Tony Thai and Ashley Carlisle of HyperDraft, return to The Geek in Review podcast to provide an update on the state of generative AI in the legal industry. It has been 6 months since their last appearance, when the AI Hype Cycle was on the rise. We wanted to get them back on the show to see where we are on that hype cycle at the moment.

While hype around tools like ChatGPT has started to level off, Tony and Ashley note there is still a lot of misinformation and unrealistic expectations about what this technology can currently achieve. Over the past few months, HyperDraft has received an influx of requests from law firms and legal departments for education and consulting on how to practically apply AI like large language models. Many organizations feel pressure from management to “do something” with AI, but lack a clear understanding of the concrete problems they aim to solve. This results in a solution in search of a problem situation.

Tony and Ashley provide several key lessons learned regarding limitations of generative AI. It is not a magic bullet or panacea – you still have to put in the work to standardize processes before automating them. The technology excels at research, data extraction and summarization, but struggles to create final, high-quality legal work product. If the issue being addressed is about standardizing processes or topics, then having the ability to create 50 different ways to answer the issue doesn’t create standards, it creates chaos.

Current useful applications center on legal research, brainstorming, administrative tasks – not mission-critical legal analysis. The hype around generative AI could dampen innovation in process automation using robotic process automation and expert systems. Casetext’s acquisition by Thomson Reuters illustrates the present-day limitations of large language models trained primarily on case law.

Looking to the near future, Tony and Ashley predict the AI hype cycle will continue to fizzle out as focus shifts to education and literacy around all forms of AI. More legal tech products will likely combine specialized AI tools with large language models. And law firms may finally move towards flat rate billing models in order to meet client expectations around efficiency gains from AI.

Listen on mobile platforms:  Apple Podcasts |  Spotify

Contact Us:

Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠@gebauerm⁠⁠⁠⁠, or ⁠⁠⁠⁠@glambert⁠⁠⁠⁠
Voicemail: 713-487-7821
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠TranscriptContinue Reading You Still Need to Put in the Work: Hyperdraft’s Ashley Carlisle and Tony Thai on the AI Hype Cycle (TGIR Ep. 213)

In this riveting episode of our podcast, we delve into the fascinating world of AI in the legal industry with our esteemed guests, Nathan Walter and Bridget Albiero. Walter, a former attorney and founder of BriefPoint.ai, has leveraged his legal expertise and passion for technology to automate the manual processes that often bog down law firms. Bridget Albiero, a User Experience (UX) and User Design (UD) expert, underscores the significance of intuitive design in making these AI tools not just effective, but user-friendly.

Nathan Walter has been instrumental in creating BriefPoint.ai, a tool designed specifically for lawyers to eliminate the mundane and time-consuming aspects of law practice. With the goals of automating the litigation process from response to appeal, Walter and Albeiro are focused on removing the mundane tasks, such as typing, from the process and allowing the attorneys to focus more on their legal experience and expertise over the grunt work that takes up too much of their time already.

However, the success of such tools is not solely dependent on their technical capabilities. Bridget Albiero’s role in UX and UD ensures that these AI systems are designed with the end user in mind. With the mission to make legal professionals’ lives much easier. Bridget’s work is critical in crafting an interface that enables lawyers to accomplish more work in less time, truly maximizing the benefits of AI integration.

Nathan and Bridget’s collaboration epitomizes the intersection of law and technology. They argue that the advent of AI tools, such as BriefPoint.ai, will invariably put pressure on law firms to rethink their traditional billing models. Nathan anticipates a shift towards contingency fee-based and flat fee billings, spurred on by the increased efficiency AI brings to the table. In addition, the ability for the plaintiff’s lawyers to reduce the overall amount of work that they need to put into each case, there will be more incentives to take on work that they might otherwise not consider. This has a multitude of effects ranging from flooding courts with more and more cases, to overwhelming defense firms and corporations with a much higher litigation matters, to making working at plaintiff’s firms more attractive to associates who don’t want to work the number of hours they would need to do in BigLaw firms.

Bridget also emphasizes the importance of approaching AI with a balanced perspective. While there are a number of positives when it comes to AI in the legal process, there are also downsides that need to be considered as well. Bridget and Nathan run through some of those issues as well. This thoughtful conversation with Nathan and Bridget offers a unique insight into the future of the legal industry, where AI and human ingenuity work hand in hand. Listen in to learn more about how these changes might soon be reshaping the legal landscape.

Listen on mobile platforms:  Apple Podcasts LogoApple Podcasts |  Spotify LogoSpotify

Twitter: ⁠⁠@gebauerm⁠⁠, or ⁠⁠@glambert⁠⁠
Voicemail: 713-487-7821
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: ⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠

Transcript

Continue Reading Lawyer vs. AI or Lawyers + AI: Embracing the Future of Legal Practice with BriefPoint.ai’s Nathan Walter and Bridget Albiero (TGIR Ep. 202)