My hot take on all these top ten sci-fi film lists is that Star Wars isn't sci-fi. It's the classic Hero's Journey, set in space. The Force is "an energy field created by all life that binds everything in the universe together." That's magic, not science. Obi-Wan is Merlin; Luke is Arthur.

“More on this later”

It took a little over three years to go from the release of ChatGPT-4.2 to Microsoft piloting a legal AI agent. The long-held-back modernization of legal workflow is advancing at an extraordinary rate. www.law.com/legaltechnew...

The standard lawyer response to AI's massive productivity increases is to crank up lawyers' billing rates to make up for revenue lost to automation. It occurs to about 1 in 100 firms that a massive productivity increase is both a mandate and opportunity to price their services more profitably.

Gotta tell you, if your article begins, "This is not about X. This is about Y," I'm going to assume AI wrote your article and I'll read no further.

"it is not possible for two sides to both win a war. But it is absolutely possible for both sides to lose; mutual ruin is an option." Over a month old and dead on target: "The War in Iran." acoup.blog/2026/03/25/m...

Fifteen years after the movie and nearly 25 years after the actual season in which the events occurred, a law firm figures out that Moneyball could help them with lateral partner hires. www.law360.com/pulse/modern...

I was on a panel earlier this week talking about private equity in law (I think I was meant to be the conscientious objector), but even after my preparation and participation, I still don't see real upside for anybody but the PE investors and the senior lawyers who take the opportunity to cash out.

"General Counsel are no longer shopping for lawyers. They’re shopping for solutions to business problems that happen to require legal expertise." This and other sharp observations in a post from Elevate Law's Paula Forbes: elevate.law/expertise/la...

Man, meeting the standards for admission to law firm partnership is *really* getting tough. www.law360.com/pulse/modern...

It feels like a hundred years ago when I was writing about this, but the BC Supreme Court has ruled that the government's overhaul of legal regulation is constitutional and can proceed. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/... This was the obvious result from the start, IMO, and I'm glad it's finally cleared up.

Stay off Polymarket. Stay away from prediction markets of all types. They're predatory environments, and you're the prey. (via Matt Levine's newsletter) www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

I had a terrific conversation earlier this month with the hosts of Lawfuel, the legal podcast of The Florida Bar's Practice Resource Center. Our discussion touched on Generative AI, law firm pricing, associate development, lawyer licensing, and many other topics: www.legalfuel.com/as-ai-allows...

I feel like post-AI, law firm strategy will come down to "Pick the narrow segment of the market you want to dominate and gain the maximum share of it." I don't see much of a future for all-purpose firms that do a little of everything. Find a niche field, occupy it, then both dig down and build up.

Canary, meet coal mine: www.law360.com/pulse/modern...

Since so much of the AI job debate is among economists, they miss that as jobs are disrupted, professions will compete over new boundaries Abbot's System of Professions is a good read on what happens historically. Here is a short cartoon summary by a lizard painted in the style of Egon Schiele

The civil justice system was backlogged and sclerotic before AI. After AI, I seriously worry about its sustainability. Courts are just not equipped for this.

My new report for Lawyers On Demand examines the relationship between Gen-Z lawyers and the future legal sector. My newest Substack article gives you the details and an excerpt: jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/generation...

“Now we've got a technology that's going to eliminate the sorts of things that allow people to become wealthy off of tedious work," said the General Counsel of Anthropic, and which tech do you suppose he's referring to? www.law.com/legaltechnew...

As I’ve noted here before: The current market is dumb as a box of rocks. It doesn’t respond to reality anymore and is likely driven by a combination of wishful thinking and Polymarket side bets. Don’t look to it for rationality and certainly not for leading indicators of anything important.

Turns out getting JD Vance to campaign for you is a powerful voter repellent.

if this is Trump defeating Iran, maybe we should have let him try and make Canada the 51st state after all

75% of civil litigants face court without a lawyer. We’re closing the gap — and @bobambrogi.bsky.social covered it today on LawSites. The LAW Accelerator™: AI litigation tools with guardrails, curriculum, peer community. Think Techstars for pro se litigants. 🔗 www.lawnext.com/2026/04/cour...

What comes after the billable hour for lawyers? Part 1 of a two-part series starts by defining the role that lawyers will play in future: Safeguarding the client’s overall legal journey with guidance, judgment, and timely intervention at critical junctures. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/after-hour...

He doesn't understand what's happening. He doesn't have a plan. There's nothing there to analyse.

I knew the airport in question even before I opened the article. If you travel in the US a lot, you do too.

This is disturbingly good: Use AI to generate legal sector discourse for any setting and name-dropping opportunity, courtesy of @colinlachance.bsky.social: lexbluff.com

My newest Substack digs into the "risk transfer" theory of future lawyer value and finds it makes sense in some markets but less in others -- and that lawyers' real danger might be clients deciding that "professional accountability" isn't that essential. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/the-accoun...

One Battle After Another was meh.

Private equity can't buy (part of) a law firm (MSOs etc.) without a clear sense of its market value. A law firm is worth what its partners are worth -- no more, no less. Partners move all the time. PE can't stop them. The back-office is a commodity. Where's the value? www.law360.com/pulse/modern...

AI is switching the market incentives around the billable hour. Clients are happy to be billed by the hour when the work takes seconds to perform. Lawyers want to preserve their income, so now they talk up "value pricing." Good luck. When you live by the sword, guess what's going to take you out.

"72% of law firms have no plans to change attorney compensation structures to align with the increased use of AI. If you don’t change the compensation structure, you can’t change the business model to something other than time spent, period." abovethelaw.com/2026/03/lega...

If we do end up with an energy crisis and consequent economic damage -- and every day bombing continues increases the odds -- then we could see a rapid merger-and-consolidation wave spread across US law firms. This is a very fragile ecosystem right now. www.law360.com/pulse/modern...

Yeah, this looks like a legit return e-address.

One of my favourite podcast destinations is Lawyerist: We cover a huge range of topics, and I always get wound up and make eye-opening pronouncements. Stephanie Everett and I had a blast during our conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it too -- click here and tune in: lawyerist.com/podcast/the-...

I should've promoted this sooner: Really interesting and important AI survey from @mycase.bsky.social shows lawyer usage of AI tools more than doubling in just one year. Detailed report by @bobambrogi.bsky.social: www.lawnext.com/2026/03/ai-a...

You come away from this article with the strong sense that neither any question nor any answer was uttered by a human being. www.law.com/legaltechnew...

With all the chaos surrounding AI and the law, let's not forget the chaos surrounding PE and the law: www.law360.com/pulse/modern... Every time I look at this topic, I like the implications less. And because PE is mostly focused on consumer-facing law, I worry about who'll end up paying the price.

The more you hear financial and policy people talking about "liquidity," the more concerned you should be. I'm starting to hear it a lot.

Keir Starmer: Well, whatever else, this week can't possibly get any worse. Wednesday:

cc: the legal profession

Will we soon see a large-scale migration of lawyers, leaving BigLaw and corporate practice to help individuals with their legal needs? I think so, and weirdly enough, AI could be the reason. My newest Substack newsletter explains why. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/the-rising...

Matt Levine suggests, half-jokingly, that a business model for OpenAI is to choose an industry, short its major stocks, announce an AI tool that disrupts the industry, and sit back and watch the money roll in. Not implausible, given the Claude Code imbroglio in law. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/news...

New from me at @slawdotca.bsky.social: As AI gradually becomes the primary engine of legal production, law firm business models built around lawyer-centrism inevitably will give way. Watch AI-native law firms for clues on what to do next. www.slaw.ca/2026/02/11/t...

I had a criminal law prof who used to be a judge. He told us that if you're reviewing a decision searching for grounds to appeal, look for the word "surely." E.g. "Surely the legislature never intended such a result." Judges, he said, say "surely" when they don't have any law to back up their point.

I'm having a growing amount of trouble distinguishing text written by AI from text written by a human who's unconsciously adopted AI style and cadence. Of course, it's distinctly possible that everything I'm reading that sounds AI-produced actually is. Which would be really depressing.

AI Chatbot That Only Responds ‘Huh’ Valued At $200 Billion https://theonion.com/ai-chatbot-that-only-responds-huh-valued-at-200-billion/

Lawyers' professional judgment is their most valuable asset. If we could isolate and apply its components, we could do everything from quality-testing AI to re-engineering lawyer formation. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/how-to-sur...

McDermott gets AI in a way few other law firms do; they're cranking up AI training and seeking to make it mandatory for all associates: www.law360.com/pulse/modern... In a broader sense, law firms will have to accept that new lawyer training is a core function and a cost centre from now on.