Legalweek 2025: Put An AI On It!
Portlandia had a bit about Northwest hipsters putting a bird on every knick knack up for sale. “Put a bird on it” involved shoving birds onto everything from tote bags to homemade pillows. I think about that bit every time another vendor announces that they’ve “put an AI on” their product.
I suspect this will come up a lot this week.
Legal technology’s annual pilgrimage to the New York Hilton Midtown commences with Legalweek 2025 welcoming a motley crew of attorneys and tech vendors. This year’s congregation, boasting over 6,000 attendees from 34 countries, is set to navigate the warrens of the Hilton’s conference space.
Or at least at one point it was 34 countries. If folks stayed home rather than risk this administration accidentally sending them to a prison in El Salvador, that’s understandable.
Doug Austin of eDiscovery Today helpfully creates word clouds based on conference agendas and found that “AI” appears a staggering 250 times — 108 more than last year. That’s before he added in similar terms like GenAI. The point is that you’re not listening to someone talk about AI, then you’re probably in the wrong conference room.
The only exception might be the keynote address tomorrow morning when Rob Lowe takes the stage to discuss “The Art of Reinvention: Turning Setbacks into Stepping Stones.” Perhaps it’s an ominous reference to the soon-to-be displaced junior lawyers performing all the tasks AI can reliably handle. But he’s probably just going to talk about the time he mistakenly ate a carb.
To be fair to the vendors, they have to inject AI into their products or risk falling behind competitors who do. We make fun of AI’s legal industry failings and question its long-term potential, but just because its not replacing lawyers and judges — no matter what the dumbest man in the world thinks — that doesn’t detract from its value in performing the smaller tasks. It’s that infamous Apple story about Steve Jobs challenging the team to shave seconds off the boot up time because that translates to years saved on a grand scale… just because AI won’t argue a case before the Supreme Court doesn’t make it any less useful for its ability to summarize a mass of transcripts into actionable work product.
So now let’s brave the rainy Midtown weather and start checking out some AI.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
