This 12 months, “agentic” turned the sexiest buzzword to hit vendor PowerPoints. It’s in all places from particular merchandise to the period itself. At instances, plainly no copy can depart the door with out the phrase “agentic” crammed in there, regardless of it hitting the ear with roughly the identical credibility as “placing the regulation on the blockchain” or “constructing a metaverse follow.”
After which, Clio did one thing exceptional at its 2025 convention: it didn’t say it.
Very similar to jazz, typically an important a part of a convention is what you don’t say. As CEO Jack Newton unveiled an bold future for the corporate’s plan to tackle the world as a more or less everything app for lawyers, he wasn’t speaking about brokers. By my rely, Newton talked about the time period precisely twice throughout his keynote, and each instances in passing reference to broader trade traits versus describing Clio’s personal merchandise. As an alternative, he opted for phrases like “automation” and “teammates.” These could appear to be semantic variations, and to some extent they’re, however the absence of agentic — the acutely aware omission of a ubiquitous time period — says loads about Clio’s technique and engagement with its customers.
As somebody who has staked out a position as an aggressive hater of 2025’s most overrused empty signifier, I couldn’t have been extra happy by this.
Within the authorized trade, the time period “agentic AI” means one in every of two issues, and neither significantly helpful. Both it’s describing a very autonomous system that takes person targets and a few imprecise constitutional steering to chart out its personal workflow that it goes out and pursues earlier than delivering a ultimate product. That is what we within the enterprise would name “malpractice.” Agentic also can describe a sequence of vetted, cascading prompts we’d in any other case simply name “automation” however for Silicon Valley gloss. Mercifully, most merchandise calling themselves “agentic” within the authorized area fall into the latter class — competent workflow automation that legal professionals would embrace if it weren’t wrapped in terminology that implies their AI would possibly go rogue and file a movement with out them.
Whereas each different firm at authorized tech conferences this 12 months has been tripping over themselves to hype their spin on agentic, Clio appears to have learn the room — or, extra exactly, the legal professionals. Chief Product Officer John Foreman, confirmed that this rhetorical alternative was very a lot intentional. “For those who’re saying agentic, who’re you speaking to?” Foreman requested. “Buyers? Sure media publications? What if you wish to discuss a solo lawyer within the viewers that should use these items? ‘Agentic,’ as a time period, does nothing.”
Common attorneys don’t need to ship their work to brokers. An agent is somebody you rent to exit in your behalf and get you a greater deal whereas hiding how the sausage is made. They do your work as an alternative of you after which ask for 10 %. A “teammate” however is somebody who works with you. An affiliate or paralegal is somebody who does be just right for you that you just — primarily based in your precise expertise — then redline into oblivion.
“What do brokers do?” Vice President of Authorized Content material and Migrations Chris Inventory requested. “Brokers do stuff for you, however they don’t all the time get it proper. What do members of your group do? An assembled group works collectively, they get to the fitting conclusions collectively, they assist one another.”
“Human within the loop” is the vogue pushback that agentic advocates make, however it is a superficial nod. You say “we’ll hold you within the loop” is what you say to essentially the most annoying man in your group whereas planning the after social gathering. Legal professionals shouldn’t be within the loop, they need to be the middle of the entire dialog.
On the floor, what most corporations are calling agentic won’t differ from what’s being known as a teammate, but it surely carries a ton of unconscious baggage. If distributors got down to be agentic, the stress is all the time on them to maneuver extra duties behind the veil. However, as we’ve put it round right here, this “GPT-sus take the wheel” mentality simply additional strikes the lawyer and their skilled judgment out of the middle. It’s not sufficient to “edit on the finish,” as a result of lawyering is an iterative process that requires these breaks within the course of the place the group can — to cite from the Bard — cease, collaborate, and hear.
Quite a lot of the magic occurs when a junior exhibits a senior the work-in-progress. A system that jumps from enter to ultimate product, will nonetheless get an edit, but it surely’s a distinct psychological course of than partaking with work product again and again all through its manufacturing. “It’s all about checkpoints,” Foreman advised me. “You’re not essentially going after automating this complete factor right into a Rube Goldberg machine of AI.” Determining methods to maintain the AI actively leveraged whereas not dropping the suitable interruption factors is a key distinction between pondering in agent vs. pondering in teammate.
This won’t impress buyers and podcasters as a lot, but it surely ought to make legal professionals far more snug.
