The Legalpreneurs Sandbox

This podcast was delivered on 11 July 2023 and is the fourth session in CLI’s AI for Legal Series.

In this session Krystal Jackson, eDiscovery Senior Manager, Ashurst Advance discussed data – what you need to know, what you need to do, and how you can get ready for the legal AI revolution.

Topics covered included:

• What data is (and is not)
• Data governance and storage
• On premise vs cloud storage
• Data collection and disclosure
• What data works best with AI

Resources

• CLI Legal Generative AI LinkedIn Group
• CLI Generative AI Initiative

If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this episode, you’ll find the video in our CLI-Collaborate (CLIC) free Resource Hub here.

Generative AI has created a critical role for educators. Everyone is learning something new, and educators know how to make that meaningful and stick. Whether the tech is forcing us to challenge traditional mindsets, understand a new context for our work, experiment with new ways to work, or embrace different ways to collaborate with different people so we find the right solutions to new issues, educators have a pivotal role to play.

In this session, we chatted with three professors in the US who took their individual experiences with generative AI, and their learnings in their respective disciplines, to create a resource and community for legal educators to learn, share, and do more with this tech – they called it The Law Profs GenAI Sandbox.

Our discussion with the fabulous founders of the Sandbox: Will Monroe, Assistant Director for Instructional Technology, LSU Law Library, LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center; Tracy Norton, Assistant Professor of Law, Erick Vincent Anderson Professor, LSU Law Center; and Susan Tanner, Assistant Professor of Law, Louis D. Brandeis School of Law, University of Louisville, was enlightening and inspiring.

We kicked off with where generative AI is taking higher education; delved into how the Sandbox started and where it might go next; and concluded with benchmarking where and how educators can embrace the tech. But, what was also evident throughout the entire discussion was the joy, excitement, and passion these profs have for finding ways to use the tech so it enhances learning for students and supports their colleagues in using it effectively and efficiently too.

If you are working in education and particularly legal education, you will not want to miss this one!

If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this podcast, you’ll find the video here.

About the Future 50 Series

In the Future 50 Series we’re chatting with legalpreneurs who, through their ideas and actions, are challenging and transforming legal BAU all around the world.

If you would like to recommend people for this Series, please contact us at: [email protected]

In this session, we spoke with Mark Williams, a Founding Co-Director of the Vanderbilt AI Law Lab (VAILL) and a Professor of the Practice of Law at the AIGP.

Mark has come to AI via journalism, law, sometime in the political world and knowledge management. In many respects, his work now draws on that rich professional and personal life experience.

Today, Mark is deeply immersed in working with and educating future generations of lawyers through the AI Law Lab. The Lab is a hands-on, multidisciplinary, experiential learning opportunity at Vanderbilt Law School (VLS).

The VLS AI Law Lab is preparing law graduates for the next generation of legal practice and leadership. It’s modelling a different way of teaching and learning in partnership with industry - one that is comfortable with experimentation and supports students in understanding the tech, its limitations and opportunities, from the ground up.

VLS’s has a long history in transformative legal education, especially in the tech/AI space. We chatted with Mark about that too i.e., what drives VLS’s leadership, mindset, and comfort with embracing new, different, and supporting their graduates to do that too...their secret sauce!

We wrapped this conversation by discussing the broader impact of AI education in the legal industry - the importance of digital and data literacy and, if we have arrived, or still edging towards, a different type of legal practice.

Don’t miss this spotlight, if you haven’t engaged with AI before now, this will be your catalyst to start your journey today!

If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this podcast, you’ll find the video here.

About the Future 50 Series

In the Future 50 Series we’re chatting with legalpreneurs who, through their ideas and actions, are challenging and transforming legal BAU all around the world.

If you would like to recommend people for this Series, please contact us at: [email protected].

In this session, we spoke with Jean Yang, the VP and Co-founder of Onit’s AI Center of Excellence. The Center is a note-worthy offering from a software vendor. Jean’s journey to Onit seems like it was a natural progression. A former practising lawyer from New Zealand, she has spent most of her career so far (there’s lots more still to come) at the leading edge of AI in legal and, that has now taken her to Onit in Austin, Texas.

Our discussion focussed on the application of AI in legal - how much that has changed this past year; emerging trends in AI uptake; whether it’s realistic to expect definitive use cases right now; and the challenges, opportunities, needs, expectations and reality of the tech becoming pervasive/BAU in the legal world next year or maybe later - it’s hard to look too far ahead in this space right now but we did a little AI crystal ball gazing!

If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this podcast, you’ll find the video here.

About the Future 50 Series

In the Future 50 Series, we’re chatting with legalpreneurs who, through their ideas and actions, are challenging and transforming legal BAU all around the world.

If you would like to recommend people for this Series, please contact us at: [email protected].

We’re back for our sixth year and what a year it has been for legaltech, AI and innovation!

If 2023 was the year to figure out what generative AI was all about, then 2024 was most definitely the year for pilots, experimentation, and strategies for data and AI. Well, that was how it went for some, but not everyone...

In this, our annual year in review, we discussed what happened and where the dust settled in 2024 with Caryn Sandler, Partner and Chief Knowledge & Innovation Officer at Gilbert + Tobin and Co-chair of the CLI Advisory Board; Graeme Grovum, Head of Legal Technology and Client Services at Allens and Host of CLI’s Legal Ops Clinic in 2024; and Tessa van Duyn, CEO and Practice Leader at Moores and member of the CLI Advisory Board.

We started this session by discussing the discernible shift in mindset during 2024 from questioning if the legal industry should engage with generative AI, to embracing it as well as understanding and learning how to manage its issues – we collectively reached a new level of AI maturity!

As we dug deeper on impacts, we identified some key changes enabled by AI, particularly generative AI, to the business and practice of law this year, including:

• Non-negotiable “must haves” for the tech – easy to use, convenient, clearly identifiable benefits.
• New levels of tech engagement – GenAI creates a space where “personal life meets professional life” and consequently its uptake has been faster and at an unprecedented scale.
• Redefining collaboration – different partnerships, different interactions, different client engagements, emerging coalitions of competitors working and learning together, all focused on building a strong legal ecosystem that delivers on the potential, promises, and opportunities of generative AI but also knows how to manage its challenges.
• Redefining legal work - from conception to delivery and everything in between.
• Redefining value – what matters most, authenticity or efficiency and, are they the only choices? Where does pricing and billing by the hour fit into all of this?
• Redefining capabilities for practice – meeting people where they are so they can work out where they need to go together and individually.
• Redefining metrics – are we measuring impact or use or something else? Are metrics the same for this tech for all its uses? We need to know if the investment in the tech is moving us forward, or not, but it may be well into 2025 before we work this one out.
• Redefining employment and workforce – employees are now in search of digitally enabled employers and employers in search of digitally and data literate employees. Is going to a law firm or legal department that is not tech-enabled now a career-limiting move? What will that do to the legal workforce?
• Embracing capabilities where you find them, not where you expect them – making the tech available to everyone can result in an expansion of roles, new roles, and uncovering tech-related capabilities that enhance careers and your workforce where they may have otherwise remained hidden.
• Understanding that the pace and scale of change is now a constant and must be proactively managed. We need to understand the human consequence of this i.e., unparalleled change fatigue and the need to focus on human wellbeing more than ever before.

And, Graeme demonstrated his interactive avatar too – we all want him to build us one!

We wrapped with what will come next in 2025. Will ops teams lead the way? Will our humanity and creativity be best explored through play? Will a growing sophistication in how we use GenAI, especially by clients, reinvent the B2B, B2C and D2C markets?

Thank you sooooo much Caryn, Graeme and Tessa – this is a session we look forward to every year and we’re certain you will too – don’t miss this one!

If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this podcast, you’ll find the video here.

About the Future 50 Series

In the Future 50 Seri...