This is the recording of my live CLE presentation at NiftyCON in 2024 called AI’s Impact on Competence and Fees: Ethically Become a Lawyer of the Future.
The CLE goals are: (1) learn to ethically incorporate AI into legal practice; (2) differentiate between various AI tools; and (3) learn about the most profitable and ethical billing methods. No CLE credit is available for listening to this podcast, but the content will still be super valuable and still worth a listen.
In this talk, I share my journey from traditional practice to leveraging AI to revolutionize legal services. I argue against the billable hour (to no one’s surprise), presenting AI as not just a tool for profitability but an ethical necessity for modern legal practice.
I focus on the ethical obligations on competence in technology and fair fee arrangements. I explain the concept of Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) for improving AI’s accuracy and stress the importance protected communications and client data security. I spend a good deal of time highlighting the distinction between legal-specific AI tools and general-purpose AI, emphasizing the need for legal AI to prioritize confidentiality and reliability (a/k/a using RAG).
I argue that attorneys must use the subscription model since it aligns with ethical obligations to not bill clients by using wasteful procedures, and it promotes efficiency and transparency. I share practical tips for implementing subscription legal services, including pricing strategies. I make the case that lawyers should embrace AI and subscription models to enhance service delivery, access to justice, and firm scalability, and move towards a more client-centric practice.
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Here’s the related presentation deck.
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