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For the Fourth of July week, we thought we’d do something fun and probably a little weird. Greg spoke with an AI guest named Justis for this episode. Justis, powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4, was able to have a natural conversation with Greg and provide insightful perspectives on the use of generative AI in the legal industry, specifically in law firms.

In the first part of their discussion, Justis gave an overview of the legal industry’s interest in and uncertainty around adopting generative AI. While many law firm leaders recognize its potential, some are unsure of how it fits into legal work or worry about risks. Justis pointed to examples of firms exploring AI and said letting lawyers experiment with the tools could help identify use cases.

Greg and Justis then discussed the challenges for the legal industry in using AI, like knowledge gaps, data issues, technology maturity, and managing change. They also talked about the upsides of using AI for tasks such as research, drafting, and review, including efficiency and cost benefits, as well as downsides like over-reliance on AI and ethical concerns.

The conversation turned to how AI could streamline law firm operations, with opportunities around scheduling, paperwork, billing, client insights, and more. However, Justis noted that human oversight is still critical. Justis and Greg also discussed how AI may impact legal jobs, creating demand for new skills and roles but aiming to augment human work rather than replace it.

Finally, Justis suggested innovations law firms could build with AI like research and drafting tools, analytics, dispute resolution systems, and project management. Justis emphasized that focusing on user needs, ethics, and change management will be key for successfully implementing AI. Looking ahead, Justis anticipated continuing progress in legal AI, regulatory changes, a focus on ethics, growing demand for AI skills, and AI becoming a competitive advantage for some firms.

While this was a “unique” episode for The Geek in Review, we hope it provided an insightful “conversation” about the current and future state of generative AI in the legal industry. There is significant promise but there are also challenges around managing change, addressing risks, and ensuring the responsible development of new AI tools. With the right focus and approach, law firms can start exploring ways to make the most of AI and gain a competitive edge. But they must make AI work for human professionals, not the other way around.

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Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠Transcript

Continue Reading A Literal Generative AI Discussion: How AI Could Reshape Law

For those of us in large law firms, we understand that Practice Group Leaders have the following responsibilities:

  • Develop a strategy for the Practice Group (PG)
  • Advance the business development of the PG
  • Ensure equitable distribution of work among the more junior PG attorneys
  • Identify attorneys within the practice who are struggling and find mentoring and coaching opportunities for them
  • Practice law at the same time

For Lathrop GPM’s Intellectual Property Group, Kate Tompkins can do all of these, except practice law. That’s because she is not a lawyer. She’s a business professional.

We’ve heard the phrase “law firms should be run more like a business.” Well, Lathrop GPM and Kate Tompkins are putting that phrase into action. Kate tells us how she landed this role, and how we may see more business operation professionals stepping up to lead the legal practice as other firms look to run more like a business.

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Information Inspirations

If you’re looking for the future of search, CaseText may have the answer with the help of BERT. In their new WeSearch product, CaseText’s Pablo Arredondo says that the conceptual search product will leverage the open-source neural network framework developed by Google called Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, or simply BERT, to find related results not based on keywords, but through actual concepts. Bob Ambrogi runs through a few examples in his Law Sites Blog.

The patent office in China pulled about half of 2020’s applications recently due to irregularities. Many are saying that it is downright fraud and that it may have a worldwide impact on patents.

Slack rolled out, and then quickly rolled back a new feature that allowed anyone on Slack to DM anyone else on Slack. After a swift public rebuke on the potential harassment issues that this “feature” opens up, especially against women, Slack is rethinking the changes. Perhaps Slack would benefit from listening to lawyers like K&L Gates Partner Elisa D’Amico who specialize in understanding and fighting abuse on the Internet.

Video games are expanding into what is known as Synthetic Economies where gamers’ actions have economic effects both within the games and outside the games as well.

Bonus Inspirations

In support of March being Womens’ History Month, as well as the start of baseball’s Spring Training, check out this Twelve Six Podcast interview of Yankee’s beat reporter Lindsay Adler.

Also, check out how Kelp may save us all on the How to Save a Planet.

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Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcast. Contact us anytime by tweeting us at @gebauerm or @glambert. Or, you can call The Geek in Review hotline at 713-487-7270 and leave us a message. You can email us at geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.
Transcript

Continue Reading The Geek in Review Ep. 110 – Kate Tompkins on Being a Practice Group Leader But Not a Lawyer

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