21st century

“Nikii Shaver on legal AI strategy, agentic governance, and trusted judgement” + an item on access to justice + an item from Zach Abramowitz

On 07/22/2026, in 21st century, Access to Justice (A2J), business, change, changing business models, corporate / business world, law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, new business models, United States, by Daniel Christian

Nikii Shaver on legal AI strategy, agentic governance, and trusted judgement — from The Geek in Review Podcast

What does legal AI value look like once speed stops serving as the headline metric? In this episode of The Geek in Review, Greg Lambert and Marlene Gebauer speak with Nikki Shaver, co-founder and CEO of Legal Technology Jub and a member of the inaugural Financial Times Law 50. Shaver argues that law firms need to move beyond time saved toward efficacy: stronger output, stronger client outcomes, and more effective legal advice.

The conversation examines why the billable hour is far from finished yet no longer serves as the sole measure of legal value. Shaver compares hourly timekeeping to a taxi meter: useful for internal visibility, yet insufficient as the price signal for work transformed by AI. Workflow mapping, client discussions, and pricing discipline become central where an AI-enabled process compresses weeks of effort into hours.

Corporate legal departments are adopting AI at a faster pace, bringing new pressure to outside counsel. Some in-house teams see AI as a route to keep more work inside, while others see room for firms to take on work that previously sat outside budget limits. Shaver frames the strategic question around delivering more for clients, especially in practice areas where a firm holds differentiated expertise.

AI has not produced the promised empty calendar. Instead, lawyers report fuller schedules, longer documents, and a growing verification tax. Shaver flags the rise of 40-page forms, bloated redlines, and outputs that look polished yet lack sound reasoning. The episode makes a practical case for concise drafting, human review, and critical reasoning before any AI-generated material reaches a client or counterparty.

Agentic AI raises the stakes. Legal Technology Hub’s AI Agents in Law Map tracks hundreds of solutions, yet governance has not kept pace with new autonomy, connectors, and downstream system access. Shaver urges firms to establish traceability, unique identifiers, risk-based human oversight, enforceable policies, and a clear view of where data travels.

For firms aiming past baseline adoption, Shaver draws a line between routine personal use and strategic transformation. Daily use builds fluency, but competitive advantage grows from proprietary workflows, data foundations, client-facing collaboration spaces, and focused investment in the practices where a firm already excels. Her crystal-ball view is blunt: trusted judgment will become a scarce premium asset, AI-native firms will rise, and traditional firms will launch AI-native subsidiaries of their own.

Nonprofit, legal automation company design new AI tool to protect public benefits — from abajournal.com by Amanda Robert

An artificial intelligence tool from national nonprofit Frontline Justice and legal automation company Josef that aims to improve access to justice is rolling out across three states.

Frontline Q, an AI assistant that can help families navigate the complex Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, is now available in Arizona, Texas and Alaska. Using a combination of federal, state and local regulations and with oversight from legal aid lawyers, it offers answers to questions about the program’s eligibility and appeal rules.

CLM is a Zombie, ALSPs are In Trouble and Outside Counsel Budgets Cut in Half: Episode 54, Wordsmith.ai CEO Ross McNairn — from legallydisrupted.com by Zach Abramowitz
The understated founder of one of the hottest legal AI startups on the market makes bold predictions

Though not necessarily related to legaltech, these items caught my eye as well:

LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire, citing ‘serious concerns’ over civil liberties and privacy — from techcrunch.com by Zack Whittaker

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is reportedly ending its deal with Flock Safety, a surveillance company that helps law enforcement track vehicles using thousands of its license plate cameras placed across the United States.

A senior LAPD official told news outlets, first reported by ABC7 and the Los Angeles Times, that the police department would allow its three-year contract with Flock to expire when it ends on Saturday. The department cited “serious concerns” around civil liberties and privacy. Flock’s cameras are operated by the Atlanta, Georgia-based company and not the LAPD.

‘Spraying and praying’ is ruining the Bay Area tech job market — from sfgate.com/ by Ariana Bindman
A vicious cycle of inefficiency is hurting recruiters and applicants

To survive this nightmarish job market, candidates are now “spraying and praying,” as one career coach described it — or paying resume services to blast out thousands of CVs per day to game the system and land a gig. However, according to experts in the tech industry who spoke with SFGATE, this is only creating a vicious cycle of inefficiency that hurts both workers and companies.

The AI-native university, AI literacy, AI and accessibility + other items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 07/22/2026, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, accessibility / UDL, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, data related items, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty/staff, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, liberal arts, lifelong learning, personalized/customized learning, productivity / tips and tricks, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, training / L&D, trends, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

AI & Accessibility: 5 Practical Ways to Use LLMs to Support Inclusive Learning — from learningguild.com by Dr. Athena Joyce Stanley (B.A., M.A.E., Ph.D.)

The following strategies focus on how instructional designers can design for accessibility by embedding or enabling AI-supported tools within learning experiences. These approaches move beyond access to content and begin to support access to understanding, expression, and participation.
…
Personalized Clarification Through AI Copilots
Learners often need additional explanation, but may hesitate to ask questions in live sessions or require more individualized support.

Instructional designers can integrate AI copilots, LLM-powered conversational interfaces, into learning environments to provide on-demand clarification. These tools can act as digital coaches, helping learners understand concepts through simplified explanations and relevant examples.

This approach supports learners who benefit from additional processing time and personalized guidance.

Sample Prompt (for IDs Configuring Copilot Behavior)
You are a workplace learning coach.

Explain the following concept in a clear, simple way:

- Use plain language
- Provide one practical, job-relevant example
- Avoid jargon unless necessary (and define it if used)

Then ask one follow-up question to check for understanding.

Jeff’s posting on LinkedIn.

Teaching AI Literacy with Susan Ray — from intentionalteaching.buzzsprout.com by Derek Bruff and Susan Ray

Per Derek Bruff:
In my conversation with Susan, we talk about that syllabus activity, as well as the AI transparency journals she asks her students to keep during her courses. We also talk about how her personal background prepared her to navigate the challenges and opportunities that AI has posed to her teaching, how she approaches assessing student learning in this age of AI—especially in her online asynchronous courses—and much more.

Building the AI-Native University: Student Success and Lifelong Learning — from coursera.org

In this episode, you’ll discover:

Why building an AI-native campus requires a data-first foundation
How to build an “achievement architecture” for lifelong success
How faculty-built AI tutors cut one program’s course attrition from 40% to 10%
What it means to be a lifelong learning companion

We’re Raising the First AI Generation. They’re Pushing Back. (Rebecca Winthrop, Brookings) — from humanistxyz.substack.com by Allison Dulin Salisbury
“Young people harbor real anger about AI because they’re already experiencing its consequences in their schools, relationships, job prospects, and feeds.”

As Rebecca told me:

“Kids harbor real anger. They’re pissed about climate impacts. They’re upset about job prospects. They’re outraged about AI being used to plagiarize writing and produce counterfeit artwork. Their relationships are being affected, and they’re seeing deepfakes in their feeds.”

Our conversation explores what follows from taking those concerns seriously. We discuss cognitive stunting, the case for small, purpose-built AI models over frontier models in education, why students should spend far more time in explorer mode, and how schools can cultivate agency, curiosity, and independent thinking in an age of AI.

The interview ends with one of Rebecca’s most practical recommendations: every school should have a student AI council, not as a symbolic gesture, but with real influence over the tools their schools adopt, the ways they’re used, and the data students are asked to hand over.

Every generation of technology seems to relearn the same lesson: build with people, not for them. AI should be no exception.

“Teachers ban it. Employers demand it.”

Also relevant/see:

The Shifting Career Ladder — from nafez.substack.com by Nafez Dakkak
AI is changing how work works and quietly removing the pathways through which young people learn to become experts.

AI is reshaping how people build skills, enter professions, and move along the career ladder and through the labour market.

In this conversation, I sit down with Matt Sigelmen founder of LightCast and now the President of Burning Glass Institute. Matt has dedicated his career to understanding the labor market and helping society improve the connections within in it.

Matt and I explore why people and opportunities are often only “a few skills apart,” why entry-level work may be losing its traditional role as the first rung of expertise, and why schools, universities, and employers now need to rethink the pathways that turn potential into mastery.

Educators need to be deeply aligned with what these changes are, and they need to shift the AI discourse from “how” questions to “what” questions. What do we need to teach? What do we need to keep in the curriculum?

LEGAL FUTURISMS: Consumer Legal Tech and the Soul of US Democracy

The “Dollar Legal” Thought Experiment

What if the salvation of our democratic enthusiasm doesn’t come from a political revolution, but a technological one? Enter the thought experiment of Dollar Legal.

Imagine a ubiquitous, consumer-facing legal tech platform—accessible from any smartphone—that commoditizes basic legal defense and assertion of rights. It is AI-driven legal agency for the masses, costing no more than a cup of coffee, or perhaps literally a single dollar.

Dollar Legal wouldn’t exist to litigate complex corporate mergers; it would exist to handle the agonizing friction of everyday survival. It instantly analyzes a notice to quit, drafts a legally sound response asserting warranty of habitability defenses, and files it electronically. It forces the bureaucratic machine to pause. It translates the raw, terrifying human experience of a legal threat into the cold rules and procedures that the justice system understands.

And the price, $1.00, at sufficient scale, would support the operation and maintenance of the service.

By deploying Dollar Legal, we fundamentally shift the balance of power. The democratization of legal leverage changes the calculus for bad actors who rely on the silent default judgments of the unrepresented.

The Law School Deans Driving AI Innovation in Legal Education — from natlawreview.com by Shivani Vedhere, AI & the Law Newsletter; via Colin S. Levy

Artificial intelligence is no longer a peripheral issue for legal education. It is quickly becoming one of the central questions facing law schools: how to prepare future lawyers for a profession in which AI will affect research, client counseling, litigation strategy, access to justice, and the business of law.

For decades, law schools treated legal technology as an elective or a niche interest for students already inclined toward innovation. That era is ending. Law firms are adopting AI tools at scale and even investing in developing their own tools. Clients are asking harder questions about efficiency, cost, and competence. Courts are sanctioning lawyers and litigants for AI-generated hallucinations, with the number of identified cases in the United States now exceeding 1,000. Students entering the profession will be expected to keep up with this rapidly changing landscape.

The most forward-looking law schools are responding accordingly. That transformation is being driven in large part by a group of innovative law school deans who are treating AI not as a passing trend, but as a structural change in legal education.

These initiatives signal a broader shift in legal academia where law schools are no longer merely debating whether AI belongs in the curriculum. The more pressing question is how deeply, how early, and how responsibly AI should be integrated into legal education.

A Comprehensive Report on Teens, Tweens, and AI — from commonsensemedia.org

To find out what that actually looks like day-to-day, we surveyed more than a thousand 9- to 17-year-olds across the country. We asked them how they use AI, how often, and for what.

The Common Sense Media Census: AI Use by Tweens and Teens (2026) is the first in a series we’ll repeat every year to learn how this generation’s relationship with AI evolves over time.

A few things stood out:

Kids are using AI for many things. It’s not just a homework helper anymore. For some kids, AI has become a confidant, even though our research is clear that AI companionship is not safe for anyone under 18.
Guardrails are thin to nonexistent. Schools are talking about rules more than safety. Three-quarters of kids say their school has discussed what they can and cannot use AI for, but just over half have been taught how to use AI safely.
Just like we saw with smartphones and social media, the conversation is once again lagging behind the technology. Nearly half of kids have never had a conversation with their parents about AI safety.

Higher Education Can’t Wait for the Future to Arrive (Lev Gonick, Arizona State University) [Salisbury]

On 07/07/2026, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, career development, change, changing business models, collaboration, colleges, community colleges, competency-based learning/education, faculty/staff, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, heutagogy, higher education, innovation, instructional design, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning preferences, liberal arts, more voice more choice more control, skills, society, student-related, teaching & learning, trends, United States, universities, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

Higher Education Can’t Wait for the Future to Arrive (Lev Gonick, Arizona State University) — from humanistxyz.substack.com by Allison Dulin Salisbury
“The biggest risk we face as a sector is assuming we can wait out AI.”

We have an opportunity right now to reorient the university around student experience—not as an aspiration, but as a necessity. I’m calling this shift TechEd, which I explore in detail in my LinkedIn series The TechEd Revolution.

AI poses a fundamental shift in how technology might empower students to own their discovery and educational journey, and to drastically reduce the friction that makes college so unappealing to so many.

To that end, we need to urgently redesign systems and opportunities around skills and competencies. That work should be far more advanced than it currently is. And one of the hardest challenges is rethinking how we operate as a workforce in academia.

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Entry-Level Work: A Framework for Safeguarding and Reinventing Early Career Pathways

On 06/29/2026, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, career development, change, corporate / business world, economics, global / globalization, participation, pathways, policy, reinvent, society, student-related, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Entry-Level Work: A Framework for Safeguarding and Reinventing Early Career Pathways — from the World Economic Forum (weforum.org) and PwC

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping how organizations hire, develop and advance talent, and this is most visible at entry-level. Globally, more than one in three young workers are employed in occupations with medium to high exposure to AI-driven task change. How these roles evolve will have significant implications for organizational performance, workforce participation and economic mobility.

Stanford Online Launches Immersive Learning Studio — from campustechnology.com by Matt Jones

Key Takeaways

Stanford Online celebrated its 30th anniversary by launching a new immersive learning studio that combines VR, AR, and AI technologies to create more engaging and personalized educational experiences.
The studio provides faculty with advanced production tools — including a 4K LED wall, cinematic cameras, AI-enabled workflows, and extensive editing and storage infrastructure — to develop innovative learning content at scale.
University leaders see the studio as a major step toward expanding faculty-led, research-based education globally, leveraging AI and immersive technologies to reach learners in ways previously not possible.

The Current State of Play: AI in Higher Education and the Road Ahead [Gamby, Kil, Koblic, LeBlanc, Moldoveanu & Siemens]

On 06/29/2026, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business side of he, career development, change, colleges, community colleges, corporate / business world, culture, emerging technologies, ethics, expectations, experimentation, faculty/staff, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, IT in HE, leadership, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, liberal arts, morals/values, organizational change, pace of change, parents/guardians, personalized/customized learning, policy, reinvent, relationships, skills, society, strategy, student-related, teaching & learning, trends, United States, universities, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

The Current State of Play: AI in Higher Education and the Road Ahead — from er.educause.edu by Tanya Gamby, David Kil, Rachel Koblic, Paul LeBlanc, Mihnea Moldoveanu and George Siemens

The conventional explanation for this strategic vacuum points to the speed of technological change; it is moving too fast for institutions built for deliberation. That is true. . . and incomplete. The deeper issue is cultural. In fairness to higher education, many industries are struggling to keep up with the pace of AI advances. Higher education, however, moves even more slowly and is not built for the kind of transformational speed now underway. Getting institutional stakeholders to engage, rethink the work, and move faster may be the central challenge facing presidents and chancellors today, and that’s saying a lot in such volatile times.

From DSC:
I highlighted this paragraph because it hits upon the key item involved here — culture. “The deeper issue is cultural.” I think that’s a very true statement.

Part of the culture and setup of many institutions includes giving faculty members full rein of their classes and their departments. Faculty members have a great deal of leeway and power in how they do things. So trying to get X faculty members to get on board — including the Department Chairs — is not an easy task.

Another part of culture involves being willing — or not — to change in the first place. Some institutions are like Google and are used to making changes and being more innovative. But those institutions are not the norm, at least in my experience. And this doesn’t even address another topic the article mentioned — the pace of these changes. As the authors point out, most institutions of traditional higher education are not equipped to deal with the current pace of change (nor are most of our other types of institutions and our corporations as well).

I’m going to end this posting with another brief excerpt from the article:

Institutions rooted in human relationships, committed to truth-seeking, and oriented toward the full development of persons play a central role. AI cannot manufacture the experience of mattering to another human being. It cannot model intellectual courage or ethical discernment. It cannot build the kind of community in which students discover who they are and what they believe.

These are not small things. They are, in fact, the things most worth doing. At their best, colleges and universities are not only preparing better workers but shaping individuals and strengthening society.

From DSC:
Following are several companies that are using AI to connect people to work. That’s a significant piece of my Learning from the Living [AI-Based Class] Room vision.

These companies were listed on an article entitled,
“Can AI be an effective career coach?”
— from achievepartners.com and Ryan Craig

FutureFit AI
Bridge the gap between talent, training, and employment at scale

AI-powered workforce technology connecting people to careers, employers to talent, and workforce partners to tools for integrated and intelligent workforce systems.

PathPilot AI

Empowering every job seeker with personalized AI coaching. Helping organizations scale career services and improve outcomes.

Empower Students with Career-Ready Skills
Help students discover career pathways, develop essential skills, and connect with opportunities. PathPilot provides personalized guidance that scales across your entire institution.

AI-powered career exploration and pathway planning
Skills assessment aligned with NACE competencies
Resume builder and interview preparation tools
Job matching with local and national employers
Institutional analytics and outcome tracking
Integration with existing career services systems

Pathific — Design your future
The all-in-one platform that connects your strengths to programs, careers, and real salary outcomes — powered by AI.

High school, post-secondary, newcomer to Canada, or career change — Pathific meets you where you are.

Your all-in-one career compass
Quality career guidance shouldn’t depend on where you go to school, when you start your journey, or where you come from. Using the latest AI and comprehensive Canadian data, we built a platform that gives everyone clear, data-driven pathways to their future. No more one-size-fits-all advice. No more guessing. Just your strengths, connected to real data.

OpportuNext

See Where Your Skills Can Take You | Find new career path opportunities with one simple search.

OpportuNext from Signal49 Research is a free-to-use career tool created in partnership with the Future Skills Centre. Using big data, it matches a person’s skills with viable career paths — often including some you have not considered.

The unbundling of lawyer institutions [Furlong]

On 06/18/2026, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Access to Justice (A2J), Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, change, changing business models, game-changing environment, law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, new business models, by Daniel Christian

The unbundling of lawyer institutions — from jordanfurlong.substack.com by Jordan Furlong
AI will strip law firms and law schools of their commodity features. Their future depends on whether they can rebuild around their highest-value functions and their trust-bearing core.

Two very different articles — one from a law professor, one from a legal technology analyst — crossed my desk last month. They each say something really important about law schools and law firms, respectively. But taken together, they point us towards what I think is an even more profound reality about lawyer institutions in the post-AI world.

At his eponymous Substack, Professor Michael Plaxton’s “To Our Next Law Dean” is really addressed to every dean of every law school, asking: After AI, how will you justify our existence? His concern is that AI is rapidly learning to perform many of the tasks law schools train students to do, and to deliver much of the general legal knowledge law schools provide at scale, including research, writing, analysis, and explanation.
…
At Legal Technology Hub, Nikki Shaver’s “Law Firms Want to Change; They Just Can’t” asks whether law firms are capable of managing the transition to a post-AI legal market.

Law schools and law firms are the legal profession’s most important institutions. But they were built for a world in which legal intelligence was scarce, and that world is rapidly passing away.

Also related/see:

Affordable & Accessible: The Democratization of Legal Tech (Tyler Foreman VP of AI – Rocket Lawyer) — from tlpodcast.com with Tyler Foreman & Chad Main
Tyler Foreman, the Vice President of AI at Rocket Lawyer, joins the show to discuss the intersection of artificial intelligence and the legal industry.

The conversation focuses on how modern generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) act as a legal operating system to simplify contract reviews, document drafting, and client intake, while maintaining essential connections to human attorneys.

And here’s the link to Robert’s posting on LinkedIn.

Learning Ecosystems

“Nikii Shaver on legal AI strategy, agentic governance, and trusted judgement” + an item on access to justice + an item from Zach Abramowitz

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