Independent analysis
Sharp, conflict-free commentary on how law and technology actually collide — for lawyers, legal-ops teams and CLOs.
The deposition room has always rewarded preparation. In 2026, preparation increasingly means something specific: running a witness's prior sworn testimony, public statements, regulatory filings, and social media history through an AI system trained to surface contradictions before the examination begins. Plaintiffs' firms — particularly boutiques...
The legaltech press has spent the better part of three years breathlessly covering AI's impact on litigation, M&A due diligence, and contract review. Meanwhile, tax lawyers have been quietly building some of the highest per-attorney AI ROI numbers in BigLaw — and almost nobody has...
Here is something your court reporter almost certainly didn't mention when she handed you the certified transcript: the firm that employs her may be sitting on a licensing agreement with an AI company that gives that vendor the right to train models on everything she's...
Family law attorneys have been watching the AI revolution from the waiting room.
The privilege log has always been litigation's most tedious artifact. Thousands of entries, each requiring a specific factual predicate, each potentially the subject of a motion to compel. So when AI-assisted review tools promised to automate the process—flagging privileged documents, populating log fields, generating descriptions—litigation...
No practice area in American law is fighting harder about AI adoption right now than environmental law. Not IP, not securities, not even criminal defense — environmental. And the fight is unusually bitter because both sides have genuinely compelling arguments, the stakes involve real ecosystems...
Something uncomfortable is happening in law firms that have been running AI tools for eighteen months or more, and the partnership is mostly not talking about it. The quality floor is dropping. Not catastrophically, not all at once — but incrementally, invisibly, in the way...
When litigation departments at firms like Latham & Watkins and Kirkland & Ellis started quietly deploying AI drafting tools in 2023 and 2024, patent prosecutors largely watched from the sidelines. Not because they were technophobic. Because they were right to be skeptical.
Something is happening in legal AI that deserves more attention than it's getting in board rooms and procurement meetings. The major vendors — Harvey, Ironclad, ContractPodAi, and increasingly Thomson Reuters with its CoCounsel suite — are no longer selling point solutions. They're selling ecosystems. And...