Plus: Fact-checking depositions as they happen | The weird history behind legal words
Your identity as an attorney is now a raw material, something that can be captured, encoded, replicated and deployed for better or worse. We saw this in action when 7.5 million people checked out an article an attorney wrote about training Claude to handle chunks of his practice. We've got the viral post and our own read on what it actually means for how you practice.
We're also covering a new tool that fact-checks conversations in real time as they're being transcribed. And finally, a warning worth heeding: deepfake technology has gotten good enough that your own marketing materials may be all someone needs to put words in your mouth.
But first, do you know what a public defender smells like? This Etsy seller does. And they think it makes a good candle.
“Just give it to a museum!”
Radio personality Nick Fox is doing every estate planning attorney a solid as “Curator of the Millennial Inheritance Community.” His video explaining why you can’t just leave random stuff to a museum in your will is gold.
In vino veritas?
This lawsuit against the Court of Master Sommeliers has legs.
The sound of silence.
We applaud the legal team that’s forcing everyone on United Airlines flights to use headphones if they want to listen to something on their personal device.
Why would someone break into jail?
As Nashville built a new jail, a prison reformer tried to turn it into an armory.
Pioneers! O Pioneers!
Looking for inspiration? The ABA’s Women Trailblazers in the Law Project (WTP) is a unique collection of the oral histories of over a hundred women who entered the legal profession in the 1970s and earlier.
Building AI tools for your practice
Last week, attorney Zack Shapiro published an article explaining how he trained and uses Claude at his firm, Rains LLP, rather than licensing specialized legal AI products. The piece begins with an example of how he used the AI tool to close a deal when the other party wanted changes at the last minute. He also discusses how he built “skills” for specific tasks he frequently needed AI assistance with—including contract reviews, document formatting and converting written documents into audio files he can listen to on his commute.
Why this matters: The post went viral, in part because he’s one of the first attorneys to talk about the nuts and bolts of training AI to do specific tasks. But also because it’s an illustration of why legal tech stocks tanked after Anthropic updated its Claude cowork platform to specifically include legal tools. (Medium)
We’ll do it live!
Every attorney who has taken a deposition knows the feeling: you're trying to focus on what the witness is saying, but you also need to check whether something they just mentioned contradicts page 16 of their interrogatory answers. The AI platform August is trying to make this a little easier with its new Live Assist tool.
As Bob Ambrogi explains over on his LawSites blog, Live Assist is designed to fact-check conversations as it transcribes them by cross-referencing what is being said against other materials the attorney has uploaded to the case file. When something doesn’t match up, it is flagged so you can follow up on it.
Why this matters: The robots are already listening to everything we say. It’s about time they started contributing to the conversation. (LawSites)
I see what you’re saying
Culture Study is not a legal podcast. But its recent episode, “The Ridiculously Interesting History of Weird English Words,” is one that lawyers—the ultimate word nerds—are going to want to check out. Host Anne Helen Petersen sits down with linguist Colin Gorrie to trace the surprisingly specific historical forces that shaped the English language. They discuss why weird means strange (Hi, Shakespeare!) and why GH is pronounced as F in laughter but is silent in daughter (blame the Black Death).
Why this matters: Toward the end of the episode, they talk about how litigation forced more people to write in English. Before that, the courts used French, which is why we have words like plaintiff and defendant. (Culture Study)
- OpenAI sued for unauthorized practice of law
- Jackson and Kavanaugh shared a stage to discuss the “shadow docket”
- 175+ ex-judges join amicus brief arguing SCOTUS’s emergency orders aren’t binding
- DOJ wants a role in attorney discipline
- The surprise settlement in the Live Nation/Ticketmaster case
You are the product
If you watched the McDonald's CEO eat a burger "product" and thought, “That’s why our firm doesn’t post videos,” you may be worrying too much about looking foolish, and not enough about the other risks of video marketing. As this article in Fortune explains, most people do not realize how easily AI can use a legitimate video to make very convincing deep fakes.
Why this matters: There is a growing risk that videos or other marketing materials will be used to create deep fake videos. Now is the time to think about how to adjust your marketing plan to minimize this possibility, and to figure out how to respond if this happens to you or one of your clients. (MarketWatch / Fortune)
You're all caught up!
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Raise the Bar is written and curated by Emily Kelchen and edited by Bianca Prieto.
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