experimentation

How to Design with AI in 2026 (based on the most compelling research published in 2025). — from linkedin.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman

Several resources from Paul Fain re: how AI is impacting the workplace

On 01/22/2026, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty/staff, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, global / globalization, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), intelligent systems, leadership, lifelong learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, research, skills, society, sociology, student-related, training / L&D, trends, United States, universities, vendors, vocational / trades, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

The following resources were mentioned in Paul Fain’s posting entitled, “High Demand, Low Wage“ — from the-job.beehiiv.com by Paul Fain

AI And Automation Will Take 6% Of US Jobs By 2030 — from forrester.com by J.P. Gownder
Measuring US workers’ capacity to adapt to AI-driven job displacement — from brookings.edu by Sam Manning, Tomás Aguirre, Mark Muro, and Shriya Methkupally
Anthropic Economic Index report: economic primitives — from anthropic.com

The US wants more apprenticeships. The UK figured out how to make them coveted roles — from hechingerreport.org by Kelly Field
‘Degree apprenticeships’ that pair bachelor’s with jobs can be harder to get into than elite colleges

Most students here and in the United States wouldn’t get access to expensive equipment like this until graduate school. Goshawk — a 21-year-old undergraduate student and one of 149 “degree apprentices” employed by AstraZeneca across the U.K. — started using them his second week in.

“It shows the trust we’ve been given,” said Goshawk, who is working nearly full time while studying toward a degree in chemical science at Manchester Metropolitan University that his employer is paying for. By the time he graduates next spring, he will have earned roughly 100,000 pounds (approximately $130,000) in wages, on top of the tuition-free education.

Degree apprenticeships like Goshawk’s have exploded across England since their introduction a decade ago. More than 60,000 apprentices began programs leading to the U.K. equivalent of bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the 2024-25 academic year, in fields as varied as engineering, digital technology, health care, law and business.

AI Is Quietly Rewiring the ADDIE Model (In a Good Way) [Hardman] + Generative AI for Course Design: Writing Effective Prompts for Multiple Choice Question Development [Najafi]

On 01/20/2026, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, assessment, bots, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty/staff, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, IT in HE, law schools, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, learning theories, liberal arts, Michigan, online learning, pedagogy, productivity / tips and tricks, teaching & learning, training / L&D, United States, universities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

AI Is Quietly Rewiring the ADDIE Model (In a Good Way) — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman
The traditional ADDIE workflow isn’t dead, but it is evolving

The real story isn’t what AI can produce — it’s how it changes the decisions we make at every stage of instructional design.

After working with thousands of instructional designers on my bootcamp, I’ve learned something counterintuitive: the best teams aren’t the ones with the fanciest AI tools — they’re the ones who know when to use which mode—and when to use none at all.

Once you recognise that, you start to see instructional design differently — not as a linear process, but as a series of decision loops where AI plays distinct roles.

In this post, I show you the 3 modes of AI that actually matter in instructional design — and map them across every phase of ADDIE so you know exactly when to let AI run, and when to slow down and think.

Also see:

Generative AI for Course Design: Writing Effective Prompts for Multiple Choice Question Development — from onlineteaching.umich.edu by Hedieh Najafi

In higher education, developing strong multiple-choice questions can be a time-intensive part of the course design process. Developing such items requires subject-matter expertise and assessment literacy, and for faculty and designers who are creating and producing online courses, it can be difficult to find the capacity to craft quality multiple-choice questions.

At the University of Michigan Center for Academic Innovation, learning experience designers are using generative artificial intelligence to streamline the multiple-choice question development process and help ameliorate this issue. In this article, I summarize one of our projects that explored effective prompting strategies to develop multiple-choice questions with ChatGPT for our open course portfolio. We examined how structured prompting can improve the quality of AI-generated assessments, producing relevant comprehension and recall items and options that include plausible distractors.

Achieving this goal enables us to develop several ungraded practice opportunities, preparing learners for their graded assessments while also freeing up more time for course instructors and designers.

Which AI Video Tool Is Most Powerful for L&D Teams? — from by Dr. Philippa Hardman
Evaluating four popular AI video generation platforms through a learning-science lens

Happy new year! One of the biggest L&D stories of 2025 was the rise to fame among L&D teams of AI video generator tools. As we head into 2026, platforms like Colossyan, Synthesia, HeyGen, and NotebookLM’s video creation feature are firmly embedded in most L&D tech stacks. These tools promise rapid production and multi-language output at significantly reduced costs —and they deliver on a lot of that.

But something has been playing on my mind: we rarely evaluate these tools on what matters most for learning design—whether they enable us to build instructional content that actually enables learning.

So, I spent some time over the holiday digging into this question: do the AI video tools we use most in L&D create content that supports substantive learning?

To answer it, I took two decades of learning science research and translated it into a scoring rubric. Then I scored the four most popular AI video generation platforms among L&D professionals against the rubric.
.

For an AI-based tool or two — as they regard higher ed — see:

5 new tools worth trying — from wondertools.substack.com by Jeremy Kaplan

YouTube to NotebookLM: Import a Whole Playlist or Channel in One Click
YouTube to NotebookLM is a remarkably useful new Chrome extension that lets you bulk-add any YouTube playlists, channels, or search results into NotebookLM. for AI-powered analysis.
…
What to try

Find or create YouTube playlists on topics of interest. Then use this extension to ingest those playlists into NotebookLM. The videos are automatically indexed, and within minutes you can create reports, slides, and infographics to enhance your learning.
Summarize a playlist or channel with an audio or video overview. Or create quizzes, flash cards, data tables, or mind maps to explore a batch of YouTube videos. Or have a chat in NotebookLM with your favorite video channel. Check my recent post for some YouTube channels to try.

There are two ways instructional designers are using AI. The first is obvious. The second is a superpower. [Hardman]

On 01/07/2026, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate universities / corporate training, experimentation, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, instructional design, intelligent systems, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, productivity / tips and tricks, training / L&D, workplace, by Daniel Christian

There are two ways instructional designers are using AI. The first is obvious. The second is a superpower. — from linkedin.com by Dr Philippa Hardman

For other L&D related items, see the following items from the Learning Guild:

Your Past Skills Are Your L&D Superpower — by Armando Contreraz
AI Is Not the Answer to Everything in L&D — by Peter Lazaro
AI Clarity: 4 Mindset Shifts Learning Leaders Need Before Building an AI Strategy — by Peter Lazaro

6 Ed Tech Tools to Try in 2026 — from cultofpedagogy.com by Jennifer Gonzalez

It’s that time again ~ the annual round-up of tech tools we think are worth a look this year. This year I really feel like there’s something for everyone: history teachers, math and science teachers, people who run makerspaces, teachers interested in music or podcasting, writing teachers, special ed teachers, and anyone whose course content could be made clearer through graphic organizers.

Also somewhat relevant here, see:

Edtech Show & Tell January 2026 — from techlearning.com by Diana Restifo and Ray Bendici
New edtech products that have caught our attention this month
Best Sites & Apps for K-12 Education Games — from techlearning.com by Diana Restifo
Game-based learning is a great way to integrate technology into the classroom while engaging kids with real learning.
Wonder Tools Tidbits to Start 2026 — from wondertools.substack.com by Jeremy Caplan
AI-spotting games, smart reads, and gems you missed

At CES 2026, Everything Is AI. What Matters Is How You Use It — from wired.com by Boone Ashworth
Integrated chatbots and built-in machine intelligence are no longer standout features in consumer tech. If companies want to win in the AI era, they’ve got to hone the user experience.

Beyond Wearables
Right now, AI is on your face and arms—smart glasses and smart watches—but this year will see it proliferate further into products like earbuds, headphones, and smart clothing.

Health tech will see an influx of AI features too, as companies aim to use AI to monitor biometric data from wearables like rings and wristbands. Heath sensors will also continue to show up in newer places like toilets, bath mats, and brassieres.

The smart home will continue to be bolstered by machine intelligence, with more products that can listen, see, and understand what’s happening in your living space. Familiar candidates for AI-powered upgrades like smart vacuums and security cameras will be joined by surprising AI bedfellows like refrigerators and garage door openers.

Along these lines, see
live updates from CNET here.

ChatGPT is overrated. Here’s what to use instead. — from washingtonpost.com by Geoffrey A. Fowler
When I want help from AI, ChatGPT is no longer my default first stop.

I can tell you which AI tools are worth using — and which to avoid — because I’ve been running a chatbot fight club.

I conducted dozens of bot challenges based on real things people do with AI, including writing breakup texts and work emails, decoding legal contracts and scientific research, answering tricky research questions, and editing photos and making “art.” Human experts including best-selling authors, reference librarians, a renowned scientist and even a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer judged the results.

After a year of bot battles, one thing stands out: There is no single best AI. The smartest way to use chatbots today is to pick different tools for different jobs — and not assume one bot can do it all.

How Collaborative AI Agents Are Shaping the Future of Autonomous IT — from aijourn.com by Michael Nappi

Some enterprise platforms now support cross-agent communication and integration with ecosystems maintained by companies like Microsoft, NVIDIA, Google, and Oracle. These cross-platform data fabrics break down silos and turn isolated AI pilots into enterprise-wide services. The result is an IT backbone that not only automates but also collaborates for continuous learning, diagnostics, and system optimization in real time.

Nvidia dominated the headlines in 2025 — these were its 15 biggest events of the year — from finance.yahoo.com by Daniel Howley

It’s difficult to think of any single company that had a bigger impact on Wall Street and the AI trade in 2025 than Nvidia (NVDA).
…
Nvidia’s revenue soared in 2025, bringing in $187.1 billion, and its market capitalization continued to climb, briefly eclipsing the $5 trillion mark before settling back in the $4 trillion range.

There were plenty of major highs and deep lows throughout the year, but these 15 were among the biggest moments of Nvidia’s 2025.

How Your Learners Actually Learn with AI [Hardman] + another item re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 12/22/2025, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, communities of practice, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty/staff, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning preferences, liberal arts, library / librarians, Microsoft, personalized/customized learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, research, skills, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, tools, trends, United States, universities, vendors, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

How Your Learners *Actually* Learn with AI — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman
What 37.5 million AI chats show us about how learners use AI at the end of 2025 — and what this means for how we design & deliver learning experiences in 2026

Last week, Microsoft released a similar analysis of a whopping 37.5 million Copilot conversations. These conversation took place on the platform from January to September 2025, providing us with a window into if and how AI use in general — and AI use among learners specifically – has evolved in 2025.

Microsoft’s mass behavioural data gives us a detailed, global glimpse into what learners are actually doing across devices, times of day and contexts. The picture that emerges is pretty clear and largely consistent with what OpenAI’s told us back in the summer:

AI isn’t functioning primarily as an “answers machine”: the majority of us use AI as a tool to personalise and differentiate generic learning experiences and – ultimately – to augment human learning.

Let’s dive in!

Learners don’t “decide” to use AI anymore. They assume it’s there, like search, like spellcheck, like calculators. The question has shifted from “should I use this?” to “how do I use this effectively?”

8 AI Agents Every HR Leader Needs To Know In 2026 — from forbes.com by Bernard Marr

So where do you start? There are many agentic tools and platforms for AI tasks on the market, and the most effective approach is to focus on practical, high-impact workflows. So here, I’ll look at some of the most compelling use cases, as well as provide an overview of the tools that can help you quickly deliver tangible wins.
…
Some of the strongest opportunities in HR include:

Workforce management, administering job satisfaction surveys, monitoring and tracking performance targets, scheduling interventions, and managing staff benefits, medical leave, and holiday entitlement.
Recruitment screening, automatically generating and posting job descriptions, filtering candidates, ranking applicants against defined criteria, identifying the strongest matches, and scheduling interviews.
Employee onboarding, issuing new hires with contracts and paperwork, guiding them to onboarding and training resources, tracking compliance and completion rates, answering routine enquiries, and escalating complex cases to human HR specialists.
Training and development, identifying skills gaps, providing self-service access to upskilling and reskilling opportunities, creating personalized learning pathways aligned with roles and career goals, and tracking progress toward completion.

AI working competency is now a graduation requirement at Purdue [Pacton] + other items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 12/16/2025, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, adult learning, Alternatives, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Asia, Australia, bots, career development, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, CMS/LMS, collaboration, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, computer science, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education technology, experimentation, faculty/staff, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), India, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, liberal arts, library / librarians, lifelong learning, microlearning, online media, personalized/customized learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, the downsides of how people use tech, tools, training / L&D, trends, UK, United States, universities, vendors, vision/possibilities, youth, by Daniel Christian

AI Has Landed in Education: Now What? — from learningfuturesdigest.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman

Here’s what’s shaped the AI-education landscape in the last month:

The AI Speed Trap is [still] here: AI adoption in L&D is basically won (87%)—but it’s being used to ship faster, not learn better (84% prioritising speed), scaling “more of the same” at pace.
AI tutors risk a “pedagogy of passivity”: emerging evidence suggests tutoring bots can reduce cognitive friction and pull learners down the ICAP spectrum—away from interactive/constructive learning toward efficient consumption.
Singapore + India are building what the West lacks: they’re treating AI as national learning infrastructure—for resilience (Singapore) and access + language inclusion (India)—while Western systems remain fragmented and reactive.
Agentic AI is the next pivot: early signs show a shift from AI as a content engine to AI as a learning partner—with UConn using agents to remove barriers so learners can participate more fully in shared learning.
Moodle’s AI stance sends two big signals: the traditional learning ecosystem in fragmenting, and the concept of “user sovereignty” over by AI is emerging.

Four strategies for implementing custom AIs that help students learn, not outsource — from educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au by Kria Coleman, Matthew Clemson, Laura Crocco and Samantha Clarke; via Derek Bruff

For Cogniti to be taken seriously, it needs to be woven into the structure of your unit and its delivery, both in class and on Canvas, rather than left on the side. This article shares practical strategies for implementing Cogniti in your teaching so that students:

understand the context and purpose of the agent,
know how to interact with it effectively,
perceive its value as a learning tool over any other available AI chatbots, and
engage in reflection and feedback.

In this post, we discuss how to introduce and integrate Cogniti agents into the learning environment so students understand their context, interact effectively, and see their value as customised learning companions.

In this post, we share four strategies to help introduce and integrate Cogniti in your teaching so that students understand their context, interact effectively, and see their value as customised learning companions.

Collection: Teaching with Custom AI Chatbots — from teaching.virginia.edu; via Derek Bruff
The default behaviors of popular AI chatbots don’t always align with our teaching goals. This collection explores approaches to designing AI chatbots for particular pedagogical purposes.

Example/excerpt:

Not Your Default Chatbot: Five Teaching Applications of Custom AI Bots
Agile Learning
derekbruff.org/2025/10/01/five-teaching-applications-of-custom-ai-chatbots/

“My students use ChatGPT to attack their own thinking before I ever grade them.” [Winkel] + another item re: AI in our LE’s

On 12/10/2025, in adjunct faculty, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, creativity, digital learning, education, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty/staff, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, graphics, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning preferences, learning spaces, liberal arts, library / librarians, lifelong learning, multimedia, pedagogy, personalized/customized learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, skills, society, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, technologies for your home, tools, training / L&D, trends, United States, universities, vendors, vision/possibilities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Beyond Infographics: How to Use Nano Banana to *Actually* Support Learning — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr Philippa Hardman
Six evidence-based use cases to try in Google’s latest image-generating AI tool

While it’s true that Nano Banana generates better infographics than other AI models, the conversation has so far massively under-sold what’s actually different and valuable about this tool for those of us who design learning experiences.

What this means for our workflow:

Instead of the traditional “commission ? wait ? tweak ? approve ? repeat” cycle, Nano Banana enables an iterative, rapid-cycle design process where you can:

Sketch an idea and see it refined in minutes.
Test multiple visual metaphors for the same concept without re-briefing a designer.
Build 10-image storyboards with perfect consistency by specifying the constraints once, not manually editing each frame.
Implement evidence-based strategies (contrasting cases, worked examples, observational learning) that are usually too labour-intensive to produce at scale.

This shift—from “image generation as decoration” to “image generation as instructional scaffolding”—is what makes Nano Banana uniquely useful for the 10 evidence-based strategies below.

Agents, robots, and us: Skill partnerships in the age of AI — from mckinsey.com by Lareina Yee, Anu Madgavkar, Sven Smit, Alexis Krivkovich, Michael Chui, María Jesús Ramírez, and Diego Castresana
AI is expanding the productivity frontier. Realizing its benefits requires new skills and rethinking how people work together with intelligent machines.

At a glance

Work in the future will be a partnership between people, agents, and robots—all powered by AI. …
Most human skills will endure, though they will be applied differently. …
Our new Skill Change Index shows which skills will be most and least exposed to automation in the next five years….
Demand for AI fluency—the ability to use and manage AI tools—has grown sevenfold in two years…
By 2030, about $2.9 trillion of economic value could be unlocked in the United States…

Also related/see:

The state of AI in 2025: Agents, innovation, and transformation — from mckinsey.com
Almost all survey respondents say their organizations are using AI, and many have begun to use AI agents. But most are still in the early stages of scaling AI and capturing enterprise-level value.

State of AI: December 2025 newsletter — from nathanbenaich.substack.com by Nathan Benaich
What you’ve got to know in AI from the last 4 weeks.

Welcome to the latest issue of the State of AI, an editorialized newsletter that covers the key developments in AI policy, research, industry, and start-ups over the last month.

“Introducing AI assistants with memory” + other items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 12/01/2025, in accessibility / UDL, adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, digital video, education, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty/staff, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, Google, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, IT in HE, K-12 related, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, liberal arts, library / librarians, memory, multimedia, personalized/customized learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, tools, training / L&D, trends, United States, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

4 Simple & Easy Ways to Use AI to Differentiate Instruction — from mindfulaiedu.substack.com (Mindful AI for Education) by Dani Kachorsky, PhD
Designing for All Learners with AI and Universal Design Learning

So this year, I’ve been exploring new ways that AI can help support students with disabilities—students on IEPs, learning plans, or 504s—and, honestly, it’s changing the way I think about differentiation in general.

As a quick note, a lot of what I’m finding applies just as well to English language learners or really to any students. One of the big ideas behind Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is that accommodations and strategies designed for students with disabilities are often just good teaching practices. When we plan instruction that’s accessible to the widest possible range of learners, everyone benefits. For example, UDL encourages explaining things in multiple modes—written, visual, auditory, kinesthetic—because people access information differently. I hear students say they’re “visual learners,” but I think everyone is a visual learner, and an auditory learner, and a kinesthetic learner. The more ways we present information, the more likely it is to stick.

So, with that in mind, here are four ways I’ve been using AI to differentiate instruction for students with disabilities (and, really, everyone else too):

The Periodic Table of AI Tools In Education To Try Today — from ictevangelist.com by Mark Anderson

What I’ve tried to do is bring together genuinely useful AI tools that I know are already making a difference.

For colleagues wanting to explore further, I’m sharing the list exactly as it appears in the table, including website links, grouped by category below. Please do check it out, as along with links to all of the resources, I’ve also written a brief summary explaining what each of the different tools do and how they can help.

Seven Hard-Won Lessons from Building AI Learning Tools — from linkedin.com by Louise Worgan

Last week, I wrapped up Dr Philippa Hardman’s intensive bootcamp on AI in learning design. Four conversations, countless iterations, and more than a few humbling moments later – here’s what I am left thinking about.

Finally Catching Up to the New Models — from michellekassorla.substack.com by Michelle Kassorla
There are some amazing things happening out there!

An aside: Google is working on a new vision for textbooks that can be easily differentiated based on the beautiful success for NotebookLM. You can get on the waiting list for that tool by going to LearnYourWay.withgoogle.com.
…
Nano Banana Pro
Sticking with the Google tools for now, Nano Banana Pro (which you can use for free on Google’s AI Studio), is doing something that everyone has been waiting a long time for: it adds correct text to images.

Introducing AI assistants with memory — from perplexity.ai

The simple act of remembering is the crux of how we navigate the world: it shapes our experiences, informs our decisions, and helps us anticipate what comes next. For AI agents like Comet Assistant, that continuity leads to a more powerful, personalized experience.

Today we are announcing new personalization features to remember your preferences, interests, and conversations. Perplexity now synthesizes them automatically like memory, for valuable context on relevant tasks. Answers are smarter, faster, and more personalized, no matter how you work.

From DSC :
This should be important as we look at learning-related applications for AI.

For the last three days, my Substack has been in the top “Rising in Education” list. I realize this is based on a hugely flawed metric, but it still feels good. ?

– Michael G Wagner

Read on Substack

I’m a Professor. A.I. Has Changed My Classroom, but Not for the Worse. — from nytimes.com by Carlo Rotella [this should be a gifted article]
My students’ easy access to chatbots forced me to make humanities instruction even more human.

Law Firm 2.0: A Trillion-Dollar Market Begins To Move — from abovethelaw.com by Ken Crutchfield
The test cases for Law Firm 2.0 are arriving faster than many expected.

A move to separate legal advice from other legal services that don’t require advice is a big shift that would ripple through established firms and also test regulatory boundaries.
…
The LegalTech Fund (TLTF) sees a $1 trillion opportunity to reinvent legal services through the convergence of technology, regulatory changes, and innovation. TLTF calls this movement Law Firm 2.0, and the fund believes a reinvention will pave the way for entirely new, tech-enabled models of legal service delivery.

From Paper to Platform: How LegalTech Is Revolutionizing the Practice of Law — from markets.financialcontent.com by AB Newswire

For decades, practicing law has been a business about paper — contracts, case files, court documents, and floor-to-ceiling piles of precedent. But as technology transforms all aspects of modern-day business, law firms and in-house legal teams are transforming along with it. The development of LegalTech has revolutionized what was previously a paper-driven, manpower-intensive profession into a data-driven digital web of collaboration and automation.

Conclusion: Building the Future of Law
The practice of law has always been about accuracy, precedent, and human beings. Technology doesn’t alter that — it magnifies it. The shift to the platform from paper is about liberating lawyers from back-office tasks so they can concentrate on strategy, advocacy, and creativity.

By coupling intelligent automation with moral obligation, today’s firms are positioning the legal profession for a more intelligent, responsive industry. LegalTech isn’t about automation, it’s about empowering attorneys to practice at the speed of today’s business.

What Legal Can Learn from Other Industries’ AI Transformations — from jdsupra.com

Artificial intelligence has already redefined how industries like finance, healthcare, and supply chain operate — transforming once-manual processes into predictive, data-driven engines of efficiency.

Yet the legal industry, while increasingly open to innovation, still lags behind its peers in adopting automation at scale. As corporate legal departments face mounting pressure to do more with less, they have an opportunity to learn from how other sectors successfully integrated AI into their operations.

The message is clear: AI transformation doesn’t just change workflows — it changes what’s possible.

7 Legal Tech Trends To Watch In 2026 — from lexology.com

Small Language Models Are Changing Legal Tech: What That Means for Lawyers and Law Firms — from community.nasscom.in

The legal profession is at a turning point. Artificial intelligence tools are moving from novelty to everyday utility, and small language models, or SLMs, are a major reason why. For law firms and in-house legal teams that are balancing client confidentiality, tight budgets, and the need to move faster, SLMs offer a practical, high impact way to bring legal AI into routine practice. This article explains what SLMs are, why they matter to lawyers, where they fit in legal workflows, and how to adopt them responsibly.

Legal AI startup draws new $50 million Blackstone investment, opens law firm — from reuters.com by Sara Merken

NEW YORK, Nov 20 (Reuters) – Asset manager Blackstone (BX.N), opens new tab has invested $50 million in Norm Ai, a legal and compliance technology startup that also said on Thursday that it is launching an independent law firm that will offer “AI-native legal services.”

Lawyers at the new New York-based firm, Norm Law LLP, will use Norm Ai’s artificial intelligence technology to do legal work for Blackstone and other financial services clients, said Norm Ai founder and CEO John Nay.

Law School Toolbox Podcast Episode 531: What Law Students Should Know About New Legal Tech (w/Gabe Teninbaum) — from jdsupra.com

Today, Alison and Gabe Teninbaum — law professor and creator of SpacedRepetition.com — discuss how technology is rapidly transforming the legal profession, emphasizing the importance for law students and lawyers to develop technological competence and adapt to new tools and roles in the legal profession.

New York is the San Francisco of legal tech — from businessinsider.com by Melia Russell

Legal tech ?? NYC.
To win the market, startups say they need to be where the law firms and corporate legal chiefs are.
Legora and Harvey are expanding their footprints in New York, as Clio hunts for office space.

Legal Tech Startups Expand in New York to Access Law Firms — from indexbox.io

Several legal technology startups are expanding their physical presence in New York City, according to a report from Legal tech NYC. The companies state that to win market share, they need to be located where major law firms and corporate legal departments are based.

Linklaters unveils 20-strong ‘AI lawyer’ team — from legalcheek.com by Legal Cheek

Magic Circle giant Linklaters has launched a team of 20 ‘AI Lawyers’ (yes, that is their actual job title) as it ramps up its commitment to artificial intelligence across its global offices.

The new cohort is a mix of external tech specialists and Linklaters lawyers who have decided to boost their legal expertise with advanced AI know-how. They will be placed into practice groups around the world to help build prompts, workflows and other tech driven processes that the firm hopes will sharpen client delivery.

I went to a closed-door retreat for top lawyers. The message was clear: Don’t fear AI — use it. — from businessinsider.com by Melia Russell

AI is making its mark on law firms and corporate legal teams.
Clients expect measurable savings, and firms are spending real money to deliver them.
At TLTF Summit, Big Law leaders and legal-tech builders explored the future of the industry.

From Cost Center to Command Center: The Future of Litigation is Being Built In-House — from law.stanford.edu by Adam Rouse, Tamra Moore, Renee Meisel, Kassi Burns, & Olga Mack

Litigation isn’t going away, but who leads, drafts, and drives it is rapidly changing. Empirical research shows corporate legal departments have steadily expanded litigation management functions over the past decade. (Annual Litigation Trends Survey, Norton Rose Fulbright (2025)).

For decades, litigation lived squarely in the law firm domain. (Wald, Eli, Getting in and Out of the House: Career Trajectories of In-House Lawyers, Fordham Law Review, Vol. 88, No. 1765, 2020 (June 22, 2020)). Corporate legal departments played a responsive role: approving strategies, reviewing documents, and paying hourly rates. But through dozens of recent conversations with in-house legal leaders, legal operations professionals, and litigation specialists, a new reality is emerging. One in which in-house counsel increasingly owns the first draft, systematizes their litigation approach, and reshapes how outside counsel fits into the picture.

AI, analytics, exemplar libraries, playbooks, and modular document builders are not simply tools. They are catalysts for a structural shift. Litigation is becoming modular, data-informed, and orchestrated by in-house teams who increasingly want more than cost control. They want consistency, clarity, and leverage. This piece outlines five major trends from our qualitative research, predictions on their impact to the practice of law, and research questions that are worth considering to further understand these trends. A model is then introduced for understanding how litigation workflows and outside counsel relationships will evolve in the coming years.

Could Your Next Side Hustle Be Training AI? — from builtin.com by Jeff Rumage
As automation continues to reshape the labor market, some white-collar professionals are cashing in by teaching AI models to do their jobs.

Summary: Artificial intelligence may be replacing jobs, but it’s also creating some new ones. Professionals in fields like medicine, law and engineering can earn big money training AI models, teaching them human skills and expertise that may one day make those same jobs obsolete.

DEEP DIVE: The AI user interface of the future = Voice — from theneurondaily.com by Grant Harvey
PLUS: Gemini 3.0 and Microsoft’s new voice features

Here’s the thing: voice is finally good enough to replace typing now. And I mean actually good enough, not “Siri, play Despacito” good enough.

To Paraphrase Andrej Karpathy’s famous quote, “the hottest new programming language is English”, in this case, the hottest new user interface is talking.

The Great Convergence: Why Voice Is Having Its Moment
Three massive shifts just collided to make voice interfaces inevitable.

1. First, speech recognition stopped being terrible. …
2. Second, our devices got ears everywhere. …
3. Third, and most importantly: LLMs made voice assistants smart enough to be worth talking to. …

Introducing group chats in ChatGPT — from openai.com
Collaborate with others, and ChatGPT, in the same conversation.

Update on November 20, 2025: Early feedback from the pilot has been positive, so we’re expanding group chats to all logged-in users on ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus and Pro plans globally over the coming days. We will continue refining the experience as more people start using it.

Today, we’re beginning to pilot a new experience in a few regions that makes it easy for people to collaborate with each other—and with ChatGPT—in the same conversation. With group chats, you can bring friends, family, or coworkers into a shared space to plan, make decisions, or work through ideas together.

Whether you’re organizing a group dinner or drafting an outline with coworkers, ChatGPT can help. Group chats are separate from your private conversations, and your personal ChatGPT memory is never shared with anyone in the chat.

Learning Ecosystems

Which AI Video Tool Is Most Powerful for L&D Teams? [Hardman]

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