regular attendees).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 was certainly true from the opening Summit AI Keynote this morning.

The Keynote was a fireside chat with Matthew Fraser, the CTO for New York City. I almost didn’t attend the Keynote since I figured it would not yield anything possibly relevant to the law. But I was wrong.Continue Reading The AI Summit Keynote: Don’t Let the Perfect Be the Enemy: Lessons from NYC’s AI Initiatives

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. I learned of one interesting way in a recent conversation with Bruce Kiefer, Vice President of Software Engineering of OpenText.Continue Reading Generative AI and the New Era of Preventive Lawyering

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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 their 2024 annual Conference that just concluded. According to Clio’s Annual Legal Trends Report,  AI can automate up to 75% of the work for which legal professionals currently bill. That’s a startling finding and should put fear into the hearts of managing partners. This billed time percentage is significantly higher than that reported by Goldman Sachs in March of 2023. At that time, Goldman Sachs believed 44% of legal tasks could soon be automated.

Continue Reading Clio’s Legal Trends Report 2024: AI, Automation and the Death of the Billable Hour?

I recently attended LexSummit2024, the Filevine user conference. Filevine is a case management software provider. I also got a demo of vLex’s enhancement of its AI tool, Vincent from its Chief Strategy Officer, Ed Walters. VLex has historically been thought of as a legal research provider although now we its expansion, Walters describes vLex as a “legal intelligence company.” Lots of cool stuff, most of which is already out there in the marketplace. What struck me the most about these and other tools? Litigation is about to be completely disrupted across the board.Continue Reading A New Day For Litigation: AI Tools Are Redefining the Future

Earlier this week, the well-known commentator Seth Godin observed,  

“One of the valid complaints about some AI systems is that they make stuff up, with confidence, and without sourcing, and then argue when challenged.

Unsurprisingly, this sounds a lot like people.”

In evaluating whether lawyers should use Gen AI tools, lawyers (and legal commentators, for that matter), often forget that humans (lawyers) make mistakes. They make shit up. As one of my former partners once observed, “So and so may be wrong, but he is never unsure.” And even when wrong, boy, can lawyers argue they are nevertheless right.Continue Reading Gen AI and Law: Perfection Is Not the Point

There’s gold in them thar hills. Mark Twain in 1892 novel The American Claimant

Almost every law firm has a great wealth of documents and knowledge locked up in work they have previously done in cases and matters. If only they could find it. The problem, as I have discussed before, is that lawyers don’t want to spend nonbillable time getting the information into a system where it could be searched and accessed. But a recent partnership between the major legal research player, vLex, and a leading document management vendor, iManage, is attempting to solve that problem.Continue Reading vLex and iManage Partner to Maximize Customer Past Efforts: But User Process is Key

On May 8, the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics issued its formal Opinion 511 entitled Confidentiality Obligations of Lawyers Posting to Listservs. As Bob Ambrogi rightly pointed out in his recent post on the Opinion, it seems odd that the ABA would issue an opinion now about a technology that has been around since the late 90s. For Bob, it brought to mind Rip Van Winkle, who slept for 20 years only to wake up in a unrecognizable world.

I agree that the timing seemed strange. However, the substance of the Opinion could relate to and reveal the Committee’s thinking about the use by lawyers of large language models (LLMs).

The Opinion deals with when a lawyer can post questions or comments on a ListServ without their client’’s “informed consent.” According to the Opinion (and clearly, under the Rules), a lawyer can only do so if there is not a reasonable likelihood that a reader could determine either the identity of the client or the matter. The Opinion also discusses what “informed consent” entails.Continue Reading ABA’s Opinion 511 and Its Impact on Legal Ethics in the AI Era: A Wake Up Call?

It goes without saying that one of the most critical functions of a law firm is to train its associates adequately. But time constraints and a lack of consistency, as I have previously discussed, make good, sound training of associates problematic in many firms. However, large language models and GenAI, even open models, may offer potential solutions. Provided, of course, that the firm and its partners understand the risks and benefits of these models and how to use them.Continue Reading Revolutionizing Law Firm Training with AI: The Power of Large Language Models