The Geek In Review

Guests at two legal tech conferences discuss the impact of AI and innovations on the legal industry in 2024, including automating workflows, improving data analytics, reducing costs, and enhancing access to justice. The hosts also emphasize the importance of solving real business problems with AI solutions and explore topics like synthetic data, making legal information accessible, decentralized autonomous organizations, and innovation opportunities in the legal tech industry.

Whitney Triplet, Paul Campbell, and Adonica Black discuss the LexisNexis African Ancestry Network Fellowship 2023. They focus on technology solutions to combat racial bias in jury selection, law clinic support tools to address systemic racism, and the role of analytics in identifying disparities in the legal system. The fellowship program aims to tackle systemic racism through project-based approaches and initiatives promoting diversity in the legal field.

Jeff Pfeifer and Serena Wellen from LexisNexis discuss the rapid development of AI tools for the legal industry. They share insights on the evolution of their Lexis+ AI tool, the launch of Lexis Snapshot and Lexis Create, and the expansion of generative AI tools to an international reach. They also explore the adoption of chat GPT technology in law firms, user feedback, future improvements, AI product development, and essential skills for product managers. The guests emphasize the importance of user feedback in driving enhancements and the transformative impact of AI products on the legal industry.

Patrick DiDomenico, Tanisha Little, and Sara Miro review the Knowledge Management and Innovation for Legal Conference. They cover organizing the conference, engaging newcomers, and the future of knowledge management in the age of generative AI.

Vanderbilt Law School recently launched an exciting new initiative called the Vanderbilt AI Legal Lab (VAILL) to explore how artificial intelligence can transform legal services and access to justice. In this episode, we spoke with VAILL's leadership – Cat Moon,(👑) Director of Innovation at Vanderbilt's Program on Law and Innovation (PoLI), and Mark Williams, Associate Director for Collections and Innovation at the Massey Law Library – about their vision for this pioneering lab.  VAILL's mission is to harness AI to expand access to legal knowledge and services, with a particular focus on leveraging generative AI to improve legal service delivery. As Moon described, VAILL aims to experiment, collaborate widely, and build solutions to realize AI's potential in the legal domain. The lab will leverage Vanderbilt's cross-disciplinary strengths, drawing on experts in computer science, engineering, philosophy, and other fields to inform their ethically-grounded, human-centered approach. VAILL is prioritizing partnerships across sectors – courts, law firms, legal aid organizations, alternative providers, and others – to test ideas and develop prototype AI applications that solve real legal needs. For instance, they plan to co-create solutions with Legal Aid of North Carolina's Innovation Lab to expand access to justice. Moon explained that generative AI presents solutions for some legal challenges, so VAILL hopes to match developing technological capabilities with organizations' needs. Ethics are foundational to VAILL's work. Students will learn both practical uses of AI in law practice as well as broader policy and social implications. As Williams emphasized, beyond core professional responsibility issues, VAILL aims to empower students to lead in shaping AI's societal impacts through deeper engagement with questions around data, access, and algorithms. Teaching ethical, creative mindsets is VAILL's ultimate opportunity. VAILL will leverage the resources and expertise of Vanderbilt's law librarians to critically assess new AI tools from their unique perspective. Williams noted that the lab sees law students as a "risk free" testing ground for innovations, while also equipping them with adaptable learning capabilities to keep pace with AI's rapid evolution. Rather than viewing AI as a differentiator, VAILL's goal is producing legally-skilled innovators ready to thrive amidst ongoing change. Vanderbilt's AI Legal Lab represents an exciting development in exploring AI's legal impacts. By emphasizing human-centered, ethical approaches and collaborations, VAILL aims to pioneer solutions that expand access to legal knowledge and services for all. We look forward to seeing the innovative applications VAILL develops at the intersection of law and AI.   ⁠⁠⁠⁠Contact Us:  Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@gebauerm⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@glambert⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Threads: @glambertpod or @gebauerm66Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.comMusic: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠ Transcripts

vLex's Damien Riehl demonstrates Vincent AI, a generative AI tool that retrieves legal sources, generates summaries, and provides jurisdiction comparison. It excels due to its grounding in real legal sources and ability to handle foreign languages. The chatbot style allows for straightforward questions and future plans include generating new motions for summary judgment.

Colin Levy, Dorna Moini, and Ashley Carlisle discuss Levy's 'Handbook of Legal Tech'. The book provides an overview of key technologies transforming the legal industry. Levy shares his experience herding experts to contribute chapters. Carlisle appreciates consolidating information on contract lifecycle management. Moini contributes before having a baby. The guests offer advice for law students and lawyers, emphasizing starting with an open mind and intentional research.

Hosts Marlene Gebauer and Greg Lambert talk with Jacqueline Schafer, founder and CEO of ClearBrief, about leveraging AI to streamline legal drafting. ClearBrief integrates with Microsoft Word to suggest evidence and citations, generate chronologies, and provide security and confidentiality controls. Schafer discusses the openness of attorneys to tailored AI tools, the enthusiasm of younger associates and paralegals, and the future expansion of ClearBrief to assist paralegals and corporate attorneys. They also discuss integrations, the impact on legal writing, and the expected changes in the legal profession.

On this episode of The Geek in Review, hosts Marlene Gebauer and Greg Lambert explore innovations in legal search with Paulina Grnarova and Yannic Kilcher, co-founders of DeepJudge. This semantic search engine for legal documents leverages proprietary AI developed by experts with backgrounds from Google and academic AI research. As PhDs from ETH Zurich, Grnarova and Kilcher recognized lawyers needed better access to institutional knowledge rather than constantly reinventing the wheel. DeepJudge moves beyond traditional keyword searches to a deeper integration of search and generative AI models like GPT-3. Partnerships provide financial support and key insights – advisors include execs from Recommind and Kira Systems while collaborations with law firms shape real-world product capabilities. Discussing product development, Kilcher explains connecting search to language models allows generating summaries grounded in internal data without ethical or security risks of training individual models. Grnarova finds the core problem of connecting users to full knowledge translates universally across firms, though notes larger US firms devote more resources to knowledge management and data science teams. When asked about the future of AI, Grnarova expresses excitement for AI and humans enhancing each other rather than replacing human roles. Kilcher predicts continued growth in model scale and capability, requiring innovations to sustain rapid progress. They aim to leverage academic research and industry experience to build AI that augments, not displaces, professionals. DeepJudge stands out for its co-founder expertise and proprietary AI enabling semantic search to tap into institutional knowledge. Instead of reinventing the wheel, lawyers can find relevant precedents and background facts at their fingertips. As Kilcher states, competitive advantage lies in accumulated know-how – their technology surfaces this asset. The future of DeepJudge lies in combining search and generative models for greater insights. Links: Contact DeepJudge: info@deepjudge.ai⁠ Contact Us:  Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@gebauerm⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@glambert⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Threads: @glambertpod or @gebauerm66 Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠ Transcript

[Ed. Note: This episodes discusses sensitive issues including depression and suicide. -GL] Mental health and wellbeing issues have long posed challenges in the legal profession.  However, in this thoughtful episode of The Geek in Review podcast, hosts Marlene Gebauer and Greg Lambert have an enlightening discussion with three experts on concrete ways to foster greater wellness. Defining wellbeing holistically, Bree Buchanan, co-founder of the Well-Being in Law Movement, explains it encompasses mental, emotional, occupational, spiritual, and physical dimensions. She argues the profession needs “systemic, structural change” through total leadership buy-in, not just HR-led programs. As Buchanan emphasizes, “What I see frequently, then you'll have a practice group or a team, and the leader of that is not bought into this at all.” Reviewing startling statistics from a new Thomson Reuters survey, Nita Cumello reveals over 50% of legal professionals have taken a mental health day this past quarter. She worries this implies “even more days spent, where they're operating in a negative or stressed or in best case, state of neutral headspace.” Cumello asserts, “if more than half of the people are struggling with mental health difficulties enough that it forces them to take time away from work, it means that there are even more days spent, where they're operating in a negative or stressed or in best case, state of neutral headspace.” Saskia Mehlhorn courageously shares her family’s painful experience losing her youngest son to suicide and the importance of removing stigma through authenticity. As she recounts her eldest son telling her, “You can’t make the last thing that people will know about [him] something that isn’t him.” Mehlhorn stresses, "if someone lives authentically, we have to pick them up at the point where we, as a family, as a community, as a society fail and don't allow them to live authentically any longer." Offering insights on providing genuine support, the guests emphasize taking helpful actions, active listening without platitudes, and cueing off what colleagues need. Buchanan advises firms should intervene to assist struggling employees rather than ignore issues or terminate them. She observes, “there’s much more willingness to sit down and give the person a chance and work with them.” Cumello concludes wellbeing can’t be crowded out by urgent business demands, stating “we have to keep the well being movement as and think about it in that reframe sense of how foundational it is to performing optimally." She advocates assessing workforce wellbeing, training at all levels, and equipping leaders to role model healthy behaviors to drive lasting cultural change. Links: The Unmind report on The State of WellBeing in Law Thomson Reuters Future of Professionals Report  DIal 988 - Suicide and Crisis Lifeline Contact Us:  Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@gebauerm⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@glambert⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Threads: @glambertpod or @gebauerm66 Voicemail: 713-487-7821 Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠ Transcript