- The fallacy of the calculator – Jordan Furlong shares salient, focused and actionable thoughts about the future relationship between Gen AI and the legal profession. Furlong states that the more you study how Generative AI works, the more parallels emerge with how lawyers think — and that has implications. With Gen AI getting better every day, we need to get our act together, fast.
- Safeguarding the Docket: A Roadmap for AI Agent Integration into Patent Docketing Workflows – Deadlines are everything in patent law. A missed deadline can result in abandoned patent applications, loss of rights, and costly malpractice claims. Accordingly, deadline management is one of the most important functions of patent docketing. Traditional docketing systems rely heavily on manual data entry, introducing opportunities for human error. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) agents (“Agents”) offers a practical solution to reduce these risks. Agents can extract deadlines from United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) communications, populate docketing systems, and even provide attorneys with regular updates on upcoming tasks. Agents create a highly reliable docketing system that reduces clerical mistakes and malpractice exposure and may ultimately lower malpractice insurance premiums over time when combined with human oversight. This paper by John Schulte outlines the potential benefits of using AI agents in docketing workflows and proposes an implementation roadmap, including three key safeguards for law firms to consider.
- Trump Administration Continues Scrubbing Statistics and Disappearing Data – What is the status of the official data published by U.S. federal statistical agencies? As the current administration continues its disassembling of huge swaths of the federal government, not only are the workers and services gone, so of course is much of the data generated by those employees. And federal statistical data and datasets, whether census data or statistics on the economy, health, education, or other critical public matters, are what librarians and information professionals rely upon to answer patron questions and perform research and analysis for internal, data-driven projects. This article by Robert Berkman is a roundup of where these cuts and significant changes are happening and offers alternatives to locate datasets and statistical data that are no longer available.
- AI in Finance and Banking, May 31, 2025 – This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government documents, NGO/IGO papers, conferences, industry white papers and reports, academic papers and speeches, and central bank actions on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact on the banking and finance sectors. The chronological links provided are to the primary sources, and as available, indicate links to alternate free versions. Five highlights from this post: Wall Street Banks, Executives and U.S. Regulators Raise Warnings over Lack of AI Security; Expecting job replacement by GenAI: effects on workers’ economic outlook and behavior; The Economics of Transformative AI; Artificial intelligence and human capital: challenges for central bank; and Rising Adoption of Artificial Intelligence in Financial Operations.
- Recognizing And Dealing With AI Snake Oil – Jerry Lawson reviews Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor’s new book, What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference as a timely wake-up call amidst today’s AI hype. Narayanan and Kapoor are on a mission to help readers separate genuine AI advances from “snake oil” – the bogus or overhyped claims that too often swirl around artificial intelligence. For lawyers and regulators grappling with AI, Narayanan and Kapoor’s analysis provides a much-needed reality check on both the technology’s potential and its pitfalls.
- Connecticut House Passes Landmark eBook Bill – Kyle K. Courtney [he is lawyer for libraries] spotlights the eBook Study Group, a national coalition of legal and policy experts focused on fair digital access for libraries, who applaud the 106–38 passage of long-awaited legislation by the Connecticut House of Representatives that will make eBook licenses more consistent with the library mission and better serve library users across the state. This effort is a benchmark for libraries and advocates in jurisdictions throughout the country who are battling restrictive licensing terms imposed by publishers.
- Law Publishing Doom-Mongers, Self-Styled Heroes and Others – Akin to a 1991 major law firm management effort to declare the reign of the ‘paperless law library,’ Robert McKay’s commentary challenges the death knell of the latest iteration of powerhouse law publishing by the multitude of AI applications and programs poised to take the throne.
- From Hype to Habits: Comparing Data on Generative AI in Law Firms – Since generative AI was first publicly released over two years ago, a litany of reports has been released that provide insight into how law firms are approaching it and the changing perspectives on its benefits and risks. Nicole L. Black brings the facts to the discussion of how and to what extent law firms are actually implementing AI.
- How redefining just one word could strip the Endangered Species Act’s ability to protect vital habitat – Dr. Mariah Meek asserts that it wouldn’t make much sense to prohibit people from shooting a threatened woodpecker while allowing its forest to be cut down, or to bar killing endangered salmon while allowing a dam to dry out their habitat. But that’s exactly what the Trump administration is proposing to do by changing how one word in the Endangered Species Act is interpreted: harm. The definition change is a quiet way to gut the Endangered Species Act.
- AI in Finance and Banking, May 15, 2025 – This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government documents, NGO/IGO papers, conferences, industry white papers and reports, academic papers and speeches, and central bank actions on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact on the banking and finance sectors. The chronological links provided are to the primary sources, and as available, indicate links to alternate free versions. Five highlights from this post: Artificial intelligence and human capital: challenges for central banks; Artificial Intelligence and the Labor Market: A Scenario-Based Approach; How Good is AI at Twisting Arms? Experiments in Debt Collection; The rapidly increasing power of generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) models is more than a passing fad, even if the full extent of its impact in financial services is yet unclear; and Generative AI may shoulder up to 40% of workload, some bank execs predict.
- Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, May 31, 2025 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: Most AI chatbots devour your user data – these are the worst offenders; The US Is Building a One-Stop Shop for Buying Your Data; Digital Corruption Takes Over DC; A Starter Guide to Protecting Your Data From Hackers and Corporations; and Cybercriminals exploit AI hype to spread ransomware, malware.
- Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, May 24, 2025 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: A Judge Just Cracked Open the Can of Worms AI Firms Were Hoping to Avoid; How to Shield Yourself From Social Media Abuse; AI hallucinations and their risk to cybersecurity operations; the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is withdrawing its Notice of Proposed Rule: Protecting Americans from Harmful Data Broker Practices; Philadelphia woman spends months fixing Social Security error that declared her dead.
- Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, May 17, 2025 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: License Plate Reader Company Flock Is Building a Massive People Lookup Tool, Leak Shows; Senators want TSA to scale back facial recognition at airports; How Signal, WhatsApp, Apple, and Google Handle Encrypted Chat Backups; Deepfakes, Scams, and the Age of Paranoia; Does One Line Fix Google?
- Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, May 10, 2025 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: Using AI Can Be Ethically Iffy. Here’s How to Do It Right; How to Make Your iPhone as Secure as Possible; After $243M Crypto Heist, a Crucial Mistake; Postal Service Data Sharing to Deport Immigrants; and AI is getting “creepy good” at geo-guessing.
- Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, May 3, 2025 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: US State Privacy Legislation Tracker; Social Security Administration Introduces Secure Digital Access to Social Security Numbers; I Scammed My Bank With Just an AI Voice Generator and a Phone Call; European regulators fined TikTok $600 million – social media giant unlawfully transferred users’ personal data from the EU to China; and Internet crimes increased 33 percent in 2024.
LLRX.com® – the free web journal on law, technology, knowledge discovery and research for Librarians, Lawyers, Researchers, Academics, and Journalists. Founded in 1996, published monthly by a solo, independent, self funded owner, editor, publisher, researcher and writer.
