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Two-Way Street: LegalTech Connects with Frontier AI

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Last week, I addressed how both Anthropic and OpenAI are making inroads into the legal vertical with their own l aw firm platforms.     Now, that’s a shot across the bow of traditional legaltech vendors, who are actively employing (usually) white-labeled versions of frontier AI tools into their platforms .   But, with frontier AI vendors releasing legal-specific p roducts , that also delivers an interesting new choice for attorneys – who could entirely avoid case management software in favor of these new tools.   Legaltech vendors, then, especially the law practice management software companies, that have traditional ly served as the hub for legal operations, now also have a choice to make: Do they continue to gatekeep their systems from frontier AI tools, or risk losing clients who want to use those tools aggressively, to those models?     Currently legaltech vendors are answering those questions in different ways .  Some (like Clio , with it...
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Incursion: Now Comes OpenAI for Legal

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In April, Anthropic hosted a live webinar entitled ‘ Claude for Legal Teams ’ – over 20,000 attorneys attended .   ( Anthropic is the AI company whose chatbot/coding product is Claude .)  In May, Anthropic released a series of Claude plugins (skills) & connectors (integrations), to lawyers and legal products .     Now, OpenAI – the company that offers the chatbot/coding product, ChatGPT – is releasing a new version of its latest model (Astra) for the legal industry (Astra for Legal) .   A number of legal integrations are being made available .  Astra for Legal is a ccessible only by select firms right now – the biggest ones; but, it will trickle down, from there.   Of course, every frontier AI model is likely to try to breach the legal space, at some point – which delivers some interesting choice s for attorneys .  Do you opt in to one of these legal-specific models, and to what else do you give it access ?  What do you need, ...
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Pay Roll: Two Ways to Conceive of Employee Cost

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One of the hardest things to do, as a solo attorney, is to make your first hire in any category .  Even if you’ve hired an administrative assistant or paralegal before – a difficult hurdle to jump, in its own right – it’s still not easy to bring i n an associate attorney , or a chief revenue officer .  Those are all different categories of role; so , it’s easy to get a little antsy making one of those hires, because the skill sets are different, and it’s tough to get a handle on what you should be expecting out of a job title you’ve never had any experience hiring for, or managing.     You can research all you want; but, when the rubber meets the road, you’re the one who needs to determine whether someone is effective in a role – and, part of understanding that is lived experience .   T here’s only one way to get that , of course .   So, it’s always a little bit of a leap of faith , when you hire a new employee type, for the first time .   ...
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