What's the value of privacy? It's $4!

a16z: "The 'best' companies have hostages, not customers." Over the decades, how has this applied to #legaltech? youtu.be/Kw2bK_jLz8M?...

In defense of the em dash — punctuation making us more human! www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/m...

Ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati's company Thinking Machines is making LLMs more #deterministic. Open questions: Do we want *all* of our #legaltech to be deterministic? Or is "legal creativity" #probabilsm a feature, not a bug? 🤔

#Lawyers, #judges, #arbitrators, and #mediators use #Claude. Queries: - #Lawyers: 0.21% = 201,600 daily (6,048,000 monthly) - #ALJs: 0.19% = 5.4M/mo - #Arbitrators + #Mediators: 0.10% = 2.8M/mo - #Paralegals + #LAAs: 0.05% = 1.4M/mo - #Judges + #Magistrates: 0.03% = 28k/mo

Law firm leader on stage just now: "We've equipped each of our lawyers with the $20/month ChatGPT, telling them 'Use it for everything you can.'" How many firms are doing this? How many just don't speak about their "off the shelf #LLM use" publicly?

LexisNexis study: "Among these consumers who are aware of [ #LLMs ], a stunning 48% have already used some form of generative AI tool to obtain #LegalAdvice or assistance with a legal question." Wow — 48%! Oh, by the way, this was from May 2023. 🤯 www.lexisnexis.com/community/in...

Google: AI's environmental impact appears overestimated AI QUERIES: 0.24 Wh vs earlier estimates (3-7 Wh) — like watching TV for <9 seconds TRUE ENERGY: far lower than claims (0.24 vs 3-7 Wh) OLD STUDIES missed cooling/infrastructure 33x efficiency (44x carbon ↓ ) youtu.be/aarDw3sooYE?...

Visions of the future with AI for people, the courts, and lawyers. I'm very excited for this article from Washington State Bar Association. With thanks to @damienriehl.bsky.social, Jayne Reardon, and J. Scott Schlegel who I have been bouncing ideas off for a year or so wabarnews.org/2025/07/16/t...

Microsoft: AI beats human physicians in diagnoses (Humans = 2/10, Machines = 8/10) www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Lovely London event with Reena SenGupta of #RSGI at the @financialtimes.com FT Innovative Lawyers event!

Great fun chatting #music + #Copyright • Copyright protects expressions, not ideas • AI extracting uncopyrightable #ideas (vectors), not #expressions (jettisoned)? • #MLC style royalties statute for #AI ingested works? youtu.be/1UjXTRw2Yck?...

Dark day, here in Minnesota. Democrats shot and killed: How will POTUS respond? 🤷 kstp.com/kstp-news/to...

RIP Brian Wilson youtu.be/9a7TENaM7mE

Legal tech "learning" through redlines? This interview with Cursor engineers discusses doing reinforcement learning (RL) on PRs (pull requests), to allow the LLM to "learn" like a Jr. coder might. Equally applicable to lawyers? Maybe RL on Track Changes redlines? 🤔 youtu.be/sLaxGAL_Pl0?...

Estonia's FutureLaw Conference was wonderful — filled with old friends and new ones. Tallinn is lovely, and its people are great hosts. Last year was a joy, and this year might have even been better. Thanks to Team #FutureLaw25 for an excellent meeting of smart legal minds!

Poor people, veterans, seniors, and children rely on LSC to fund #LegalAid organizations nationwide. The White House budget would eliminate the LSC — harming 5M low-income families. Civil legal aid helps returns $7 for every $1 invested. Support LSC here: americanbar.quorum.us/campaign/457...

Hey, M&A lawyers: CEO said he used #LLM for #M&A deal, saving him $100k. Harbinger of the future? Or today? If you're not using LLMs, will this client stop hiring you? Or will you not know why the phone didn't ring? See 32:37 mark. youtu.be/JMYQmGfTltY?...

OpenAI's Applied #AI person's insights — which apply to #Legal: • Markets reward #scarcity (scarcity = valuable) • #Agents commoditize "doing tasks" — formerly scarce • After that, what's scarce? Orchestration of: • Compute • Capital • Access to #Data • Human/Expert #Judgment

Another study showing that #LLMs are more persuasive than humans: - GPT-4 improved persuasion 64.4% of time - 81.2% higher post-debate agreement - 95% confidence interval Study used GPT-4: Reasoning models = even better? 🤔 #Lawyers #LawFirms: How long before NOT using an LLM = malpractice?

Jeff Dean (renowned Google engineer) says that an AI will operate 24/7 at a "junior engineer" level — and that'll happen in the "next year-ish." youtu.be/dq8MhTFCs80?...

Rest in peace, "Prompt Engineering" field. 🪦 www.fastcompany.com/91327911/pro...

ICYMI, the good folks at @free.law have added a feature to the Court Listener pages called "Pray & Pay" where you can click the pray icon next to a document you want & they list it for other RECAP users to contribute it w/ unused free allowance or generous $$$. www.courtlistener.com/help/pray-an...

Superstar panel — talking Access to Justice #A2J — at the @suffolklitlab.org #LITCon 2025! - Bob Ambrogi @bobambrogi.bsky.social - Sateesh Nori — Just-Tech — @theaugmentedlawyer.bsky.social - Ben Jackson — Upsolve - Nicole Bradick @nbradick.bsky.social

Important discussion of #AI + #Law + #A2J (Access to Justice) by @karajp.bsky.social Kara Peterson and Jess Bednarz at #ABATECHSHOW

Where keynotes normally are empty platitudes, Cory Doctorow at @americanbar.org TECHSHOW brings much-needed truth. #enshittification

Delta Sky Club has curious tastes for sparkling water:

Who's ready for "loophole bots"? OpenAI's research shows LLMs' "reward hacking" by cheating. Law: "cheating within rules" = loopholes. Lawyers get paid well to find/exploit. 1. Will lawyers will use "loophole bots"? 👍 2. Will lawmakers close them? 🤷 3. Bot arms race? Or will regulators give up?

#People + #Process + #Technology. Chatted with amazing @agileattorney.bsky.social (John Grant) about #LegalTech + #AI impact on #law: 8hr research → 2 mins. Smart firms shifting from hourly → value pricing. What remains = uniquely human (empathy + judgment). Experiment safely! youtu.be/Zp93iKiFDDQ

Another New Study of #LegalAi Shows Some Models Can Significantly Improve Work Quality and Efficiency. Great article from @bobambrogi.bsky.social on research done by @danielschwarcz.bsky.social with help by @damienriehl.bsky.social. www.lawnext.com/2025/03/anot...

From @jordanfurlong.com: WISDOM: "AI will help you free up time" JORDAN: - Workers with "free time" get laid off - AI = gift of time — so you can improve - ... *professional* development - ... *personal* dev - ... *business* dev (new clients) - ... *client* dev(existing clients)

🚨New Paper Alert!🚨 How will AI transform the legal profession? Our latest study – available at papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... – offers the first randomized controlled trial of AI reasoning models & retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) in lawyering. The results are striking. 🧵👇

Tyler Cowen has said he's writing his most-recent books for #AI, not humans. (Though humans can certainly read them.) He's right: www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/19/1...

I can now text using Starlink! The question: Do I put myself into the middle of nowhere — and in harm's way — to test it? 🤔

After seeing this post last month, @ejwalters.bsky.social suggested I take a look at vLex's AI-driven legal research engine. He gave me a demo last week, and I'm here to say: I was absolutely wrong. This is the real deal. I'm still recalibrating my views about what it all means for the legal sector.

Always enjoy speaking with the incomparable Olga Mack — and who doesn't love discussing how lawyers will make money? #BusinessofLaw abovethelaw.com/2025/01/llms...

Anybody who claims that #LLMs lack #reasoning capabilities, since they're just "next-word generators": Google #Gemini, in this example, is clearly doing reasoning — or at least as much "reasoning" as typical humans. "Gemini, based on this photo, on what date was this photo taken?" Nailed it.

Salesforce and @mbenioff.bsky.social insights for #lawyers + #lawfirms: 1. Stopped hiring new #engineers: #LLMs including #agents = 30% productivity gains. Attrition, not layoffs. 2. Hiring 1K+ new #salespeople. People buy from humans (for now, at least) www.thetwentyminutevc.com/marc-benioff-2

Happy belated #PublicDomain Day: on January 1, this song's first recording — and many others — lost their #copyright, becoming free to everyone! youtu.be/ttsSt6Io_ZM

I conduct a virtual choir (Schola Diffusa), with singers on six continents. Here's our holiday song: Happy Christmas! youtu.be/sYzXLYHHRbU

A musical Christmas card: happy holidays to you and yours! youtu.be/cHgN5yBNd04

Legal professional? Please complete this survey — objectively (non-commercially) assessing #LLM use — for the Global Report on the State of #AI in #Legal Practice: maastrichtuniversity.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Fun and silly! youtu.be/gB4m7E3tP0Q

As an owner of OG Google Glass: Finally, market validation! 🙂 www.wired.com/story/google...

Excited to give the #CLE: "Leveraging #LLMs in Law Departments" — at Minnesota's #BrewingtheFuture seminar — alongside #legaltech and #legalservices luminaries from Ford, Cargill, Trimble, Norton Rose Fulbright, Greene Espel, and Elevate. Register: t.ly/0Rjdv. #litigatelikeyoumeanit

Favorite new podcast is from @horacewu.bsky.social and @damienriehl.bsky.social. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/f...

For those asking for more, my full #LegalTech Medley link — exploring crooners' views on AI, LLMs, and Neural Nets — is here. Happy nerding out! youtu.be/LrMOzfAuMj8?...

Excited to present with Salesforce's Léo Murgel — on combining an organization's #PrivateOil (e.g., contracts, settlements) with #PublicOil (e.g., cases, statutes, regulations, briefs, pleadings, motions). Join us! skills.law

Good Morning #cliocon! I've just updated my talk to include specific strategies for Flat Fee, Hybrid, and AI-Augmented legal workflows. You won't want to miss it (especially if you saw @joshualenon.bsky.social & @damienriehl.bsky.social yesterday). Join me at the Hilton Austin Ballroom J/K at 3:00!

@damienriehl.bsky.social will MC-ing the upcoming American Legal Technology Awards gala happening in October!