In this episode of The Geek in Review, we welcome three powerhouse guests—Cas Laskowski, Taryn Marks, and Kristina (Kris) Niedringhaus—who are charting a bold course for Artificial Intelligence & the Future of Law Libraries. These three recently co-authored a major white paper, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Law Libraries (pdf), which we see as less of a report and more of a call to arms. Together, we explore how law librarians can move from reactive observers of AI’s rise to proactive architects shaping its ethical and practical integration across the legal ecosystem.

Cas Laskowski, Head of Research Data and Instruction at the University of Arizona College of Law, shares how the release of ChatGPT in 2022 jolted the profession into action. Librarians everywhere were overwhelmed by the flood of information and hype surrounding AI tools. Cas’s response was to create a space for collective thinking and planning: the Future of Law Libraries initiative and a series of roundtables designed to bring professionals together for strategic collaboration. One of the paper’s most ambitious recommendations—a centralized AI organization for legal information professionals—aims to unify those efforts, coordinate training, and sustain a profession-wide vision. Cas compares the idea to data curation networks that transformed academic libraries by pooling expertise and reducing duplication of effort.

Kris Niedringhaus, Associate Dean and Director of the University of South Carolina School of Law Library, takes the conversation into education and training. She makes a compelling case that “AI-ready librarians,” much like “tech-ready lawyers,” need flexible skill-building models that recognize different levels of engagement and expertise. Drawing from the Delta Lawyer model, Kris calls for tiered AI training—ranging from foundational prompt literacy to higher-level data ethics and system design awareness. She also pushes back against the fear surrounding AI in academia, noting that students are often told not to use AI at all. We couldn’t agree more with her point that we’re doing students a disservice if we don’t teach them how to use these tools effectively and responsibly. Law firms now expect graduates to come in with applied AI fluency, and that expectation will only grow.

When we turned to Taryn Marks, Associate Director of Research and Instructional Services at Stanford Law School’s Robert Crown Law Library, the discussion moved to another key recommendation: building a centralized knowledge hub for AI-related best practices. Taryn describes how librarians are eager to share materials, lesson plans, and policy frameworks, but the current efforts are fragmented. A shared repository would “reduce duplication of effort” and allow ideas to evolve through open collaboration. It’s similar to how standardized models like SALI help the legal industry align without giving away anyone’s secret sauce. We loved this idea of a commons where librarians, educators, and technologists work together to lift the entire profession.

As we explored the broader implications, all three guests agreed that intentionality is key. Cas emphasizes that information architecture—the design of how knowledge is gathered, tagged, and retrieved—is central to AI’s success. Kris points to both the promise and peril of automated legal decision-making, warning that “done well, AI can expand access to justice; done poorly, it can amplify bias.” And Taryn envisions a future where legal information professionals are trusted collaborators across the entire lifecycle of data and decision-making.

We closed the conversation feeling both inspired and challenged. The message is clear: law librarians shouldn’t sit on the sidelines of AI. They are uniquely positioned to lead, to teach, and to ensure that the technologies shaping law remain grounded in ethics, accessibility, and the rule of law. For those who want to get involved, Cas directs listeners to the University of Arizona Law Library’s Future of Law Libraries Initiative page, which includes the white paper and volunteer opportunities. This episode reminded us that the future of AI in law won’t be defined by the tools themselves, but by the people—especially librarians—who decide how those tools are used.

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[Special Thanks to ⁠Legal Technology Hub⁠ for their sponsoring this episode.]

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Transcript:

Marlene Gebauer (00:00)
Hi, I’m Marlene Gebauer from The Geek in Review and I’m here with Cheryl Wilson-Griffin from Legal Technology Hub. She’s going to tell us a little bit about vendor readiness offerings. So tell us a little bit about that, Cheryl.

Cheryl Wilson Griffin (00:15)
Thanks Marlene. So if you’re a legal tech vendor, have you ever thought about how your demo is being judged by buyers? I’m here to talk to you today about the critical factors that separate successful demos from the ones that never make it past procurement. So when law firms and corporate legal teams evaluate products, it’s becoming more more common that they’re using very structured scorecards to capture feedback. Some of those score codes are actually created by Legal Technology Hub themselves and provided through our premium service to those buyers.

That means vendors are being judged on very specific criteria, and the looks remarkably consistent across all buyers. So here are the big themes that we’re seeing. Company fit. This seems logical, but be ready to talk about who your clients are, have some references, and demonstrate that you understand the buyer’s strategic challenges, not just your tech. Remember, it’s about them, not about you. Think about solution and differentiation.

Make sure that they understand clearly what your product does and how it stacks up against your competitors without being negative. Tailor your demo to the folks in the room. Next, think about workflow impact. show real use cases that show how people are using your platform today to solve their business issues. Think about integration and security.

You’re going to get very detailed questions on integrations, API, SOC 2, GDPR, regional data requirements. Have that document at hand or be ready to follow up afterwards. And finally, think about implementation and support. Buyers want to understand everything from timelines, onboarding, training, and long-term client success structures. Come ready and you’ll prove that you’re the right team for the job. The bottom line, buyers are looking for partners they can trust, not products.

If you walk into a demo unprepared on these fronts, you will not make the cut. So check out our vendor readiness checklist to ensure your demos are aligned to your buyer’s expectations on legaltechnologyhub.com and learn more about how we help vendors by checking the LTH solution menu on our homepage. Thanks, Marlene.

Marlene Gebauer (02:22)
Thank you, Cheryl.

Marlene Gebauer (02:30)
Welcome to the Geek in Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gabauer.

Greg Lambert (02:36)
And I’m Greg Lambert. And this week we are very thrilled to welcome three leaders who are architecting a strategic response to one of the biggest challenges facing the legal profession. And that’s obviously the rise of artificial intelligence that we’ve seen over the past three years. ⁓ They are the authors of a landmark white paper called Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Law Libraries.

Marlene Gebauer (02:51)
Mm-hmm.

Greg Lambert (03:01)
which I think is less of a report, more of a call to arms for the profession at this critical point in time.

Marlene Gebauer (03:08)
Yeah, that’s right, Greg. So today we’re joined by Cas Laskowski head of research data and instruction at the university of Arizona college of law. Cas is a co-founder of the future of law librarians initiative and a leading voice on the ethical implications of AI and legal informatics. ⁓ Cas was a fun fact for everyone. Cas was one of our very first guests on the geek and review all the way back in 2018. And I think it was like episode three.

Greg Lambert (03:37)
Yeah, it’s been a while. Cas, good to have you back. ⁓ Joining Cas is Taryn Marks, who is the Associate Director of Research and Instructional Services at Stanford Law School’s Robert Crown Law Library. And as a key author of the paper and host of the initiative’s Western Roundtable, Taryn brings the perspective of how these changes are impacting top legal institutions.

Marlene Gebauer (03:41)
Yeah.

Cas Laskowski (03:42)
to be back.

Marlene Gebauer (04:05)
And rounding out this powerhouse trio is Kristina Niedringhaus who’s the associate dean and director of the law library at the University of South Carolina School of Law. Recognized as one of the influential women in legal tech, Kris is at the forefront of legal technology education, focusing on building human experience needed to navigate this new landscape. So everybody welcome.

Greg Lambert (04:29)
Yeah.

So the three of them together have outlined this ⁓ very proactive strategy for law librarians to not just adapt to AI, but to actually lead ⁓ its ethical and effective implementation across the legal industry. So I know it’s a long introduction, but Cas, Taryn, and Kris, welcome to the Geek in Review.

Cas Laskowski (04:50)
Thank you for having us.

Kris Niedringhaus (04:52)
Thanks for having us.

Greg Lambert (04:54)
All right, so let’s dive into the report itself. ⁓ When I was reading it, the executive summary of the white paper had a, I mean, almost a palpable sense of ⁓ urgency that legal information professionals must now take a really active and coordinated role in AI or kind of risk being left on the sidelines. So.

I want to ask, what was the catalyst for the initiative and was there a specific trend or a technological leap or a collective feeling that you kind of observed that made it clear that this was the moment for the law librarian and legal information profession to really get out and act?

Cas Laskowski (05:39)
Yeah, so I have been learning about and working with AI in different capacities since 2020. But at that time, when I was at the Idea Institute for libraries and AI and working with SCADs, it just was sort of a niche use, right? These people who are using it for these very small cases. But when Chat GPT was released in 2020 or 2022, it spread so quickly that it felt like everyone was in response mode.

Right. The information about the technology and advancements were coming so quickly and from so many different sources. Many of my colleagues just felt overwhelmed trying to grasp it, the technological underpinnings and the implications. And not all of it was right, right, because the speaker or the person giving that information sometimes has a perspective like when RAG comes out, you know, the achievement of generation. And it was sort of like hallucinations are solved and it’s not it’s reduced. Right.

But that was sort of, it was all moving so fast that the language around it was hard to gather. And so everyone was sort of stuck in a very responsive stance. And there was little ability for us to come together and strategically plan or intentionally collaborate. So I proposed to Teresa Miguel-Sterns, my director and colleague, that we host roundtable discussions where legal information professionals and our allies could really speak together and critically engage on this topic and identify what we as a community needed to do to ensure we were actively setting the agenda for the

future of law libraries and legal information professionals, not just passively watching it ⁓ change our role around us.

Marlene Gebauer (07:11)
Well, I like the whole, the not passively watching and that we need to take an active role. think that’s extraordinarily important. So ⁓ let’s, let’s focused on the, on the first and maybe most ambitious recommendation, creating a centralized AI organization. So to our, to our audience of vendors and technologists, this sounds like a very strategic move to form a

Buyers Consortium to counterbalance the big market players. So can you unpack the practical vision here? How do you get academic firm and government libraries to align given very diverse interests? And how would this group practically engage with a vendor to influence their product roadmap and data policies?

Cas Laskowski (08:02)
This is a really great question. And I think when we got the recommendations and we were really trying to create these next steps, people wanted this sort of centralized strategic vision, right? Because everyone’s doing these sort of individual things and it was really hard for people to come together. And so…

what it will be is kind of unsure at this moment what it could be. But the goal when we started thinking about creating a centralized organization and making that the recommendation was that the centralized organization oversees the other recommendations that we’ve talked about once they’re implemented, making sure that they’re sustainable, making sure that they’re still ⁓ working. But it also provides opportunity for growth in the direction the profession needs. the goal is to be responsive in this niche area as a profession needs. And the example I could give is the data curation network. When that

was first created, data curation was a growing need in academic libraries. And everyone was once again responding and doing their own individual things at their institutions, but not able to come together. And so they built this network that allowed them to ⁓ get advice from each other, best practices, share workflows, share all these different things, and even created a system where people could…

submit data to be curated and share the workload because not all of the institutions had the ability to or the resources to handle this work. ⁓

Now that was its original creation, but now it’s evolved from that original goal into an advocacy and educational organization. So what we envision right now, right, which is just trying to get together to create this foundation that we all need, may not be what it does in the future. It may become a buyer’s consortium if that’s a professional need, right, if that’s what we want, but we can’t predict what it will become. In this initial phase, it’s centralized vision and coordination unit to create community, provide support, resources, and training, and unify the disparate efforts happening nationally by legal

information professionals. What it’ll be in the future, we really hope will be guided by our colleagues in all the different types of libraries so that it’s responsive to that need that’s happening at the moment.

Greg Lambert (10:08)
⁓ Cas, let me just follow up a little bit on that. ⁓ I think, well, I think all of us on this call, five of us are librarians. So I think we know what it is that librarians and legal information professionals bring to this ⁓ for our folks that are more in technology or maybe practice of law. ⁓

What are the core strengths that you see of this community and why this kind of call to action, what are they bringing that’s different from the rest of the community?

Cas Laskowski (10:47)
Well, I’m gonna pull from something I have planned to say later, so I’ll say this now, but a key part of AI is information architecture. All the different levels of that, whether data gathering, creation, organization, design in the ways that we tag it.

Greg Lambert (10:50)
So, well, don’t give away too much.

Cas Laskowski (11:09)
structure it, right? It’s just that first phase is key to creating any system that’s going to be, you know, ethically well made and intentionally designed. In addition to that, we as information ⁓ guides, right? Just naturally for teaching people to do legal research, showing them the good resources, right? Making those things available and accessible. We really understand both like the user need

right, that engagement effort, but also designing these systems for those component, for those individuals in those communities. And we also know how people seek information, which that’s what they’re engaging with these systems to do, right, is to get information. And

However they understand them, we hope that they’re literate enough to engage critically, but that’s not necessarily always the case, right? There’s some assumptions or overreliance on AI in that moment. And it has always been our job to try to teach the kind of critical information literacy, whatever resource they’re using, that people can empower themselves to get the information and knowledge they need.

to do whatever it is they’re doing. so AI is just a different formulation of information structuring and information retrieval and information delivery. And we are information scientists. So how could we not be critical to this effort?

Greg Lambert (12:36)
Great, thanks for queuing that up because now I’m going to turn the mic to Kris and talk about recommendation B of the paper which focused on developing, know, profession wide this kind of tiered AI training and, you know, this seems to be set up to tackle a huge industry barrier and that’s the lack of internal expertise. So.

Kris I know you have a really deep background in legal tech education. ⁓ So I want you to kind of paint us a picture of what the next two or three years looks like. So what specific skills beyond just say prompt engineering, which I think everyone’s talking about, ⁓ what is it that we’re needing and how does this training address this deeper cultural challenge?

of moving a pretty traditional risk adverse profession toward experimenting with the tools that we have now.

Kris Niedringhaus (13:41)
Sure. ⁓ So this is also going to be community driven. That’s part of what this call is, is to get people involved and help us build what it is that the community needs and wants to see. ⁓ But I’m going to talk a little bit about how, and I am kind of passionate about training law students on legal tech. So I’m going to come at it a little bit from that direction.

⁓ I would answer that question of what does an AI ready librarian look like the same way I answer the question of what does a tech ready law student or new attorney look like and it depends upon their role and their level of interest. So I know you’re familiar with the work of Professor Alyson Carrel and Professor Cat Moon on the Delta Lawyer model.

⁓ And that model is very flexible. It lets people adjust the model and what levels of training they need according to what it is that they’re doing or what it is that they want to skill up to do. A couple years ago, Professor Patrick Parsons, Professor Michelle Hook Dewey and I wrote an article

on legal technology competency. And the model that we use sort of built on the Delta model, and I think of librarian training the same way. There’s a base of skills that everyone should have. And so I think for librarians that is gonna be like prompt engineering, ⁓

the different legal expertise and the legal research platforms that have AI embedded and that may change. like a academic law librarian may have expertise in different platforms than a firm librarian would have, but to have that expertise, knowledge about ethical issues and how to protect against them and other skills would form a base. And then coming up from the base,

people are going to have different levels of expertise. When we talked about law student technology competency, we referred to them as know, integrate, and create. And so there’s different levels of expertise. It isn’t that one is better than the other. It just may be that one is ⁓ important for your particular role.

that can change depending on the setting that you’re in as well. And so I think of training that way. I don’t think there’s this cookie cutter AI ready librarian that all looks the same. They’re probably all gonna have the same base skills, but what happens building on that depends upon what their role is and ⁓ what it is that they’re trying to do.

recall, I forget how long, I’m probably aging myself, but there was this whole debate about should lawyers learn to code, right? And there were people who felt very strongly on both sides of that issue. I never felt that all lawyers had to learn how to code. ⁓ But what I tell law students and what I would say to librarians is that you have to, as a base level, have enough information to know the right questions to ask.

and to protect yourself and your organization.

Marlene Gebauer (17:35)
you there were two news articles and one was about how firms are educating their, their, their incoming associates. And then the other one was about how clients are going to their firms for this type of training. And I’m curious.

how you all think this initiative ⁓ plays into that. Is there a role there? Is there a way that the recommendations here could be applied in those situations?

Kris Niedringhaus (18:10)
think that, so what I see in the law school is that a lot of our students are actually afraid to use AI because they’re afraid that they’re going to have an honor code violation or something like that thrown at them. And they aren’t.

Marlene Gebauer (18:29)
That’s interesting because

in this article, this person said, I was told not to use it. Like I was told like, you know, just be careful.

Kris Niedringhaus (18:36)
Right, and what I would like, and this goes beyond librarians, but I think it applies to librarians. I ⁓ would like librarians and other law faculty to become comfortable enough with AI to feel like they can teach it, right? I don’t know everything about AI. Things are happening so quickly that it’s all you can do to keep up.

But you have to, you can’t be afraid of it. And I think that I hope that by providing this training and this community to share, mean, librarians are, you know, were great at sharing exercises for legal research or syllabi, the same sort of idea for AI and ⁓ training. I’m hoping that ⁓ as people build their knowledge and skill level,

then they’ll feel more comfortable to go teach it to others, be that their students or their fellow faculty. ⁓ And we kind of break through that barrier that some faculty have of just telling people not to use it, because that’s not what we should be doing. And I’m sorry, because I get a little preachy about this, but ⁓ what we need to do

Greg Lambert (20:02)
Or you’re getting an

Marlene Gebauer (20:03)
We’re all

Greg Lambert (20:04)
amen from this pew.

Marlene Gebauer (20:05)
on your camp. ⁓

Kris Niedringhaus (20:06)
Preaching to the choir. ⁓

You know, we are doing our students a disservice if we don’t teach them how to use it, right? And we’re not going to be able, they have to, just like with legal research platforms, they have to be able to teach themselves how to keep up and to know the right questions to ask and to think about the ethical implications. And we have an obligation to educate them in that. And I’ll…

step off my soapbox to mix my metaphors a little bit.

Greg Lambert (20:38)
Well,

let me be your assistant preacher here. Because I think, one, if you’re a law professor and you’re telling your students not to use it, I think that’s absolutely the worst approach to it. Because one, the law firms or the organizations that they’re going to go to are now expecting them to know and be able to apply.

Marlene Gebauer (21:02)
They are.

Greg Lambert (21:06)
⁓ AI skill sets to tasks that they’re going to be assigned. And number two, law schools are the perfect environment to teach AI because, and I would have slapped myself a couple of years ago for saying this, but the Socratic method is perfect for this type of environment. In fact, I think the Socratic method has to kind of make its way down into the undergraduate level to where

Kris Niedringhaus (21:12)
Yes.

Greg Lambert (21:35)
You can use the tools, you can do whatever you can to prep, but you’re going to have to stand on your own at the end of the day behind any of the information that you present. so, you know, telling students no is absolutely the worst thing that you can do.

Marlene Gebauer (21:53)
It’s an incredible

disservice to them ⁓ because Greg is absolutely right. We, know, in firms, we are expecting them and wanting them to come in with this type of mindset.

Cas Laskowski (22:06)
I read an interesting article this morning, speaking of interesting articles, that was talking about people overestimating their competence when they engage with AI, even especially people who are AI literate. There was a study that was done and a lot of people were, they were actually giving people LSAT logic puzzles and half were doing it on their own and half were doing it with AI. And most of the people would just put the question into the AI once.

get the answer and then trust the answer and not critically engaging with that answer. And when we talk about training law librarians, I think it’s capable of really impacting legal education in the system and even law firms greatly because of how integrated we are in all the institutions, know, even government librarians with the courts.

in a way that we can really start infusing it. if we have the baseline knowledge that Kris is talking about, right, then legal research classes and instruction instantly include foundational AI engagement. I had a faculty member come to me to teach her immigration law clinic about the way AI might or might not be used in legal drafting and legal work. So they engaged in that. had these conversations and we thought really critically about what it can be used for, how to engage with it,

how to use it to do planning and drafting and editing and any of that work that you’re doing in the different systems. But we also have faculty constantly coming up to us looking for resources. So there’s the potential that if we have, right, the things that we’re talking about, that we can have.

assignments that they integrate into torts or into contracts or into something else. And we can be the people they go to for that. And at the firm, right, you’re the person at the table as they’re talking about how to get this AI interface in front of the associates, right, or the new.

summer associates and trying to figure out what, how do you get them to engage with it critically, right? They’re going to ask you because the partners aren’t going to necessarily have the time, right, to sit them down and go, this is how you use this agentic AI for your, you know, ⁓ prep. So it’s just by training us, I think we have the ability to infuse it.

because of how embedded we are in all of the different areas of justice and law practice.

Kris Niedringhaus (24:20)
But I also want to say that I think law schools, a lot of law schools recognize this problem and they’re trying to solve it. ⁓ you know, like here at South Carolina, we’ve done a lot of faculty hires. We’re teaching an AI drafting class this semester, working with the 1Ls and upper level. And I know other law schools are doing similar things.

The other thing is, is I think it’s really important that we recognize what’s a technology problem and what is a bad lawyering or bad researching problem. Cause we see lots of news stories about, you know, this attorney got in trouble because they filed a brief with, you know, bad links and

Is that a technology problem or is that a bad lawyering problem? Because I think it’s a bad lawyering problem because the way you fix that is you, Shepardizer Keysight, you’re brief, right? Like that’s not, that’s not an AI problem. That’s a you’re being lazy problem. And so I think as we, as we think about these issues, we also have to

Be cognizant of where the real issue is.

Marlene Gebauer (25:50)
I want to turn to the third recommendation, which I think is an area that all organizations are struggling with, ⁓ you know, to sort of get it right and to keep up to date. ⁓ You know, I was just at the ACC conference and this was a lot of what they talked about there.

So your third recommendation is, is centralized knowledge hub for sharing of resources like policies and best practices. So in a world where this knowledge is, is very much often siloed, you know, within, within firms, this feels ⁓ like a push for more open source, models of, of innovation. So Taryn, as, as you hosted the Western round table at Stanford,

What were the key points that you heard from professionals that, you know, this hub is designed to solve and what’s the real initiative for a busy librarian in a competitive environment to contribute their, their hard won knowledge to an open repository.

Greg Lambert (26:55)
Yeah, why should I be helping you?

Marlene Gebauer (26:57)
Why should Greg share?

Taryn Marks (27:00)
Because we are all

Great. And we all want to share information, right? And that was actually shown really well in the round tables that we had, not just the Western one, but in all of the round tables that creating this knowledge hub solves pain points that we all had. ⁓ So one of them that came across quite a bit was the need to reduce duplication of efforts, right? Like Kris and Cas are doing amazing things at their schools related to AI. We librarians are constantly, as they both mentioned, asking, like,

I’m about to teach this class on this session, right? Like, has anybody done it before? What are strategies that you applied? So really reducing that duplication of effort ⁓ so that like we gain more time, right? Second, we want to break down those silos that you mentioned, right? Absolutely. Everyone was on the same page. They want those silos gone. They want to be in the room having this conversation with anyone who will have it with us. And third, I think, right, if you’ve created these best practices,

that we knew were being developed, people like mentioned them throughout.

We wanted to see it have them be shared out so that we could all use them, but also to iterate them, right? That in order to create even better best practices, if you will, right? It puts you at the table. It lets you get ideas from others and improve your own ideas. So I think the round tables and the discussions that we’ve had since then have just really made clear that librarians are doing this work and we want a seat at the table.

We want to be talking about it. We want to be involved in the critical, which I think echoes throughout everything that Kris and Cas have said, right? We have to be critical and thoughtful about this when we’re assessing, developing, deploying, teaching, advocating for AI use in whatever form that takes. So why would you do that? You get to get a seat at the table. You get to get ideas from others and improve and iterate on your own.

ideas. Plus, I personally, I’ll get on my soapbox right now, right? Like open access to information is so important in any part of this work that we’re doing. Plus, you’ll get to interact with

people like Cas, people like Kris, a group of really dedicated librarians who are experts in lots of different things who really wanna impact the future of the legal work, legal informatics, legal AI. And now we like kind of almost have a plan to start doing that, like Cas said.

Marlene Gebauer (29:40)
It’s like, correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me from what I’m hearing, it’s almost like a SALI model for information sharing where SALI shares matter codes and that sort of thing. This is a hub for sharing other knowledge.

Taryn Marks (29:57)
Exactly, exactly. People are doing this work and this is a way for us to share it and then to iterate it and keep growing it.

Greg Lambert (30:05)
Yeah, yeah. It’s a, I always mention this when I talk about like knowledge management and initiatives. ⁓ I, I could give you a step-by-step process of everything we do here at Jackson Walker. And I can hand that to my colleague over at Jackson Lewis. And that would kind of help get them started, but they would never be able to take those five steps and implement them there because their culture is different. Their, the processes are different.

It’s the same here. You’re not giving away the secrets. You’re actually kind of helping everyone kind of get up to speed. And I think law librarians are really good about doing this, about sharing. So I think this is a good call to action for ⁓ the community to help the industry get started on this. So good job.

Taryn Marks (31:02)
It rises

us all to that base level that Cas mentioned and that Kris mentioned much more quickly, right? So just like you said.

Greg Lambert (31:09)
Yeah.

Well, let me ⁓ wrap up the paper because like I was just mentioning, it ends not necessarily with a conclusion, but more with that call to action, ⁓ inviting volunteers to join specific working groups. ⁓ This is clearly, you guys are doing a call to action, a mobilization effort here. So Cas, let me come back to you and ask you as ⁓ a…

co-founder of the initiative, looking ahead one or two years, what’s kind of one of the most important milestones that you want to see this project achieve to be considered a success? And conversely, what do you think are some, what’s a risk that could derail the effort?

Cas Laskowski (31:58)
So.

For me, the single most important milestone for the next phase is getting a group of committed volunteers. I say that because it was the commitment from the round table project team that was why we had such a successful, well-regarded round tables, six of them, right? But it was because of the colleagues.

You know both Taryn, Kris, Kenton, Richard, obviously Teresa, my co-founder, George Pike, Beth Williams, Tina Ching, Sean Harrington, right? Patrick Parsons. They all took a huge load of work because each roundtable was not small efforts in recruiting people, in organizing the logistics of the event, in making sure it went off really well, finding the funding locally. I mean, it was a huge lift, but everyone cared so much.

and was so dedicated and somehow I convinced them that this was a worthwhile effort and they believed me that it became a success. And so the success of these three recommendations we’ve talked about is entirely, right? The ability to meet that stated scope of work is entirely dependent on us bringing together people who see the value of this work and are dedicated to bringing it to fruition. We’ve gotten an amazing response already from our call for volunteers, including many people already doing this work in other capacity.

So I personally am deeply optimistic that we will succeed because there’s that need but there’s also the the Momentum right because these recommendations aren’t just things that came out of Cas’s head or Taryn’s head or Kris’s head, right? We had these roundtable discussions to ask the community what they needed they felt heard and because these things are the things that they wanted and we’ve made Vocalized and saying we want to make that real for them. We’ve gotten that that response and so

As with the roundtables, I am committed to supporting this work in the next phase, however I can to ensure that’s the case. So those volunteers, for me, the people doing the work at these other levels, the three of us cannot do a consortium training and an auto ball by ourselves, right? So it’s gonna be the people. for me and my day jobs, yeah. So that’s gonna be the most important milestone, but I think we’re gonna get there. I really do, I deeply believe we are.

Greg Lambert (34:10)
and your day jobs.

Marlene Gebauer (34:11)
Yeah.

So before we get to our crystal ball question, ⁓ we, we’d like to know what sources and resources all of you rely upon, ⁓ to, you know, to keep informed and to keep up with the rapid changes in AI and legal tech and the future of legal information besides this podcast. You can’t say this podcast.

Greg Lambert (34:41)
Yeah, you can’t save this podcast.

Cas Laskowski (34:45)
⁓ I’ll go first. I try to look at everywhere except legal information personally because if you understand the technology and the things happening outside, right, you can understand how it would likely be applied and let’s be honest, the legal profession moves a little bit slower than others. So we sort of follow suit and things happening elsewhere. I-

I follow the Neuron, AI and Education, MIT Tech Review, especially the algorithm, and even the ARL’s Day in Review, just trying to figure out what everyone else is doing and what everyone else is talking about. have some podcasts about machine learning, and ⁓ I follow those kinds of things. That’s just me.

Greg Lambert (35:22)
Kris, you wanna go next?

Kris Niedringhaus (35:24)
Sure. Yeah, it’s current awareness. I hear there’s some podcast that’s good about that and that we’re not supposed to name. Even following things like ⁓ law sites, Bob Ambrogi’s there’s some Google groups on AI and higher ed. ⁓ There’s an AI law professors group. ⁓

frankly even LinkedIn. ⁓ It’s funny because I’ve never been very good about getting on LinkedIn and sharing things and reading things. And now I, every day I get on LinkedIn and you know, there’s people who always popping up in my feed. So all those sort of current awareness. ⁓ And I agree with Cas, I think it’s important. I look at some of the legal stuff, but I also think it’s important to look outside. ⁓

legal to get some other perspectives.

Greg Lambert (36:27)
And Taryn, you want to wrap this part up?

Taryn Marks (36:30)
Yeah, so I listened to a…

podcast slash newsletter slash lots and lots of stuff. It’s called Everyday AI. It’s kind of overwhelming, but it’s got a lot of good stuff to it. And he just kind of breaks it down from like a really business use case, which I find quite interesting and helpful. I actually love Law 360 Pulse to keep up with AI stuff because it tells me a lot of what the law firms are doing, what the legal world is thinking, even if it’s, you know.

Yeah, similar news. So I think those are kind of the two that I would add to Cas and Kris.

Greg Lambert (37:07)
Awesome, well thanks for sharing those. ⁓ Well I asked Cas about one to two years what your ⁓ project should look like, but let me kind of back it up and see what you guys think ⁓ when you look into your crystal ball on the biggest structural change that you believe. An overall coordinated AI strategy of successful will force upon the

legal professions relationship with information and how that may even define what a law librarian’s role is. So anyone want to ⁓ jump in and tell us what their crystal ball is telling them over the next couple of years?

Cas Laskowski (37:52)
We talk, we…

prep for this. We all have our own little predictions, so I’ll start with mine. ⁓ for me, a major component in the development of useful AI is information architecture. A common use for AI systems is information retrieval, right knowledge expansion, and a key skill in the future as we wade through a quagmire of AI slop will be curation. All of these are fundamental aspects and skills of librarianship. And this next phase is designed to build the structures necessary to make us partners in this

Marlene Gebauer (37:57)
Hahaha.

Cas Laskowski (38:24)
work and the key impact I foresee from all of this is empowering legal information professionals to feel confident engaging with these technologies, advising our communities and participating in creating the necessary infrastructure for ethically founded, intentionally designed, judiciously implemented AI future that respects the rule of law. I think the industry is ready, especially if we can clearly demonstrate the value we bring to this work.

Greg Lambert (38:50)
Who wants to go next? Kris?

Kris Niedringhaus (38:53)
Sure, I’ll go. So I agree with Cas. I think that intentionality and thoughtful design are critical to the future of AI in the legal industry. ⁓ Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to talk with a Fulbright scholar ⁓ here working on automated legal decision-making systems. And…

To me, this is an idea that should be both equally fascinating and exciting and terrifying. ⁓ And I found myself sort of being the, ⁓ you know, the little critical voice in the background, because I was thinking about the consequences. you know, in an ideal world, such a system could improve

Marlene Gebauer (39:26)
Mm-hmm.

Kris Niedringhaus (39:47)
transparency from the justice system and remove bias ⁓ and hopefully make people more confident in the judicial system. Done poorly, such a system would reinforce bias and increase distrust and make our justice system worse. And that’s sort of a flashy…

exciting example, but I think most, if not all, AI tools have that dichotomy within them, right? Like, ideally, if done well, they can really improve things, help with access to justice issues, help with trust in the justice system, and if done poorly, they make those issues worse. And so I hope, I think, that bringing

A bunch of people together who do this kind of work and are experts in information science and all of these issues from different perspectives, I hope, will help mitigate some of the potential harms and think about some of those things that we should be keeping in mind as we build these tools.

Greg Lambert (41:07)
All right, Taryn, take us home.

Taryn Marks (41:09)
So my crystal ball says that legal information professionals are trusted partners throughout the entire life cycle of information. It doesn’t matter what phase you’re in, the librarians are one of the first calls that you make to make sure that that information is trusted and that we’re critically assessing it. ⁓ I don’t know if we’re ready for that, but I don’t think it matters. We have to be, so we’re gonna get ready on the way. Here it comes.

Greg Lambert (41:36)
Ready or not, here it comes, huh?

Marlene Gebauer (41:38)
That’s right.

That’s right. Well, Cas Laskowski, Taryn Marks and Kristina Niedringhaus. Thank you so much for this incredibly important conversation.

Taryn Marks (41:39)
Definitely.

Greg Lambert (41:49)
Great. Thanks, guys.

Cas Laskowski (41:51)
Thank you.

Kris Niedringhaus (41:52)
Thank you.

Marlene Gebauer (41:52)
And thanks to all of you, listeners for taking the time to listen to the geek and review podcast. If you enjoy the show, please share it with a colleague. We’d love to hear from you on LinkedIn and tick tock.

Greg Lambert (42:03)
And Cas, for the listeners who want to find out more and read the white paper and learn how they can get involved in the initiative, where is the best place for them to go?

Cas Laskowski (42:13)
So on the University of Arizona Law Library website, we have the Future of Law Library’s initiative page. I’ll be sharing that link with you. You’ll have that. You can share with them. But that has all the information about the initiative in this phase, the information about the roundtables, the last phase, the white paper, and all of the other reports. All of it is in that space. And so are the volunteer opportunities.

Marlene Gebauer (42:37)
And as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca have a great day.