A terrific and important article about AI's impact on lawyer formation. "Becoming, Doing, Being: GenAI and the Promise of Professional Identity in Law." lthj.qut.edu.au/article/view... HT @julianinoz.bsky.social

Don't wait around for corporate law departments to lead meaningful change in the commercial legal market. 48% of in-house survey respondents don't track internal legal spend. 72% don't track time to resolution. 88% don't track outside counsel performance metrics. www.law.com/legaltechnew...

Top-line numbers for BigLaw look great. But demand up only 1.9%, productivity down 0.6%, collection cycles increasing 1.2%, and expenses (more senior income-partner salaries and AI investments) up 9.1%, collectively is cause to tread with some caution here. www.law360.com/pulse/modern...

"It's challenging for law firms to house products and services under one roof. Aosphere, the firm’s online derivatives advisory business, was recently sold to private equity. Running a products business often requires more upfront capital and different management skills." www.ft.com/content/f94a...

See, this is exactly the wrong road for lawyers to go down. I'm prepared to hear arguments in favour of inviting private equity to invest in your law firm, but "I want to be rich" will cut no ice with me.

You know, if I were the private equity industry looking for a headline law firm to carry the banner for PE's legal investment efforts in the US, I'm not sure the firm that represented Ghislaine Maxwell would be at the top of my list.

You're a mean one, Charlie Brown.

Something we should take away from the latest “Ukraine peace plan” fiasco is that all the men in charge in both Russia and the United States are incompetent cretins. There’s no hidden plan or secret strategy. There’s no clever misdirection or 3D chess. They’re all idiots.

Law firms are just so bad at simple business practices. Their initial cost estimates to clients are lowballed and unrealistic; their engagement terms are poorly scoped and sloppy; and a lack of discipline in matter execution leaks value. Maddening stuff. www.legalfutures.co.uk/blog/pitch-p...

Important and thought-provoking critiques of overly simplistic "AI will fix A2J" takes, along with two good suggestions for how to ameliorate the challenges in this area, by @profmarkovic.bsky.social: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

You no longer need to read historical fiction to know the answer to, “What would America look like today if the Confederacy had won the Civil War?”

New from me at Substack: What happens when private equity meets artificial intelligence in the legal sector? The profit engine of law firms changes address -- and lawyers get a chance to rethink their purpose. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/the-migrat...

Far too much credibility is being given to the new ‘Trump peace plan’ that would be tantamount to Ukraine’s capitulation. Here I explain why this new plan is far less than it seems and is unlikely to lead to anything. (£/free trial), open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/y...?

Just call it a “surrender plan,” because that’s all it is. Keep “peace” out of it.

Man, the more I look at this "private equity buying law firm MSOs" thing, the more questions I have, and the answers I'm coming up with are not encouraging.

Private equity in the AmLaw 100? Not a possibility most people took seriously until this news from Will McDermott: news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and... | Includes comments and analysis from me.

You could set your clock by it.

America has long feared it would suffer the same fate as the Roman republic, but never quite truly appreciated how utterly absurd Roman elites had become by the time of the late republic.

New from me at Substack: My analysis of the surging wave of private equity activity in the legal sector. My message to lawyers and legal regulators: Be very, very careful here. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/private-eq...

I just read a comment by an interviewee in a legal news article that 100% looked to be written by ChatGPT. The clever analogy, the "it's not this; it's that" structure, etc. One of the side effects of working with ChatGPT as much as I do is recognizing its cadence. (Also, it uses "cadence" a lot.)

"FinTRAC identified 4,300 suspicious transaction reports that totalled $7.99-billion ... and 67,500 electronic funds transfer reports with a collective value of $13.8-billion." Lawyers' unwillingness to deal with money laundering will do them in someday. www.theglobeandmail.com/business/com...

"The ultimate beneficiaries of this new industrial revolution may not be the providers of the general-purpose technology itself, but those that apply it. ... The fact that Nvidia is financing its customers to buy its products is not a supportive signal." spencea.substack.com/p/double-dou...

Nvidia's CEO meets two other Korean tech CEOs for fried chicken -- and chicken-related stocks immediately increase, including a company that makes chicken-frying robots. The bubble is going to burst, and a whole lot of chaos will follow. Get yourself as mentally and financially prepared as you can.

It's interesting to think how history might have unfolded differently if nuclear technology had been developed first as a clean power source and later used as a weapon, rather than the other way around. Much of the world might now be powered by nuclear stations.

"Trump’s personal worth has increased by $3.4 billion over just the first eight months of his presidency, to say nothing of the wealth funnelled into the accounts of his party, sycophants, and allies. And he’s just getting started." Essential reading (especially for Americans) right now.

Polling is not an indicator of peoples' deeply-held, immutable, moral convictions — it's a function of people pressing a button on a phone after having had three seconds to think about a topic. It is *a* data point, not a fact of nature.

The sound of the '70s haunts the legal sector to this day:

New from me at Substack: What happens when the capacity to solve legal problems is no longer exclusive to lawyers, and can instead be found on every desktop and smartphone? What does it mean when legal reasoning becomes ubiquitous? We're about to find out. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/the-new-le...

ordinary americans are filming ice agents and trying to save their neighbors. for all the hemming and hawing during 2024 about how democracy was an elite concern, the elites gave up far more quickly than average people.

For no particular reason, read this timeless list of 18 reasons why complex systems fail: how.complexsystems.fail

"On well-scoped, single-jurisdiction research questions, AI systems — especially legal-specific ones — can deliver accurate, well-cited outputs faster than baseline human performance and with fewer outright misses." But there's a lot more going on here: www.legaltechnologyhub.com/contents/can...

I couldn't watch any debate knowing the outcome has already been decided. This is epically illustrated by the current SCOTUS, but it's been the case for decades now: You always know how each judge will rule in every case. Same for the electoral college, BTW. It's built into major US institutions.

New from me at Substack: In the post-AI legal sector, lawyers will be called on for different functions than before. Here are three essential attributes lawyers must possess to meet that new demand. We need to start training lawyers to develop them -- now. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/three-core...

"White used ChatGPT to identify potential errors in a judge’s decision ... [to] overturn her eviction notice and avoid roughly $55K in penalties and more than $18K in overdue rent. 'I never, ever, ever, ever could have won this appeal without AI.'" www-nbcnews-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.nbcn...

SQE1 exam results from July 2025 (legal knowledge competence exam for solicitors in England/Wales) report a pass rate of just 41%. Even excluding repeat takers, it's just 46%. sqe.sra.org.uk/news-item/20.... The SQE1 pass rate has never exceeded 56%. This should be a red flag for the SRA. 1/

ACC reports growth in number of in-house counsel outstripped growth in law firm lawyers 87%-23% since 2008: www.law360.com/pulse/modern.... Two thoughts: 1. This is mostly just redistribution of lawyers from multi-client private practice to single-client employment. 2. AI will shrink both numbers.

“Revolutions and long weekends don’t go together”: Georgia Meloni giving it her best Marie Antoinette.

All states are purple. Both Republicans and Democrats prefer to overlook this.

“It takes two to lie, Marge. One to lie, and one to listen.”

It is undeniable that this moment is being shaped by people who marinated for years in an informational environment where reality was not only demoted but actively disdained. It took a while for that bubble to become impermeable but it did and now we have a chunk of people who know nothing but.

"Full-service" law firms that handle both commercial and litigation matters can work, up to a certain size anyway. But as this article suggests, "BigLaw" is really only corporate law firms now; litigation is a secondary distraction. Look for this divergence to continue. www.wsj.com/us-news/law/...

There are clear cases of AI's applicability to legal tasks, there are edge cases, and there are "of course not" cases. Letting AI anywhere near the drafting of court judgments is squarely in the third category - if for no other reason than public confidence in the courts. www.law.com/legaltechnew...

I don't like this new version of the TARDIS.

Me, whenever the Harvey AI Discourse Machine powers up:

Sincere thanks to @stephenpoor.bsky.social and his "PIoneers and Pathfinders" team for inviting me back to their terrific podcast! I was surprisingly (even to me) blunt about the mid-term prospects for law firms, but hopeful for the future of lawyers after AI. www.seyfarth.com/news-insight...

Now it's getting fascinating: bsky.app/profile/chad...

Who in the hell got to Trump following his speech at the UN? Who was the last person he spoke with before dictating this? 👇

Scenario: AI makes legal knowledge/tools near-ubiquitous, leading to surge in demand for dispute resolution, commercial transactions, and growth facilitation that the extant legal system (courts, regulators, agencies, lawyers) can't manage, so new private legal systems emerge to handle the overflow.

Terrific and thought-provoking article about how improv -- yes, improv -- can help create a more human-oriented legal education system: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... I'd add: Training future lawyers to collaborate towards a common goal, rather than compete with each other, would be invaluable.

Largest US law firms see slower growth in hours billed than less sizeable firms below them. But top firms do more complex work and charge higher rates: www.law360.com/pulse/modern... Volume of demand won't matter as much post-AI. Firms focusing on specialized/expert work are getting this right.