law schools

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The “Dollar Legal” Thought Experiment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are losing the war for Access to Justice. And we keep aiming our attacks on our own side. [Nori]

On 06/29/2026, in Access to Justice (A2J), law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, tools, United States, by Daniel Christian

Contrapposto — from sateeshnori.substack.com by Sateesh Nori
We are losing the war for Access to Justice. And we keep aiming our attacks on our own side.
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“To Public Interest Lawyers of Any Kind:

Only when you have vanquished every eviction notice that shouldn’t have been filed… Only when you have defeated every predatory landlord, every wage thief, every debt collector armed with a default judgment… Only when you have lifted the burden from every tenant who faced Housing Court alone… Only when every family has shelter and every worker has been paid what they’re owed… Only when every immigrant has had someone in their corner and every person in crisis has had a lawyer who showed up… Only when every child aging out of foster care has had counsel, and every survivor of domestic violence has had an advocate who knew the system cold…

Only then — only when you have directed your energy toward the real adversaries: the justice gap, the underfunded courts, the 92% who never get a lawyer at all — only then can you attack another public interest lawyer for the tools they chose to fight with.”

The unbundling of lawyer institutions [Furlong]

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

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

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

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

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

Also related/see:

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

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

Why Students Aren’t All In on AI—And What They Want From Colleges — from insidehighered.com by Colleen Flaherty
New Student Voice data reveal students are embracing AI as a learning tool while worrying about dependence, career disruption and inconsistent institutional responses.

Read on for six takeaways from the survey and additional insights—including how institutions can start to close the gap between students’ optimism about AI as a learning tool and their faith in their colleges’ ability to help them navigate change.

Takeaway 1: More students are using AI than ever for coursework, while a significant share—20 percent—remain resisters.

Takeaway 2: “Worried about dependence” is the most common student stance on AI.

Takeaway 3: A majority of all students expect AI to somewhat (39 percent) or very (16 percent) negatively impact their career prospects.

Takeaway 4: Just one in 10 students says that their institution is handling AI’s rise very well, in a thoughtful and proactive way.

…and more >>

Majority of law school faculty self-censor, think legal education headed in wrong direction, new survey finds [Hill]

On 06/10/2026, in adult learning, faculty/staff, higher education, law schools, learning ecosystem, teaching & learning, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

Majority of law school faculty self-censor, think legal education headed in wrong direction, new survey finds — from abajournal.com by Julianne Hill

A majority of law school faculty said legal education is headed in the wrong direction and feel unable to freely express their opinions for fear of how students, colleagues or administrators would respond.

That’s according to the finding of a new survey of nearly 2,000 law school faculty at 192 ABA-accredited law schools by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit organization that defends free speech.

Released Tuesday, 57% identified as liberal leaning, 18% identified as conservative leaning, 16% identified as moderate, and 10% identified as something else, according to the survey.

Students say law school isn’t prepping them to use AI in practice, new survey shows [Hill]

On 05/31/2026, in faculty/staff, law schools, learning ecosystem, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

Students say law school isn’t prepping them to use AI in practice, new survey shows — from abajournal.com by Julianne Hill; note this may be behind a paywall

Just 30% of third-year law students think that their school is preparing them for artificial intelligence in practice, leaving 70% of soon-to-be bar candidates to learn best practices for the emerging technology on their own.

That’s according to the results of the Thomson Reuters Institute’s 2026 Law Student Pulse Survey of 1,874 U.S. law students between April 6 and April 19.

Also see:

Grads of non-ABA-accredited law school can sit for Washington state bar exam — from abajournal.com by Julianne Hill; note this may be behind a paywall

As of Sept. 1, graduates of non-ABA-accredited law schools will be allowed to sit for the bar exam in Washington state after a policy change by the state’s bar association.

Law.com reported Thursday that the change had been formally adopted by the Washington State bar Association’s Board of Governors.

Three items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 05/26/2026, in adjunct faculty, business, career development, colleges, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty/staff, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, law schools, learner profiles, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, liberal arts, policy, productivity / tips and tricks, student-related, teaching & learning, training / L&D, United States, universities, vision/possibilities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

I Was a University AI Czar. I’m Not Equipped to Teach in the Age of AI. — from jgellers.substack.com by Josh Gellers, PhD

The reason that I claim I am not well-suited to thrive as an instructor in the age of AI is because both AI Enthusiasts and AI Resisters put a lot of thought and energy into completely redesigning their classes in response to AI. This is the one takeaway that I don’t think the Exhausted Majority has fully accepted yet—to excel as a teacher in this AI era, you need to totally revise how you teach and how you assess what students learn in your classes.

I can say this much—whatever solution our industry comes up with, it’s likely to emerge from teaching and learning centers. Contrary to what Paul Schofield wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education, pedagogy experts are the best hope we have to equip today’s faculty with the tools required to succeed in this uncertain educational environment. As I always tell my students, “I was trained for 7 years to become a researcher and 2 days to become a teacher.” The idea that only disciplinary experts know how to teach and have nothing to learn from so-called “nonscholars” is so laughable that one has to wonder whether an AI agent jokingly wrote that sad opinion piece to troll the whole academe.

Also from Dr. Gellers, see:

The Worst AI Policy in Higher Ed
How Berkeley Law Boalt-ed From Expertise in Favor of Abstinence

Last week, one of the top law schools in the United States, the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, released its final policy on artificial intelligence, effective summer 2026. In the span of a breezy 1.5 pages, the school outlined the challenge AI poses to legal education and how it plans to address this problem. Despite these intentions, this AI policy is, in my estimation, the worst AI policy in higher education I have seen.

From AI Tutors to AI Study Mates— from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr Philippa Hardman
New research reveals how AI can enable real learning — not just productivity gains

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The point isn’t that AI is inherently bad for learning — it’s that the meta-analyses showing that LLMs improve assignment and performance scores are measuring the wrong thing. They’re measuring performance with the AI present, not learning that persists once it’s gone.

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From DSC:
Notice that when an AI-based learning system can remember what you’ve worked on and how you are doing — where you are struggling or doing well — it can have a positive impact on your longer-term learning. That, to me, is where long-term based learner profiles come in.

Later in the article, Dr. Hardman points out that “if we want to deliver AI tooling which supports substantive learning, we need to intentionally create a new category of AI tool for ‘learning at work’ which prioritises learning and development over productivity.” While I agree with that, I do wonder if businesses will care, so long as the work gets done and gets done well. But this calls into mind the word “experience” — something that traditionally has been hard fought to get in the corporate world. But the corporate realm often doesn’t like to pay for experience (beyond key AI-based jobs) when they perceive it’s getting too expensive. Ask all those 50 and over who had or have a target on their backs.

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Several legaltech-related items

On 05/25/2026, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Access to Justice (A2J), Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, tools, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Easy to miss: Anthropic named the Justice Technology Association as the access-to-justice partner in the launch. The cost floor just dropped (while the product got better) for consumer legal. Law Firm 2.0 gets the headlines. A2J and direct-to-consumer is the largest white space in legal.

Antti Innanen > LAVERN: OPEN SOURCE

It has been a crazy 48 hours. We released Lavern as open source.

An agentic legal system, six months in the making, 155,000+ lines of code, 67 specialist agents, nine workflows, and at least ten things inside it that you could make as a separate product.

I was a bit anxious, like I was organising a kids’ party with balloons, unsure if anyone would come.

But they did.

Lavern the Agentic ‘Law Firm’ Has Arrived #legaltech #agents https://t.co/Kqw7l48xgK

— Artificial Lawyer (@ArtificialLawya) May 20, 2026

Deans for Impact Releases New Edition of The Science of Learning — from deansforimpact.org
Second edition of seminal report reflects new research amidst growing momentum for evidence-based instruction in teacher preparation and PK-12.

AUSTIN, Texas (May 19, 2026) – Deans for Impact (DFI) today released the second edition of The Science of Learning, a report translating cognitive-science research into practical implications for teaching. The updated edition includes new research on memory, attention, motivation, and learning misconceptions, offering educators a research-based foundation for understanding how to support durable student learning.

First released in 2015, The Science of Learning is DFI’s most widely-used and cited resource, with more than one million downloads. Since its publication, DFI has supported nearly 300 teacher-preparation programs to make instructional quality a priority in the way teachers are prepared, directly impacting more than 110,000 teachers over the last decade.

The second edition arrives at a moment when more than 40 states have made meaningful investments in strengthening evidence-based instruction, particularly in early literacy, mathematics, and the use of high-quality instructional materials. The science of learning supports future teachers to build a comprehensive foundation for instructional decision-making that cuts across content areas and grade levels.
…

The report has been endorsed by more than 100 field experts and leading organizations across the United States and internationally.

Download the report at deansforimpact.org/thescienceoflearning.

An example excerpt:

“Claude For Legal Launches, May Reshape the Legal Tech World” + several other items re: Anthropic’s recent announcement

On 05/16/2026, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Access to Justice (A2J), Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, platforms, United States, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Several items re: Anthropic’s recent announcement

[On May 12, 2026, we introduced] 20+ new MCP connectors that link Claude to the software the legal industry already relies on, and 12 new plugins tailored to specific legal work and practice areas. And finally, we’re partnering with the Free Law Project, the Justice Technology Association, and others working to put legal help within reach of people who can’t currently access it.
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Link to Nicola’s posting on LinkedIn

Claude For Legal Launches, May Reshape the Legal Tech World — from Artificial Lawyer’s interview with Mark Pike, Anthropic Associate General Counsel

We have been building toward this moment, and now it’s finally arrived. Anthropic has formally launched ‘Claude For Legal’, a comprehensive offering that could reshape the legal tech world and places the LLM-maker at the heart of the market. (See below Artificial Lawyer interview with Mark Pike, Anthropic Associate General Counsel.)

Legal tech companies from Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis, to Harvey and Legora, are all participants in one way or another, in what is a bold strategic move that changes the legal tech market in ways that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. (Plus, see comments from Harvey and TR below.) And of course, Freshfields has already gone all-in with Claude, while other major firms are also deeply exploring what it can do.

Claude for Legal will manifest itself across four main paths and builds on work that has already been developed:

‘New Legal Plugins: …
New MCP Connectors: …
Open-source Ecosystem: …
Plus, Free Law Project & Justice Technology Association Partnerships: …

Justice Technology Association Named Access to Justice Partner in Anthropic’s Legal AI Launch — from lawnext.com by Bob Ambrogi

The Justice Technology Association (JTA), a nonprofit trade group representing mission-driven companies focused on the access to justice crisis, announced today that it has joined Anthropic as a launch partner in what Anthropic is calling its first comprehensive legal vertical initiative.

The announcement comes as part of a much-broader announcement by Anthropic of its push into the legal industry, as it just released more than 20 MCP connectors to legal tech products and 12 practice-area plugins for Claude.

“Legal services are out of reach for many people and small businesses, and the gap is widening,” Anthropic said in its announcement. “We’re working with the Free Law Project, Justice Technology Association and other legal aid and public service organizations to help make legal services more affordable and available.”

That makes this the first time that a leading AI company is explicitly naming access to justice as a foundational pillar, JTA says, with Anthropic positioning the initiative as “investing in the premise that AI should expand access to justice — making legal services more affordable and available.”

Anthropic Goes All-In on Legal, Releasing More Than 20 Connectors and 12 Practice-Area Plugins for Claude — from lawnext.com by Bob Ambrogi

Anthropic today took its biggest step yet into the legal market, releasing more than 20 new MCP connectors linking Claude to the software that law firms and legal departments run on, along with 12 new plugins tailored to specific legal practice areas.

Today’s announcement builds on the legal plugin Anthropic released in early February for Claude Cowork — the agentic desktop tool the company introduced in January as “Claude Code for the rest of your work.”

In the months since that initial release, Anthropic says legal professionals have become the most engaged Cowork users of any knowledge-work function, a statistic that likely accelerated this deeper push.

ANTHROPIC JUST OPEN-SOURCED A COMPLETE AI LEGAL SYSTEM COVERING 10 PRACTICE AREAS. 100% FREE.

80+ NAMED AGENTS handling
– contracts
– employment
– litigation
– privacy, IP
– corporate work. All of it

It is called Claude for Legal.

Here is what is going on.

Legal work is… pic.twitter.com/LjGi1VRSgK

— Kanika (@KanikaBK) May 13, 2026

https://t.co/QVaE6niDY2

— Zack Shapiro (@zackbshapiro) February 27, 2026

The agentic AI era hits the legal field; several items re: legaltech!

On 05/16/2026, in Access to Justice (A2J), Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, change, changing business models, data related items, ethics, law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, new business models, organizational change, podcasting, trends, United States, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

The AI Pilot is Over: Legal’s Moment to Move Beyond Experiments and Avoid the Innovator’s Dilemma — by Sabastian Niles, President & CLO Salesforce

We welcome back Sabastian Niles, President and Chief Legal Officer at Salesforce, to discuss his recent “Open Letter to Law Firms.” As the legal industry hits a critical inflection point, Sabastian argues that the era of “AI theater” and small-scale pilots is over.

The conversation dives deep into the Innovator’s Dilemma facing law firms, the shift toward agentic AI, and how firms must reimagine their business models to remain competitive. Sabastian highlights that legal professionals are uniquely positioned to lead the charge in trusted AI transformation, provided they embrace transparency, data integration, and shared efficiency gains with their clients.

How Law Firms Can Lead the Agentic AI Era — And What Clients Now Expect — from salesforce.com by Sabastian Niles

Three Realities for the Modern Legal Firm
To lead in this landscape, there are three realities every firm leader must understand:

Competition is intensifying: …
Client expectations will reshape the market: Clients are no longer asking whether firms use AI. Rather, they’re expecting to see the benefits of that transformation passed directly to them. They expect more for less but are not simply seeking lower costs – they want more insight, more speed, and more value for every dollar of their budget. And law firms, which operate at the center of data, ethics, and risk, have outsized influence over the structure and deployment of trusted AI across all industries. Some clients, like Salesforce, are even creating agentic tools to improve the law firm’s experience when working with clients. …
Unified client intelligence is at the heart of legal strategy: …

Are AI First Firms a Threat To Biglaw? — from legallydisrupted.com by Zach Abramowitz and Logan Brown
Episode 49 features AI first law firm founder Logan Brown

Is Big Law about to become the Yellow Pages? Hey, I didn’t say it, but ex-Cooley lawyer turned AI first law firm Logan Brown did. The question is do I agree?

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Instead of the traditional billable hour, they charge flat fees like $100 for a contract review or $50 to ask a lawyer a quick question via chat. She’s already got over 40 attorneys on the platform. And in a departure from the traditional partnership track, she actually chose to raise venture capital so she could scale the firm like a tech company and tackle the access-to-justice gap.

From DSC:
LOVE to hear anything and everything regarding efforts to address the access-to-justice gap here in the United States!!! Along these lines, also see:

Justice Technology Association Named Access to Justice Partner in Anthropic’s Legal AI Launch — from lawnext.com by Bob Ambrogi

“Legal services are out of reach for many people and small businesses, and the gap is widening,” Anthropic said in its announcement. “We’re working with the Free Law Project, Justice Technology Association and other legal aid and public service organizations to help make legal services more affordable and available.”

That makes this the first time that a leading AI company is explicitly naming access to justice as a foundational pillar, JTA says, with Anthropic positioning the initiative as “investing in the premise that AI should expand access to justice — making legal services more affordable and available.”

AI Hallucinations in Legal Filings: How to Avoid Them and What to Do When You Find Them — from legaltechdaily.com by Ed Walters

What AI hallucinations in law actually are
In a legal context, AI hallucinations are one of two things. They’re either citations to cases or statutes that don’t exist, or citations to real authorities for propositions those authorities don’t actually support.

The first kind is the one making headlines. A lawyer or pro se litigant uses a general-purpose chatbot like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, or Grok to help draft a brief. The model, predicting the statistically likely next word, decides a citation belongs in a particular spot, and produces one. The reporter might be real. The volume number might fall within the right range. The Bluebook formatting is often better than what most associates produce. The case itself just doesn’t exist.

The second kind is older than AI. Lawyers have always occasionally cited a case for a proposition that the case doesn’t stand for. AI has made this kind of error easier to commit and easier to catch.

A dangerous mind — from by Jordan Furlong
Generative AI is a tireless genius with no boundaries. Use it carelessly, and it can usurp your voice, overwrite your ideas, and steal your originality. Make sure you safeguard your capacity to think.

Don’t let the genius do the hard work for you. The more incisive and unique your own thinking — the more you battle and struggle and eventually succeed in getting your ideas and insights out — the more you can benefit from the AI’s complementary improvements. The great irony of Gen AI is that it actually makes your own cognitive processes your most valuable asset.

So safeguard your mind. Defend your right to think as only you can. And if you don’t want AI to replace you, then don’t send it a written invitation.

Ten AI Predictions for 2026: What Leading Analysts Say Legal Teams Should Expect — from natlawreview.com by Andrew R. Lee, Jason M. Loring, Graham H. Ryan

The pilot phase is over. After two years of experimentation for legal departments, 2026 will be the year AI moves from “interesting tool” to “operational infrastructure,” whether they’re ready or not. We surveyed predictions from Gartner, Forrester, McKinsey, and other leading legal tech analysts to identify where expert consensus is forming. The implications for AI governance, outside counsel relationships, and regulatory compliance are significant.

AI for Judges? AAA CEO Bridget McCormack & Learned Hand CEO Shlomo Klapper #LegalAI #legaltech [Abramowitz]

On 04/27/2026, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Access to Justice (A2J), Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, intelligent systems, law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, Michigan, platforms, society, tools, United States, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Recording at LegalWeek in New York, Zach sits down with Shlomo Klapper (founder of Learned Hand) and Bridget McCormack, former Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court and now CEO of the American Arbitration Association, to challenge one of the biggest double standards in legal AI: “AI for me, but not for thee.” Lawyers are now widely using AI like #Harvey and #Legora — and now more than ever #claude — but the moment it touches judges or arbitrators, support drops off.

That hesitation comes as courts are under real strain, with judges handling thousands of cases a year and only minutes to decide each one, and no realistic way to keep up. Shlomo describes Learned Hand’s “AI law clerk,” built to support judicial research, analysis, and drafting, while Bridget brings the perspective of someone who has both made decisions on the bench and has pioneered the American Arbitration Association’s AI Arbitrator, a first of its kind. The conversation moves beyond AI as an assistant and into a harder shift: AI as part of decision-making itself, and whether the system can continue to function without it.

Also see:

Are Judges the Next To Adopt AI? Is That a Good Thing? — from legallydisrupted.com by Zach Abramowitz
Episode 46 of Legally Disrupted Has the Two Best Experts on the Topic

This brings us to an admitted, glaring double standard between lawyers and judges. Lawyers are totally fine with lawyers using AI, but those same lawyers become apoplectic at the thought of judges or arbitrators using AI. It is very much “AI for me, but not for thee.” A survey last year from White & Case and Queen Mary University of London School of Law showed that nearly 90% of lawyers were deeply supportive of AI for their own research and analytics, but that support drops to just 23% when it comes to a judge or arbitrator using it to make a decision.
…
Yet, despite that hullabaloo, there is a massive need for alternative forms of intelligence in our courts. Right now, the system is drowning. We have state court trial judges disposing of 2,500 cases a year, meaning they have barely half an hour to spend on a single case. We are simply not going to lawyer our way out of this 50-year backlog. If we just use humans, we have a massive demand for intelligence but a severely limited supply. AI could step in to give these judges the capacity they desperately need for the courts to actually function.

I wish I would have learned about these important financial, legal and medical things in high school! [Christian]

On 04/19/2026, in change, future, health, K-12 related, law schools, legislatures / government / legal, parents/guardians, relationships, student-related, youth, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
I wish I had learned about the important financial, legal, and medical things (that are covered in the gifted article below) in high school!

How to Help Your Aging Loved Ones Plan for the Future— a gifted article from nytimes.com by Elie Levine
Learn as much as you can about setting up the financial, legal and medical components of late-in-life care — and do it earlier than you might think.

Making end-of-life plans for your loved ones can feel like a burden. It is, almost by definition, complicated, and it might require having difficult conversations and sorting through a seemingly endless stream of forms and terminology. But it’s essential to your family’s well-being — and it’s worth doing earlier than you might think.

The first thing to know: There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to planning. But think of this as a starter kit that covers how to handle your parents’ current or future health challenges, and how they’ll pay for medical care. (Knowing about their medications, current finances and living situation can also help you prepare for an emergency medical situation.) Below are some of the questions to consider and discuss with your loved ones.

Learning Ecosystems

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

We are losing the war for Access to Justice. And we keep aiming our attacks on our own side. [Nori]

Majority of law school faculty self-censor, think legal education headed in wrong direction, new survey finds [Hill]

Students say law school isn’t prepping them to use AI in practice, new survey shows [Hill]

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