Everyone wants an AI strategy but far fewer companies are ready to actually use one.In this episode of Between the Briefs, hosts Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens welcome Elaine Barsoom, AI and innovation leader and Venture Partner at Silicon Foundry, for a grounded and practical conversation on what it really takes to turn AI ambition into measurable business outcomes.
What You’ll Learn:

• Why most AI efforts fail because of readiness, not technology
• How to identify where repetitive work, trapped knowledge and overloaded judgment are slowing teams down
• Why “go slow to go fast” means doing the work in the right order, not moving timidly
• How leadership urgency and employee buy-in have to work together
• Why fear often shows up as “we’re too busy” or “the tools aren’t ready”
• How legal teams can act as accelerants instead of gatekeepers in AI transformation
• Why reskilling is really about rewiring how people work with technology
• How proprietary data and tribal knowledge can become a company’s real AI advantage

Tune in to understand what it takes to be truly AI ready. 
Highlights:
00:00 Introduction & Meeting Elaine Barsoom01:04 Elaine’s Background in Innovation, Emerging Tech and Growth02:06 Building a $200M Joint Venture at American Express03:13 What It Means to Architect the Execution Layer04:10 Why Activity Does Not Equal Progress05:38 How Elaine Bridges Legal, Engineering and Business Teams07:09 Aligning Incentives Across Engineering, Legal and Leadership09:02 Why Companies Need Discovery Before Engineers10:06 Why Legal Engineers Can Be Strategic Accelerants11:57 The Problem With AI for AI’s Sake13:27 Balancing Leadership Urgency With Employee Buy-In15:16 How to Prioritize the Right AI Workflows17:03 Why Companies Underestimate Fear19:39 Reskilling, AI Adoption and the Future of Work22:28 Go Slow to Go Fast23:21 The Three Questions Every AI Strategy Should Start With24:45 How Silicon Foundry Supports AI Transformation26:07 What AI Fear Gets Right and What It Gets Wrong28:29 Why AI Can Be a Big Advantage for SMBs30:15 Where to Save Time Without Damaging Trust31:16 The AI Mandate Problem for Small Businesses33:12 Elaine’s Favorite Diagnostic Questions35:42 Build vs. Buy in AI Transformation40:03 What Elaine Finds Most Exciting in Legal AI42:07 Why Tribal Knowledge Is the Real Competitive Edge43:30 Elaine’s Hot Take: It’s a Readiness Problem44:22 Final Thoughts and Closing Remarks
Quotes:

1. "Activity doesn’t actually correlate with progress. We have to understand where the underlying work is."
2. "The leadership can create the urgency, but then it’s really getting the buy-in from the people that are actually doing the work."
3. "When I say go slow to go fast, I don’t mean moving timidly. I just mean doing the work in the right order."
4. "People won’t say, I’m afraid that this is going to make me less relevant. They say I’m too busy, or the tools are not ready, or we need more guidance."
5. "Most companies do not just have an AI technical problem or strategy. They have a readiness problem."

Between The Briefs is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Before eDiscovery had a name, George Socha was already asking the questions most of the legal industry had not caught up to yet.
In this episode of Between the Briefs, hosts Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens welcome George Socha, Senior Vice President of Brand Awareness at Reveal and co-founder of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM), for a wide-ranging conversation on how legal technology has evolved from floppy disks and early matter management systems to GenAI, agentic tools and AI-powered discovery workflows.
What You’ll Learn:

• Why eDiscovery became an industry standard through collaboration, timing and free access
• Why liberal arts thinking matters in legal tech more than people might expect
• How GenAI and agentic AI are making eDiscovery feel new, open and uncertain again
• Why discovery is not about finding “everything,” but finding just enough to take the next step
• How AI tools like Ask can give lawyers grounded narrative answers with citations
• Why discovery is not a waste of time, but the work that gives lawyers the facts they need
• Why every AI platform may start with similar models, but the difference lies in what gets built on top

Tune in to hear why one of eDiscovery’s most influential voices believes this is the hottest moment legal tech has ever seen.
Highlights:
00:00 Introduction & Meeting George Socha01:16 From Early Programming to Law School03:03 “Real Attorneys Do Not Type”04:07 Refusing to Lose the Computer05:16 Building Litigation Support and eDiscovery Capabilities06:38 How the EDRM Framework Was Created09:04 Why EDRM Stood the Test of Time09:31 Why Free, Collaborative Standards Won12:24 Why Liberal Arts Thinking Matters in Legal Tech14:28 How eDiscovery Has Changed Since the Early Days17:56 Why This AI Moment Rhymes With Early eDiscovery18:11 What Excites George About GenAI and Agentic Tools20:49 The Million-Dollar Data Story Project22:33 What Reveal Is Building with AI23:35 How Ask Gives Lawyers Grounded Answers28:30 The Myth of Finding Everything in Discovery29:11 Why Good-Faith Discovery Matters More Than Perfection33:43 The Biggest Misconceptions About eDiscovery35:52 What Actually Differentiates AI Platforms39:22 Can AI Improve Access to Justice?41:58 George’s Hot Take: Legal Tech Is at a 15 Out of 1043:16 Final Thoughts
Quotes:

1. "When we started EDRM I said no way, how are we going down that path where you have to buy standards. Whatever else we do, the diagram and the content we publish around it comes at no charge to anybody. Everything wrapped around that diagram was the result of 35 people coming from law firms, corporate legal departments, service providers, and software providers, so it wasn't any one person's work or organization's work."
2. "What you can learn through getting a liberal arts undergraduate education that is very hard to learn if you have a technical education focused on a specific area are really powerful critical thinking skills. The ability to stand in the shoes of others and look at things from their perspectives, and to call on foundational elements that come from any number of disciplines like philosophy, sociology, economics and history."
3. "We're seeing more rapid and more extensive change now than we have ever seen. In some ways with generative AI and agentic capabilities, we are back at that same starting point again. History doesn't repeat itself but it definitely can rhyme, and we're on a rhyming stage right now where it's at the same type of open range of possibilities."
4. "The area of eDiscovery that has always been of greatest interest to me is what can you do with this stuff once you've got it. We are now seeing with all of the capabilities emerging with generative AI and agentic possibilities a whole array of opportunities for lawyers to work with content to more effectively prosecute or defend a matter at far lower cost in a much compressed time frame."
5. “The number one preconception is that discovery stuff is just a waste of time and money. What do you do in a lawsuit? There are two things you focus on - the law and the facts. Discovery is what gets you the facts, and if you do discovery well, you're much better placed to combine them together to reach an outcome."

Between The Briefs is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Law firms have, historically, struggled with change. In this episode of Between the Briefs, hosts Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens welcome Umair Muhajir, Vice President and Global Head of Managed Review at DISCO, for a sharp, honest conversation about what GenAI is really doing to litigation workflows.
His view is clear: GenAI is not simply making old workflows faster. At its best, it is forcing the industry to ask whether those workflows still make any sense. 
What You’ll Learn:

• Why GenAI replaces first-level document review work, not lawyers themselves
• How AI-powered review can deliver high precision and recall while creating stronger audit trails
• How legal teams can separate case learning from document review using AI-powered Q&A tools
• Why law firms struggle to adopt AI when their billing systems are still built for hourly work
• Why many “AI ethics” horror stories are actually old-fashioned lawyering failures in a shinier outfit
• Why legal education may need more statistics, validation and practical technology literacy

Tune in to hear why the future of legal work will only be won by lawyers who know how to use AI without lowering their standards.
Highlights:
00:00 Introduction & Meeting Umair Muhajir01:07 From Paul Weiss to the Early Days of eDiscovery04:48 What DISCO Does and Umair’s Role in Managed Review06:45 Is AI Replacing Associates or Replacing Document Review?08:52 How DISCO Builds Client Confidence Around GenAI Review09:32 Why Precision and Recall Matter in AI-Powered Discovery13:18 The Biggest Barriers to Law Firm AI Adoption15:48 How Junior Associates Learn Cases When AI Handles Review20:00 Why AI Should Reimagine Workflows, Not Just Speed Them Up21:17 What Comes Next for AI in Discovery and Legal Data24:21 What Big Law Actually Wants From Legal Tech Vendors27:10 Why Legal Has Multiple Historical Periods Inside One Firm29:03 How GenAI Challenges Hourly Billing and Pricing Models32:56 What Law Schools Need to Teach in an AI-Native Legal World38:02 How Global Review Strategy Works Across Jurisdictions40:44 Why Many AI Ethics Failures Are Really Lawyering Failures45:05 Umair’s Hot Take: Legal’s Overinvestment Problem46:47 Closing Thoughts 
Quotes:

1. "The issue isn't associates learning the case, it's how they are learning the case. Technological developments have meant that you can actually bifurcate learning about the case from document review. We have a Q and A chatbot that works with lawyers and associates on the case team to learn the case, and it'll give you a supporting citation and highlights."
2. "The technology ought not to be an invitation to recreate the exact same workflows we've always done, but maybe should also be an invitation to reimagine what those workflows can be in the future."
3. "The reality is not that AI is replacing people. It's that people who use AI are going to replace people who don't. Law students will need to expect certain different things from their legal education, including introductions to statistical thinking, which might not be natural to us in law school."
4. "A lot of the cases and horror stories that get press are really examples of legal malpractice, not a Gen AI problem. If you don't think it's a great idea to discuss your case with someone at the bar, it's probably not a good idea to feed confidential stuff into a public instance of Gemini."
5. "An hourly model will never adequately capture what needs to be done at either the provider or the client side. Law firms have billing systems that might only be set up to process hourly rates, and it is very difficult for them to fit a tech-driven solution into their existing internal billing systems."

Between The Briefs is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Paralegals have long been boxed into the role of “document reviewers” but their true value goes far beyond that. And with AI in the mix, their place in law firms is being rewritten entirely. In this episode of Between the Briefs, hosts Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens welcome Michelle Pendleton, Certified Paralegal and eDiscovery specialist at Allen Matkins and President of the San Diego Paralegal Association, to explore how paralegals are quietly becoming the most valuable players in law firms.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to navigate the paralegal profession's shifting identity
• How to structure case management from intake to trial
• Why paralegals must reframe AI prompts for machines, not lawyers
• The art of managing attorney expectations through timeline transparency
• How to treat paralegals as strategic professionals, not administrative assistants
• The paralegal's untouchable value: strategic case orchestration that AI cannot replicate
• Why the next frontier for paralegals is technical infrastructure literacy

Tune in to understand how the role of the paralegal is undergoing a major transformation and what technology has to do with it. 
Highlights:
00:00 Introduction & Meeting Michelle Pendleton 00:01 How Michelle Went from Receptionist to Paralegal00:50 All It Takes is One More Question in Litigation02:53 How eDiscovery Evolved and Why Paralegals Led the Charge04:02 Why Paralegals are the Unsung Architects of Complex Legal Cases06:33 Learning New Legal Technology: Then vs. Now08:28 Why You Need to Prompt AI Like You're Speaking to a Beginner10:04 Managing Attorney Expectations Through Transparent Timelines11:42 How to Treat Paralegals as Strategic Professionals13:34 Why Communication Matters Now More Than Ever13:57 Real-World Applications of AI in Daily Paralegal Work16:16 A Paralegal’s POV on AI Adoption and Job Security18:26 The Evolution of the Paralegal Role from Back Office to Courtroom20:57 Paralegals as Gatekeepers: Evaluating Legal Tech Vendors22:20 Making the Right Sales Pitch to Paralegals 23:54 Career Advice for Aspiring Paralegals and New Professionals25:34 San Diego Paralegal Association: Current Conversations and Concerns28:01 Michelle’s Case for Paralegal-Specific Education29:48 Designing the Courses Paralegals Actually Need32:33 What the Future of Paralegals Looks Like 34:22 Mastering the Nuts and Bolts of eDiscovery Tools35:55 The One Thing Technology Cannot Replace37:29 Emotional Intelligence and Soft Skills in Paralegal Work38:35 How Digital Communication Is Changing Professional Interactions39:34 Michelle's Hot Take: You Can't Avoid It, So Learn It41:17 Key Takeaways and Final Thoughts
Quotes:

1. "The biggest thing for me was to always ask one more question. I think in litigation, that's a big, big thing to think about because even if you get something that looks pretty simple and obvious on its face, it's not always that way when you start to dig in and look at the actual information and the documentation, especially, the evidence."
2. "We are kind of a jack of all trades. I do something different almost every day, at least a little bit that I haven't done before. You know, whether it's today I'm using Google Earth to map a demonstrative for a hearing, but I think just being willing to make those adjustments because it's a constant movement in terms of what the case requires, what the judge requires, what a witness might require to take their deposition properly."
3. "I learned that even though people say use common language, use natural language, you also have to be cognizant that you're talking to a machine or someone who may not know anything about the legal profession. I learned that I have to take a few steps backwards when I'm starting those prompts because I tend to just jump in and I'm used to using the jargon and legal tools that know exactly what those parameters are."
4. "I think it's the case management - that's the key. Because I find when I see a case that hasn't had a paralegal on it, it's not structured. There's no management and no tracking of all of those things that we've been talking about. The ability to know where you're going and what you're gonna need to get there - it's invaluable."

Between The Briefs is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

The impact of AI on law has been studied through the narrow lens of productivity and profitability. But the reality is much broader than that. In this episode of Between the Briefs by Steno, Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens welcome back Daniel Schwarcz, Professor at the University of Minnesota Law School to discuss groundbreaking empirical research on how AI impacts lawyer performance, legal reasoning and long-term professional development.
What You’ll Learn:

• How to move beyond benchmarking studies to measure what actually matters
• Why reasoning models and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) platforms deliver measurable improvements
• The counterintuitive finding that using AI for research strengthens independent legal reasoning when AI is unavailable
• How litigation work benefits more measurably from current AI tools than transactional work
• The critical distinction between confidentiality risks and genuine professional concerns
• Why high-valuation legal tech firms like Harvey and Legora face competitive pressure from accessible alternatives

This episode challenges everything we think we know about AI’s cognitive impact on lawyers and their practice. 
Highlights:
00:00 Introduction & Meeting Professor Daniel Schwarcz 2.0 02:09 How AI Progress Has Defied Earlier Predictions03:34 Getting into the Research: New Findings & More 05:56 Why Randomized Controlled Trials Matter for Lawyers10:47 Reasoning Models vs. RAG: Choosing the Right AI Architecture for Your Practice16:40 How and Why AI Research Skills Persist Even When Technology is Removed23:00 Legal Tech Vendors, Study Citations & Navigating Selective Evidence26:43 Why It’s Critical to Use Foundation Models Responsibly30:02 AI's Role in Access to Justice & Pro Se Litigants and Future Research34:00 The Long-Term Effects of AI in Law and Emerging Research Questions36:19 Human vs. AI: Context-Dependent Futures in Legal Practice39:05 Why Empirical Evidence Shouldn't Slow Adoption42:31 Daniel’s Hot Take: High-Valuation Legal Tech Firms Face Significant Market Pressure44:12 Key Takeaways & Closing Thoughts 

Quotes:

1. "I'm excited about this new paper I have that tries to look at not only what the effect on quality and speed is of using AI on legal tasks, but also what the effect is on the ability of people who are using AI to reason when the AI is taken away from them. I think that's an important step in trying to understand the broader scenario that all lawyers and members of the legal academy more generally are facing right now."
2. "The mere fact that an AI can do well on an exam or on a task doesn't really answer the question most lawyers want answered, which is: how will I perform when I use AI compared to how I perform when I don't use AI? You can't extrapolate from the fact that an AI performs well on its own to the fact that if I use an AI, I'll start performing well on my own."
3. The basic interpretation is that AI helped our participants understand the legal source material better - they understood the case law better, they understood the law better. That produces benefits that persist even when they no longer have AI."
4. "The study made me more confident than I would otherwise be that using these tools can be beneficial in many ways, even in ways that aren't fully intuitive.”
5. "In some contexts, the practice of law will absolutely look like AI judgment being primary with humans handling exceptions - like in will drafting where an AI handles the initial draft and a human checks it. But in other settings with massive human elements like counseling clients or talking to judges, AI won't be a substitute because the human element is essential."

Between The Briefs is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Lawyers can (technically) be the superheroes society needs them to be but the legal system simply doesn’t allow it. With a broken system, flawed legal aid and crumbling structures, justice gets the short end of the stick - but can AI be part of the solution? In this episode of Between the Briefs, hosts Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens welcome Sateesh Nori, Chief Legal Futurist at LawDroid and Senior Research Fellow at NYU School of Law, to explore how justice can truly be democratized. 
What You’ll Learn:

• How to quantify the access to justice crisis
• Why AI is uniquely suited to legal work
• The triage bottleneck and how chatbots solve it
• Why housing court illustrates systemic failure
• How to reframe legal services as a utility, not a luxury
• The critical gap in law school curriculum

Right now, millions are disenfranchised, without access to the legal care they deserve. Tune in to find out how legal technology is tipping the scales. 
Highlights:
02:29 Sateesh’s Journey from Housing Court to Legal Technology04:26 Let’s Quantify the Access to Justice Crisis07:20 Why Large Language Models Are Architecturally Perfect for Legal Work09:10 The Harsh Truth About Housing Courts Today13:04 Fixing the System Before Court, Rent Assistance & Bureaucratic Friction14:12 Building Intelligent Triage Systems that Eliminate Burnout16:50 Courts Need Both Systemic Reform and Technology19:30 Why Comparative Risk Analysis is Our Best Friend Right Now22:41 What Needs to Change So Access to Justice Can Be Real 25:40 Innovation Hubs: Stanford, Suffolk and Utah's Regulatory Sandbox Model27:08 Thinking About the Future of Legal Services28:40 How We Need to Prepare Law Students for Disruption31:10 The Death of the Billable Hour in an AI-Driven Legal Market33:31 AI-Native Law Firms Without Humanity Mean Nothing 35:15 Redesigning Client Experience: The McDonald's Model for Legal Services36:56 Sateesh’s Rapid Fire: Big Law Pro Bono, Tec-Led Education & More39:37 Making Legal Aid and Clinics Irrelevant40:56 Thought Leaders Shaping the Future of Access to Justice42:17 Sateesh’s Hot Take: An AmLaw 40 Firm Will Fail Within 12 Months43:13 Key Takeaways & Closing Thoughts 
Quotes:

1. "I'm someone who always wanted to go to law school. Since I was a kid, I thought it was such a great way to spend time, to help people, to dress up and go to court, to stand up for the little guy. But after a long time practicing as a lawyer, I realized we're like superheroes, but we're being held down by a giant force. And that force is the legal system."
2. "The time that we do have, we're spending not on helping people, but on paperwork, on procedural things, on internal things within the structures of nonprofits, on fundraising, on answering emails. We're probably spending less than 40% of it on actually helping people and more than half of it on the drudgery of working in a big system that's so oppressive."
3. "We're comparing what we're offering to the perfect lawyer, which no one's gonna get. In fact, you're not gonna get anybody. The average person is going to Reddit and Google for help, and they're also going to OpenAI and Gemini. This is already happening. So regulating it from that end is not gonna do anything."
4. "I think law schools are still following law firms. The higher rank the law school, the more insulated they think their students are because they're still gonna get jobs. But you fast forward couple years, and if the law firms stop hiring people from elite law schools, what happens to the law schools? They're not thinking ahead far enough."
5. "We need to be the McDonald's. Instead, we're operating even the most modest legal services office like a fancy Michelin star French restaurant. People want burgers and fries and pizza, the basic answers to their legal problems, and we're like, let me see what the chef has in mind for you today. It's totally broken."

Between The Briefs is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

The only thing more important than embracing AI transformation for legal teams today is being able to communicate the change and manage it. In this episode of Between the Briefs by Steno, hosts Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens sit down with Mike Russell, Head of Global Legal Operations at Expedia Group, to explore just how legal operations is spearheading this movement. 
What You’ll Learn:

• How to position change management as the most critical skill in legal operations
• The framework for evaluating AI tools in legal departments
• Why measuring "lawyer hours saved" alone is an incomplete metric
• How to structure listening tours across global legal operations
• The strategic vision for self-serving legal agents that reduce human touchpoints
• How to navigate the law firm relationship evolution in an AI-enabled market
• The governance framework that separates productivity gains from legal liability
• Why legal operations should hire for curiosity and adaptability over experience
• How peer-driven adoption accelerates AI implementation across legal teams
• The opportunity to position legal operations as the first hire after general counsel in growing companies

Tune in for the play-by-play on building and managing AI-enabled departments. 
Highlights:

00:00 Introduction 02:09 From Law Firm IT to Global Legal Operations: A Three-Decade Journey04:33 Breaking Down the Legal Ops Evolution  07:54 Why Change Management Defines Legal Ops Success08:30 Mike’s Legal Ops Success Playbook13:48 Building AI-Enabled Legal Operations Teams15:30 Is Saving Lawyer Hours a Valid Metric? 19:21 The New Skills: Hiring for Legal Ops Today 21:53 Building Agents That Compress Decision Timelines25:03 Architecting Self-Serving Legal Agents 10127:20 How to Sell Innovation in a Conservative Industry29:13 The Truth About Managing Multiple AI Agents30:17 Making AI Compliance Intrinsic, Not Retroactive31:36 The Importance of Internal AI Champions and Peer Advocacy33:23 How Real-Time Visibility and Peer Success Drive Deeper AI Adoption34:38 Unconventional Skills That Transform Leadership37:00 Balancing Innovation Velocity With Organizational Readiness38:10 The Art of Listening: Using the Five Whys to Diagnose Workflow Friction40:45 Essential Resources: Richard Susskind, David Cowan, and the Business of Law41:48 Why Jurisdiction Differences Demand Flexibility43:18 AI Won't Eliminate Jobs, It Will Transform Them44:31 Mike’s Hot Take: Legal Ops is the Secret to Scaling 45:34 Key Takeaways & Final Thoughts
Between The Briefs is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Applying AI to an already bad process is just automating a bad process,” says Myah Bowermaster, Head of Legal Operations at Cvent, in this episode of Between the Briefs by Steno. Tune in as hosts Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens sit down with Myah to explore the truth behind AI adoption in the legal landscape. 
What You’ll Learn:

• How to position legal operations as strategic partnership
• Why waiting for AI maturity beats first-mover adoption
• The framework for assessing legal tech readiness 
• How to build credibility as a non-lawyer legal operations leader 
• The “help me help you” approach to process implementation 
• Why contract data integration unlocks revenue-generating insights 
• How to hire for legal operations success without a legal background 
• The human-AI balance that protects cognitive capability

AI is shiny, but not all that glitters is gold. And, it turns out waiting, rather than rushing, might be the smarter choice when it comes to the AI game. 
Highlights:
00:00 Introduction & Meeting Myah Bowermaster 01:43 From Paralegal to Legal Operations Leader: An Unconventional Path05:48 What Legal Operations Actually Does and Why It Matters10:16 Strategic Patience: Why AI Adoption Should Follow Market Maturity13:29 Myah’s Advice to Legal Teams 15:40 Input Quality Determines Output Reliability18:27 Descriptive Context Over Prompt Engineering20:41 Building Credibility Without a Law Degree23:05 Ownership, Maturity Models, and Growing Legal Operations Teams25:50 The Real Resistance: Centralization and User Interface Design27:20 Three-Year CLM Implementation and Cross-Functional Excellence29:32 Hiring for Legal Operations: Soft Skills Over Legal Background32:33 Crisis Management and the Chaos Coordinator Role34:23 The Evolution of Legal Operations: From Admin to Chief of Staff35:57 When to Hire Your First Head of Legal Operations37:33 AI Tool Evaluation: Consistency, Integration, and User Experience40:02 Turning Contract Data Into Revenue-Generating Intelligence44:20 Myah’s Hot Take: Just Because AI Can Doesn't Mean It Should45:16 Key Takeaways and Final Thoughts
Quotes:

1. "Legal operations is doing everything it takes to run a legal department that doesn't involve practicing law. We're the connective tissue bringing the process to compliance. Lawyers are really good at being lawyers, but lawyers are not typically process oriented or tech oriented, and so a big part of what legal ops does is we empower lawyers to do what only lawyers can, and then we automate and operationalize the rest."
2. “Everyone kept saying we need to catch up with AI, but all the pain points that we have were not something that AI could do yet in the legal space. I could purchase this right now and address 25% of the pain point, but we haven't done the internal work to get to that 40%. Why don't I just wait and let the market catch up to us so they can address 70 to 80% of our pain points?"
3. "You don't need to be a prompt engineer. You need to be descriptive and then let the AI do the prompt engineering for you. Start every prompt with: I want you to refine this prompt so it works best with my tool. Do not run the prompt. This shows you how descriptive you actually were and what the AI understood from what you said."
4. "It is all about relationship building. I went out to everyone and said, help me help you. What are your pain points? Instead of telling you the best way to do something, I understand what your pain points are and tell you everything I do is to help you and enable you and make your life better. It all comes back to trust."

Between The Briefs is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

You can know every detail of a case - the when, what and who - but if you miss out the why, you’re playing a losing game. In this episode of Between the Briefs by Steno, hosts Joe Stephens and Adrian Cea welcome Kaelyn Gustafson, Litigation Associate at Friedman, Kaplan, Seiler, Adleman and Robbins, to explore how genuine human connection, strategic preparation, and technological literacy are reshaping modern legal practice.
What You’ll Learn:

• How service industry experience builds the foundational empathy lawyers need to understand client motivation and case strategy
• Why authenticity is the primary credibility meter in litigation
• The critical difference between understanding the "what" and the "why" in case strategy
• How to leverage closed-loop AI systems strategically while protecting client privilege and sensitive information
• The necessity of transparent client communication about AI use in legal services
• How judges evaluate counsel credibility through written work product and courtroom behavior

This episode serves as a reminder that authenticity, even in the age of AI, is every lawyer’s biggest winning bet.
Highlights:
00:00 Introduction & Meeting Kaelyn Gustafson 02:22 From Waiter to Complex Litigation: An Unconventional Path07:26 Building Empathy and Credibility Through Hospitality Experience09:10 Kaelyn’s Aha Moment & Overcoming Impostor Syndrome  16:20 Where Authenticity and Strategy Converge in Legal Practice18:43 Understanding Client Motivation: The Irreplaceable "Why" in Litigation23:25 Using AI as a Tool for Access to Justice27:23 Being Human Beats AI: Storytelling in the Courtroom 28:17 Kaelyn’s Lessons from Clerkship 30:35 Life Without AI: Written Advocacy and Courtroom Credibility 35:03 Navigating the Modern Litigator Life 41:12 Kaelyn’s Hot Take: Empathy is Every Lawyer’s Biggest Advantage 41:57 Key Takeaways & Final Thoughts
Quotes:
1. "I think everyone should work in the service industry at one point in their lives because that is what shaped me as an empathetic person, but also as someone who can manage a myriad of personalities."
2. "If you don't know the why for what people are pursuing a case for or what you know, on the opposite side, like, the why of an individual's actions that may have led to a lawsuit, then you're not gonna get it right."3. “Authenticity, I think, is the number one credibility meter, and credibility, by the way, is most of a trial court's determination."
4. "The lawyers still standing at the end of this AI revolution are the ones with empathy and who understand the client's problem, and that can only be done with a human connection."Between The Briefs is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

What if legal professionals have been missing the key to responsible AI implementation this whole time? In this episode of Between the Briefs, hosts Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens welcome Matthew Krengel, eDiscovery Counsel and Director of Information Retention Counseling at Cooley LLP, to explore the real solution.
What You’ll Learn:

• How to transition from viewing AI as a liability to recognizing it as a strategic asset
• Why the "move fast and break things" ethos conflicts with legal practice, and how to implement a phased approach to AI governance 
• The critical importance of client consent frameworks for AI usage
• How to protect confidentiality and trade secrets in an AI-enabled workplace 
• The psychological barriers to effective AI implementation, including automation bias and confirmation bias
• Why information governance and records management professionals have become more critical than ever

We're at an unprecedented inflection point in law and technology and this conversation reveals how to position yourself at its forefront.
Highlights:

00:00 Introduction & Meeting Matthew Krengel  01:57 From eDiscovery Pioneer to AI Governance Leader07:10 What’s Changing in the Tech-Law Space Today 10:50 Machine Learning's Two-Decade Role in Legal Discovery13:56 From Malpractice Fear to Mandatory AI Implementation18:06 Discovery Sanctions and the Technology Adoption Cycle21:57 Combating Automation Bias in Legal Practice26:19 Hafner Case: Confidentiality Breaches and Privilege Waiver30:45 Client Consent Frameworks and Engagement Letter Protocols35:28 Implementing Governance Without Perfection38:25 Fear and Existential Doubt in an AI-Driven Practice39:55 AI as Force Multiplier for Trial Team Excellence42:44 Business Acumen: The JD-MBA Advantage in Legal Practice45:42 Matthew’s Hot Take: We’re at an Inflection Point48:00 Key Takeaways & Closing Thoughts
Quotes:

1. "I like to gravitate towards the new and unformed. I like to be on sort of the frontier of, you know, the development of law."

1. "How do I enable the responsible use of information? How do I make sure that companies are using it responsibly so that they can then use it in a manner that both benefits themselves and also the people that they serve."

1. “Move fast and break things works because when they break things, you don't end up with sanctions, you end up with, “okay. We just need to rebuild this and fix it.” That doesn't really always work for the law."

1. “Attorneys are known for their analytical rigor. If we're not doing that because we're now seeding it to AI, then how are we supposed to verify and vet the outputs with any degree of scrutiny if we're not exercising that."

Between The Briefs is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so