Here’s my recap of the CLOC Global Institute for Above the Law. Legal ops professionals are the adults in the room of the legal tech conference world. There was serious content, serious attendees, and a business first attitude.
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Legal Ops And Matter Management By Outside Counsel: The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same
Based on what I heard at a CLOC conference facilitated audience conversation, a lot of outside counsel still don’t know what legal ops is. And when the audience was asked what outside counsel do right there was mostly silence.
According to this audience, the divide between many outside counsel and legal ops isn’t narrowing. But…
CLOC Opening Keynote: What If You Could Automate Everything?
Zach Cass opened the CLOC Global Institute this week with a question: if you could automate everything, what would you leave in? It’s a critical question for legal ops and for the legal profession .
I’ve been told C-suite executives are already wondering how to build agentic workflows that reduce the need to consult in-house…
Celebrity Keynotes At Legal Tech Conferences: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
I recently attended another legal tech conference celebrity keynote that left the audience wondering “what does this have to do with me?” Here’s my post for Above the Law on why celebrity keynotes at legal tech conferences sometime miss the mark. And what conference organizers and, for that matter, the celebrity speakers should be focusing…
The CLOC Global Institute: Some Changes And Challenges
Legal ops’ biggest annual gathering, CLOC’s Global Institute, is moving to McCormick in Chicago this week and, as can be expected, AI is shaping the agenda. One big question: how will AI reshape legal ops in particular, and how do its practitioners prepare? Not to mention how attendees will deal with the new venue (we…
Finally, Something For Small Law Firms
The Smokeball/Thomson Reuters partnership is the latest effort to better tie the legal research and substantive side of the business to the administrative side. What’s unique about it is that TR and Smokeball both say their partnership is purposefully directed toward the smaller law firms. It’s particularly timely as smaller law firms are struggling to…
Hallucinations, Inaccuracies, And The Erosion Of The Rule Of Law
Another week. Another law firm caught citing cases that don’t exist. But this time it was Sullivan and Cromwell, one of the most influential firms in the world. 36 errors. Three pages to describe them. Fabricated passages from real cases. S&C said its AI policies weren’t followed. That it had training designed to prevent exactly…
Dealing With AI Pressures: Thriving With An Abundance Of Knowledge
Just returned from ILTA’s Evolve 2026 conferance in Denver and here’s my Above the Law post. Three days of content at a breathless pace. A record 500+ attendees that tested but didn’t break the small-conference vibe that makes Evolve worth it. An opening keynote from Zach Abramowitz that framed the AI moment as well…
The Provocative Abramowitz Keynote And The Computer That Won’t Come On
Here’s my Above the Law post on Zach Abramowitz’s keynote at ILTA’s Evolve conferance. The keynote lived up to its title: Most Law Firms Are Doing AI Wrong. Here’s How to Do It Right.
His argument is that the failures in GenAI adoption from ineffective training to analysis paralysis to hallucination panic, all trace back…
ILTA EVOLVE: Sometimes Less Is More — A Focus On Leadership
Here’s my preview of ILTA’s Evolve conference that starts today in Denver for Above the Law. This is the thrid year in a row I have attended. I keep coming back for the same reasons: it’s small, focused, and cuts through the noise that dominates many large legal tech conferences.
This year ILTA has added…