Artificial Intelligence

This is the second in a two-part series on AI-driven crises. Part 1 examined communications during an incident while the facts are still developing. Part 2 addresses crisis plans, governance and tabletop exercises before an agent acts on behalf of the business.

This article walks through where intellectual property ownership gaps come from, how they surface in diligence and why they are so often tied to the way founder equity is structured.

Here is the uncomfortable truth about AI in law firms: adoption was the easy part. Firms did in two years what this profession failed to do with almost every technology before it. But adoption was never the goal. Return is. And on return, the evidence is starting to come in — and it should get every managing partner’s attention.

Identity security has moved well beyond passwords, and legal organizations still defending as if it has not are the most likely to find out the hard way, with client trust and professional obligations on the line.

Today, a prospective client may learn about your firm through an AI-generated answer before ever visiting your website. This raises an important question: If an answer engine were to reduce everything your firm says about its AI capabilities to three sentences, would those three sentences still be accurate?

Some of the world's leading AI companies are spending considerable time preparing for something they sincerely hope never happens: a catastrophic AI-related event.

Profit won’t be decided simply by how fast lawyers work. It will be decided by what happens to that work as it moves through the firm. To convert AI-enabled work into actual profit, firms need intelligence across the full economic chain: matters, pricing, realization, billing and collections.

Here is the uncomfortable truth about AI in law firms: adoption was the easy part. But adoption was never the goal. Return is. And on return, the evidence is starting to come in — and it should get every managing partner’s attention.