“Future of Professionals Report” analysis: Why AI will flip law firm economics — from thomsonreuters.com by Ragunath Ramanathan AI forces a reinvention of law firm billing models, the market will reward those firms that price by outcome, guarantee efficiency, and are transparent. The question then isn’t whether to change — it’s whether firms will stand on the sidelines or lead
Key insights:
Efficiency and cost savings are expected— AI is significantly increasing efficiency and reducing costs in the legal industry, with each lawyer expecting to save 190 work-hours per year by leveraging AI, resulting in approximately $20 billion worth of work-savings in the US alone.
Challenges to the billable hour model— The traditional billable hour model is being challenged by AI advancements, as lawyers are now able to complete tasks more efficiently and quickly, leading some law firms to explore alternative pricing models that reflect the value delivered rather than the time spent.
Opportunities for smaller law firms— AI presents unique opportunities for smaller law firms to differentiate themselves and compete with larger firms, as AI solutions allow smaller firms to access advanced technology without significant investment and deliver innovative pricing models.
The legal industry is undergoing a significant transformation that’s being driven by the rapid adoption of AI — a shift that is poised to redefine traditional practices, particularly the billable hour model, a cornerstone of law firm operations.
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Not surprisingly, AI is anticipated to have the biggest impact on the legal industry over the next five years, with 80% of law firm survey respondents to Thomson Reuters recently published 2025 Future of Professionals report saying that they expect AI to fundamentally alter how they conduct business, especially around how law firms price, staff, and deliver legal work to their clients.
Experience AI: A new architecture of learning
Experience AI represents a new architecture for learning — one that prioritizes continuity, agency and deep personalization. It fuses three dimensions into a new category of co-intelligent systems:
Agentic AI that evolves with the learner, not just serves them
Persona-based AI that adapts to individual goals, identities and motivations
Multimodal AI that engages across text, voice, video, simulation and interaction
Experience AI brings learning into context. It powers personalized, problem-based journeys where students explore ideas, reflect on progress and co-create meaning — with both human and machine collaborators.
Sam Altman kicks off DevDay 2025 with a keynote to explore ideas that will challenge how you think about building. Join us for announcements, live demos, and a vision of how developers are reshaping the future with AI.
Commentary from The Rundown AI:
Why it matters: OpenAI is turning ChatGPT into a do-it-all platform that might eventually act like a browser in itself, with users simply calling on the website/app they need and interacting directly within a conversation instead of navigating manually. The AgentKit will also compete and disrupt competitors like Zapier, n8n, Lindy, and others.
Cost is too high. Pathways are unclear. Options feel limited. For many prospective, current, or former students, these barriers define their relationship with higher education. As colleges and universities face the long-anticipated enrollment cliff, the question isn’t just how to recruit—it’s how to reimagine value, access, and engagement across the entire student journey.
Ellucian’s 2025 Student Voice Report offers one of the most comprehensive views into that journey to date. With responses from over 1,500 learners across the U.S.—including high school students, current undergrads, college grads, stop-outs, and opt-outs—the findings surface one clear mandate for institutions: meet students where they are, or risk losing them entirely.
What Are Learners Asking For? Across demographics, four priorities rose to the top: Affordability. Flexibility. Relevance. Clarity.
Students aren’t rejecting education—they’re rejecting systems that don’t clearly show how their investment leads to real outcomes.
Provosts Are a ‘Release Valve’ for Campus Controversy — from insidehighered.com by Emma Whitford According to former Western Michigan provost Julian Vasquez Heilig, provosts are stuck driving change with few, if any, allies, while simultaneously playing crisis manager for the university.
After two years, he stepped down, and he now serves as a professor of educational leadership, research and technology at Western Michigan. His frustrations with the provost role had less to do with Western Michigan and more to do with how the job is designed, he explained. “Each person sees the provost a little differently. The faculty see the provost as administration, although, honestly, around the table at the cabinet, the provost is probably the only faculty member,” Heilig said. “The trustees—they see the provost as a middle manager below the president, and the president sees [the provost] as a buffer from issues that are arising.”
Inside Higher Ed sat down with Heilig to talk about the provost job and all he’s learned about the role through years of education leadership research, conversations with colleagues and his own experience.
Levine unveiled “The Brandeis Plan to Reinvent the Liberal Arts,” a sweeping redesign of academic structures, curricula, degree programs, teaching methods, career education, and student support systems. Developed in close partnership with Brandeis faculty, the plan responds to a rapidly shifting landscape in which the demands on higher education are evolving at unprecedented speed in a global, digital economy.
“We are living through a time of extraordinary change across technology, the economy, and society,” Levine said. “Today’s students need more than knowledge. They need the skills, experiences, and confidence to lead in a world we cannot yet predict. We are advancing a new model. We need reinvention. And that’s exactly what Brandeis is establishing.”
The Brandeis Plan transforms the student experience by integrating career preparation into every stage of a student’s education, requiring internships or apprenticeships, sustaining career counseling, and implementing a core curriculum built around the skills that employers value most. The plan also reimagines teaching. It will be more experiential and practical, and introduce new ways to measure and showcase student learning and growth over time.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bottom line: The best engineers became 100x better with AI coding tools. Now the same transformation is hitting law. Joel [the CTO at Thomson Reuters] predicts the best attorneys who master these tools will become 100x more powerful than before.
4. Legal Startups Reshape the Market for Judges and Practitioners
Legal services are no longer dominated by traditional providers. Business Insider reports on a new wave of nimble “Law Firm 2.0” entities—AI-enabled startups offering fixed cost services for specific tasks such as contract reviews or drafting. The LegalTech Lab is helping launch such disruptors with funding and guidance.
At the same time, alternative legal service providers or ALSPs are integrating generative AI, moving beyond cost-efficient support to providing legal advice and enhanced services—often on subscription models.
In 2025 so far, legal technology has moved from incremental adoption to integral transformation. Generative AI, investments, startups, and regulatory readiness are reshaping the practice of law—for lawyers, judges, and the rule of law.
I recently finished reading Ethan Mollick‘s excellent book on artificial intelligence, entitled Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI. He does a great job of explaining what it is, how it works, how it best can be used, and where it may be headed.
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The first point that resonated with me is that artificial intelligence tools can take those with poor skills in certain areas and significantly elevate their output. For example, Mollick cited a study that demonstrated that the performance of law students at the bottom of their class got closer to that of the top students with the use of AI.
Lawyers and law firms need to begin thinking and planning for how the coming skill equalization will impact competition and potentially profitability. They need to consider how the value of what they provide to their clients will be greater than their competition. They need to start thinking about what skill will set them apart in the new AI driven world.
Welcome to the new normal: the AI First Draft. Clients—from everyday citizens to solo entrepreneurs to sophisticated in-house counsel—are increasingly using AI to create the first draft of legal documents before outside counsel even enters the conversation. Contracts, memos, emails, issue spotters, litigation narratives: AI can now do it all.
This means outside counsel is now navigating a very different kind of document review and client relationship. One that comes with hidden risks, awkward conversations, and new economic pressures.
Here are the three things every lawyer needs to start thinking about when reviewing client-generated work product.
1. The Prompt Problem: What Was Shared, and With Whom?… 2. The Confidence Barrier: When AI Sounds Right, But Isn’t… 3. The Economic Shift: Why AI Work Can Cost More, Not Less…
Business leaders across the world are grappling with a reality that would have seemed like science fiction just a few decades ago: Artificial intelligence systems dubbed AI agents are becoming colleagues, not just tools. At many organizations, HR pros are already developing balanced and thoughtful machine-people workforces that meet business goals.
At Skillsoft, a global corporate learning company, Chief People Officer Ciara Harrington has spent the better part of three years leading digital transformation in real time. Through her front-row seat to CEO transitions, strategic pivots and the rapid acceleration of AI adoption, she’s developed a strong belief that organizations must be agile with people operations.
‘No role that’s not a tech role’ Under these modern conditions, she says, technology is becoming a common language in the workplace. “There is no role that’s not a tech role,” Harrington said during a recent discussion about the future of work. It’s a statement that gets at the heart of a shift many HR leaders are still coming to terms with.
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But a key question remains: Who will manage the AI agents, specifically, HR leaders or someone else?
SINGAPORE Sept. 3, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Today, Midoo AIproudly announces the launch of the world’s first AI language learning agent, a groundbreaking innovation set to transform language education forever.
For decades, language learning has pursued one ultimate goal: true personalization. Traditional tools offered smart recommendations, gamified challenges, and pre-written role-play scripts—but real personalization remained out of reach. Midoo AI changes that. Here is the >launch video of Midoo AI.
Imagine a learning experience that evolves with you in real time. A system that doesn’t rely on static courses or scripts but creates a dynamic, one-of-a-kind language world tailored entirely to your needs. This is the power of Midoo’s Dynamic Generation technology.
“Midoo is not just a language-learning tool,” said Yvonne, co-founder of Midoo AI. “It’s a living agent that senses your needs, adapts instantly, and shapes an experience that’s warm, personal, and alive. Learning is no longer one-size-fits-all—now, it’s yours and yours alone.”
Language learning apps have traditionally focused on exercises, quizzes, and progress tracking. Midoo AI introduces a different approach. Instead of presenting itself as a course provider, it acts as an intelligent learning agent that builds, adapts, and sustains a learner’s journey.
This review examines how Midoo AI operates, its feature set, and what makes it distinct from other AI-powered tutors.
Midoo AI in Context: Purpose and Position
Midoo AI is not structured around distributing lessons or modules. Its core purpose is to provide an agent-like partner that adapts in real time. Where many platforms ask learners to select a “level” or “topic,”
Midoo instead begins by analyzing goals, usage context, and error patterns. The result is less about consuming predesigned units and more about co-constructing a pathway.
Turning Time Saved Into Better Learning
AI can save teachers time, but what can that time be used for (besides taking a breath)? For most of us, it means redirecting energy into the parts of teaching that made us want to pursue this profession in the first place: connecting with our students and helping them grow academically.
Differentiation Every classroom has students with different readiness levels, language needs, and learning preferences. AI tools like Diffit or MagicSchool can instantly create multiple versions of a passage or assignment, differentiated by grade level, complexity, or language. This allows every student to engage with the same core concept, moving together as one cohesive class. Instead of spending an evening retyping and rephrasing, teachers can review and tweak AI drafts in minutes, ready for the next lesson.
Mass Intelligence — from oneusefulthing.org by Ethan Mollick From GPT-5 to nano banana: everyone is getting access to powerful AI
When a billion people have access to advanced AI, we’ve entered what we might call the era of Mass Intelligence. Every institution we have — schools, hospitals, courts, companies, governments — was built for a world where intelligence was scarce and expensive. Now every profession, every institution, every community has to figure out how to thrive with Mass Intelligence. How do we harness a billion people using AI while managing the chaos that comes with it? How do we rebuild trust when anyone can fabricate anything? How do we preserve what’s valuable about human expertise while democratizing access to knowledge?
By the time today’s 9th graders and college freshman enter the workforce, the most disruptive waves of AGI and robotics may already be embedded into part society.
What replaces the old system will not simply be a more digital version of the same thing. Structurally, schools may move away from rigid age-groupings, fixed schedules, and subject silos. Instead, learning could become more fluid, personalized, and interdisciplinary—organized around problems, projects, and human development rather than discrete facts or standardized assessments.
AI tutors and mentors will allow for pacing that adapts to each student, freeing teachers to focus more on guidance, relationships, and high-level facilitation. Classrooms may feel less like miniature factories and more like collaborative studios, labs, or even homes—spaces for exploring meaning and building capacity, not just delivering content.
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If students are no longer the default source of action, then we need to teach them to:
Design agents,
Collaborate with agents,
Align agentic systems with human values,
And most of all, retain moral and civic agency in a world where machines act on our behalf.
We are no longer educating students to be just doers.
We must now educate them to be judges, designers, and stewards of agency.
Meet Your New AI Tutor — from wondertools.substack.com by Jeremy Caplan Try new learning modes in ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini
AI assistants are now more than simple answer machines. ChatGPT’s new Study Mode, Claude’s Learning Mode, and Gemini’s Guided Learningrepresent a significant shift. Instead of just providing answers, these free tools act as adaptive, 24/7 personal tutors.
That’s why, in preparation for my next bootcamp which kicks off September 8th 2025, I’ve just completed a full refresh of my list of the most powerful & popular AI tools for Instructional Designers, complete with tips on how to get the most from each tool.
The list has been created using my own experience + the experience of hundreds of Instructional Designers who I work with every week.
It contains the 50 most powerful AI tools for instructional design available right now, along with tips on how to optimise their benefits while mitigating their risks.
Addendums on 9/4/25:
AI Companies Roll Out Educational Tools — from insidehighered.com by Ray Schroeder This fall, Google, Anthropic and OpenAI are rolling out powerful new AI tools for students and educators, each taking a different path to shape the future of learning.
So here’s the new list of essential skills I think my students will need when they are employed to work with AI five years from now:
They can follow directions, analyze outcomes, and adapt to change when needed.
They can write or edit AI to capture a unique voice and appropriate tone in sync with an audience’s needs
They have a deep understanding of one or more content areas of a particular profession, business, or industry, so they can easily identify factual errors.
They have a strong commitment to exploration, a flexible mindset, and a broad understanding of AI literacy.
They are resilient and critical thinkers, ready to question results and demand better answers.
They are problem solvers.
And, of course, here is a new rubric built on those skills:
The Online Education Marketplace Is Increasingly Competitive: …
Alternative Credentials Take Center Stage: …
AI Integration Lacks Strategic Coordination: …
Just 28% of faculty are considered fully prepared for online course design, and 45% for teaching. Alarmingly, only 28% of institutions report having fully developed academic continuity plans for future emergency pivots to online.
Cultural resistance remains strong. Many [Chief Online Learning Officers] COLOs say faculty and deans still believe in-person learning is “just better,” creating headwinds even for modest online growth. As one respondent at a four-year institution with a large online presence put it:
Supportive departments [that] see the value in online may have very different levels of responsiveness compared to academic departments [that] are begrudgingly online. There is definitely a growing belief that students “should” be on-ground and are only choosing online because it’s easy/ convenient. Never mind the very real and growing population of nontraditional learners who can only take online classes, and the very real and growing population of traditional-aged learners who prefer online classes; many faculty/deans take a paternalistic, “we know what’s best” approach.
… Ultimately, what we need is not just more ambition but better ambition. Ambition rooted in a realistic understanding of institutional capacity, a shared strategic vision, investments in policy and infrastructure, and a culture that supports online learning as a core part of the academic mission, not an auxiliary one. It’s time we talked about what it really takes to grow online learning , and where ambition needs to be matched by structure.
From DSC: Yup. Culture is at the breakfast table again…boy, those strategies taste good.
I’d like to take some of this report — like the graphic below — and share it with former faculty members and members of a couple of my past job families’ leadership. They strongly didn’t agree with us when we tried to advocate for the development of online-based learning/programs at our organizations…but we were right. We were right all along. And we were LEADING all along. No doubt about it — even if the leadership at the time said that we weren’t leading.
The cultures of those organizations hurt us at the time. But our cultivating work eventually led to the development of online programs — unfortunately, after our groups were disbanded, they had to outsource those programs to OPMs.
Arizona State University — with its dramatic growth in online-based enrollments.
Young workers are getting hit in fields where generative-AI tools such as ChatGPT can most easily automate tasks done by humans, such as software development, according to a paper released Tuesday by three Stanford University economists. They crunched anonymized data on millions of employees at tens of thousands of firms, including detailed information on workers’ ages and jobs, making this one of clearest indicators yet of AI’s disruptive impact.
Young workers in jobs where AI could act as a helper, rather than a replacement, actually saw employment growth, economists found.
“The rhetoric was, if you just learned to code, work hard and get a computer science degree, you can get six figures for your starting salary,” Ms. Mishra, now 21, recalls hearing as she grew up in San Ramon, Calif.
Those golden industry promises helped spur Ms. Mishra to code her first website in elementary school, take advanced computing in high school and major in computer science in college. But after a year of hunting for tech jobs and internships, Ms. Mishra graduated from Purdue University in May without an offer.
“I just graduated with a computer science degree, and the only company that has called me for an interview is Chipotle,” Ms. Mishra said in a get-ready-with-me TikTok video this summer that has since racked up more than 147,000 views.
But now, the spread of A.I. programming tools, which can quickly generate thousands of lines of computer code — combined with layoffs at companies like Amazon, Intel, Meta and Microsoft — is dimming prospects in a field that tech leaders promoted for years as a golden career ticket. The turnabout is derailing the employment dreams of many new computing grads and sending them scrambling for other work.
A new study measuring the use of generative artificial intelligence in different professions has just gone public, and its main message to people working in some fields is harsh. It suggests translators, historians, text writers, sales representatives, and customer service agents might want to consider new careers as pile driver or dredge operators, railroad track layers, hardwood floor sanders, or maids — if, that is, they want to lower the threat of AI apps pushing them out of their current jobs.
From DSC: Unfortunately, this is where the hyperscalers are going to get their ROI from all of the capital expenditures that they are making. Companies are going to use their services in order to reduce headcount at their organizations. CEOs are even beginning to brag about the savings that are realized by the use of AI-based technologies: (or so they claim.)
“As a CEO myself, I can tell you, I’m extremely excited about it. I’ve laid off employees myself because of AI. AI doesn’t go on strike. It doesn’t ask for a pay raise. These things that you don’t have to deal with as a CEO.”
My first position out of college was being a Customer Service Representative at Baxter Healthcare. It was my most impactful job, as it taught me the value of a customer. From then on, whoever I was trying to assist was my customer — whether they were internal or external to the organization that I was working for. Those kinds of jobs are so important. If they evaporate, what then? How will young people/graduates get their start?
Alex’s take: We’re seeing browsers fundamentally transition from search engines ? answer engines ? action engines. Gone are the days of having to trawl through pages of search results. Commands are the future. They are the direct input to arrive at the outcomes we sought in the first place, such as booking a hotel or ordering food. I’m interested in watching Microsoft’s bet develop as browsers become collaborative (and proactive) assistants.
Amazon just invested in an AI that can create full TV episodes—and it wants you to star in them.
Remember when everyone lost their minds over AI generating a few seconds of video? Well, Amazon just invested in a company called Fable Studio whose system called Showrunner can generates entire 22-minute TV episodes.
… Where does this go from here? Imagine asking AI to rewrite the ending of Game of Thrones, or creating a sitcom where you and your friends are the main characters. This type of tech could create personalized entertainment experiences just like that.
Our take: Without question, we’re moving toward a world where every piece of media can be customized to you personally. Your Netflix could soon generate episodes where you’re the protagonist, with storylines tailored to your interests and sense of humor.
And if this technology scales, the entire entertainment industry could flip upside down. The pitch goes: why watch someone else’s story when you can generate your own?
The End of Work as We Know It — from gizmodo.com by Luc Olinga CEOs call it a revolution in efficiency. The workers powering it call it a “new era in forced labor.” I spoke to the people on the front lines of the AI takeover.
Yet, even in this vision of a more pleasant workplace, the specter of displacement looms large. Miscovich acknowledges that companies are planning for a future where headcount could be “reduced by 40%.” And Clark is even more direct. “A lot of CEOs are saying that, knowing that they’re going to come up in the next six months to a year and start laying people off,” he says. “They’re looking for ways to save money at every single company that exists.”
But we do not have much time. As Clark told me bluntly: “I am hired by CEOs to figure out how to use AI to cut jobs. Not in ten years. Right now.”
Faced with mounting backlash, OpenAI removed a controversial ChatGPT feature that caused some users to unintentionally allow their private—and highly personal—chats to appear in search results.
Fast Company exposed the privacy issue on Wednesday, reporting that thousands of ChatGPT conversations were found in Google search results and likely only represented a sample of chats “visible to millions.” While the indexing did not include identifying information about the ChatGPT users, some of their chats did share personal details—like highly specific descriptions of interpersonal relationships with friends and family members—perhaps making it possible to identify them, Fast Company found.
Today, we’re dropping the world’s first AI-native social feed.
Feed from Character.AI is a dynamic, scrollable content platform that connects users with the latest Characters, Scenes, Streams, and creator-driven videos in one place.
This is a milestone in the evolution of online entertainment.
For the last 10 years, social platforms have been all about passive consumption. The Character.AI Feed breaks that paradigm and turns content into a creative playground. Every post is an invitation to interact, remix, and build on what others have made. Want to rewrite a storyline? Make yourself the main character? Take a Character you just met in someone else’s Scene and pop it into a roast battle or a debate? Now it’s easy. Every story can have a billion endings, and every piece of content can change and evolve with one tap.
AI and Higher Ed: An Impending Collapse — from insidehighered.com by Robert Niebuhr; via George Siemens; I also think George’s excerpt (see below) gets right to the point. Universities’ rush to embrace AI will lead to an untenable outcome, Robert Niebuhr writes.
Herein lies the trap. If students learn how to use AI to complete assignments and faculty use AI to design courses, assignments, and grade student work, then what is the value of higher education? How long until people dismiss the degree as an absurdly overpriced piece of paper? How long until that trickles down and influences our economic and cultural output? Simply put, can we afford a scenario where students pretend to learn and we pretend to teach them?
This next report doesn’t look too good for traditional institutions of higher education either:
For the first time in modern history, a bachelor’s degree is no longer a reliable path to professional employment. Recent graduates face rising unemployment and widespread underemployment as structural—not cyclical—forces reshape entry?level work. This new report identifies four interlocking drivers: an AI?powered “Expertise Upheaval” eliminating many junior tasks, a post?pandemic shift to lean staffing and risk?averse hiring, AI acting as an accelerant to these changes, and a growing graduate glut. As a result, young degree holders are uniquely seeing their prospects deteriorate – even as the rest of the economy remain robust. Read the full report to explore the data behind these trends.
A Digital Shift in Law
In 2025, LegalTech isn’t a trend—it’s a standard. Tools like client dashboards, e-signatures, AI legal assistants, and automated case tracking are making law firms more efficient and more transparent. These systems also help reduce errors and save time. For clients, it means less confusion and more control.
For example, immigration law—a field known for paperwork and long processing times—is being transformed through tech. Clients now track their case status online, receive instant updates, and even upload key documents from their phones. Lawyers, meanwhile, use AI tools to spot issues faster, prepare filings quicker, and manage growing caseloads without dropping the ball.
Loren Locke, Founder of Locke Immigration Law, explains how tech helps simplify high-stress cases:
“As a former consular officer, I know how overwhelming the visa process can feel. Now, we use digital tools to break down each step for our clients—timelines, checklists, updates—all in one place. One client recently told me it was the first time they didn’t feel lost during their visa process. That’s why I built my firm this way: to give people clarity when they need it most.”
While not so much legaltech this time, Jordan’s article below is an excellent, highly relevant posting for what we are going through — at least in the United States:
What are lawyers for? — from jordanfurlong.substack.com by Jordan Furlong We all know lawyers’ commercial role, to be professional guides for human affairs. But we also need lawyers to bring the law’s guarantees to life for people and in society. And we need it right now.
The question “What are lawyers for?” raises another, prior and more foundational question: “What is the law for?”
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But there’s more. The law also exists to regulate power in a society: to structure its distribution, create processes for its implementation, and place limits on its application. In a healthy society, power flows through the law, not around it. Certainly, we need to closely examine and evaluate those laws — the exercise of power through a biased or corrupted system will be illegitimate even if it’s “lawful.” But as a general rule, the law is available as a check on the arbitrary exercise of power, whether by a state authority or a private entity.
And above these two aspects of law’s societal role, I believe there’s also a third: to serve as a kind of “moral architecture” of society.
