To have peace and prosperity, a society must have productivity that benefits most people - Principles For Dealing With The Changing World Order, Ray Dalio #booksky

“What exactly is power if not the consolidation of resources?” - Empire of AI, Karen Hao #booksky

It requires a certain courage, a certain craziness, to be able to live life without compromise, to step out the door and risk ridicule… They might all look at me and they might talk about me and they might think I’m weird. And you know what? I couldn’t possibly disappoint them.

The world is changing and you’re at the vanguard of it - Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley #booksky

“Professional organisations such as law firms are not passive recipients of change, but may in fact be active drivers of it, and introduce new technologies including GenAI as a means of competitive advantage.”

Listening to System of a Down and it’s prophetic.

I have this worrying feeling that AI is going to be the tool of this new generation of fascism. I hope I’m being ridiculous

“I now believe that balancing the benefits and threats of artificial intelligence — saving humanity with and from AI — is the defining challenge of our age.” Richard Susskind in ‘How To Think About AI’ at 14. #LawSky

There is absolutely no good faith reason to use the term “AI” for any technology one is selling. It serves only for dazzling people into thinking the technology has capabilities that it doesn’t. If one wants a technology to be trustworthy, just use a transparent, informative term without hype.

“Expertise, is a core professional ideal leading to monopoly power where professions ‘exercise economic power and control over the market for their services.’” #lawsky

From all the accounts of ChatGPT-5, it’s giving Wild E Coyote. Its professionalism at pretending to be human, including pretending to do the tasks no one wants to do is *chef’s kiss* #chatGPT

“Future legal education must bridge the gap between traditional legal theory and practical market dynamics to prepare attorneys who can effectively navigate through modern legal challenges.” Jelena Schidzig in “the Law Firm of 2030: how the future law firm might look” p34-5 #law

It’s only effective automation if it comes from the automation region of France. Otherwise, it’s just sparkling legaltech for legaltech sake. #law

“Great legal technology will assist lawyers in exercising their skilled human judgement” - Douglas O Linder and Nancy Levit quoting Blake Masters in “The Good Lawyer” (2014 Oxford University Press) #law

“The Bar is now a competitive business and its practitioners are selling their services. Whilst training, credentials and expertise persist as recognisable features of traditional professionalism, much more is required of Barrister these days.”

‘“Ethical infrastructures consist of the policies, procedures, systems and structures - in short, the ‘measures’ that ensure lawyers in their firms comply with their ethical duties and that non-lawyers associated with the firm behave in a manner consistent with the lawyers’ duties”’ #law

“Remember when AI couldn’t count how many Rs there are in strawberry? That was eight months ago” 🤯

“In addition to being less susceptible to various kinds of biases, machines do not suffer from other problems affecting Human lawyers exercising such judgment” - Benjamin Alarie, Anthony Niblett, & Albert Yoon ‘How Artificial Intelligence Will Affect the practice of Law’ (2017) #law #legalAI

“The overwhelming barrier to change is that their [law firms] entire business model is based on the hour. All of it; how you evaluate lawyers, how you measure profitability, how you measure everything. It is all in the hours” #law

“Business—is not the enemy of lawyers but an important tool to implement our service profession” Judith A McMorrow in ‘In Defense of the Business of Law’ (2012) 40(1) Fordham Urban Law Journal 459, 461 #law

Some days you’ll feel like you’ve been writing the same sentence over and over. Others you will have almost 4K words down. Trust the process! #phd

This is your sign to invite yourself to the table. Don’t wait. I’m mentoring at New Zealand’s first law hackathon at @aucklanduni.bsky.social and this is how I did it

The wise man learns more from his enemies than the fool from his friends. But even a fool can learn from his friends if his friends are willing to call him one. - Jay Kristoff, Empire of the Damned #books

The solution to the dilemma (of there being no safe place) is not to be afraid, poppet. It is to be feared - Jay Kristoff, Empire of the Damned #booksky

Even hellfire is easier to bear with a friend at your side - Jay Kristoff, Empire of the Damned #books

Total 6,500 words and draft send to my supervisor for review. What a wonderfully productive couple of days! 💪 ✍️ #phd

More words! 600 so far today but that’s because I’ve had to travel. Hoping to get a few more paragraphs out on this flight. This goal is working ✍️ ✍️ ✍️ #phd

I’ve done 800 today and I’m going back for more!

I’ve got a goal to write 500-1,000 words every day over the next 4 days. Super proud of myself that I’ve done over 1,000 today. Let’s keep this streak 🔥 🔥 #phd

Generative AI does not think. Therefore it cannot lie. It has parameters to be “overtly helpful” above being “accurate” = it makes stuff up. Those settings can be changed!

The cost of progress is saying goodbye to the things we love from great memories to say hello to something brand new to create new memories.

How do I know I’m hormonal? I just cried about the pigeon that was shot in WWI and yet still delivered its message, saving 200 POWs en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cher_Ami

Got myself thinking about the decline of print media and its resurgence. This 15 year period may be likened to Europe’s dark age as digital history is being erased

If I wanted an easier life I would have been born a man.

Me, to me: hey buddy, you don’t need to rise to every challenge. You can just be for a moment. Promise.

Law shouldn’t suck. But why do most lawyers say “don’t do law”? There are long hours. Ungrateful clients. The pay isn’t that good, despite what Suits makes us believe. There is a stress which is building and getting worse, globally. This is what my PhD research is about 🧵

Why does spellbook have a refund policy on their website but not disclosing their pricing? Hmm #lawsky

“No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets with arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals, or, if neither, mechanised petrification, embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance.

I saw this shared yesterday and I’ve had a read of the paper and some time to digest. I have thoughts: what do we think law and judgment is? What do we think LLMs are?

I need to add an “ennui” rating for my mood chart

I feel like I spent my 20s learning how to tolerate unpleasant things and now I’m in my 30s I’m learning to tell them to get f*cked.

“Times must be getting bad cuz the musics getting good” -BentMegan (via Instagram)

Navigating the conflicts between professionalism and commercialism has become a critical issue for lawyers, given recent contemporary events

Anyone else open BlueSky and for that brief moment when it’s opening, think they accidentally opened their weather app? Yeah, me neither

I’ve reached the point in the thesis that I hate it. Hoping that this is just a small phase

Ideal type lawyers are rubbish for ethics research. This is because ideal types are “free from the detailed complexity of actuality” (from JW Watkins 1952 ‘Ideal Types and Historical Explanation’ as cited in Scholz and Steiner (2015) ‘the real type and ideal type of transdisciplinary processes’)

Philosophy is weird. It makes you think so different. Today was the first time I ever considered to ask why cats don’t seem have belly buttons. Answer: they do but they don’t collect lint like ours can. Thanks Google!

Look, I’m not saying getting yourself a giant coffee drink will fix all your problems, but the science tells us there’s only one way to know for sure that it won’t

A lawyer I was speaking with yesterday says he describes AI in the legal context as “a shitty first draft”. This is a great term. Being realistic and not giving into techno chauvinism is the only way out of the mess imo #lawsky

I often think that the cases of made-up cases submitted in a brief by lawyers is less about AI and more about lawyers not adhering to the motto of trust, but verify.