We best be careful, or we will find ourselves in a closet talking to ourselves too much.
Once upon a time, I had a good client who was fond of saying, “We best be careful, or we will find ourselves in a closet talking to ourselves too much.” Meaning, of course, that you get into trouble if you don’t get diverse viewpoints from people who perhaps see the problem and the world differently than you.
My client’s wisdom was recently brought home to me in connection with the Gen AI hoopla. The last two months have been a whirlwind of conferences for me. During that time, I attended three technology conferences. One was CES, which was generally directed toward consumer electronics and technology. The other two, LegalWeek and ABA TechShow, were both directed at legal technology in particular.
At all three conferences, there was considerable discussion of Gen AI and the predicted revolutionary changes it portends. At LegalWeek and TechShow, the clear message was that Gen AI will disrupt legal as nothing before and that lawyers and law firms are rushing to adopt and use the technology like nothing ever before.
After these three conferences, my view of the world was that Gen AI was revolutionizing the legal world and that lawyers were constantly coming up with new ways to use Gen AI tools in their everyday practice. This worldview was seemingly confirmed by a plethora of vendor studies.
A Dose of Reality
So when I recently attended a conference of top-of-the-line, high-end trial lawyers (and only lawyers), I fully expected the same: lawyers gushing over what Gen AI could do and how they were using it every day. After all, these are the soldiers with boots on the ground, lawyers who actually practice and try cases. If anyone