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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…

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

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 a different tier. Associates are allowed to bill fewer than 1800 hours and have their pay pro-rated accordingly.Continue Reading Billable Hour Tiers for Associates: Progressive or Lipstick on a Pig?

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.

  • NetDocuments is positioning itself to be a player in the AI, GenAI, and automation market by combining these tools with its document management services platform.
  • NetDocuments is positioning itself as a one stop platform for all document management services for customers’ content.
  • Most importantly, the tools NetDocuments is offering and will offer in the future provide a glimpse into just how disruptive GenAI will be in the legal marketplace. And how ill-prepared we are for it.

Continue Reading Three Takeaways From NetDocuments’ Inspire 2024: GenAI, One Stop Services and BTW, We Need to Talk

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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?

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange

David Bowie

I recently read Jordan Furlong’s excellent piece entitled Forget Everything You Think You Know About Law Firms. Jordan, one of the most insightful thinkers in the legal space, believes that law firm leaders need to better understand and react to changes, changes that are already altering the legal landscape. The challenge leaders face, says Furlong, is recognizing and accepting these changes. Says Furlong, “The future has arrived without you noticing.”Continue Reading What If? Forget Everything You Think You Know About Litigation

Dan Roe of law.com recently reported on a study by Edge International on the problem of underperforming partners. I have written on this issue before.

Identifying and defining underperforming and underproductive partners will prove more and more challenging given the changing dynamics in the profession. Those firms that evaluate partners’ performance and productivity only on current financial metrics may face problems in the future.

The Survey

According to the Survey, more than half of the responding firms believe underproductive partners hurt firm profitability. And two-thirds say they intend to act on the problem within the next two years.Continue Reading Beyond the Billable Hour: Rethinking Partner Evaluation to Enhance Long-Term Financial Health

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

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