You should listen to this podcast with Bob Ambrogi and Jason Tashea about the judicial innovation fellowship at Georgetown. The JIF program is awesome, but I want to focus in on Jason’s idea of pitching courts as the crux of social change. Here’s a quote from Jason, paraphrased from the podcast:
We need to be telling better stories - our stories suck … When I started out pitching this … I thought my job was to convince people that the fellowship program was a good idea - I realized that I’m there to convince them that courts are a vector for social change. … We need to be thinking about courts more holistically.
I wonder if lawyers are the only ones who know that lower-level courts are the place where important things happen. In general people understand that important things happen at, say, the U.S. Supreme Court, but I’d bet they think of state and county courts kind of like the DMV. Stuff happens there, but it’s stuff like filing some paperwork, paying a traffic fine, maybe getting married or divorced. But if you’ve spent time in courtrooms, even lower-level courtrooms like misdemeanor or domestic violence court, you may have figured out that courts are where big events happen in people’s lives:
People lose their voting rights, usually forever, at a clip of probably hundreds to thousands each day. I couldn’t find exact stats, but around 19 million people in the U.S. are convicted felons.
People start on a downward spiral of poverty, which is near impossible to get out of. Something like an eviction or having your bond revoked doesn’t seem like a big deal to lawyers and judges, but they can make someone lose their job, torpedo their credit score, and generally put a person on an inescapable slide to homelessness & poverty.
People also escape a potential downward spiral. Drug treatment courts & veteran’s courts can act like a thrown life-ring to the people who take it seriously.
People escape an abuser. A domestic violence injunction can be life-saving for the victim.
People gain citizenship, or permanent residency, or some other legal immigration status that lets them do things like but a house, get a job, pay taxes.
There are many other examples. But Jason’s exactly right - we need to start telling better stories about the work that courts and legal aid orgs do - stories that show the true level of social change that’s achievable.
Why can’t we make AI do the stuff we don’t want to do, instead of stuff that’s interesting?
I’ve probably written this before but my god why can’t Legal AI companies come up with ways to automate the mundane stuff that lawyers do, instead of bragging about automating the interesting stuff? If I have to listen to another techbro explain why an AI model is going to automate brief and argument writing, I sweatergod I’m going to lose it.
Interesting law stuff (to me, YMMV):
Research
both legal and otherwise - I practiced medical malpractice law and I now know a hell of a lot more about ways to die in a hospital than I ever wanted to, but it was still interesting…
Writing complex motions;
Analysis of specific fact patterns; and
Seeing where the puzzle pieces fit into the weird amalgamation of fact and law for each specific case.
Super boring stuff (to me):
Writing time / billing entries;
Writing reports to the insurance company on what’s been happening in the case;
Creating footnotes / endnotes;
Trolling through crap to see what needs to go out in discovery, or what I got in discovery.
Off the top of my head, nearly every Legal AI product brags that they’re going to automate one or more of the interesting things, and not touch the boring things. Why would lawyers want that? Think about why lawyers actually went to law school: I’ll give you a hint - it wasn’t to write billing entries or to feel like a glorified scrivener.
Maybe it’s just that investors won’t bundle off wheelbarrows of cash to an AI product that is actually boringly useful. Maybe it’s that getting a JD and practicing in biglaw in San Francisco or NYC for exactly 1.25 years is a recipe for AI-founderitis. I don’t know.
Other reading
I found this slightly tongue-in-cheek article hilariously insightful. I’m by no means an AI-doomer or an AI-hypebeast, hopefully I’m somewhere in-between. A tool is a tool. The more I work on stuff, the more I find that AI is very good at some very specific tasks, like filling in a gap in a workflow in a more efficient way. But that’s not sexy, and it certainly isn’t going to guarantee those cash wheelbarrows from silicon valley show up at my door.
Anyway, have a great weekend. I’ve been trying to maintain at least a bi-weekly writing schedule but my real job has been kicking my ass. Stay frosty out there.