Stanford Law Unveils liftlab, a Groundbreaking AI Initiative Focused on the Legal Profession’s Future — from law.stanford.edu

September 15, 2025 — Stanford, CA — Stanford Law School today announced the launch of the Legal Innovation through Frontier Technology Lab, or liftlab, to explore how artificial intelligence can reshape legal services—not just to make them faster and cheaper, but better and more widely accessible.

Led by Professor Julian Nyarko and Executive Director Megan Ma, liftlab is among the first academic efforts in legal AI to unite research, prototyping, and real-time collaboration with industry. While much of AI innovation in law has so far focused on streamlining routine tasks, liftlab is taking a broader and more ambitious approach. The goal is to tap AI’s potential to fundamentally change the way legal work serves society.

The divergence of law firms from lawyers — from jordanfurlong.substack.com by Jordan Furlong
LLMs’ absorption of legal task performance will drive law firms towards commoditized service hubs while raising lawyers to unique callings as trustworthy legal guides — so long as we do this right.

Generative AI is going to weaken and potentially dissolve that relationship. Law firms will become capable of generating output that can be sold to clients with no lawyer involvement at all.

Right now, it’s possible for an ordinary person to obtain from an LLM like ChatGPT-5 the performance of a legal task — the provision of legal analysis, the production of a legal instrument, the delivery of legal advice — that previously could only be acquired from a human lawyer.

I’m not saying a person should do that. The LLM’s output might be effective and reliable, or it might prove disastrously off-base. But many people are already using LLMs in this way, and in the absence of other accessible options for legal assistance, they will continue to do so.

Why legal professionals need purpose-built agentic AI — from legal.thomsonreuters.com by Frank Schilder with Thomson Reuters Labs

Highlights

  • Professional-grade agentic AI systems are architecturally distinct from consumer chatbots, utilizing domain-specific data and robust verification mechanisms to deliver the high accuracy and reliability essential for legal work, whereas consumer tools prioritize conversational flow using unvetted web data.
  • True agentic AI for legal professionals offers transparent, multi-agent workflows, integrates with authoritative legal databases for verification, and applies domain-specific reasoning to understand legal nuances, unlike traditional chatbots that lack this complexity and autonomy.
  • When evaluating legal AI, professionals should avoid solutions that lack workflow transparency, offer no human checkpoints for oversight, and cannot integrate with professional databases, ensuring the chosen tool enhances, rather than replaces, expert judgment.

How I Left Corporate Law to Become a Legal Tech Entrepreneur — from news.bloomberglaw.com by Adam Nguyen; behind a paywall

If you’re a lawyer wondering whether to take the leap into entrepreneurship, I understand the apprehension that comes with leaving a predictable path. Embracing the fear, uncertainty, challenges, and constant evolution integral to an entrepreneur’s journey has been worth it for me.

Lawyering In The Age Of AI: Why Artificial Intelligence Might Make Lawyers More Human — from abovethelaw.com by Lisa Lang and Joshua Horenstein
AI could rehumanize the legal profession.

AI is already adept at doing what law school trained us to do — identifying risks, spotting issues, and referencing precedent. What it’s not good at is nuance, trust, or judgment — skills that define great lawyering.

When AI handles some of the drudgery — like contract clause spotting and formatting — it gives us something precious back: time. That time forces lawyers to stop hiding behind legalese and impractical analysis. It allows — and even demands — that we communicate like leaders.

Imagine walking into a business meeting and, instead of delivering a 20-page memo, offering a single slide with a recommendation tied directly to company goals. That’s not just good lawyering; that’s leadership. And AI may be the catalyst that gets us there.

AI changes the game. When generative tools can translate clauses into plain English, the old value proposition of complexity begins to crumble. The playing field shifts — from who can analyze the most thoroughly to who can communicate the most clearly.

That’s not a threat. It’s an opportunity — one for lawyers to become better partners to the business by focusing on what matters most: sound judgment delivered in plain language.