I, like many, have already had a crack at UC Berkeley Law’s inane AI policy. But it’s hard not to keep going back to that well when the disconnect between some in academia and real lawyers is growing so stark. Thus, just a few notes on what the latter crowd is up to, all thanks to Bloomberg Law—
Kirkland & Ellis is investing at least half a billion dollars to develop in-house AI tools, a smart move both for the productivity it can ultimately bring and for the publicity it now brings. When you are on top, you have to keep moving to stay there.
The GC and Chief Policy Officer of Ford Motor Company has called upon outside counsel to do more with AI… lest they lose Ford business. Steven Croley, like me, is an AI believer:
AI is a new “entrant” in the market for legal services that is increasingly able to compete with both external and in-house counsel. Large language models and the products that integrate them undertake complex research tasks, advanced legal problem-solving, and sophisticated composition. They do so at superior speed and with increasingly exceptional quality. Advancements in model development make deploying AI agents across multiple workflows attractive and cost-effective.
AI agents operate without the constraints of the billable hour, fundamentally decoupling the time spent on a task from the market value of the output. What’s more, AI models scale their output without a corresponding increase in cost. AI largely replaces the law library, also at low cost, and isn’t limited to certain practice areas.
Although AI tools require human lawyers to scope issues, supply parameters, and validate outputs, this level of oversight is similar in kind (but often lesser in degree) to managing junior attorneys or outside counsel. When properly directed, AI effectively functions as a highly efficient “super associate” and increasingly a “super partner,” amplifying the capabilities of both external and in-house legal teams.
I highly recommend reading Croley’s entire ‘call to arms.’
And those outside law firms get it, as demonstrated by experiences like these:
“I’ve been a CIO for more years than I care to admit, and I’ve never experienced this kind of pull for new technology,” Dan Surowiec, chief information officer at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, said in an email. … “We’ve not had to work hard to push lawyers to use AI tools,” Surowiec said. “We introduced our partners to Generative AI tools at our last Partners Conference and there was an immediate recognition that these tools were incredibly powerful and will change legal services.”
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“I’ve been doing this for a long time, and getting lawyers to adopt technology has, at times, felt like pushing a rock uphill,” [Katrina] Dittmer [of Eversheds Sutherland] said. “AI has been the first time where the attorneys are reaching out when they are saying, ‘Can I be included in this pilot? Can I be part of this tool?’ Because they recognize that this is an opportunity that they don’t want to fall behind with.”
Fortunately, law professors who are paying attention get it too, as demonstrated by this study finding that law profs favor AI responses over other-professor answers. That’s stunning, yet not surprising to those who have worked with contemporary generative AI.
So it goes… we’ll see when even UC Berkeley is forced to reality.
ADDENDUM 06.24.26
For those more generally interested in the capabilities of generative AI, this incredible result shows how far systems have improved in mathematics.
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