Vital Insights That Law Firms And Law Partners Need To Know About Generative AI For Their Legal Practices

Today’s column is a continuation of my ongoing analyses and commentary regarding the burgeoning realm of AI and the law. The focus this time will be on key aspects that law firms and law partners need to know when it comes to the emergence of generative AI for performing legal services.

In my consulting work with law firms and in the workshops that I conduct, plus my speaking engagements, I have collected the most often-asked questions that are on the minds of law partners concerning what they should or should not be doing about generative AI. I’ll be sharing with you a handful of selected topmost questions and addressing them in an informal FAQ (frequently asked questions) format.

Please realize that robust answers to the noted questions can become quite detailed. For this discussion, I’ll seek to keep my remarks relatively brief, covering just topline particulars. I trust that some of you will want a greater amount of unpacking. The good news is that most of these questions have been previously addressed in my extensive columns and other writings that cover AI and the law. I’ll go ahead and provide you with convenient links to those postings in case you want to dive more deeply into these rather weighty matters.

By and large, the questions I have chosen to cover specifically in today’s column have arisen during or after my various talks.

For example, after my invited opening keynote on AI at the iTechLaw conference, an annual event showcasing the latest in LegalTech for law firms, attendees brought up various follow-up questions on a one-on-one basis during the session breaks. Another array of somewhat similar questions occurred after my talk at the ABA Annual Meeting where I served on a panel covering the latest in generative AI for lawyers (a session cleverly entitled “The AI Trap: The Missing Guardrails For Lawyers” and included esteemed colleagues Dazza Greenwood and Lucy Thomson).

I have an upcoming panel participation that I’ve already received questions in advance from some spirited and erstwhile attendees who aim to get their pressing questions explored. The event is an excellent symposium being co-presented by the Tsai Center for Law, Science and Innovation at SMU Dedman School of Law and Wake Forest Law. The symposium is entitled “A.I. Lawyering: Adapting to the Era of ChatGPT and Large Language Models” and occurs on Friday, October 13, 2023, taking place at the SMU Dedman School of Law. The prominent event is co-chaired by Professor Nathan Cortez and Professor Meghan Ryan of SMU Dedman School of Law and Professor Keith Robinson of Wake Forest Law.

Here’s a handy link in case you’d like to know more about this distinguished meeting (see the link here).

The symposium consists of many notable scholars and practitioners covering the latest in generative AI and the law topic. In my panel session, I am honored to be joined by Hon. Xavier Rodriguez, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Stephen Wu, Silicon Valley Law Group, and moderated by Professor Nathan Cortez, SMU Dedman School of Law.

Before I leap into my FAQs, you might find of interest a helpful shortlist of some of my prior coverage pieces that provide a solid background on these matters, ranging from the application of AI to the law (such as the use of generative AI for performing legal services) and encompassing too the application of the law to AI (e.g., copyright issues of generative AI, AI governance and efforts to regulate AI, national and international endeavors, the U.S. Bill of Rights related to AI, etc.).

Here is a sampler list of six essential pieces that you might find informative to pursue:

• (1) Big-Picture About AI & Law. This is my big-picture analysis of the forest for the trees regarding AI and the law, an altogether substantive piece identifying fifty crucial points that in-the-know lawyers and partners need to know about (see the link here).
• (2) ABA AI Resolutions. My close look at the ABA model rules and resolutions associated with AI, covering duties pertaining to how lawyers and law firms should be suitably approaching AI, including analysis of the ABA Model Rule 1.1 Comment 8, ABA Resolution 112, ABA Resolution 700, and the recently enacted ABA Resolution 604 (see the link here).
• (3) AI Hallucinations Undermining Lawyers. My detailed assessment and lessons learned arising from those two lawyers who got into hot water by relying upon generative AI when they cited AI-hallucinated legal cases in their formal court filings (see the link here).
• (4) Judges And Courts Reacting To GenAI Using Lawyers. My review and predictions about how judges and the courts are going to react to generative AI being used by lawyers and law firms (see the link here).
• (5) GenAI And The Attorney-Client Privilege. My early bird noted concerns that unaware law firms and hapless lawyers are potentially going to usurp their vaunted attorney-client privilege at times by inadvertently using generative AI in ill-advised ways (see the link here).
• (6) Prompt Engineering Techniques For Lawyers. One of my many pieces covering legal examples highlighting prompt engineering techniques when smartly using generative AI by or for lawyers (see the link here).

And many others (see the link here and the link here).

Frequently Asked Questions About Law-Oriented Uses Of Generative AI

First, some caveats and points of order.

I am going to number the questions for ease of reference. Do not interpret the numbering as a priority or preference. Also, each question is presented as an amalgamation of similar questions that drive toward a particular issue or top-of-mind concern. You will notice too that some of the answers to the questions can potentially overlap, which makes sense due to the underlying constructs and considerations that pervade the entire matter at hand.

Now that we have gotten the needed fine print out of the way, let’s start unpacking things.

• Question #1: “Should law firms and partners care about generative AI or is it simply another one of those high-tech fads that will fade away?”

My answer:

Let me make a point as clearly as I can.

Here it is.

Yes, most definitely, law firms and partners ought to stridently and seriously care about generative AI.

And, no, generative is not some zany fad that is going to fall into the high-tech pit of despair and become an unabashed wasted effort. Said another way, generative AI is here to stay and will keep getting better and better. You are not going to be able to turn back the clock.

Part of the reason that generative AI bears close watch by law firms is that it is a tool that can superbly make use of text. If you step back a moment and reflect on what law firms and lawyers do, the fact is that most of the legal work involves dealing with text. Text is the coinage of lawyering. You write briefs. You examine legal documents. Text is what makes the billable hours click by.

Generative AI is able to compose text, transform text, summarize text, analyze text, and otherwise do all sorts of processing on text. The kind of processing is pretty much unlike the types of processing you’ve seen in the past. Prior uses of text processing involved doing simple keyword searches or allowing you as a human to readily access or read text.

The advent of large language models (LLMs) is the root of how generative AI does its stuff. There isn’t any sentience involved in the AI of today, which I mention because banner headlines seem to suggest otherwise. AI researchers and developers have been able to model natural language in the large. Vast scans of the web have allowed computational pattern-matching to figure out the patterns of human language. The result is that as they have gotten AI models that are much larger and have been honed repeatedly, generative AI nowadays can seemingly converse in ways that appear quite human-like (up to various limitations).

If you’ve used the prior age of natural language processing (NLP) then you know how stilted the AI has been. Even today, using Alexa or Siri can be maddening. You have to dumb down your interaction. You need to use curt commands and avoid long sentences or complicated instructions. This is no longer the case for modern-day generative AI.

Okay, so assume that generative AI is roughly fluent at handling text. You might be tempted to do one of those classic shrugs of the shoulders and bellow that it is of no particular importance to you.

Think again.

Generative AI can potentially do with text the same kinds of activities that lawyers can, such as reviewing a legal document to figure out what it portends, drafting a contract, reviewing a legal case, and so on. That being said, and as loudly as I can say it, at this juncture, you cannot trust generative AI to do this unattended or without suitable review by human lawyers.

The considered viewpoint at this time is that generative AI is a tool for human lawyers. Law firms and lawyers that prudently use generative AI are said to be going to outgun those that do not. The use of generative AI will be a competitive advantage. Eventually, the expectation is that pretty much all law firms will need to adopt generative AI else they will be at a distinct disadvantage. Generative AI will become the norm as a tool used by lawyers.

Currently, you would be foolish to try and use generative AI on an autonomous basis to perform legal tasks (i.e., no human in the loop), though some are aiming to do so and have so far found themselves facing troubles. A related topic that is going to gain a lot of steam and attention will be the unauthorized practice of law (UPL). If a generative AI app is set up to dispense legal advice, doing so in the absence of a human lawyer being directly involved, does this constitute a violation of UPL? Some argue that we will ultimately need to reconsider UPL, though for now, given that generative AI is primarily a tool used by human lawyers, the matter is one of idle debate rather than a make-or-break debate (see my assessment at the link here).

Consider some key benefits of having lawyers use generative AI as a tool.

A law firm that mindfully adopts generative AI can potentially do more work in less time. The idea is that your lawyers can possibly take on more clients or do more in-depth work for clients while having the AI tool do some of the work under the supervision of a lawyer. A thorny question arises about billable hours and how things will shake out about using these AI tools. In any case, presumably, a shop with a lesser number of lawyers can potentially outdo a firm with a larger number of lawyers, doing so by leveraging the AI and exceeding the legal productivity of the non-AI-using firm.

Another facet involves using generative AI as a means of internally gauging the quality of your legal efforts. Associates can potentially use generative AI as a first-pass quality check, thus reducing the effort by senior partners when they do their double-checking. And so on.

Generative AI is going to transform the legal profession. We are in the early days of this. Some law firms and law partners don’t see an immediate urgency and are opting to do a wait-and-see. Others believe that first to the game will be able to get ahead of the competition. I’ve predicted that we will eventually even see that ratings of law firms will be impacted by the degree of generative AI adoption that they have successfully undertaken (see the link here).

Well, there’s a lot more to be said on this question, but let’s proceed to the next one and continue on our intrepid journey through the handful of FAQs.

• Question #2: “Those two lawyers who got in trouble for using ChatGPT to identify legal cases became the talk of the town due to their legally despondent oopsie headline-grabbing error of their ways. Is there anything else about this showcase blunder that merits scrutiny?”

My answer is:

I’m gleefully delighted that this question gets asked from time to time.

Here’s why.

Most lawyers and law firms simply assume that the lesson learned was that two lawyers made use of generative AI and did so inadequately.

There is much more to the tale of woe. Additional lessons can be fruitfully gleaned and used for your law firm. Let’s dive in.

In case you aren’t familiar with the setting, one of the lawyers was trying to find legal cases to support their position in an active legal case. The lawyer opted to use ChatGPT. ChatGPT provided various seemingly bona fide-looking cited legal cases. The details were impressive. At face value, nearly anybody might readily believe the cases were real. They weren’t. ChatGPT made up the legal cases, a kind of fabrication that is referred to as an AI hallucination (side note: I don’t like the phrase “AI hallucination” because it is anthropomorphic about AI, see my concerns at the link here).

The lawyer who used ChatGPT gave the legal cases to a second lawyer who was working on the case too. This second lawyer incorporated the generated content into a legal filing that was provided formally to the court (he assumed all was well and trusted the other lawyer correspondingly). As you might imagine, the opposing side tried to look up the legal cases and could not find them listed anywhere. They questioned the matter.

One supposes this highlights the value of our adversarial judicial structure. Score one for the adversarial system.

Anyway, the two lawyers clung to their belief that the legal cases were real. The lawyer that was using ChatGPT had gone back to ChatGPT and asked ChatGPT whether the cases were true. ChatGPT said they were. Ergo, the lawyers doubled down on the legal cases and indicated to the court that the cases were bona fide. Ultimately, the judge got involved and the whole matter became big news and an embarrassment for the lawyers and the law firm (see my coverage for more details, at the link here).

Three obvious lessons learned were these:

• Lawyers opting to use generative AI need to be versed in what they are doing, including being aware of and alert to the possibility of AI producing errors, falsehoods, biases, glitches, and AI hallucinations.
• Lawyers should double-check the output of generative AI via alternative sources. Relying on the same source to reinforce something is sloppy and bound to do little if any good.
• A lawyer relying on another lawyer is possibly going to get jammed up if the other lawyer has used generative AI and not done their homework sufficiently (well, this applies to just about any poor execution by a fellow lawyer).

The reaction by some law firms and law partners was that this instance proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that generative AI should not be used at all. Period, end of story. Bans on the use of generative AI began to get tossed around here and there in some law firms.

I dare say that this is akin to tossing out the baby with the bathwater. Just because two lawyers messed up does not equate to putting the kibosh on all use of generative AI. The better lesson is that any effort to veer into the use of generative AI ought to be a calculated one that is systematically carried out by the law firm.

Let me say that another way. If you leave lawyers to their own initiative, they are bound to search high and low for something that can make their job easier, faster, or the like. They will do so because it is in their lawyering bloodline. This particular law firm had allowed an empty vacuum to exist. From the reported indications, the law firm had not seemingly been informing their attorneys about generative AI.

The plot thickens or sickens.

Turns out that according to the reporting on the matter, the law firm had failed to ensure that a subscription to a legal cases repository was kept up to date. This supposedly was the fault of the IT function at the law firm. The one lawyer who used ChatGPT did so because he no longer could access that subscription service. He was at wit’s end.

My question naturally is why in the world didn’t he just ask IT about the subscription? As a seasoned CIO/CTO, I am betting that the relationship between IT and the rest of the law firm was shall we say thin. This happens at many law firms. The odds are that the lawyer assumed that any attempt to get the subscription renewed would be met with blockades and bureaucratic mania.

So, he took the initiative. Get this, he asked his offspring and they advised that he should consider using ChatGPT. They raved about ChatGPT. He knew almost nothing about it. It was free to use, easy to sign up for, and immensely simple to enter prompts and get results. Voila, his problem was readily solved.

I urge law firms to consider the nuances of that tale.

A lawyer seemed so reluctant to use the IT function that they went and found a completely different way to get their job done. Sad. Shouldn’t be. This is the fault of the IT function and also the fault of the partners and leadership of the law firm. No finger-pointing at just IT if you please. There is plenty of fault for all parties.

Furthermore, how come the law firm seemingly had not sought to inform their lawyers about generative AI and what to watch out for? I usually advise law firms to at least send out a missive indicating what is going on with generative AI. In addition, law firms should establish a high-level committee or similar group that can explore generative AI and identify how it might be adopted at the firm. Seemingly, none of that happened.

Here are some additional and vital lessons learned from this instance:

• You are potentially a one-lawyer misstep away from getting your reputation tainted by having someone in your law firm who turns to generative AI and has no idea what they are doing and no idea what the policy or position of the firm is on generative AI usage.
• Don’t assume that an outright ban on using generative AI is your savior. First, some of the lawyers might not get the message and proceed unknowingly. Second, some might hear of the ban but decide they can go undercover anyway (lawyers are crafty!). Third, a mighty FOMO (fear of missing out) will potentially permeate the law firm as the lawyers there keep hearing about how other law firms are using generative AI and not doing outright bans. Fourth, a potential head-in-the-sand perception of your law firm could mar your reputation, namely that it is a firm that prefers to ignore what is going on in the rest of the world. All in all, I think you get the gist of why a ban alone is not an especially sound path.
• Put together a communique to your lawyers and non-lawyers of your law firm and spell out what they should or should not be doing regarding generative AI.
• Establish a high-level committee to figure out the near-term and long-term policies and approaches for the use of generative AI at your law firm.
• Consider at least setting up some pilots or proof-of-concept efforts in your law firm that can demonstrate how generative AI will fit your legal efforts.
• When the timing is right, consider providing training on the use of generative AI to those in your law firm who seem best suited to try out the technology. See how this goes. Ramp up if warranted.
• Relook at your IT services. Is there a good relationship between IT and your lawyers? If not, why not? What can be done to well align IT and the needs of the law firm?
• Some law firms have opted to go around IT and start their generative AI forays without having IT particularly involved. This is a recipe for lots of problems. Either you are avoiding the tougher questions about IT alignment, or other serious issues are bubbling under the surface.
• Many other lessons can be easily derived.

We shall move to the next question on the list of FAQs.

• Question #3: “There are all kinds of surveys about law firms adopting generative AI. I cannot discern whether everyone is doing so or only a few are doing so. What’s up with this?”

My answer is:

I agree that numerous polls or surveys seem to be reporting a wide range of indications about the adoption of generative AI within law firms.

Let me share with you my ground-level experience.

There is a longstanding rule of thumb about the adoption of new technology. I think it applies to law firms and the adoption of generative AI. My remarks herein are based solely on law firms that I’ve chatted with or have done consulting work for.

Here’s the deal.

The technology adoption life cycle is typically laid out this way:

• Innovators: 2% of companies
• Early adopters: 14% of companies
• Early majority: 34% of companies
• Late majority: 34% of companies
• Laggards: 16% of companies

My efforts have been on those law firms in the 2% or considered the innovators category (and, also some of the early adopters too). The innovators have right away opted to do something substantive about generative AI. I am not saying they went in whole hog. Nobody in their right mind should be betting the entirety of their law practice on generative AI. These innovators overtly opted to quickly and prudently start to explore generative AI, they formed relevant committees, began to do pilots and proofs-of-concept, etc. They are dipping their toes into the generative AI waters.

Next up are the early adopters. As noted above, usually this is about 14% of companies. They at times have heard about or eye-witnessed the results born by the innovators. They are eager to get into generative AI and have been preparing themselves to do so.

The early majority is a big chunk at 34%, and likewise, the late majority is another 34%. The laggards are the last to adopt a technology, usually doing so while kicking and screaming.

A key consideration in all of this is contingent on what we mean by the adoption of a technology. If you mean that some lawyer in your firm read an article about generative AI, well, that’s a pretty weak definition of adoption. For my way of thinking, adoption consists of the steps I mentioned above. Some serious and concerted efforts to utilize generative AI is what adoption means to me.

Overall, when you read the surveys, maybe also keep in mind the above life cycle and ask yourself where your law firm sits in those buckets. And, ask too where your law firm ought to be or wants to be.

• Question #4: “I don’t quite understand how generative AI can be used by lawyers. Can you give me a rundown on some simple but effective ways to use generative AI for performing legal tasks?”

My answer is:

Sure, I am pleased to provide my favorite five ways to initially explore generative AI.

These five are handy since they are relatively easy to try out in generative AI. Performing the tasks will give you and your lawyers a sense of the strengths and weaknesses of contemporary generative AI. I would like to add a huge cautionary sign at this juncture before I go into the five ways. You might recall that I earlier warned that a human lawyer should still be overseeing and reviewing whatever generative AI is used for in terms of legal tasks. The same goes for these five practical practices.

Do not jump the gun and decide to willy-nilly make use of generative AI. You need to realize that anything you enter as a prompt into generative AI can be potentially seen by the AI maker. This is part of the usual licensing agreement. I am shocked at how many lawyers sign up for a generative AI app and fail to even glance at the licensing agreement. Big sad face.

If you are using a publicly available generative AI app, a handy rule is not to enter any private or confidential information via the prompts that you use. The licensing typically says that the AI maker can use the prompts for ongoing data training of the AI. There is also an indication that the AI maker can inspect the prompts, possibly for data training but also for concerns over uses of the generative AI that they have said are prohibited. See my coverage on the privacy and confidentiality issues (at the link here), and the prohibited uses (see the link here).

These are my devised Top 5 legal tasks that can be aided via generative AI:

• (1) Legal Brainstorming
• (2) Drafting Legal Briefs
• (3) Reviewing Legal Documents
• (4) Summarizing Legal Narratives
• (5) Converting Legalese Into Plain Language

I’ll briefly describe each one and proffer some vital caveats and warnings.

(1) Legal Brainstorming

Suppose that you are trying to devise a legal position for a vexing case.

You might find useful a tool that could spark your thoughts on ways to legally approach the issues at hand. Via generative AI, you can enter a prompt or series of prompts depicting the legal matter. As you do so, you can ask the AI app to provide commentary or additional ideas.

Though this is admittedly not going to be on par with conferring with a legal colleague, it will at least get you thinking outside of the box. Whether you get anything legally riveting or revolutionary is probably unlikely at this time. The nice thing is that you can use this at any time of the day, and do so without having to disrupt your colleagues.

Keep in mind that the generic generative AI is not especially versed in legal matters. There are research efforts underway to feed a vast array of legal documents into generative AI and aim toward a version of generative AI that is directly enmeshed in the legal field. Until then, you are dealing with a generative AI that was broadly data-trained on text across the Internet, some of which likely includes snippets of legal matters and lots of which do not. All in all, the generic generative AI is more of a means to bounce ideas around and make you think about your legal positioning, rather than the AI coming up with an advised legal posture.

(2) Drafting Legal Briefs

If you’ve ever had writer’s block when writing a legal brief, you can now feel a sense of relief that a generative AI app can get your compositions underway.

One common approach consists of entering an outline of your brief and asking the generative AI to produce the bulk of the text for the brief. You’ll need to be extremely diligent to examine the composed text since it might contain all manner of both glaring and insidiously subtle errors or made-up facts. Nonetheless, assuming that the AI app does the lion’s share of the drafting, your effort to review and adjust the content is possibly going to be a more efficient use of your time than writing the brief solely from scratch.

(3) Reviewing Legal Documents

Sometimes a lawyer is so myopically close to self-written legal materials that they fail to see anything wrong in their personally composed legal documents. Each word seems splendidly chosen. The legal phrasing is beyond perfection. A bit of ego enters into the admiration too.

The odds are that if you asked a colleague to assess your legal narrative, something would stand out as being untoward or possibly require further legal wordsmithing. You can use generative AI to help in this type of scrutiny. Provide your text as a prompt and ask the AI app to critique it. Be aware though that the analysis is not going to be akin to a legal evaluation that a fellow lawyer might give. Think of this as enabling you to do easy iterations to iron out the low-hanging legal fruit, after which you can potentially enlist a human legally-versed assessment.

(4) Summarizing Legal Narratives

Many legal documents seem to wax and wane endlessly. The enormous size of the dense legal text is larger than an average full-length Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

You might wish to produce a summary of your legal composition so that you can readily share the key points and recaps with others. To do so, enter the text into a generative AI app and tell the AI to produce a summary. Once again, you’ll need to mindfully examine the output and make sure it aptly does the summarization. Note that some errors or fakery can creep into the summary, which seems oddball since the AI is presumably focused on just the text provided, but realize that these computational maladies can arise in any outputs generated.

(5) Converting Legalese Into Plain Language

You proudly have written the best legal document of your career. It makes other lawyers weep when they read the precise and compelling legal arguments contained within. Pat yourself on the back.

The problem is that your client might not have a clue of what the legalese means. You could painstakingly attempt to rewrite the legal prose into everyday ordinary language. On the other hand, you could feed the text into a generative AI app and ask for conversion into daily language. As always, use your keen eye to review the converted material. There is a solid chance that the AI app might misportray legal finesse. The good news is that you didn’t have to do the conversion by hand and only need to clean up the spots here and there in the AI app-generated version.

Always keep your guard up.

Let’s move to the last of my handful of carefully selected FAQs.

• Question #5: “What question aren’t you asked about, but for which you believe law firms and law partners ought to be asking and they don’t seem to be doing so?”

My answer is:

I love this question.

There is indeed a topic that I keep wanting to bring up and yet it seems hasn’t registered with law firms and law partners overall. I am determined to keep trying.

Amidst my being asked about AI and the law, there are two seemingly distinct views that law firms and law partners generally are undertaking.

First, there are those law firms that perceive generative AI as something they can use to perform their legal services, which has been the focus of my remarks herein. Second, other law firms take the stance that generative AI is important because of the legal issues that such AI brings forth. This includes copyright infringement considerations, legal discriminatory practices as embedded in the AI, and all manner of legal concerns about how companies are using generative AI and potentially breaking existing laws or newly anticipated laws and regulations about AI.

Let’s divide those into two camps:

• (1) Law firms that opt to adopt generative AI as applied to the law and do so as an aid or tool in performing their legal services.
• (2) Law firms that provide legal services covering how the law is applied to generative AI and ergo aid their clients that have adopted generative AI and maybe gotten into legal hot water accordingly (or, seek to keep them out of legal hot water in the first place).

With me so far?

I hope so.

The problem is that most law firms and law partners believe these to be entirely separate conditions. It is like saying that one is anti-matter and the other is matter, and you cannot cross the streams or the universe will implode. I don’t see things that way.

Law firms are going to be dragged into providing legal services about AI, whether they realize this fact or not. Nearly every client that you can think of is going to be impacted by generative AI. You usually think of AI makers as the ones who need legal services for AI. Take off those blinders. See the future.

The use of generative AI is going to be encompassed by nearly all firms of all types, far beyond just tech companies. All companies will be adopting generative AI, doing so in a madcap dash for many. Along the way, they are going to legally fumble the ball. They will need legal advice that pertains to their use of AI.

Your clients right now are going to eventually need legal advice about their AI adoptions. Who is going to provide that advice? If not your law firm, they will find another that can do so. You will drop the ball and risk losing your clients.

On top of this, when you are trying to acquire new clients, they are bound to want to know what kind of legal services you have related to their AI adoptions. If the answer is zero, you can bet they will likely find a law firm that has more on the ball.

That’s why nearly all law firms are going to find themselves under pressure to get up-to-speed on the law as it applies to AI.

Let’s look at the other side of the coin.

Law firms are also going to be dragged into adopting generative AI for the performance of their legal services. Admittedly, some are doing this willingly, taking the innovator’s route, of which a savory tip of the hat to them for bravely and smartly doing so. I assume that all of the foregoing discussion herein is sufficient to suggest that law firms are going to one way or another be adopting generative AI.

I have placed in front of you a set of two meteors streaking through the skies and headed for a collision course.

Law firms that think they only will provide legal services associated with clients that are using AI will find themselves having to adopt AI for the performance of their legal services. Correspondingly, law firms that think they only will adopt generative AI for performing their legal services are going to find that they have clients who want legal services associated with the adoption of AI.

My point is that the two paths are going to converge.

You can deal with this now or wait until the other half hits your firm squarely in the head.

So, the question I don’t seem to be getting, but that I believe should be asked, is how are law firms going to prepare themselves for either a double whammy or a double delight?

Please give that some quiet contemplative consideration, thanks.

Conclusion

I have briefly covered a handful of FAQs that I believe will be of use to law firms and law partners. If there is expressed interest by readers, I’ll go ahead and do another follow-up column with more of these intriguing and exciting questions. Be assured, I’ve got plenty of them in my back pocket.

A final comment for now.

Charles Dickens famously wrote this memorable line:“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

Some law firms and law partners perceive generative AI as something to despair over. I’ll offer some free advice. Get over it. Law firms and law partners that are open to seeing the future will realize that it is the spring of hope. Generative AI is going to bring about massive changes in society, including and especially related to the performance of legal services, the nature of our laws, and how our laws are devised.

For me, hope springs eternal.