Welcome to In The News. I am Brett Burney from Appsinlaw.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.

Jeff, we have a special guest today.

We don't normally do this, but one of us, and shall not remain nameless, it'll be me,

I'm going to be on vacation.

And so we like to record some additional sessions to play while we're not able to do things live

every Friday.

And this time we just had a great idea that we wanted to invite a friend of the show and personally a good friend to just talk about some technology things that he sees going on.

This is Steve Embry, who has been practicing law for many, many years.

I think Steve, it was over 30 something years, right?

Something like that.

Somewhere around there.

That's where I first met Steve.

He was a litigator at Frost Brown Todd, right?

Or I don't know what they call it now.

That's just the way that I remember the firm.

And I would run into you through the American Bar Association and Tech Show, Steve.

You have retired from practice, but I think you're more busy than I remember you ever being.

Because you now author Tech Law Crossroads.

This is a blog, so I'm showing this right now, which I've always enjoyed following you on.

And you also write for AboveTheLaw.com, which is a blog that's been around for a very long time.

And you have been writing some technology-focused pieces.

And so, again, I've worked with Steve on several different projects, again, from the ABA, talking with him through the technology conferences, the ABA tech show that Jeff and I also are involved in.

And that's just like maybe one or two things, Steve, that I know that you're involved in.

But there's many other things.

But knowing Steve as I do, he is also a technology nerd, fellow nerd head.

And it's always fun to talk with him, not just specifically about like, hey, that's the new Apple Watch.

Or, I mean, if you can see, we're going to get into this.

He's wearing like the meta glasses right now as he's talking with us, which is amazing.

But we also love to geek out on some of the things.

So it's not just that, but Steve also does a lot of in-depth articles and coverage about how AI is being used today, more specifically in the practice of law or in the legal sphere, which is not just for lawyers.

It's really as applies to everything.

We were just talking about an article that you wrote about arbitration and how dispute resolution using AI tools are being used from their perspective, which is also interesting.

So anyway, that's probably enough on the about of, well, we'll get into more detail, Steve.

But welcome.

We are thrilled for you to join with us today.

And we just wanted to kind of have a little general conversation about some of the technology you're using, some of the technology trends that you're seeing, and where it's going to go.

As somebody that's using it in all that you're doing.

So welcome.

Thanks for joining us.

Thanks so much for having me.

As I've told you, Brett, and probably you too, Jeff, this is one of my favorite podcasts.

I have a list of podcasts that every week I try to listen to.

I always get to this one first.

And often this is the only one I get to because of what I'm doing.

And sometimes I actually get tired and don't listen at all.

But I always listen to this one.

So kudos to you guys.

That's so nice.

Thank you.

Steve, tell us a little bit about the technology that you're using day to day right now.

Your phone, your computer.

What are the main things you're using?

Yeah.

So I use the iPad Pro.

I'm not using it as much as I used to.

I think maybe I told this story to you, Brett.

I was at an Apple conference.

Oh, yeah.

MacStock.

MacStock, right?

Yeah, you wrote about that.

And I got there and some reason I had left my iPad and my laptop at home.

So I had to go out and get an Uber to the local Best Buy.

And I bought a 13-inch MacBook Air, thinking I would use it during the conference.

When the conference was done, I'd return it and I'd be dead.

Well, actually, I liked it so much that it has been my go-to device, even above the iPad for everything.

I'm doing this right now.

It's light.

It's dependable.

A lot of the articles that I write, they just flow better or work better on a laptop as opposed to the iPad,

particularly like with the TechLaw Crossroads, which is on a WordPress platform.

form kevin o'keefe's form as you know and and sometimes the app head just doesn't play nice

with it and so it just works better with this so so i've been using this pretty much exclusively i

had a macbook pro um and and i thought that's what i thought i would just keep and send this one back

but i like this one so well i said come sell the macbook pro and just keep this one um and it was

a big it was bigger too so for me in my sort of lifestyle the the smaller version of the macbook

is actually better.

And what are you using for a smartphone nowadays?

The iPhone, the latest iPhone.

And in fact, I was...

Let's get it out here.

You got the Pro?

I think you're a Pro model, right?

I got the orange.

Yes!

17 Pro.

Noxious orange model.

Oh, you did too.

It's the pumpkin spice caramel latte version there.

I don't know what you found.

uh brett and jeff but uh of course i do this every year because i sort of on my rationale or excuse

depending on who on on who you ask is you know i have to keep abreast of technology so i should get

a new iphone every year absolutely that's a good reason yeah that's that's what i tell myself

but i was frankly shocked at how much better the camera and cameras were on this new iphone than

they were before. I was not expecting that. I mean, they really are. It's really quite an

improvement. And some of the features like the selfie landscape features, I think you got

recently is that's really cool. And so, so yeah, that's what I use as a, as a, an iPhone. I also

have a, I hate to ask, I guess I shouldn't confess this, but I will also have a Samsung Galaxy

Android phone. And the main reason I do that is, you know, I wanted to, well, two reasons. One,

I wanted to have a different like phone and phone number I could give out to vendors,

which I know I could use without buying another phone. But one of the features on the Galaxy is

it's got a recording transcription tool built in, and it's actually better. I was using Whisper,

But I think this feature is actually better and converted to that.

Yeah, I've had some glitches with Whisper from time to time.

So, yeah, I have two phones.

As much as I run into you, Steve, I don't know that I've ever seen you pick up the other phone.

Like, I always see you with an iPhone.

But it is good.

Like you say, you're using it for like a separate phone number, and it does keep it separate, which is a good thing, too.

And it's, you know, it is, I think there's some value, and maybe this is an excuse more than the rationale.

There's some value to being at least acquainted with the Android system to sort of know how it works.

Absolutely.

Because a lot of people use Androids, and I'll get questions from time to time.

How do I do this on a phone?

And I'll say, well, on the Apple phone?

Well, I don't have an Apple phone.

I have an Android.

Oh, okay.

Well, you know, it's a little bit different, and it takes a little getting used to, but it'll do this, and it'll do that.

So just to wrap up the technology that you're using, I have to ask about the technology you're wearing, because as Brett alluded to before, you are wearing the meta Ray-Bans.

And I'm curious, tell me a little bit, how long have you had them?

What are you using them for?

What do you like?

What do you dislike?

Yeah, I've had them for about a week or so.

Oh, brand new.

Okay.

And this is the first generation.

And if I went back and revisited, I might, you know, get maybe the second generation or even the latest one, which has got the text capability on it, which I'm really not sure about.

I want to see a text like running across the screen while I'm talking to somebody.

But, you know, it's it's got the camera.

You can you can touch the top and it'll take a picture, hold it down and take a video.

So the speakers and microphone are actually in the glasses.

So you're hearing me and I'm hearing you sort of by my ears.

But the cool thing that it does, it's got an AI feature that is actually pretty good.

You could ask it various questions.

It'll respond.

You ask it orally.

You don't have to pick up your phone to do it.

And I think that when we were talking beforehand, I gave the example when I was in Boston last week,

I was looking out the window at the river and sort of the downtown scene.

And so I asked the tool, what am I looking at?

And it said, well, you're looking at a river and there's some skyscrapers and some businesses.

Okay, that's fine.

It can see.

Then I asked, well, where am I?

And it said, you were in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

And to me, that was kind of impressive that it could figure where I was.

I don't know whether it did that through just, you know, location systems or comparing what I was seeing.

But you can, you know, you can look at various objects and say, what is this?

like a water bottle or, you know, a magazine, and it'll tell you,

which is kind of cool. And it'll also read texts to you.

It'll say you got a text from so-and-so and it'll read it.

And then you can, you can ask it to call somebody or text somebody.

So all in all, I've been kind of, kind of happy with it.

Surprisingly. So, I mean, I never thought I would be, but yeah, I,

I bought them and, and pretty happy with them. Yeah.

Now I'm fascinated by that. Yeah. Are you connecting via Bluetooth?

Steve, is that how you're, okay. Cause you sound really good. Like that microphone is really good

in there. And so you're connecting via Bluetooth to your iPhone as well. That's how it gets the

text messages. Interesting. Okay. Go ahead, Jeff. And it's funny because I was in one of the keynotes

at Clio and my phone rang and I had these on and I thought, oh crap, I'm disturbing everybody. So I'm

madly punching at the, and then it dawned on me, nobody else could hear it ring cause it was coming

that is interesting i'm fascinated by it because i'm a big fan of the apple vision pro you do not

have a vision pro is that right yeah um and the vision pro is amazing it's it's frankly the most

impressive technology that apple has made in an incredibly long time as far as i'm concerned but

it's also very high-end and very futuristic i mean it's so expensive and although it's fantastic for

watching movies and for the things I do with it, it's tough to justify the expense, unlike an iPhone,

where you can justify getting it every year because it's so useful for a million different things.

It's just, you know, the way I justify it is it's just, it's a way to sort of experience the future.

But what Apple is doing on the high end with this Vision OS, which is, I mean,

truly amazing what they've done with Visual OS operating system. I'm interested that it's what

Meta, you know, which I always think of as Facebook, I mean, are doing from the low end,

You know, they're sort of coming up from the bottom, whereas Apple, I think, is going to be coming down from the top.

And eventually they will meet in the middle because I do believe that we will have a future.

I don't know how far away it is.

Five years, maybe even 10.

I don't know.

But we will have a future where people that wear glasses like me for, you know, it'll be fantastic that you wear glasses because you'll want to have glasses because your glasses will be your AirPods, which is basically what yours are serving as right now, working as your AirPods.

And your glasses will be able to see the world around you and interact with it and give you information.

And then, and this is the part that I don't know about, you know, how it would superimpose

in an augmented reality sense information that's relevant to the world around you.

You know, Meta, as you just said, their newest version does that by just having a tiny little

screen in the corner.

When I'm wearing my Vision Pro, it's interesting that, you know, even though it's goggles that

are coming up the world because of the cameras, I'm seeing the outside world just as if I

am wearing glasses, but then I will bring up apps and windows and things like that.

And it's getting to the point where it becomes natural.

I mean, the best example I think of is the,

and it just showed up on the screen

that you were showing a second, Brett,

the newest version of the operating system

for the Vision OS, where you can have widgets in place.

And so I can take like a clock and I can put it on my wall.

And I actually get to the point

where sometimes I'll be in my living room

and I'll glance up on the wall to see the clock.

And I'm like, oh no, there actually is no clock there.

It's just, I see a clock there

whenever I'm wearing my Vision Pro,

but I just get so used to it.

So it is interesting to me how these worlds are coming together.

I don't know if that's an interest of you in the future, or maybe you're just trying out the latest technology.

You've only had it a week, so it's all brand new.

But it's fascinating to me.

I was thinking as you were talking, where we are with these metaglasses sort of suggests sort of where we were not that long ago with the AirPods.

Very convenient devices, inexpensive enough for most people to buy.

And now they have developed all these different capabilities.

I said at the time I thought it was probably the most significant product

that Apple had come out with since the iPhone because of all its capabilities.

And I wish that these glasses also had the hearing capabilities

and hearing aid features that the the uh airpods do because you know that would be a significant

uh development particularly for those those of us who are old enough to begin having those kinds of

issues um so i hope that they do that with these sooner or later and you know i think it would be

i would not be at all surprised if apple didn't come out with some version of these kind of glasses

that would incorporate the the airpods and capabilities and everything else um so agreed

interesting future yeah yeah that would be cool that would be cool now steve just real quick because

i got around this out i know you also have an apple watch i do um you've been using because

you were like one of the first like lawyers that i saw that actually had a watch ultra which was just

really cool and uh i think you keep uh upgrading that as well you talked about the airpods did you

you get the new airpods pro 3 you got those already okay i figured that you would uh on that

as well and then i'm just going to assume you probably have an apple tv back at the house you

so most everything else that it sounds like uh you know you're you're in the you're you're thick

in the apple ecosystem but now i just love the fact that i i didn't know that much that you were

experimenting a little bit more with the android side and now with the meta uh glasses and i just

think that that's cool like you said it just helps you to be a little bit more well-rounded which is

always yeah it's you know it's like a lot of things in life you can get you can get married to a system

to the extent that you you don't see other things that are going on and other developments and other

possibilities and and kind of what's coming down the pike and so you know i'm as i'm as as loyal

an apple supporter as you can find but you know there are things that i wish it had or would do

better and all that sort of stuff. And so, so yeah, I've, I've tried out, I've purchased and

sold more technology products than I can remember. That might, that, so that might be a good

transition point because one of the things I really wanted to talk to you about, Steve, is,

is AI. And I think of it particularly as a lawyer, and I want to talk to you about that. Although

frankly, the stuff that we're looking at in the legal context, I think it's, it's just as in its

own way. It's coming out for people that are doctors or business people or everyone else.

And you talk about like you sort of want to see the big picture of stuff. One of the things that

I'm impressed about what you've been doing is you have been following so many of the companies that

are bringing AI to law firms, you know, things like Harvey, which we use at some of the larger

law firms like where I work, things like Clio, which is a little bit more medium to small firms.

I know that there's a lot of other people. If we could start, I would love to sort of hear

your take as of today, you know, and where we are late 2025, the promise and the peril of AI for

lawyers. And then maybe we can sort of talk about what some of the different platforms are offering

and where it goes from that. Because I think that it, I mean, I'll begin by saying that I'm

prejudiced, that I think what it can do is amazing. And it is going to be transformative. In my view,

it already is starting to get there. And yet at the same time, it has a ton of dangers, not just

obvious ones like hallucinations but um you know it may lead us some of the path and i know that one

of your recent articles sort of talked about the need to stay analog so why don't you start with

sort of your general take on ai for lawyers and go from there yeah sure it's um one of the keynote

speakers at the clio conference was richard suskin who sure is thought of pretty reverently by by most

people not all people some people say he's you know a little simplistic um but one of the things he

he posed to the group was how will businesses, individuals, organizations solve the problems

that they have used lawyers for in the future? And his premise was that they're going to do it

completely different because of the AI tools. More self-help, for example, I think is on the

horizon. I saw an article today where a person used chat GPT to defend a landlord-tenant eviction

successfully a landlord tenant fiction. Wow. Okay. So I think that that is coming down the road.

A lot of the people, particularly on the vendor side of things, like to say, well, you know, it's

not going to be that disruptive because there'll always be legal problems. There'll always be a need

for lawyers to do the strategizing and visioning kinds of things that they're really good at.

I don't agree with that. Number one, not all lawyers are equally capable of strategizing and

visioning. Some of us are better than others, and the ones that are not good are going to lose out

to the ones that are good. Number two, I don't think there's any question that the legal profession

has been overbuilt. It's been overbuilt to serve the leverage model that, let's face it,

all of us have made a lot of money off of for the past, what, 30, 40, 50 years.

I think AI is going to destroy that model significantly.

And in the destruction of it, it's going to eliminate a lot of the tasks that many of these

overly, many of these lawyers that we have used to satisfy the leverage model will no

longer have the opportunity to their billable quotas by doing tasks that AI can now do.

But that's going to have a significant disruptive effect. I'm not sure when,

because you can never underestimate the power of lawyers to push back against technology,

particularly when it starts trimming their billable hours. I think that's going to happen.

Another real concern that I have is, and it's one that has not been terribly well addressed,

is it's not just lawyers that will be affected.

It's the entire legal sort of ecosystem.

And that includes a lot of administrative type people,

marketing type people, IT type people.

You know, we think, oh, well, they'll always have jobs.

They're not going to have an IT person

that's not going to have a job

when a bot can do it just as well.

I mean, let's face it, that's reality.

And so some of the people who can least afford

to be disrupted are the ones

that are going to be hurt the most.

you know just to jump off on that i've talked steve too and this is not going to surprise you

i've talked to people that work um that are you know computer programmers they write programs you

know working for small companies big companies and they have said you know years ago you know

you would hire people that were fresh out of college or whatever and they would sort of start

their career programming and they all the field for computer science is already at the point

where a first second third year computer programmer is not as good as the ais are and so that is you

Is a company going to spend the money in hiring someone that's frankly not as good as what

they can do with Claude or whatever AI system they're going to use?

And it makes it tough to enter the field.

But of course, the irony is you need to enter the field so that you can get good and gain

that experience in the future.

And so that is already disruptive.

I don't think we're at the point where law firms are not hiring our first year associates

because the AI is better.

And yet, these AI products that are being sold to law firms, they will purport to...

to prepare first drafts of documents, sometimes better than what a young lawyer could do,

sometimes not.

It is, it's, I mean, it's definitely disruptive.

No question about that.

Is it changing everything?

And it's getting to the point where you need to learn, you know, to be a new lawyer, today's

world, you absolutely need to understand how to work with the AI so that you don't get replaced

it.

I'm not saying it's replacing it today.

And yet at the same time, and we all know if we have medical problems, we self-diagnose

through going to WebMD or those sorts of things.

And so it won't surprise me that a lot of people will be self-resolving things through the law of the AI as they get more sophisticated.

It's really interesting.

So, yeah, what's the old joke?

You have a hangnail and you ask chat GPT, and it says usually it's not anything serious.

On occasion, it can be terminal cancer.

Of course.

Right.

But everything you just said about the computer programmers, Jeff, I think you can just substitute the word young lawyers in there.

Yeah.

And it's been a real, I've been thinking about that a lot because there's this notion that senior lawyers are really good because they have gut instincts about things.

And I've never been a real fan of the notion of gut instincts.

I think what has happened when a senior lawyer has a gut instinct, it's because he or she looks at a problem and sees patterns in that problem that they have experienced before in their life over and over and over and over again.

So you say, oh, this is just like the case where I defended Jeff Richardson on this claim.

It's not quite the same, but it's got a lot of the same elements.

So here's what we can, here's the strategy we can come up with.

You can't, I'm concerned that younger lawyers can't get there if they immediately run to

chat GPT or even one of the closed systems and ask for the answer.

It's so seductive and it's so easy that I fear that they will not stop there and think

through the response and the answer and whether it's right or whether it's wrong.

So I was at the AALL conference back in the summer that I'm not sure, Brett, if you go to, I think maybe you haven't, maybe you were there, I can't remember.

But there was an interesting panel discussion from law librarians, and one of them was with a very large law firm, I can't remember the name of it.

And she said, you know, what she had noticed is once the more experienced lawyers become acclimated to using the generative AI tools, they are so much better at it because, number one, they're able to formulate the question after thinking about the problem.

So they have a better question.

And then when they get the response, they're better at being able to say, this doesn't sound right.

That part, that can't be right.

And so she was saying the problem that we have is unless we have younger lawyers go through a lot of that training kind of experience over time, we're going to end up with, you know, people with minds full of mush if we're not careful.

And, you know, the issue on that is that you talked about how seductive it is and how easy it is.

But the other adjective that I worry about is, you know, definitive, incorrectly so.

Because when the AI, I know you've written about this before, so I know you know what I'm talking about.

When the AI gives you an answer, it says it with 100% confidence as if that is the answer.

And then if you push back on it and say, well, actually, isn't the opposite true?

It will oftentimes say, absolutely, that opposite is true.

Thank you so much for pointing that out.

And you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Like if I didn't know that that first answer was wrong.

The thing that's been in the legal news a lot for the past, I guess, maybe two years,

that first one was the attorney, what was his name, Schwartz up in New York,

who filed a brief that had cases in it that were made up.

They're hallucinated by ChatGPT.

I mean, that's the easy one.

I mean, if you cite the case of Roe versus Wade, but there is no Roe versus Wade, that's

sort of objective.

We can easily see that case does not exist.

It's a hallucination.

But what worries me is when the AI purports to give you an analysis of here, you know,

here's how this should be done.

And sometimes it's incredibly accurate and does it in 15, 30 seconds.

And it's like, this is so helpful.

And then other times it doesn't.

I have a lot of AI systems that I will sometimes, you know, give it a whole bunch of documents.

And it would take me so long to go through these documents, needle in a haystack to find

what does it say about this type of a clause and a contract.

And the AI can quickly go through and say, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

For these 100 documents, these 30 have that clause.

But then you need to double check it because it turns out that some of those 30 actually

won't.

And some of them that it doesn't say it has actually do.

And so it's a trust but verify situation.

And yet, as frustrating as that might make me, the reality is that, especially if I'm just looking for examples of clauses and contracts, it will give it to me so much faster than I could have found it, so much faster than I could have had a young associate at my firm spend all these hours going through it.

And it gets to, I mean, clients are not going to pay for some of these labor intensive tasks that, you know, 10, 20 years ago, we would have young associates do because they know that the AI can do it.

not 100 but it can get so close and you can double check it and that gets to the experience thing

that you're talking about that you have to understand what you're looking for to be able

to check it um yeah i think you know we when we talk about things like this we also have to

consider the fact that you know the the human uh human response to prompts often contains errors as

well. I don't want this to be the perfect to become the enemy of the good. But there are

practical problems. And I've talked about this before that, you know, people are very quick to

blame lazy lawyering for not coming up with the hallucinations or inaccuracies, which are probably,

you know, the hallucinations are only the tip of the iceberg. I think the inaccuracies,

He's citing a case for a proposition, which is not correct.

It happens probably more frequently.

But I was talking to a lawyer at a conference of lawyers not long ago.

We were talking about this very thing.

And he said, you know, I serve as local counsel in lots of cases.

And if National Council sends me a brief that needs to be filed in the next 30 minutes to meet the deadline,

Am I going to have to go through and once I sign the pleading, does that make me responsible for any hallucinations in what's written?

And even if I get the document a week in advance, if I go check all those hallucinations, the National Council is probably going to say, I'm not going to pay you for that.

So I think at some point, and I'm not sure when it is, when it will be, I think these systems are going to get to the point where they can become as trustworthy as humans can be.

In other words, even before AI, when a national council sent a brief, there could be errors in it.

But we accepted sort of as a profession that, yeah, there could be errors, but we're just going to go on with it.

And I think at some point these systems will get close to that, and that'll make them even more usable.

And you make a very good point.

Clients are going to demand.

Senior partners are going to demand.

I think I'd written a piece about what happens when a senior partner has these billing guidelines that preclude or at least disparage checking all the citations from a generative AI tool.

he's not going to want the associate doing the research to check all those citations because

the associate won't get paid we won't get paid for it and so i mean there's just a lot of abuses

there that i think are are pending over the horizon as pressures mount for for clients lawyers

businesses to to force the service industry to rely more and more on these tools unless they get

ready for unless they're ready to tolerate certain inaccuracies. Having gone to the Clio conference

and other ones, I mean, do you have any being more positive about it? You know, assuming that the

lawyers are not going to lose their jobs quite yet, quite yet, at least not maybe not this year.

What are some of the things that you think are most and you don't have to identify specific

vendors, but more of just like the types of tools? What are the things that you're seeing that there

seems to be the most enthusiasm and optimism about how it could be helpful for lawyers?

Well, I mean, the thing that was introduced at Clio was the ability to marry using AI inquiries,

both on internal data within a firm, which is where there's a vast repository of information,

and external data, the cases and all of that, in a seamless sort of way.

And that's, I've said for a long time, that's sort of the holy grail, where you just ask and

I completely agree.

And it gives you, not only gives you answers from your stuff, but answers from the rest of the world.

And, you know, I think the Harvey and LexisNexis partnership was moving in that direction.

The Clio acquisition of Vlex, I mean, I'm sure that that was on their minds when they did that,

because they ended up with a sophisticated AI tool and, you know, a ton of data.

So, you know, that's having that kind of ability, I think, is it really makes these tools a lot more useful.

And I think we're seeing or going to see, you know, we talk a lot about the access to justice or lack thereof.

But I think we will see people using these tools to to solve their legal problems that they couldn't afford a lawyer to solve.

And I know that that's a hot topic, particularly the judges, because they get all, you know, we don't want this pro se stuff in our courtroom and blah, blah, blah.

But pro se stuff that's not 100% perfect is better than none, where these people just starve.

And I think we can see a lot of uses for these tools, not only by those that are completely underprivileged and can't afford a lawyer, but those small businesses, startups.

The woman that really desperately needs a divorce but can't afford a lawyer.

I think these tools are going to enable lawyers to perform some of those services that they couldn't before because of cost pressure and cost prohibitions.

Plaintiffs and contingency fee lawyers are another example.

There are cases that contingency lawyers won't take because the amount of time they have to spend will not be justified by the reward at the end, the recovery.

If you can constrain that time spent on the case, you can take more cases.

And there's a theory and some data to support it that that's exactly what is happening in the real world.

Wainwright-of-Sawyers are taking more cases.

What that means, of course, is that people that have been injured in some fashion that wouldn't be able to prosecute their claim and get a recovery will now be able to.

And that's a good thing.

So, you know, yes, there could be disruptions, but there have been disruptions when Henry Ford rolled out the Model T.

There was significant disruption at that point in time.

But, you know, we can't underestimate the disruption and change that will occur.

We can't overestimate the benefits of it because, you know, let's face it, the world we live in today was made possible by disruptions of all things, many, many, many things.

And, you know, some people will suffer.

Many of us will, in the long run, will say, you know, I can't believe that there was a time that you had to go look stuff up in books and you had to drive to the office Saturdays and Sundays because you couldn't get it.

crazy, but that's a lot better life where you don't have to do that. Right. So, you know,

you have to keep all of it sort of in balance as you, as you look at risks and benefits,

it's easy to see some of the risks. It's not always easy to see some of the benefits.

So I've seen a dystopian science fiction movies where there are some artificial intelligence,

which is the adjudicator and the judge in a trial. And I always thought, well, what an

interesting sci-fi idea. And here you are, you know, the article that you wrote for above the

law saying that AI arbitrators talk about this and should I be scared?

Well, it stems from an announcement by AAA, who has who has is being pretty innovative in the

entire AI space. And what they were proposing is that there would be for a certain class of cases,

I think dot more document intensive kind of maybe construction cases or something like that,

that they would allow a bot to basically decide the case based on the pleadings and the information

provided in the pleadings. The idea being that would save money and save time for everyone

involved. And I think it's an interesting concept for some level and some types of matter.

One of the examples that was pointed out to me by an in-house counsel for an insurance carrier was

It's subrogation claims where one carrier is subrogating against another.

I mean, those things rarely go to a jury anyway, and it's all pretty cut and dried.

Either it's your fault or it's my fault, and my insurance company pays or yours does.

The insurance already made whole or at least compensated, so there's no sort of individual sort of fear about it.

It's just a business-to-business decision.

And there are lots of cases like that.

I mean, one general counsel said to me, I think she said, you know, if I could have every case with exposures of $50,000 or less decided by an AI tool, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

I spend more money on those cases than what they're worth.

So you get some of them wrong.

Big deal, you know.

We have used an AI bot for decisions with eBay for years and years and years.

And there's an escape clause there.

I mean, if you don't like the decision, you can have it kicked up to a human.

Most people accept the decision.

The thing I noticed over the practice of law for many, many years was most businesses can deal with exposures if they kind of know what they are.

If they know that they're going to have to pay $50 million for a set of claims in the future, as long as they know and can get that resolved quickly, they can live with that.

It's when uncertainty drags on and on and on and on.

That just messes up their budget.

It messes up the whole process.

And so I can see how there'd be various places where having a kind of an AI decision-making would be preferable.

Now, of course, everybody immediately says, well, what about bias?

And I'm like, again, this is, you know, it's not what perfect be the enemy of good.

If you look at the bias of our human judges, right, there's a lot.

I mean, there was a study study that said, you know, a judge in some city judges in certain

cities would decide things and be more harsh on people the Monday after the football team

lost NFL team, local NFL team lost.

I mean, there's all sorts of biases. And in many respects, we might have less bias with some of these. I don't think it's I don't think it would be appropriate in cases involving really human kind of issues where somebody like a significant mass tort or something like that, where emotions and having that sort of empathy with people becomes important.

And a lot of business disputes are not like that.

They're completely different.

They're just a business.

It's just a business proposition.

So it'd be interesting to see.

As I think I wrote in the article, I've given several presentations to lawyers at retreats.

And somebody always stands up and says, you know, I'm a litigator and I'm not too worried about all this stuff because, you know, the things that's so good about litigators is our gut instinct, our empathy for people,

our persuasion, our ability to read body language, so on and so forth.

There's a lot of data that shows that's not really true.

But be that as may, my response is usually, you may be right.

I'm not saying that you are, but you may be right.

But what you haven't taken into account is that the person,

the people deciding the dispute will no longer be humans.

They'll be kind of a gasp goes throughout the room.

Yeah.

Let me just close up the topic.

I'll tell you, when I read this article, when I saw your title,

I'm like, this is ridiculous.

I mean, how could you possibly that same AI that we were just talking about how it has

hallucinations and it says things that seem definitively to be X when it's actually the

opposite of X that's true.

And yet, you know, number one, since they're, you know, whenever I'm involved in a lawsuit,

you know, oftentimes when I lose, I feel like I should have won.

And maybe that's true, maybe that's wrong.

And, you know, so there's judges are going to have to go one way or the other.

Mistakes will be made.

And the thing that you pointed out just now, and that was in the article is like to a certain

degree, you know, for if you have a company, you know, how much money are we going to spend to

resolve this? Because you hate to spend $50,000 to litigate a $20,000 dispute. You know, if you can

get a, you know, there's also something to be said for just finality. And I, and, you know,

I settle cases with my clients all the time where, you know, I feel like we should have won the case,

but the advantage of the settlement is oftentimes, you know what, we could do a lot worse than this.

And now we can all move on.

And that's the part where, gosh, you know, maybe with some degree for certain types of cases, if everybody agrees going into, you know, we're going to spend just, you know, a very minimal amount of money to have an AI arbitrated based upon the law.

Hopefully they get it right.

But at least we could all move on from it.

It amazes me to say this, but this is perhaps not that crazy for certain types of cases.

But it's bizarre to me to even think about it.

You know, the other point to that is we may have AI not decide the entire dispute, but we may have AI decide motions, like a motion to amend.

You know, we have all seen lawyers that even though everybody knows it's going to be granted, we'll still fight it.

Or motions for an extension, we'll still fight it.

And, you know, so now we all have to file our motions and we all have, you know, 15 page briefs all say the same thing because it's all been said a million times before.

Then we have to wait until the judge gets around to saying, of course you can amend.

Are you crazy?

And those kinds of discovery disputes.

I can't tell you, and Jeff, you know how many hours and days are spent, A, arguing all your stupid discovery disputes that most of the time you know how it's going to turn out.

but you feel bot or bound to do it.

And they just eat up massive amounts of time.

And having a bot say, you know, you get the discovery, that's it.

File your emotions and within two hours you'll have my ruling on it.

I can see some value to that.

I really can.

Well, Brett, I could sit here and talk about AI forever.

So let's move on to the next topic.

You have some other things for us to talk about.

I do.

You know what?

Okay, so I'm going to go back to more fun stuff real quick because you're right.

I would love to dig into more of the AI.

And I talked to Steve quite a bit.

And so I always enjoy hearing his feedback from some of the conferences that he goes to or that we're at together.

And it's just really neat to see him write it out.

But I'm going to point you right back, Steve.

You did two articles not too long ago, within the last month.

That is the fun stuff.

I love these.

Some travel tips you may know by heart and some that you don't.

Because, of course, I know you.

You do travel quite a bit.

As people can hear you go to several conferences.

You do a lot of speaking engagements.

and I just we always enjoy Jeff and I have done several specials even when we've talked about

our travel tips or our gadgets share a couple of here with us with our audience that uh you

particularly have enjoyed or maybe you've heard other people appreciate the fact that you shared

with them yeah this all stemmed out of a uh a conversation I had going to the airport with a

with a younger lawyer and she was you know can you give me any travel tips you've traveled for so

much. And so I was rattling them off and she's busy writing them down. I thought,

I can tell you that the tip that I've gotten the single most comment on was the tip about when to

go to the bathroom on the plane. And I just read that. You just read about that. Yeah, here it is.

Here it is. I see. That's good. I was trying to say is, you know, about 30 minutes out,

The pilot's going to come out and say, we've begun our initial descent.

And when the pilot says that, either everybody rushes to the bathroom as quickly as they can,

or nobody does because you can no longer get up.

So I'm thinking, well, like if you know that 30-minute mark,

like maybe five or 10 minutes before the 30-minute mark, if you just have to go to the bathroom, go.

And then you can sit peacefully in your seat while everybody else is scrambling around or in duress.

rest so that yeah that's the one that i i got the most you said also here like oh most people will

try to hit the bathroom after the snack or drink service yeah so just try to plan maybe before that

you know sometimes if if if you don't time it just right you're going to get stuck with the cart in

the middle of the aisle right and you can't get around and then you got to wait until it's it can

be a mess it's a mess that may be that may be your most useful tip but how about what are some of the

text tips yeah because i knew that you have a bunch of those too the other one that i uh that

i got some comments on was placement of your your bags as you go through the the tsa oh yes yeah

with bags but if you if you arrange them so your roller bag has got the handle closest to you

and your backpack has the straps where you can just pick it up put it on and then take the handle

and pull out the other one and be gone it's so much faster than trying to rearrange and fumble

around and all of that the other thing that i've discovered here lately is um i used to get those

like those compressed bags to roll stuff in oh yeah the packing cubes right yeah yeah they never

last very long and after a few a few shots with them they don't work very well anymore so now i've

gone to the actual cubes where you kind of roll it up and zip it up and i think right those work

better but uh yeah it's a lot of stuff in one of these real okay so here here i like this you

talked about an app that jeff and i are both big fans of flighty you use the flighty app quite a

bit you also use trip it in here and then i like that i saw that you talked about card pointers

now that's going more to like credit cards and like different offers and and you know credit

card points on there but i actually just started using that app as well that little service that's

that's been really fun yeah and uh on that there's uh another one that keeps track of your awards

maybe i can't remember the name of it you know your points did you have like award tool or award

wallet some yeah some of those a little bit better than trip it says that they do that but i found

that it's kind of clunky i don't know they can get it together as well as they could i'm not sure

that any of the automated ones do it as well as you just keep track of it yourself but i don't know

one pair of tips yeah one pair of tips that you had in here was that the flip side of the air

tags it's number one try to never check your bag if you can avoid it which i agree with you on

but of course if you do have to or even if it's on the plane get those air tags in there so that

you can track them um afterwards and i hear so many stories about people that are just so thrilled

that they were able to find something that was lost or not even it was stolen just you know even

inadvertently sort of walked away with, but thank goodness for the air tags to help them find it

again. Yep. No, those are, those are great tools. And yeah, I, I can't remember the last time I

checked the bag there. Sometimes I've had to come close with putting, you know, the swag from a

conference or stuff. Oh yeah. So far I've managed to avoid that little, little debacle. All right.

Last one. I feel like this is a kind of a weird full circle here, but I really enjoyed reading

your article just from what a few days ago now that you put this you put this out going analog

is it just for Luddites and it was just so neat to have you share a little bit in here Steve about

what you mean by this number one you reference a couple of books you reference even David Sparks

who Jeff and I both talk about quite a bit and reference quite a bit because as we all know he's

he's a big tech nerd, a self-professed tech nerd on this. And even he talks about the need to go

analog at some time. So can you just share a little bit here in closing as to why this was

important for you to write about and just share a little bit? It kind of came out of a presentation

by Kat Moon, who I know both of you guys know. A tech show last, well, this year, I guess,

seems like it was last year. But one of the things she did with the audience is she passed out

pencils and paper and said, you know, we're going to do this exercise and I want you to write things

down because you remember it. And I kept thinking about that. Of course, I had read the books,

David Sachs' book about Revenge of the Analog, which came out several years ago. So I talked to

Kat about it and you saw in the article, she's a proponent of that because people do remember

more. And I've found, and I think it's consistent with what David Sparks had to say, if you write a

down, it sort of helps you critically think about the problem. I mean, I'm not saying write everything

down, but you know, just this morning I was, I was working, started working on an article and I sat

down and just kind of jotted my notes and I got little arrows going here and there. It really sort

of helped me think through what it is I was actually trying to say a little bit more. And it's, it's

very easy, I think, to slip into the notion that we rely upon the digital world 100%. And I'm not

sure that it's the best to always do that. I think there are places where you can use the analog

world. In his book, David Sachs talks about listening to music. And an example, he gets,

I remember this when I was younger. I mean, the Rolling Stones came out with a new album. You

and you waited and you waited and it was released.

And then you drove to the record store, you bought it,

you brought it home, you put it on the turntable,

you put the needle on the first song.

And what did you then do?

You listened to the entire album

because you were waiting for weeks to do it.

And the thing that I always remember about that

is on first hearing, you'd say,

that's a terrible song.

But then you'd listen to the album,

you know, three or four more times.

And then you would say,

that's actually a really good song.

And the digital way of doing things is completely opposite.

I mean, you just go on Spotify or Apple Music,

go grab something and you listen to one song

and you don't listen to the others.

And a lot of times you sort of miss the whole experience

about listening to music.

It's not, I don't think it's intended

to just be background noise

as to what else you're doing in the world.

The musicians that create the music,

they intend for it to be the experience itself.

yeah not just uh that's just backdrop so yeah i i enjoyed writing that article it was kind of it

was kind of fun of course it is kind of now that i'm looking at what you've got here it's kind of

ironic that the illustrations and the article come from from chad gpt of course they do

i'll say two points that you just mentioned first of all when you talk about listening to the album

i have heard people saying that that you know we need to appreciate the full album and stuff like

that. And I do that. I noticed, I haven't tried it yet, but I've heard people talk about there's

an app on the app store called Longplay. And what it specifically does is it's like a music playing

app, but all it does is play albums. And you can go from one album to the second album to the third

album, but it's sort of focused on just appreciating an album from beginning to end, because that's how

the artist entangled it. And I think that's actually sort of an interesting point. I haven't

tried the app yet, but I do understand the idea. The other thing that you were talking about,

about writing things down and, you know, moving to the analog, you know, I know for me, and you've

heard me speak about this before that, you know, I very much agree that when you write something

by hand, that is critical because it forces you, you can't write word for word unless you're a

court reporter that can transcribe everything. And so it's forcing your brain to sort of synthesize

and understand and comprehend things so that by the time your pencil hits paper and you write it

down, you have already sort of internalized it in a way that you may need to never look at your

notes again, but it's just in your brain. For me, however, although some people love to do that

with paper. And I know that there is something about like a nice piece of paper and a nice pen,

and you can understand it. I just prefer to do that digitally on my iPad, because sometimes I do want

to go back on those notes and see it. And for me, I use the GoodNotes app, but I love the fact that

if I need to see those notes that I took in a meeting with somebody, or maybe just scribbling

down, you know, strategy ideas for a lawsuit from four months ago, I can just, you know, I'm a tap

away from pulling the write-up again. I don't have to go find that piece of paper and figure out what

closet it's in or what file cabinet it's in. Everything's just right there with me. And then,

Of course, it will do the OCR and the search.

So if I needed to search for things for my notes, I can do it.

So I sort of feel like I agree with this idea of analog, but do the analog in a digital way by using my Apple Pencil and my iPad to write things down.

But I do hear where you're coming from.

I think that's fine.

And it's interesting as you were talking about it.

So I was just, as you guys know, at the keynote of NetNex.

That wasn't just recent keynote.

at the NetDocs conference.

And I use the recording as I usually do at things like that,

a transcription device that records everything, transcribes it.

But I also take notes.

I use my laptop, not digital notes, not with a pencil,

but I actually take notes.

And I have found most of the time,

if I write an article about the conversation,

I don't need to go back and read the transcript

because ideas are formulated on the notes

and the key tenants and where I'm going.

And so that was an interesting observation, Jeff,

that you made.

I think there's a lot to that.

Great stuff.

Thanks for joining us.

Oh, my pleasure.

It's been a lot of fun.

This has just been great.

I told Jeff, we're not going to have any issues

talking about something just because I know you

and it's just so many great topics

that we're just interested in with both of the AI

I just kind of like the fact that it came full circle around with the analog stuff on that.

And yeah, really, really good.

Cool.

Well, thank you for the articles that you write too.

TechLaw Crossroads is fantastic.

I love that you've been writing on Above the Law.

Those are fantastic sites.

And please continue to share your insight and experiences with the rest of us because it's really helpful.

I don't always agree with what you say, but you always make me think, which is the most important part, is like, wow, I got to think about that because that's an interesting point.

So thank you very much.

Thanks for your kind words. And, you know, thanks for having me on my favorite podcast as a

I really appreciate it. I think next time we got to come with our own meta Ray-Bans.

This is now I'm convinced now, like that's going to be the next one. I've just been watching it,

Steve, the whole time as he's been using it and taking pictures. It'll be fun. Well,

thanks again for joining us, Steve. Thanks everyone for listening. Thanks. Bye-bye everybody.