Category «Legal Profession»

Schrödinger’s AI – Where Everything and Nothing Changes

Whether speaking with lawyers and law students who haven’t gotten around to trying ChatGPT or collaborating with post-doc explainable and legal AI experts with 20+ years of machine learning and Natural Language Processing experience, Colin Lachance, legal tech innovator and leader, is no closer to understanding in what way and precisely when permanent change will come, but is unshakeably convinced that change will be enormous, uneven, disruptive and, in many cases, invisible.

Subjects: AI, Competitive Intelligence, Information Management, KM, Legal Education, Legal Profession, Legal Technology, Technology Trends

Artificial Intelligence Tools and Tips

Jim Calloway, Director of the Oklahoma Bar Association’s Management Assistance Program and Julie Bays, OBA Practice Management Advisor, aiding attorneys in using technology and other tools to efficiently manage their offices, recommend that now is a good time to experiment with specific AI-powered tools and suggest the best techniques for using them.

Subjects: AI, Communications, Continuing Legal Education, KM, Legal Profession, Legal Research, Legal Technology, Technology Trends

LLMs Do Not Obviate the Need for UX

Legaltech Hub’s Nicola Shaver discusses why it is time to level-set about advanced AI: it can’t do everything. Or perhaps more practically, a large language model can’t replace all of the other technology you already have. One of the main reasons for this is the importance of an interface and a built-out user experience (UX) that offers a journey through the system that is aligned with the way users actually work. There are other reasons a large language model (LLM) won’t replace all of your technology (one of which being advanced AI is simply unnecessary to do all things), but this article will focus on UX.

Subjects: AI, Case Management, KM, Law Firm Marketing, Legal Technology, Search Engines

Brevity is the Soul of Profit: What Lawyers Need to Know About Executive Summaries

Elizabeth Southerland writes that Jerry Lawson’s essay Plain English for Lawyers: The Way to a C-Level Executive’s Heart has some good ideas about the best ways to communicate with senior executives. However, there is a key imperative that is not addressed: The purpose of an executive summary is to boil this down to a few sentences that tell the leader what they want to know.

Subjects: Communication Skills, Communications, KM, Leadership, Legal Profession, Management

AI and the Financial System – June 28, 2023

This new bi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, reports, government and industry documents, and academic papers on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact on many facets of the global financial system. The chronological links provided are to the primary sources, and as available, indicate links to alternate free versions. Each entry includes the publication name, date published, article title, abstract and tags. Pacifici is also compiling a list of actionable subject matter resources at the end of each column that will be updated regularly.

Subjects: AI, AI in Banking and Finance, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Economy, Ethics, Financial System, Legal Research, Technology Trends

The Digital Psychology of Persuasion

Kevin Novack, digital strategist and CEO with extensive experience digitizing disparate collections at the Library of Congress, discusses the increasing importance of acknowledging and incorporating social proof into your marketing strategies to showcase the power of your brands and services. The recent wave of digital tools that are built to influence decisions have come under increasing scrutiny as we have learned, they may not be all that trustworthy. Examples include TikTok and its power to influence and even change the behaviors of impressionable next gens. Or Instagram’s role in enabling body shaming and mocking others. And more recently the overwhelming impact of ChatGPT, and the fascination with and growing use of thousands of apps and services built on OpenAI. Novack asks – but can you trust it? And responds – probably about as much as you can trust all online listings and crowdsourced input, which are the sources of GPT’s recommendations. From the user perspective, discerning fact from fiction, when interacting with your organization, is only becoming more critical.

Subjects: Communication Skills, Ethics, Internet Trends, KM, Social Media

Is using Generative AI just another form of outsourcing?

Is the implementation of generative AI simply a new flavor of outsourcing? How does this digital revolution reflect on our interpretation of the American Bar Association’s (ABA) ethical guidelines? How can we ensure that we maintain the sacrosanct standards of our profession as we step into this exciting future? Josh Kubicki⁠, Business Designer, Entrepreneur, University of Richmond School of Law Professor, presents a starting point to explore potential ethics considerations surrounding the use of generative AI.

Subjects: AI, Cybersecurity, Ethics, KM, Legal Ethics, Legal Marketing

AI has social consequences, but who pays the price? Tech companies’ problem with ‘ethical debt’

As a technology ethics educator and researcher, Carey Fiesler has thought about AI systems amplifying harmful biases and stereotypes, students using AI deceptively, privacy concerns, people being fooled by misinformation, and labor exploitation. Fiesler characterizes this not at technical debt but as accruing ethical debt. Just as technical debt can result from limited testing during the development process, ethical debt results from not considering possible negative consequences or societal harms. And with ethical debt in particular, the people who incur it are rarely the people who pay for it in the end.

Subjects: AI, Cyberlaw, Education, Ethics, Human Rights, KM, Legal Ethics, Technology Trends