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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…

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

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

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

AltaClaro, an innovative provider of interactive, experiential legal training (about which I have written before), recently announced the launch of a new course, Guiding Effective Use of GenAI: A Supervisory Course for Law Firm Partners. 

The launch is noteworthy for several reasons. The course is unique in that it focuses not on summer associates or even associates but on partners and senior legal professionals. It’s specifically designed to equip partners and managers in law firms and in-house legal departments with the skills and knowledge needed to effectively oversee the use of Generative AI (GenAI) by everyone on their teams. AltaClaro developed the supervisory course in collaboration with K&L Gates law firm and its AI Solutions group. (Interestingly, according to Abdi Shayesteh, AltaClaro CEO, K&L was AltaClaro’s first client some five years ago).Continue Reading Empowering Lawyer Leadership: K&L Gates and AltaClaro’s GenAI Supervisory Course for Partners. Yes, Partners.

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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?

This week I’m attending the annual extravaganza put on by Clio, the cloud based practice management provider. ClioCon never disappoints. In addition to offering sessions devoted to its products, it also provides presentations that make you think about broader issues that impact the profession. One of these session was the Tuesday Keynote by Nita Farahany. Farahany is the author of The Battle for Your Brain: Defending The Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology.

The thrust of Farahany’s talk was that technology can detect brain activity that reveal things like your mood, what you find appealing and not, and your memories. All of these can result in the creation of data. All that data is the world of GenAI can be used for tremendous good in the treatment of things like mental illness, epilepsy, and other neurological diseases. It can be used to detect fatigue in workers or the attention of students. But unchecked, it can be used for a lot of bad as well.Continue Reading Neurotechnology in Litigation: The End of the Beginning or the Beginning of the End?

I am thrilled to post this insightful article from my good friend, Tara Cheever. Tara is a co-founder of LitSoftware. LitSoftware suite of products, including TrialPad and TranscriptPad, among others, revolutionized how litigators practice their cases. Thanks Tara!

A cultural clash has been brewing within law firms for years. On one side are midlevel associates who grew up immersed in the sleek, intuitive world of Apple products. On the other side, legacy IT teams prefer entrenched Microsoft-based infrastructure, and are often dismissive of Apple altogether. As this clash reaches a boiling point, law firms may soon face an existential choice: stick with what’s comfortable for their IT departments, or embrace the future of technology that a growing number of associates not only prefer but demand.Continue Reading Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Apple: Is Your IT Team Holding You Back?

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

The Filevine user conference, LEXSummit2024 kicked off recently in Salt Lake City with a keynote presentation by its CEO, Ryan Anderson. Anderson offered up his view of where the company in specific, and perhaps legal tech, in general, should be going.

Anderson called to mind Steve Jobs and the iPhone introduction in 2007 as a map for the future. Anderson played a video of Job’s introduction of the iPhone. As most of you may remember, Jobs described iPhone as a device that combined three things—the iPod, a cell phone, and an internet communicator—into one. The genius of Jobs and the iPhone, said Anderson, was not that Apple created something entirely new. The genius was seeing the synergy of having a device do three things that three different devices previously did. This combination opened up the potential for innumerable new and different things because it gave customers something they needed and wanted. Given where we are today with the iPhone, the value of that insight seems pretty clear.Continue Reading Ryan Anderson Lays Out Future of Filevine