Category «Legal Profession»

2024 Link Guide to Employment Resources

This employment resources guide by Marcus P. Zillman spans multiple sectors, sources in the private and public sectors, on-site and remote work, job search engines, resume building resources, identifying job titles and respective skill requirements, and is inclusive of a focus on new job seekers and those with years of experience. Some of the sources such as LinkedIn will be familiar, but many will be new to you and will add capabilities to your efforts to develop and execute a successful job search process.

Subjects: Communication Skills, Economy, Education, Job Hunting

How Can Law Professors Effectively Teach AI Literacy to Law Students? Legal AI Studio

This spring the Michigan State University College of Law and the MSU Center for Law, Technology & Innovation introduced the “LegalRnD AI Studio,” a groundbreaking mini-course series designed to elevate law students’ AI literacy, focusing on practical skills in generative AI. Dennis Kennedy shares how you can replicate this successful model and provide your students with the essential AI literacy they need at your school.

Subjects: AI, Education, Law Librarians, Legal Education, Legal Profession, Legal Research, Legal Research Training

Is Your Firm Disclosing the Risks Associated to Using AI?

Patrick Mckenna calls out the importance to the legal community of a new public database, the AI Risk Repository, that lists ALL the ways AI could go wrong. Its creators hope their work could lead to further research to determine which risks to take more seriously.Its creators hope their work could lead to further research to determine which risks to take more seriously.

Subjects: AI, Cybersecurity, Law Firm Marketing, Legal Profession, Legal Research, Legal Technology

Slide Show Formatting Basics

Legal tech expert and frequent speaker Jerry Lawson affirms that the best substantive presentation material looks even better if packaged well. Formatting slide shows is an art. Compliance with some basic slide show formatting principles won’t make you Monet, but will put you on the road to being a passable PowerPoint artist. Lawson shares his presentation tips and techniques.

Subjects: Communication Skills, Legal Marketing, Legal Profession, Presentation Skills

Donald Trump wants to reinstate a spoils system in federal government by hiring political loyalists regardless of competence

If elected to serve a second term, Donald Trump says he supports a spoils system, a plan that would give him the authority to fire as many as 50,000 civil servants and replace them with members of his political party loyal to him. Under this plan, if he eventually deemed those new employees disloyal, he claims he could fire them too. Law professors Sidney Shapiro and Joseph P. Tomain write in their new book How Government Built America about how newly elected President Andrew Jackson, after he took office in 1828, fired about half the country’s civil servants and replaced them with loyal members of his political party. The result was not only an utterly incompetent administration, but widespread corruption.

Subjects: Congress, Ethics, Legal Research, United States Law

Are You a Renaissance Leader?

Kevin Novak continues his discussion on critical strategies and managing people in workplaces which have increasingly shifted to indirect, digitized operations and communications. The basic toolkit for successful leaders has changed and will continue to evolve as the work environment shifts. Leaders still need the basics to run the business, but the role has changed from a top-down decision-maker to an empathetic and facilitative colleague. We know it’s a lot to ask leaders to be group dynamics pros, but person-to-person skills as a wise mentor is invaluable with younger workers. It is and always will be important to “read the room” or in today’s terms “read the screen.”

Subjects: KM, Leadership, Legal Profession, Management

A Chat With Legal Rebel Richard Granat

Jerry Lawson had a conversation with Richard Granat, a lawyer, frequent speaker on legal technology, blogger, and consultant. His professional work has earned many awards, including the ABA’s Legal Rebel Award, the ABA’s Louis M. Brown Lifetime Achievement Award, and the ABA’s James I. Keane Memorial Award. He has long been a leader in using technology to improve access to legal services.

Subjects: AI, KM, Legal Profession, Legal Technology

Move Over Law Professors? AI Likes to Write Law Review Articles Too!

Sarah Gotschall describes this deep dive into how AI is used to write law review articles, with illustrations that detail the complexity and limitations of the effort. Claude (aka the illustrious author Claudia Trey) penned a 77-page extensively footnoted law review article on SSRN entitled “Bloodlines Over Merits: Exposing the Discriminatory Impact of Legacy Preferences in College Admissions.” Though not setting the world on fire in the sense that the article is interesting or that anyone wants to read it, it showcases Claude’s abilities. Now, we all know that AI text generators can churn out an endless stream of words on just about any topic if you keep typing in the prompts. However, Claude can not only generate well-written text, but it can also provide footnotes to primary legal materials with minimal hallucination, setting it apart from other AI text generators such as ChatGPT-4. And, although Claude’s citations to other sources are generally not completely accurate, it is usually not too difficult to find the intended source or a similar one based on the information supplied.

Subjects: AI, Education, Legal Education, Legal Profession, Legal Research

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, April 13, 2024

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: Hijacked Facebook Pages are pushing fake AI services to steal your data; China-backed operatives used fake social profiles to gauge US political division, Microsoft says; LastPass: Hackers targeted employee in failed deepfake CEO call; Insurers Are Spying on Your Home From the Sky; and Hospital websites share visitors’ data with Google, Meta.

Subjects: AI, Criminal Law, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Email Security, Financial System, Government Resources, Healthcare, Legal Profession, Legal Research, Social Media, Software

Review – Law Democratized: A Blueprint For Solving The Justice Crisis

Jerry Lawson rhetorically asks Is anyone in the country better qualified than Renee Knake Jefferson to write about access to justice? Professor of Law at the University of Houston, co-reporter for the ABA Commission on the Future of Legal Services, and designated by the American Bar Association as a “Legal Rebel,” she has long been a thought leader in the quest to make legal help available to all, regardless of resources. Her new book, Law Democratized: A Blueprint for Solving the Justice Crisis, does not disappoint.

Subjects: AI, Court Resources, Education, Ethics, Kodner and Cramer on the Case (Management), Legal Ethics, Legal Profession, Legal Research