The reality of artificial intelligence is less dramatic, and far more human, than the competing views rooted in 1970s visions of a utopia of flying-cars versus overlords ruling from the Death Star. In legal departments, it holds great promise in enhancing efficiency for essential but supporting tasks—fostering rather than replacing legal judgment.
This efficiency gives general counsel and chief legal officers more capacity for strategic thinking and practical problem-solving. In this way, AI liberates general counsel to focus on the most human aspects of their leadership roles and the inherent—and enduring—art of legal practice.
Even in its most dazzling new features, we can detect an echo of past legal tech innovations in AI. I began practicing law at the crossroads of analog legal research and the emergence of electronic databases. Analog research relied on physical volumes of case law and a painstaking key-number system that charted labyrinthine connections among cases.
Transactional lawyers stored prized forms in file drawers or consulted the law library’s bound volumes of forms. The arrival of databases revolutionized access to precedent, enabling faster and broader access to legal resources.
There is little nostalgia for the labor-intensive methods of the past and no argument that some arcane legal skill was lost in the transition....
How could a YouTuber uncover a multi-billion dollar fraud scandal in a state run by someone who stood months ago as the vetted Democratic nominee for vice president in Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz? Taxp...