What does it mean to be an AI-ready lawyer?

In this episode, Jen Leonard and Bridget McCormack are joined by Farrah Pepper, legal innovation partner at Harvey, and Kirsten Talmage, chief strategy officer at Practising Law Institute, to discuss The AI-Ready Lawyer: A Competency Framework for the AI Era.

Farrah and Kirsten explain why the legal profession needs a shared language for AI competency, how the framework can help law firms, legal departments, law schools, and individual lawyers, and why AI training should focus on durable professional skills rather than any single tool. The conversation also explores new legal career paths, the importance of oversight and judgment, and how organizations can use the framework to assess training gaps and build AI fluency responsibly.

In this episode:

• What it means to be an AI-ready lawyer
• Why the legal profession needs a shared AI competency framework
• How AI fluency differs from tool-specific training
• Why human judgment, oversight, and ethics remain central
• How firms and legal departments can use the framework
• Why smaller teams may benefit from AI training even more
• How law students can assess AI readiness in schools and employers

Learn more about PLI’s AI-Ready Lawyer framework:

[PLI AI-Ready Lawyer Framework]

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What is an AI-native law firm?

In this episode, Jen Leonard and Bridget McCormack are joined by John Nay, founder and CEO of Norm AI and Norm Law, for a conversation about agentic law, AI-native legal services, and what it means to build legal work around agents rather than copilots.

John explains how legal and regulatory reasoning can be embedded into AI agents, allowing them to perform first-pass work, learn from prior matters, and create compounding value over time. The conversation also explores how Norm Law combines attorneys, legal engineers, software engineers, and AI engineers; why client-specific knowledge can become persistent; and how outcome-based pricing may change the business model of legal services.

The episode also examines client trust, human supervision, experienced legal talent, and the Legal AGI Lab’s research into how AI agents may be evaluated, benchmarked, and governed by law.

Learn more about the Legal AGI Lab: https://lab.norm.ai

In this episode:

• What agentic law means
• How AI agents differ from copilots
• What an AI-native law firm looks like
• The role of legal engineers and AI engineers
• Outcome-based pricing and client trust
• Human supervision in AI-native legal work
• Legal AGI and the governance of AI agents

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How is AI changing the work of in-house legal teams?

In this episode, Jen Leonard and Bridget McCormack are joined by Nick Fleisher, co-founder and CEO of Sandstone, an AI-native platform built specifically for in-house legal teams. Nick discusses how AI is transforming legal operations by helping legal departments manage intake, triage work, connect business context, and move from reactive service providers to proactive strategic partners.

The conversation explores why successful legal AI depends on data and context rather than simply deploying another chatbot, how AI systems can learn legal judgment over time, what lawyers should automate first, and why human oversight remains essential as agentic workflows become more common. Nick also shares why corporate legal departments are under increasing pressure as AI accelerates work across the business, and what that means for the future of legal teams.

In this episode:

• Why in-house legal teams are adopting AI differently than law firms
• Building AI-native legal infrastructure
• Why legal AI is fundamentally a data and context problem
• How AI can help legal teams become more proactive
• What AI can—and can't—learn from lawyers
• Understanding agentic workflows and human oversight
• Why implementation is the key to successful AI adoption

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Can law firms redesign themselves for a world shaped by generative AI?

In this episode, Jen Leonard and Bridget McCormack are joined by Sharon Crane, president of Practising Law Institute, for a conversation about Jen’s new book, Unprecedented: Designing a Human-Centered Law Firm When Everything Is Changing. Together, they explore why law firm transformation is difficult, how storytelling can make change feel more accessible, and why collaboration, human-centered design, and practical experimentation matter in the AI era.

The conversation also covers PLI’s AI competency framework, the value of business fables, the history of the Cravath system and the billable hour, how Jen used AI as a writing partner, and what the future of junior lawyer training might look like.

Learn more about Unprecedented: Designing a Human-Centered Law Firm When Everything Is Changing:

https://www.pli.edu/catalog/publications/treatise/unprecedented-designing-a-human-centered-law-firm-when-everything-is-changing/447974

In this episode:

• Why law firm change requires human buy-in
• How storytelling can make transformation more usable
• Why the current legal business model is not inevitable
• How AI can act as a co-intelligence, not a shortcut
• What junior lawyer training might look like in the AI era

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The legal tech market is growing fast—but is it a bubble, or the beginning of a new era for legal services?

In this episode, Jen Leonard and Bridget McCormack are joined by Nikki Shaver, co-founder and CEO of Legaltech Hub, to discuss how AI is reshaping law firm strategy, pricing, technology selection, and competition. Nikki explains why firms are moving beyond efficiency as the main measure of AI value, how AI-native firms may challenge incumbents, and why agentic AI creates new governance and security questions for legal organizations.

In this episode:

• How legal tech adoption has shifted since ChatGPT
• Why AI value is moving from efficiency to quality
• What AI-native firms mean for incumbent law firms
• How law firms should evaluate legal tech startups
• Why agentic AI raises new governance risks
• What Nikki expects next for the legal tech market

Keywords:

legal tech, legal technology, AI in law, legal AI, law firm strategy, Nikki Shaver, Legaltech Hub, agentic AI, AI-native firms, law firm innovation, legal innovation, GenAI, legal tech bubble, future of law

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What happens when AI agents start making contracts with other AI agents?

In this episode, Jen Leonard and Bridget McCormack explore Legal Context Protocol, or LCP, a new open protocol designed to help legal terms become discoverable, verifiable, and connected to agentic transactions. Bridget explains why existing e-commerce legal infrastructure may not translate cleanly to a world where machines negotiate, accept terms, and complete transactions on behalf of people and businesses.

In this episode:

• What Legal Context Protocol is designed to solve
• Why agentic commerce creates new contract and ratification issues
• How legal terms can become discoverable, verifiable, and connected to transactions
• Why AI risk and legal-context risk should be separated
• What general counsel and law firm partners should do now

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Can AI help lawyers learn—or does it weaken the skills legal training is meant to build?

In this episode, Jen Leonard and Bridget McCormack are joined by Daniel Schwarcz, Fredrikson & Byron Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, to discuss new empirical research on artificial intelligence and human legal reasoning. Daniel explains a randomized control trial studying how law students used AI to synthesize legal materials, apply legal rules, and revise legal analysis—and why some results surprised even the researchers.

In this episode:

• Why legal training may prepare lawyers to use AI well
• What the University of Minnesota study tested about AI and legal reasoning
• Why AI-assisted students performed better than expected
• The risks of using AI for revision under time pressure
• What law schools and law firms should take away from the research

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The latest Am Law 100 power rankings reveal a legal industry undergoing rapid transformation—driven by shifting demand, intensifying competition, and the growing influence of AI. In this episode, Jen Leonard and Bridget McCormack are joined by legal industry analyst Jae Um to break down what’s changing in Big Law. They explore the rise of “apex predator” firms, widening performance gaps, evolving AI strategies, and early signs of client-side disruption.

In this episode:

• Am Law 100 power rankings and market concentration
• The rise of “apex predator” firms
• AI strategy and firm-level competition
• Shifting client demand and pricing pressure
• The future structure of Big Law

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Artificial intelligence is moving beyond tools and into systems—reshaping how legal work is performed and delivered.

In this episode, Jen Leonard and Bridget McCormack speak with Jason Barnwell, Chief Legal Officer at Agiloft, about the rise of AI agents, contract lifecycle management, and what these shifts mean for legal practice.

They explore how some professionals are able to extract exponentially more value from AI than others, the growing importance of structuring legal knowledge into reusable protocols, and how contract data is becoming a strategic asset inside organizations. The conversation also examines shifting incentives, emerging career paths, and how legal education and training may need to evolve in response.

Topics discussed include:

• AI agents and the shift from tools to systems
• Why some professionals get exponentially more value from AI
• Contract lifecycle management and the rise of contract data as infrastructure
• The changing role of lawyers from executors to system architects
• Legal education, training models, and new career pathways

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Artificial intelligence is beginning to test the boundaries of legal practice itself.

In this episode, Jen Leonard and Bridget McCormack examine Nippon Life v. OpenAI, a lawsuit alleging that a chatbot engaged in the unauthorized practice of law by generating legal advice, drafting filings, and influencing litigation strategy. The case raises foundational questions about liability, regulation, and whether existing legal frameworks can meaningfully apply to AI systems.

They also explore practical AI use cases and key takeaways from Legalweek 2026, including rising pressure to demonstrate ROI, rapid enterprise adoption, and the shift toward more advanced systems.

Topics discussed include:

• The facts and legal theories in Nippon Life v. OpenAI
• Unauthorized practice of law vs. product liability frameworks
• The limits of regulating AI through court decisions
• Legalweek 2026: ROI pressure and adoption trends
• Practical AI workflows using Claude Co-Work

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