The legal landscape is evolving at an unprecedented pace, with the seismic shifts of recent years demanding a fresh perspective on the role of technology and innovation within the legal profession. The Legal Tech Ecosystem delves into this essential transformation, shedding light on the crucial interplay between law and technology in today’s complex world.
At its core, this book addresses the profound changes unfolding in the legal domain, driven by macro-economic forces. These changes have placed an ever-increasing burden on legal departments to accomplish more with fewer resources. A quartet of pillars—the explosive growth of regulations, the challenges posed by globalization, the convergence of risk dimensions, and the pressure on corporate profits—has created an environment where legal professionals must adapt swiftly to succeed.
I’ve written and spoken about this before but the rise of deepfakes is going to have a profound impact on courts throughout the world. This week we saw three major deepfake stories.
Whether you are a lawyer or not, this topic will impact you.So, please consider these questions as we will need to have answers for each one very soon (if not now).
How will we establish a reliable and consistent standard to authenticate digital evidence as genuine and not altered by deepfake technology?
Will the introduction of deepfakes shift the traditional burdens of proof or production, especially when digital evidence is introduced?
Will courts require expert witnesses for digital evidence authentication in every case, and what standards will be used to qualify these experts?
Are there existing technological tools or methods to detect deepfakes? (yes there is but it is not 100%) How can courts keep abreast of rapidly advancing technology?
…plus several more questions
From DSC: What are law schools doing about this? Are they addressing this?
And speaking of legal matters and law schools, this might be interesting or helpful to someone out there:
Take ownership of the file.
When you enter #biglaw, you’ll hear this constantly.
From DSC:
I’m not crazy about the click bait nature of the title, but the article lists some ways that AI could/is impacting the legal realm. For example, here’s an excerpt:
Engineers in this capacity might not be legal experts, but they excel in framing precise questions for these models, drawing out answers that align with legal nuances. Essentially, these experts represent a significant paradigm shift, evolving the role of legal practitioners.
In legal research, an LPE harnesses advanced models to improve comprehension. Specific legal texts, statutes or summaries fed into the AI yield clarifications, contextual insights or succinct summaries. This assists legal professionals in quickly grasping the implications of texts, streamlining the research process.
In legal drafting, AI can suggest relevant clauses, pinpoint angles of an argument and provide recommendations to enhance clarity. It ensures consistency in terminology and references, detects redundant language and verifies the accuracy of legal citations. It flags potential high-risk language, aligns with jurisdictional norms and prioritizes relevance through contextual analysis. The system checks coherence in stipulated timelines and identifies potentially biased or non-inclusive language.
For training and brainstorming, LPEs can present hypothetical situations, formulating questions that unearth potential legal arguments or implications. Not only does it serve as an instructional tool for budding legal professionals, it also exercises a fresh perspective for seasoned attorneys.
Scenario 1: Fully Digitalized Law School Scenario 2: Blended Law School Experience Scenario 3: Specialized Legal Education Scenario 4: Decentralized Legal Education
In the decentralized legal education scenario, the traditional model of law schools is disrupted by the emergence of alternative education platforms and micro-credentialing. The concept of a law degree is replaced by a more flexible and personalized approach to legal education. Students can choose from an array of legal courses offered by various providers, including universities, law firms, online platforms, and even government agencies.
After barring educators from returning to Michigan schools in any capacity for nine months following their retirement, the state legislature is looking to lift the ban and pay some returnees up to $30,200 in the process.
Under House Bill 4752, lawmakers would amend the state’s public school retirement act to allow retirees to work for schools while continuing to receive their pensions and other retirement benefits, such as health care.
A survey by the American Bar Association found that 47% of lawyers believed that AI-powered chatbots could be a valuable resource for individuals seeking legal advice.
AI is more than just a buzzword—it has the power to automate tasks, analyze massive amounts of data, and provide valuable insights, revolutionizing the way law practices operate. In this blog, we’ll explore the top advantages and disadvantages of using AI in law practices, backed up by real-world examples that showcase its impact.
The Evolution of Legal Tech: Implications and Innovations — from einnews.com by Policy2050.com A Policy2050.com analysis encapsulates lawyers’ perspectives on digital documents, Legal Tech software, Big Tech’s influence, and the promises and perils of AI.
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, USA, September 10, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ — Tech-focused research and strategy firm Policy2050.com has released a new whitepaper titled “The Virtual Verdict: Evolution of Legal Tech in 2023” in its open-access Quick Insights category.
A vast global population remains underserved in terms of civil legal needs. Legal Tech could bridge this gap, making law firms more efficient and legal services more accessible. But might AI be something of a Pandora’s box, especially given the complexities of justice?
Here’s where automation stands as a beacon. The days of tedious document reviews and prolonged recruitment processes are being overshadowed by platforms like haistack.ai. Such tools aren’t mere conveniences; they signify a strategic pivot in legal practices, intertwining data analytics and deep learning to yield unprecedented outcomes.
In this report analysis, we thoroughly examine the Legal Tech Artificial Intelligence Market by exploring it into different segments, including size, share, and end-users etc. Furthermore, we present forecasts covering the period from 2023 to 2031. Additionally, we provide insights into the current status of the Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) for the upcoming period, and we shine a spotlight on the top players in the industry.
AI-Powered Virtual Legal Assistants Transform Client Services— from abovethelaw.com by Olga V. Mack They can respond more succinctly than ever to answer client questions, triage incoming requests, provide details, and trigger automated workflows that ensure lawyers handle legal issues efficiently and effectively.
A new international survey of lawyers, law students and consumers finds that nearly half believe generative AI will have a significant or transformative impact on the practice of law.
Conducted by LexisNexis and released this morning at ILTACON, the annual conference of the International Legal Technology Association, the survey polled 7,950 lawyers, law students and consumers in the U.S., U.K., Canada and France about their overall awareness of generative AI and their perspectives on its potential impact on the practice of law.
Thomson Reuters has released its Future of Professionals Report. The research was conducted during the months of May and June 2023 via an online survey. More than 1,200 professionals from the legal, tax and accounting, and risk professions employed by corporations, firms, and government agencies completed the survey.
Art created by artificial intelligence cannot receive copyright protection under U.S. law, a federal judge ruled last week in a case that could influence the outcomes of future disputes over authorship and intellectual property.
Unsurprising move by the ABA. Just a reminder, the legal market is already embracing innovation whether the ABA, or lawyers, participate or not. https://t.co/MJNgqNNXVB
*** From DSC: Having come from various other areas of higher education back in 2017, I was *amazed* to see *how far behind* legal education was from the rest of higher ed. And this is directly tied to what the American Bar Association allows (or doesn’t allow). The ABA has done a terrible job of helping Americans deal with today’s pace of change.
Speaking of technology within the legal world, also relevant/see:
How in-house legal professionals can embrace technology — from legaldive.com by Lyle Moran Colin Levy says generative AI tools, as well as well-known legacy products, can help lawyers and other legal department staff enhance their work.
10 Ways Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Instructional Design — from er.educause.edu by Robert Gibson Artificial intelligence (AI) is providing instructors and course designers with an incredible array of new tools and techniques to improve the course design and development process. However, the intersection of AI and content creation is not new.
What does this mean for the field of instructional and course design? I have been telling my graduate instructional design students that AI technology is not likely to replace them any time soon because learning and instruction are still highly personalized and humanistic experiences. However, as these students embark on their careers, they will need to understand how to appropriately identify, select, and utilize AI when developing course content.
Here are a few interesting examples of how AI is shaping and influencing instructional design. Some of the tools and resources can be used to satisfy a variety of course design activities, while others are very specific.
GenAI Chatbot Prompt Library for Educators — from aiforeducation.io We have a variety of prompts to help you lesson plan and do adminstrative tasks with GenAI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, Bard, and Perplexity.
Also relevant/see:
AI for Education — from linkedin.com Helping teachers and schools unlock their full potential through AI
Check out https://t.co/sfWeOiOzP5, “Helping teachers bring AI to the classroom critically, ethically, & responsibly.”
You can submit assignments to their curated collection. From the amazing @SarahWNewman at @metalabharvard. (She also did the Data Nutrition Project).
— Anna Mills, amills@mastodon.oeru.org, she/her (@EnglishOER) August 18, 2023
Google’s AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE) is getting a major new feature: it will be able to summarize articles you’re reading on the web, according to a Google blog post. SGE can already summarize search results for you so that you don’t have to scroll forever to find what you’re looking for, and this new feature is designed to take that further by helping you out after you’ve actually clicked a link.
Weeks after The New York Times updated its terms of service (TOS) to prohibit AI companies from scraping its articles and images to train AI models, it appears that the Times may be preparing to sue OpenAI. The result, experts speculate, could be devastating to OpenAI, including the destruction of ChatGPT’s dataset and fines up to $150,000 per infringing piece of content.
NPR spoke to two people “with direct knowledge” who confirmed that the Times’ lawyers were mulling whether a lawsuit might be necessary “to protect the intellectual property rights” of the Times’ reporting.
This is how the billable hour dies— from jordanfurlong.substack.com by Jordan Furlong Let me tell you a story about the AI-driven evolution of pricing in the legal market. It might not happen for many years. It might happen much sooner. But when it does, I expect it’ll look like this.
So assemble some of your most creative, forward-thinking people, and ask them: “If the firm could no longer bill our work by the hour, how could we turn a profit?” Give them this article from 2012 to get them started. Show them the firm’s financials for the last 24 months, so that they know how you’re making money now. Have them speak with clients, technology experts, and pricing consultants for insights — might as well get them to ask ChatGPT, too. The answers you get will form the basis of your future strategic plans.
The Legal Innovators UK conference will take place on 8 + 9 November, and we are already assembling a fantastic group of speakers from across the legal innovation ecosystem.
The two-day event comes at a time of potentially massive change for the legal market and we will be bringing you engaging panels and presentations where leading experts really dig into the issues of the day, from generative AI, to the evolution of ALSPs, to law firm innovation teams in this new era for legal tech, to how empowered legal ops groups and pioneering GCs are taking inhouse teams in new directions.
Aug 1 (Reuters) – Virtual law firm Scale said [on 8/1/23] that it has brought on small Texas intellectual property firm Creedon in the first of what it hopes may be a series of acquisitions.
James Creedon and two other attorneys from his firm have joined Scale, a Silicon Valley-founded law firm where lawyers work entirely remotely.
Scale, which debuted in 2020, is among so-called “distributed” or virtual firms that use technology to operate without physical offices and embrace a non-traditional law firm business model.
The lawyers are leaning into AI— from alexofftherecord.com by Alex Su Despite all the gloom and doom, corporate legal and law firms are both embracing generative AI much more quickly than previous technologies
When I first heard law firms announcing that they were adopting AI, I was skeptical. Anyone can announce a partnership or selection/piloting of an AI vendor. It’s good PR, and doesn’t mean that the firm has truly embraced AI. But when they create their own GPT-powered tool—that feels different. Setting aside whether it’s a good idea to build your own vs. buy, it certainly feels like a real investment, especially since the firms are dedicating significant internal resources to it.
Today I’ll discuss why generative AI is diffusing across law firms much more quickly than expected.
Leading your law firm into the Gen AI Era — from jordanfurlong.substack.com by Jordan Furlong Lawyers are embracing its promise. Clients want to reap its rewards. Here are three ways your firm can respond to the immense disruption and extraordinary opportunity of Generative AI.
Move fast to implement project and client pricing.
Prepare to hire fewer associates and to rethink partnership.
Establish a fresh approach to developing future law firm leaders.
…
Above resource via BrainyActs — who mentioned that the QR code takes you to this survey. Just 3 simple questions.
Q1: Agree/Disagree: Artificial Intelligence (AI) won’t replace lawyers anytime soon. Lawyers who use AI will replace lawyers who do not use AI.
Q2: Agree/Disagree: Non-lawyers should be allowed to have an ownership interest in a law firm.
Q3 Agree/Disagree: Trained non-lawyers should be allowed to advocate for parties in lower courts.
To get a sense of what the legal industry predicts, Above the Law and Wolters Kluwer fielded a survey of 275 professionals from March to mid-April 2023. We asked about AI’s potential effects in varied areas of the legal industry: Will it differentiate successful firms? Which practice areas could be affected the most? Could even high-level work be transformed?
So, as educators, mentors, and guides to our future generations, we must ask ourselves three pivotal questions:
What value do we offer to our students?
What value will they need to offer to the world?
How are we preparing them to offer that value?
The answers to these questions are crucial, and they will redefine the trajectory of our education system.
We need to create an environment that encourages curiosity, embraces failure as a learning opportunity, and celebrates diversity. We need to teach our students how to learn, how to ask the right questions, and how to think for themselves.
Leveraging ChatGPT for learning is the most meaningful skill this year for lifelong learners. But it’s too hard to find resources to master it.
As a learning science nerd, I’ve explored hundreds of prompts over the past months. Most of the advice doesn’t go beyond text summaries and multiple-choice testing.
That’s why I’ve created this article — it merges learning science with prompt writing to help you learn anything faster.
Midjourney AI Art for Teachers (for any kind of teacher, not just Art Teachers) — from The AI Educator on YouTube by Dan Fitzpatrick
From DSC: This is a very nice, clearly illustrated, free video to get started with the Midjourney (text-to-image) app. Nice work Dan!
In the new-normal of generative AI, how does one articulate the value of academic integrity? This blog presents my current response in about 2,500 words; a complete answer could fill a sizable book.
Massive amounts of misinformation are disseminated about generative AI, so the first part of my discussion clarifies what large language models (Chat-GPT and its counterparts) can currently do and what they cannot accomplish at this point in time. The second part describes ways in which generative AI can be misused as a means of learning; unfortunately, many people are now advocating for these mistaken applications to education. The third part describes ways in which large language models (LLM), used well, may substantially improve learning and education. I close with a plea for a robust, informed public discussion about these topics and issues.
Many of the more than a dozen teachers TIME interviewed for this story argue that the way to get kids to care is to proactively use ChatGPT in the classroom.
…
Some of those creative ideas are already in effect at Peninsula High School in Gig Harbor, about an hour from Seattle. In Erin Rossing’s precalculus class, a student got ChatGPT to generate a rap about vectors and trigonometry in the style of Kanye West, while geometry students used the program to write mathematical proofs in the style of raps, which they performed in a classroom competition. In Kara Beloate’s English-Language Arts class, she allowed students reading Shakespeare’s Othello to use ChatGPT to translate lines into modern English to help them understand the text, so that they could spend class time discussing the plot and themes.
I found that other developed countries share concerns about students cheating but are moving quickly to use AI to personalize education, enhance language lessons and help teachers with mundane tasks, such as grading. Some of these countries are in the early stages of training teachers to use AI and developing curriculum standards for what students should know and be able to do with the technology.
Several countries began positioning themselves several years ago to invest in AI in education in order to compete in the fourth industrial revolution.
AI in Education— from educationnext.org by John Bailey The leap into a new era of machine intelligence carries risks and challenges, but also plenty of promise
In the realm of education, this technology will influence how students learn, how teachers work, and ultimately how we structure our education system. Some educators and leaders look forward to these changes with great enthusiasm. Sal Kahn, founder of Khan Academy, went so far as to say in a TED talk that AI has the potential to effect “probably the biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen.” But others warn that AI will enable the spread of misinformation, facilitate cheating in school and college, kill whatever vestiges of individual privacy remain, and cause massive job loss. The challenge is to harness the positive potential while avoiding or mitigating the harm.
Generative AI and education futures — from ucl.ac.uk Video highlights from Professor Mike Sharples’ keynote address at the 2023 UCL Education Conference, which explored opportunities to prosper with AI as a part of education.
Bringing AI Literacy to High Schools— from by Nikki Goth Itoi Stanford education researchers collaborated with teachers to develop classroom-ready AI resources for high school instructors across subject areas.
To address these two imperatives, all high schools need access to basic AI tools and training. Yet the reality is that many underserved schools in low-income areas lack the bandwidth, skills, and confidence to guide their students through an AI-powered world. And if the pattern continues, AI will only worsen existing inequities. With this concern top of mind plus initial funding from the McCoy Ethics Center, Lee began recruiting some graduate students and high school teachers to explore how to give more people equal footing in the AI space.
Citing ‘political challenges’ within the ABA, its Center for Innovation cancelled an op-ed advocating for regulatory reform. I have the op-ed and full details of what happened. This comes as the ABA annual meeting convenes in Denver. @ABAesq#ABAAnnualhttps://t.co/xLFtTUIbqjpic.twitter.com/y1tqAaMvMj
@ABAesq is supposed to be the great facilitator of debate and discourse to steer the profession. To create an environment that facilitates the censorship of varying opinions is the opposite of what the organization is charged with by its members.
I was once part of the Center’s staff. I know many current ABA staff members personally. This is a situation that forces these servants of the profession to defend their existence and livelihoods because they are encouraging debate. I will defend my friends. Try me.
. A Center for Innovation that can’t honestly discuss innovation in a profession that desperately needs it. Disgusting. And the truth is innovation is good for attys. Protecting a 120yo biz model is not good for lawyers or the public.
This is equal parts disappointing and infuriating. The ABA is cutting the legs out from under its one truly forward-looking, people-focussed initiative. It’s a shameful sellout to the rising protectionist wave in the legal profession, and history will judge it accordingly.
