With the recently launched Claude Legal plugin, Nicole L. Black recommends to lawyers and legal professionals Claude’s AI for tasks like document review and contract drafting. The Claude Legal plugin runs within Claude Cowork, a desktop app that you can download, and no specialized legal software subscription is required.
AI in Law & Legal Tech Expert Nicole L. Black frames how AI is changing how legal work gets done, and the effects aren’t limited to law offices. Other legal organizations are equally impacted, including the courts. As judicial offices around the country grapple with the how and why of secure AI adoption, new rules, policies, and processes are being implemented to address the ethical and practical issues presented.
Since generative AI was first publicly released over two years ago, a litany of reports has been released that provide insight into how law firms are approaching it and the changing perspectives on its benefits and risks. Nicole L. Black brings the facts to the discussion of how and to what extent law firms are actually implementing AI.
Nicole L. Black notes the milestone of Thomson Reuters announcement that it had entered into an agreement to acquire Casetext, a legal research software company, for $650 million. For the past decade, Casetext has provided a legal research platform grounded in AI technology. The company consistently developed innovative features that utilized AI technology to streamline legal research and brief creation, most recently releasing CoCounsel, a generative AI legal assistant tool powered by GPT-4, which is the same technology that powers ChatGPT Plus.
Attorney and legal technologist Nicole Black cautions user that ChatGPT is a great start, but that’s all it is. No matter what you’re using ChatGPT for, whether for personal or professional reasons, you’ll need to have a full understanding of the topic at hand and thoroughly review, edit, and supplement the draft language it provides you.
Nicole L. Black’s actionable checklist begins with an end of year review of your law firm’s achievements and challenges to determine issues and new requirements moving forward. The review will include conducting an audit of your workflow and technology to identify process gaps and ensure efficiency and profitability in the new year. When the audit is completed, identify and implement technologies and service providers that will bridge the gaps identified and establish the foundation for success.
Nicole L. Black’s third article in a series discusses the value of an expansive new report from the ABA, Practicing Law in the Pandemic and Moving Forward: Results and Best Practices from a Nationwide Survey of the Legal Profession. The results cover a broad overview of topics ranging from the impact of the pandemic on the legal profession to post-pandemic expectations and recommendations for both legal employers and individual lawyers.
Full-time remote work may continue to be with us for some time. Nicole L. Black discusses approaches that forward thinking law firm leaders can use to take advantage of this opportunity and fine tune their management skills for both in-office or remote teams.
The software that lawyers relied on to run their firms used to be premise-based, but as reported by Nicole L. Black, in 2021 cloud computing software is the most prevalent. In fact, even before the pandemic, lawyers were adopting cloud-based legal software at higher rates than ever before. According to the 2020 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report, 59% of lawyers surveyed were already already using cloud-based software pre-COVID. Notably, the results of another survey conducted by MyCase in mid-2020, showed the social distancing requirements of the pandemic have only served to accelerate this trend.
Clubhouse is an audio chat platform that is available as an iOS app and is invite only for now. It consists of user-created drop-in audio chat rooms. You can form your own chat room or join rooms created by others. These chat rooms can be created spontaneously or scheduled ahead of time. Nicole Black identifies how the app provides lawyers with opportunities to showcase your expertise, connect with professional colleagues who might be potential referral sources, and generate exposure for your law firm.