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In this episode of The Geek in Review, Greg Lambert hosts a solo conversation with Triona Buckley, Chief Product Officer at Actionstep, about generative AI’s growing influence on mid-market law firms. Buckley challenges a common assumption about legal AI: faster task completion does not always remove friction. An associate might produce a draft within seconds, only to transfer the burden upstream to a senior lawyer responsible for reviewing sources, reconstructing reasoning, and correcting mistakes.

Buckley argues law firms should shift their attention from speed to systems. Standalone drafting and research tools address individual tasks, while system-level AI connects work across an entire legal matter. Embedded within everyday workflows, AI helps lawyers locate information, reduce administrative work, and preserve more time for client advice and professional judgment. The goal is a smoother operating model, rather than a collection of isolated tools producing faster documents.

The conversation also examines institutional knowledge, especially within firms lacking large knowledge management or innovation teams. Buckley describes an approach where AI captures decisions, context, and reasoning as lawyers work. This creates a continuously expanding record of how the firm handles matters, advises clients, and applies professional judgment. Governance still plays a central role, including clear audit trails showing whether a person or an AI agent performed each action.

Greg and Triona then explore AI as an individual tutor for junior lawyers. Remote and hybrid work have weakened the traditional apprenticeship model built around observation and informal office conversations. Drawing upon decades of firm experience, an AI tutor might question an associate’s assumptions, prompt additional research, and reinforce the firm’s preferred methods. Such systems offer structured practice while preserving the essential mentoring relationship between senior and junior lawyers.

Another major theme is the hidden cost of delayed time entry. Actionstep’s Trace passive time capture technology monitors work across practice management, email, and document applications, then presents lawyers with matter-linked, billing-ready entries. More accurate records help firms recover otherwise forgotten time while producing better data for pricing, staffing, client estimates, and profitability analysis. Those insights grow more important as clients push firms toward fixed fees and output-based pricing.

Buckley believes mid-market law firms hold several advantages during the AI transition. They often operate with fewer systems, maintain closer client relationships, and move through organizational change faster than larger enterprises. Success will still require disciplined implementation, trusted internal champions, connected data, and sustained attention to client service. Her message is optimistic but direct: firms with strong relationships, clean data, and a clear economic strategy will be better prepared for agentic AI and the changing business of law.

Actionstep’s U.S. Midsize Law Firm Priorities Report

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

Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com

Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Transcript:

Continue Reading AI Is Shifting the Bottleneck: Actionstep’s Triona Buckley on Building Smarter Mid-Market Law Firms

What does legal AI value look like once speed stops serving as the headline metric? In this episode of The Geek in Review, Greg Lambert and Marlene Gebauer speak with Nikki Shaver, co-founder and CEO of Legal Technology Hub and a member of the inaugural Financial Times Law 50. Shaver argues that law firms need to move beyond time saved toward efficacy: stronger output, stronger client outcomes, and more effective legal advice.

The conversation examines why the billable hour is far from finished yet no longer serves as the sole measure of legal value. Shaver compares hourly timekeeping to a taxi meter: useful for internal visibility, yet insufficient as the price signal for work transformed by AI. Workflow mapping, client discussions, and pricing discipline become central where an AI-enabled process compresses weeks of effort into hours.

Corporate legal departments are adopting AI at a faster pace, bringing new pressure to outside counsel. Some in-house teams see AI as a route to keep more work inside, while others see room for firms to take on work that previously sat outside budget limits. Shaver frames the strategic question around delivering more for clients, especially in practice areas where a firm holds differentiated expertise.

AI has not produced the promised empty calendar. Instead, lawyers report fuller schedules, longer documents, and a growing verification tax. Shaver flags the rise of 40-page forms, bloated redlines, and outputs that look polished yet lack sound reasoning. The episode makes a practical case for concise drafting, human review, and critical reasoning before any AI-generated material reaches a client or counterparty.

Agentic AI raises the stakes. Legal Technology Hub’s AI Agents in Law Map tracks hundreds of solutions, yet governance has not kept pace with new autonomy, connectors, and downstream system access. Shaver urges firms to establish traceability, unique identifiers, risk-based human oversight, enforceable policies, and a clear view of where data travels.

For firms aiming past baseline adoption, Shaver draws a line between routine personal use and strategic transformation. Daily use builds fluency, but competitive advantage grows from proprietary workflows, data foundations, client-facing collaboration spaces, and focused investment in the practices where a firm already excels. Her crystal-ball view is blunt: trusted judgment will become a scarce premium asset, AI-native firms will rise, and traditional firms will launch AI-native subsidiaries of their own.

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

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com

Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Transcript:

Continue Reading Nikki Shaver on Legal AI Strategy, Agentic Governance, and Trusted Judgment

For law firms, artificial intelligence has often arrived as a choice between speed and control. Stephen Costigan, founder of Atlas AI, argues that choice deserves a rethink. In this episode of The Geek in Review, we speak with Costigan about private legal AI infrastructure, knowledge graphs, and why a firm’s internal work product may become its most valuable long-term asset.

Atlas AI focuses on turning documents, matter history, precedents, clauses, parties, and obligations into a curated legal knowledge graph inside a firm’s own environment. Costigan contrasts this approach with standard vector search and retrieval systems, which find text with similar language but often lack context around clients, matters, entities, and relationships. A knowledge graph offers structure, linking people, documents, clauses, and legal concepts in ways closer to how lawyers understand their work.

The conversation also explores data quality, a subject with enough baggage to fill a records room. Costigan argues firms no longer need year-long cleanup projects before seeing results. Agent-led curation, entity extraction, duplicate resolution, and ontology mapping reduce much of the manual sorting traditionally associated with knowledge management. Human judgment still matters, especially around practice-area vocabularies and lower-confidence results, but the machines get assigned more of the janitorial work.

Security and governance sit at the center of Costigan’s model. Rather than asking firms to trust a vendor’s assurances around privileged data, Atlas AI runs within a firm’s Azure environment, under firm-controlled keys and policies. Costigan frames this as a shift from confidentiality as a contractual promise to confidentiality as an architectural decision. For legal organizations handling sensitive client information, the location of data, embeddings, audit trails, and model interactions matters as much as the interface lawyers see on screen.

Looking ahead, Costigan predicts a divide between firms renting generic AI tools and firms building durable knowledge infrastructure from their own experience. As routine drafting, diligence, and review work compress, firms with structured and reusable internal intelligence may productize expertise, offer new fixed-fee services, and rely less heavily on traditional leverage models. The future question, Costigan suggests, will not center on which AI tool sits on a lawyer’s desktop. The bigger question will ask who owns the knowledge behind the work.

Listen on mobile platforms:  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠Substack⁠

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

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com

Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Transcript:

Continue Reading Own the Graph: Stephen Costigan on Private AI, Knowledge Infrastructure, and Law Firm Advantage

This week we sit down with Suzanne Konstance, Vice-President and General Manager for Legal and Regulatory US at Wolters Kluwer. She outlines how the company supports professionals in highly regulated fields with software and authoritative content. Operations span multiple countries with a deliberately local approach, where teams design solutions for each market. Listeners get a clear view of scope, from enterprise legal management to recent additions such as Brightflag, alongside deep subject expertise.

Konstance explains a core focus on regulatory compliance across securities, tax, IP, and employment. The aim is simple, help clients stay out of court. Continuous change drives editorial work, with authors and editors tracking shifts, executive orders, and practical effects. Provenance, version history, and context matter, supported by structured meta tagging which helps search and AI retrieve the right source every time.

In a segment on trust, the conversation moves to standards for accuracy and auditability. Clients tell Wolters Kluwer quality outranks speed for research, so the team emphasizes authoritative sources and transparent sourcing. Konstance walks through a recent non-exclusive content license with Harvey for primary law from US and German collections, part of a broader collaboration strategy which also includes VitalLaw AI and new cross-border features. The goal is a reliable workflow where answers cite sources, show currency, and fit real practice.

Real user labs reinforce these priorities. At AALL, librarians worked hands-on in a sandbox session with no guided prompts, pushing tools to limits and asking tough questions. One theme dominated, transparency, with live citations and source trails visible during use. Editors remain in the loop to curate likely questions, collect feedback, and refine outputs, while openness about progress helps teams separate market sizzle from dependable results.

Looking ahead, Konstance expects roles to shift toward managing agents and setting clear instructions, similar to supervising a room full of interns, with strong expertise still required for oversight. Teams will need to train newcomers on fundamentals, auditing, and controls, so technology serves professionals, not the reverse. She also shares sources she follows, industry conversations with customers, conferences, LinkedIn, X, plus guidance from a long-standing internal Center of Excellence for AI. For more on Wolters Kluwer initiatives, listeners can visit wolterskluwer.com and explore the Legal and Regulatory section along with the AI hub.

Also, check out Jerry David DeCicca and his new album, Cardiac Country.

Links:

Listen on mobile platforms:  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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

Blue Sky: ⁠⁠@geeklawblog.com⁠⁠ ⁠⁠@marlgeb⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Transcript:

Continue Reading Wolters Kluwer’s Suzanne Konstance on Trust, Compliance, and the Next Phase of Legal AI

In this episode, we welcome Matthew Dickinson, CEO and founder of Vable, to discuss the rapidly changing landscape of legal information and current awareness. Matthew reflects on how, until recently, current awareness in law firms relied heavily on manual curation, Boolean searches, and email alerts—often resulting in information overload and a lack of personalization. With the advent of generative AI, expectations have shifted dramatically. Lawyers now want more than just a flood of articles; they expect relevant, actionable insights delivered seamlessly and intuitively, tailored to their specific needs and workflows.

Matthew explains how Vable and similar platforms are moving beyond simply delivering news. The goal is to provide context-rich, actionable intelligence that integrates with other firm systems, such as CRM platforms. Instead of sending a list of articles about data breaches, for example, the new approach is to alert lawyers when a top client is affected, summarize the implications, and identify who else in the firm needs to know. This shift requires a blend of robust technology, thoughtful workflow design, and a deep understanding of the different roles within a law firm.

A significant portion of the conversation centers on the ethical boundaries of using AI in legal information services. Matthew outlines four pillars for ethical current awareness: trust, transparency, accuracy, and inclusion. He emphasizes the importance of clear labeling when AI is used, maintaining high standards for accuracy (especially for client-facing content), and ensuring a diversity of sources to avoid echo chambers. Vable’s approach includes strong relationships with publishers, transparent rights management, and tools that allow human review and curation before information is distributed.

Matthew discuss best practices for using news and current awareness to support practice development and client engagement. While many firms still rely on newsletters and headlines, there is a growing trend toward more personalized, branded, and interactive content—such as Vable Connect, which allows firms to deliver tailored digests to clients. Automation is on the rise, but the human element remains crucial: lawyers use curated content as a springboard for client conversations, and AI is seen as a tool to empower, not replace, professional judgment.

As the episode wraps up, Matthew shares his perspective on the future of legal information services. He predicts that the next wave of innovation will bring even more personalization, prediction, and integration—potentially leading to “personalized current awareness bots” for every lawyer. However, he cautions that while AI can supercharge productivity, humans must remain in control, especially in high-stakes legal environments. The unique culture and high standards of law firms mean that technology providers must deeply understand their clients’ needs to build trust and deliver real value.

Listen on mobile platforms:  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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

Blue Sky: ⁠⁠@geeklawblog.com⁠⁠ ⁠⁠@marlgeb⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Transcript

Continue Reading Vable’s Matthew Dickinson on Current Awareness in the Age of GenAI