The International Legal Technology Association conference is, as all the time, the massive one on the authorized tech calendar. It’s the Davos of doc assessment, the Tremendous Bowl of software program integrations, and the Oscars of people that unironically use “attorneys” and “know-how” in the identical breath. This 12 months, 4600+ authorized tech professionals and distributors gathered in Maryland for a weeklong salute to all know-how… however principally AI.
Nationwide Harbor exists not a lot a city as an artificial terrarium meticulously constructed to tug convention enterprise out of DC. A simulacrum of a metropolis middle, with themed eating places and bars ideally suited to host consumer dinners or vendor blissful hours. As a convention web site, it’s an ideal, enclosed economic system operating on lanyard-strung badges and drink tickets. There are individuals who complain about this venue and I’ll struggle each considered one of them. Anybody whining about Nationwide Harbor as a venue needs to be sentenced to ninth circle of hell (simply previous the Magnolia Rooms within the Gaylord Nashville — which is, whereas we’re on the topic, the placement of this occasion subsequent 12 months).
This commerce present Narnia served as an eerie counterpoint to the tragi-buffoonery unfolding throughout the Potomac. A peaceable, walkable village contrasted by a metropolis beneath siege. Neither displays actuality a lot. Nationwide Harbor is mainly a soundstage whereas D.C. is the most secure it’s been in many years. The Humvees cruising the drop-off lane of Union Station stood in for the piano bars in Nationwide Harbor, however each are simply props backing up an phantasm. For Nationwide Harbor it’s to offer a comfortable convention host that doesn’t really feel prefer it’s been plopped in the midst of nowhere. For D.C. it’s to distract everyone from how many times Donald Trump might show up in the Epstein files. One among these initiatives is extra profitable than the opposite.
However the important thing to appreciating Nationwide Harbor is recognizing it as a custom-built convention middle. It’s not an actual metropolis, it’s a simulation designed for shelling out data and sterno-warmed rooster dumplings. It’s ruthlessly environment friendly at delivering each, however you possibly can’t lose sight of the truth that it exists to make attendees be ok with the expertise. Not in contrast to the AI merchandise dominating the dialog. Since arriving on the scene, synthetic intelligence has impressed authorized tech distributors to design all method of merchandise delivering on the promise of elevated productiveness. However most of what we hear about are the attorneys who forgot that the AI expertise is an phantasm of its personal.
“Hallucinations” aren’t the issue, attorneys failing to check their work before sending it out the door is the issue. However that’s additionally a bit reductionist. There’s a psychological dimension to the chatbot interface. Attorneys wouldn’t belief a summer season affiliate’s temporary on face, so why are they trusting ChatGPT? The Christine Lemmer-Webber description of it as Mansplaining as a Service will get a variety of the best way there — as a instrument, AI delivers outcomes with supreme confidence regardless of how unsuitable it is perhaps. Although that’s not the entire story, as a result of mansplaining takes a condescending tone whereas the issue with these bots continues to be their overzealous compulsion to present the person the outcomes they need. Standing within the Gaylord’s Belvedere Lounge final week, I defined that it’s extra just like the man who’s turn out to be satisfied that the stripper is in love with him.
The medium is the message, as McLuhan would say. Authorized tech distributors expend huge assets to ensure AI merchandise ship extra dependable outcomes, however they’re combating a relentless battle in opposition to a public AI gross sales pitch telling the world that AI isn’t simply discovering proof, it’s discovering solutions. Although “the answer” is often what the lawyer is hired to get around. However that’s going to be the gross sales pitch, as a result of nobody will get megarich promising cautious enchancment, they must drive revolutionary change… whether or not it’s warranted or not.
Which turns into its personal hallucination. Do now we have a phrase for industries constructed on shared illusions?
The official theme at ILTACON was… pirates. Attendees dressed up like pirates, buying and selling plastic doubloons at no cost drinks and snapping photos across the spectacular Crow’s Nest on the finish of the exhibit corridor. Nothing says “NOT A BUBBLE” like dressing up because the romantic superb of individuals showering themselves in stolen wealth.
To be clear, this isn’t to say the authorized know-how sector — or extra particularly the AI element of it — is a bubble. Distributors outdid themselves this 12 months in creating new and extra attention-grabbing methods to deploy AI to enhance the authorized workflow. Definely launched its Cascade product, utilizing AI know-how to trace first, second, and third-order knock-on results from contract modifications to fight negotiation whack-a-mole. Everlaw confirmed off a brand new deep dive tool to permit extra senior attorneys to interrogate their doc units at each stage of the litigation. Each NetDocuments and iManage proceed discovering new methods to automate the method of creating the agency’s personal information be extra helpful.
Authorized AI suppliers might not be a bubble, however they might effectively be a kind of rainbow swirls shimmering fantastically on the floor of an underlying AI bubble.
Many of the AI on show on the present continues to be “constructing off” different merchandise — the “foundational fashions” to make use of the parlance of the commerce. On the finish of the day, a variety of these things rests on the vitality guzzling backs of OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, and MechaHitler (or no matter Grok is looking itself now). Fawning media protection and half-trillion-dollar valuations recommend it is a gravy prepare extending many years into the long run, however can this actually maintain up? To cite tech industry analyst Ed Zitron, “by the top of 2025, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Tesla may have spent over $560 billion in capital expenditures on AI within the final two years, all to make round $35 billion.” What occurs when one — or extra — of the businesses behind these fashions runs out of money to pay the payments? The truth that authorized tech suppliers are constructing stuff on high that may truly pay the payments received’t matter a lot if the foundational bot goes darkish.
“Pirates, Be Ye Warned,” that we’re a lackluster NVIDIA earnings name from a precipitous drop.
Severely, how does OpenAI repay a $500+ billion valuation? How is that this income alleged to arrive? Tokens are the coin of the realm in AI, and in contrast to groceries, they’re truly getting less expensive. An enormous surge in customers isn’t possible barring the imposition of year-round faculty — a latest examine reveals AI subscriptions plummet when college students don’t need it to write papers for them over the summer — it’s onerous to think about the place the AI world expects to get all sufficient quantity to make again their cash. It sounds loopy to recommend a half-trillion would simply disappear, however it sounded loopy to recommend Lehman Brothers would disappear till it did.
Few tech observers are able to embrace a notion this grim. However a number of on the present appeared prepared to acknowledge this threat, even when they wouldn’t admit it out loud. After I’d recommend the opportunity of a foundational mannequin supplier going stomach up, one business insider mentioned instantly, “I feel that’s very doable.”
The present arrived in opposition to the backdrop of GPT-5 arriving with a common “meh,” which definitely didn’t assist promote the sense that we had been all using AI to the moon. The latest OpenAI mannequin didn’t come up a lot all through the week, shocking for an announcement with a lot hype, and it’s prompting the broader laptop science neighborhood to ask “What If A.I. Doesn’t Get Much Better Than This?” (which, as a title, certainly sounds familiar…). Whereas essentially the most audience-friendly tackle that query offers with the a lot ballyhooed “displacement” and whether or not or not it’s going to truly place each human in a Matrix-style incubator by 2027, it’s value realizing that with out an exponential step enchancment for AI, the one displaced people would be the ones working for the foundational mannequin suppliers.
Although most stored a optimistic outlook whereas signaling warning. Lexis, displaying off their new AI-powered authorized analysis instrument burdened that they’re continually evaluating the foundational fashions and prompt they might rapidly swap to a different mannequin as needed. In reality, probably the most singularly sensible options of the brand new Protégé providing is the choice of utilizing common AI fashions of the lawyer’s selection (4o, 3o, 5, or Claude Sonnet) from throughout the Lexis instrument. Questions that attorneys may in any other case plug into these shopper dealing with fashions may be posed throughout the safe Lexis surroundings. The aim was empowering selection, however it’s additionally helpful for conserving choices open. Of word, GPT-5 didn’t sufficiently impress Lexis into updating the melange of algorithms they use for various functions inside its Authorized AI instrument — one other attention-grabbing dig on the latest mannequin heard on the convention.
Thomson Reuters CEO Steve Hasker underscored the corporate’s dedication to the massive language fashions everyone knows and love/hate, however apparently took the chance to closely tout the corporate’s acquisition of Protected Signal Applied sciences. Hasker mentioned he believed the Protected Signal scientists “had been within the strategy of constructing the perfect, small language fashions for the authorized career,” and that Thomson Reuters is investing considerably of their work. As a strategic matter, the choice to dedicate assets to constructing, for lack of a greater analogy, an American DeepSeek looks like the highly effective hedge. Even when not one of the huge suppliers collapses beneath their very own bloated valuations and paltry revenues — and I nonetheless suppose they are going to — Thomson Reuters may have a mannequin on-hand that may be thrown at issues much more cheaply and, persevering with the DeepSeek analogy, extra precisely based mostly on a cleaner training regimen. Some companies, he mentioned, are already asking about bringing situations of those mannequin behind their firewalls.
Possibly the lasting accomplishment of huge language fashions would be the small language fashions we make alongside the best way.
Dangle round Nationwide Harbor lengthy sufficient and the cracks turn out to be obvious. Illusions solely final so lengthy, in spite of everything. The bar instantly throughout from the Gaylord sat deserted this time round, a very jarring growth contemplating it had a built-in buyer base of sloppy conventioneers. It definitely appeared unthinkable that considered one of these curated leisure experiences might fail. Is it so absurd to think about a man-made intelligence behemoth will go beneath like that bar? Nationwide Harbor carried on with out this watering gap, after all, however the absence served as a reminder: all gin joints are fleeting. AI is simply too highly effective to vanish from the authorized workflow, however strolling the convention this 12 months, it appeared as if suppliers would do effectively to contemplate the likelihood that a number of of the fashions underlying all this progress may implode. For that matter, prospects want to ensure they’ll be lined. Till then, the band performs on, the rum flows, and everybody convinces themselves they’ll be holding the doubloons when the lights come on.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Legislation and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Be at liberty to email any suggestions, questions, or feedback. Observe him on Twitter or Bluesky for those who’re enthusiastic about regulation, politics, and a wholesome dose of faculty sports activities information. Joe additionally serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
