A week spent in Manhattan gave Artificial Lawyer plenty to think about. Here are five insights inspired by a series of ‘New York moments’, often about legal AI.
Fears Over Agentic AI For Lawyers
During a session on workflows, the subject of agentic AI came up, and in fact soon became central to the conversation. Why? Because single prompts only get you so far, while a chained series of tasks – hopefully with advanced abilities to plan and correct – enable a big chunk of any workflow to be automated.
A good discussion was had, and there were several questions, of which two were very similar and coming from a place not of excitement, but something else. Both revolved around the ethical risks – and Bar regulations – of letting an automated system generate, or contribute, to legal work product.
We didn’t have time to get into the deeper triggers for the fears, i.e. was this just protectionism, or was this really about ethical risks? But, either way, it reminded me of smart contracts. Remember them? The idea was that digitised contracts connected to live external info would have self-activating aspects to them, e.g. the ability to modify an insurance policy based on data the document had received. They never caught on. Why? My gut feeling was that ‘loss of control’ was the core problem. It may also have been the way ‘smart contracts’ became subsumed into the crypto world – which also put many lawyers off – but it always felt that taking real-time decision-making away from lawyers was the real reason.
So, will agentic AI systems face the same challenges? Will lawyers remain happy to do a quick prompt to summarise a document, help improve a clause, or do some research…..but then balk at the idea of an agent doing a series of tasks for them? Is that just too much of a threat?
P.S. worth adding that the three major firms on the panel said they were already using agentic programs in certain areas. So, let’s hope that any fears will dissipate as practical benefits are shown. After all, we will only get to really transformative legal change if agentic systems become part and parcel of legal work.
AI Evangelicals and More
Sitting on the opposite sofa in my hotel lobby were a group of Evangelical Christians.
‘I love ChatGPT! I really love it!’ one of the chaps kept saying, which was met with approving nods and murmurs. ‘I use it for preaching, and for confessions.’
There then followed a discussion of how great genAI was for spreading the Good Word to the flock. Implicit was the idea that it made life a lot easier. And no doubt it does.
We talk a lot about how AI will become part of everyone’s lives. But, this aspect had not been considered before. But, it makes sense. As with the law, religion is based on text – written and spoken.
Later that week, while sitting in a restaurant for breakfast, a group of folks from a tech company were at the next table, albeit not connected to legal tech. One lady in the group also really loved AI. In fact, she announced the names of every LLM one could think of at maximum volume to the room, displaying the kind of enthusiasm people sometimes give when name-dropping after spotting a celebrity.
‘And we use Claude! And we use GPT 4o! And we have used Gemini!’ she announced to an early morning restaurant filled with quiet punters more focused on their coffees.
There was no spontaneous eruption of applause from the nearby patrons, but it made one think once again how AI has spread from a fringe subject area to something that is part and parcel of daily life – not for everyone yet, but certainly now holding a position undreamed of just a few years ago.
Airport Taxis And Billable Hours
New York taxi drivers, especially those to JFK, are a source of constant inspiration. It’s worth chatting with one just for the insights they can help generate.
During a 1 hour 30 minute drive from Midtown to the airport, the taxi driver (who was from Bhutan and had once been on a hunting holiday with a Scottish lord) explained that the reason there is no direct public transport system from the city to the airport was that taxi drivers had campaigned against it. AL noted that in comparison you can get a special fast train from Paddington to Heathrow that takes 15 minutes – and similar systems exist across Europe.
This site also remembers reading how the Koch brothers and others had over many decades systematically sought to undermine public transport in the US, as part of an effort to encourage everyone to buy their own car. And that perhaps had been a factor as well, given that it seemed insane that such an important route was so slow and so inefficient.
On the way back from Paddington the cab driver was also questioned on the topic. He replied with wisdom: ‘When they made Heathrow Express a lot of us feared it would take away work. The funny thing is, it pushes more people to Paddington and generates a steady flow of fares. Before, you might spend ages getting to Heathrow with one passenger and sometimes have to drive all the way back with no fare.’
The end result: the effort to increase speed and efficiency ended up making the taxi drivers of London much happier and their lives more flexible. Whereas the taxi drivers of New York remain stuck doing huge, one-off journeys, while the general public suffers high costs and slow – and unpredictable – travel times.
Now, one wonders where there could be a connection to how the legal world works…..?
Big Legal Tech
After a sit-down with the CEO of a very large legal tech provider – more on that later – what really struck this site was how what was a huge business was thinking like a startup.
There was clearly a major investment going on with cutting edge tech, and there was an R&D approach that was truly out of a ‘Big Idea’ playbook where there is everything to play for.
There was also a very open and frank discussion about what the market would look like in a couple of years and who would emerge, or remain, the winners in terms of market share when it came to deployed legal AI tools.
It felt like I was talking to a super-ambitious startup run by a group of people in their 20s, rather than a massive corporate. This suggests that while company sizes vary enormously across legal tech, everyone is in the same boat in terms of emerging as a winner and there is everything to play for.
Obviously, the Big Two have the massive advantage of oodles of legal data (both contract data and case law), but on the productivity side of deploying genAI, i.e. making and reviewing contracts, then they were largely in the same position as many other companies, at least on a technical level. And they knew it.
That’s an exciting position for the market to be in, i.e. X may be a $billion company, but it’s genuinely competing against Y company that has revenues of less than $10m…..at least for now.
The question is: how long will this levelling of the playing field remain? How long before clear winners on the productivity side emerge?
Rule of Law
Last point. One could not really have a conversation with anyone in New York before a reference to Trump popped into existence, followed by nervous laughter and a quick change of subject. Why? Because Trump clearly despises ‘the rule of law’…and this was a conference about helping lawyers to do their jobs with tech.
It was therefore fascinating to chat to Neil Araujo, CEO of iManage, about how the rule of law and legal tech go together. He showed this site a global map of where iManage’s customers are and it told a clear story: wherever the rule of law really mattered, then they had customers. Conversely, in places where it didn’t, then they had very few customers. This was not exactly connected to the wealth of a nation either. In short, the rule of law demands lawyers, and in turn lawyers operating in a functioning legal system will reach for those tools that help them to do their jobs.
—
So, there you go. There’s a few more anecdotes to share, like the one about the New York hotel that was taken over by the authorities and chucked everyone out. But, you’ll have to hear those over a pint.
Richard Tromans, Founder, Artificial Lawyer.
—
P.S. one last point worth making is how great it was to get invited on a private tour of MoMa – one of the best art galleries in the world. It’s so nice to see legal tech companies thinking outside the box when it comes to engaging with the community.