AI and the Future of Law

What does it mean to be an AI-ready lawyer?
In this episode, Jen Leonard and Bridget McCormack are joined by Farrah Pepper, legal innovation partner at Harvey, and Kirsten Talmage, chief strategy officer at Practising Law Institute, to discuss The AI-Ready Lawyer: A Competency Framework for the AI Era.
Farrah and Kirsten explain why the legal profession needs a shared language for AI competency, how the framework can help law firms, legal departments, law schools, and individual lawyers, and why AI training should focus on durable professional skills rather than any single tool. The conversation also explores new legal career paths, the importance of oversight and judgment, and how organizations can use the framework to assess training gaps and build AI fluency responsibly.
In this episode:
What it means to be an AI-ready lawyer
Why the legal profession needs a shared AI competency framework
How AI fluency differs from tool-specific training
Why human judgment, oversight, and ethics remain central
How firms and legal departments can use the framework
Why smaller teams may benefit from AI training even more
How law students can assess AI readiness in schools and employers
Learn more about PLI’s AI-Ready Lawyer framework:
[PLI AI-Ready Lawyer Framework]
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What is an AI-native law firm?
In this episode, Jen Leonard and Bridget McCormack are joined by John Nay, founder and CEO of Norm AI and Norm Law, for a conversation about agentic law, AI-native legal services, and what it means to build legal work around agents rather than copilots.
John explains how legal and regulatory reasoning can be embedded into AI agents, allowing them to perform first-pass work, learn from prior matters, and create compounding value over time. The conversation also explores how Norm Law combines attorneys, legal engineers, software engineers, and AI engineers; why client-specific knowledge can become persistent; and how outcome-based pricing may change the business model of legal services.
The episode also examines client trust, human supervision, experienced legal talent, and the Legal AGI Lab’s research into how AI agents may be evaluated, benchmarked, and governed by law.
Learn more about the Legal AGI Lab: https://lab.norm.ai
In this episode:
What agentic law means
How AI agents differ from copilots
What an AI-native law firm looks like
The role of legal engineers and AI engineers
Outcome-based pricing and client trust
Human supervision in AI-native legal work
Legal AGI and the governance of AI agents
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How is AI changing the work of in-house legal teams?
In this episode, Jen Leonard and Bridget McCormack are joined by Nick Fleisher, co-founder and CEO of Sandstone, an AI-native platform built specifically for in-house legal teams. Nick discusses how AI is transforming legal operations by helping legal departments manage intake, triage work, connect business context, and move from reactive service providers to proactive strategic partners.
The conversation explores why successful legal AI depends on data and context rather than simply deploying another chatbot, how AI systems can learn legal judgment over time, what lawyers should automate first, and why human oversight remains essential as agentic workflows become more common. Nick also shares why corporate legal departments are under increasing pressure as AI accelerates work across the business, and what that means for the future of legal teams.
In this episode:

Why in-house legal teams are adopting AI differently than law firms
Building AI-native legal infrastructure
Why legal AI is fundamentally a data and context problem
How AI can help legal teams become more proactive
What AI can—and can't—learn from lawyers
Understanding agentic workflows and human oversight
Why implementation is the key to successful AI adoption
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Can law firms redesign themselves for a world shaped by generative AI?
In this episode, Jen Leonard and Bridget McCormack are joined by Sharon Crane, president of Practising Law Institute, for a conversation about Jen’s new book, Unprecedented: Designing a Human-Centered Law Firm When Everything Is Changing. Together, they explore why law firm transformation is difficult, how storytelling can make change feel more accessible, and why collaboration, human-centered design, and practical experimentation matter in the AI era.
The conversation also covers PLI’s AI competency framework, the value of business fables, the history of the Cravath system and the billable hour, how Jen used AI as a writing partner, and what the future of junior lawyer training might look like.
Learn more about Unprecedented: Designing a Human-Centered Law Firm When Everything Is Changing:
https://www.pli.edu/catalog/publications/treatise/unprecedented-designing-a-human-centered-law-firm-when-everything-is-changing/447974
In this episode:
Why law firm change requires human buy-in
How storytelling can make transformation more usable
Why the current legal business model is not inevitable
How AI can act as a co-intelligence, not a shortcut
What junior lawyer training might look like in the AI era

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The legal tech market is growing fast—but is it a bubble, or the beginning of a new era for legal services?
In this episode, Jen Leonard and Bridget McCormack are joined by Nikki Shaver, co-founder and CEO of Legaltech Hub, to discuss how AI is reshaping law firm strategy, pricing, technology selection, and competition. Nikki explains why firms are moving beyond efficiency as the main measure of AI value, how AI-native firms may challenge incumbents, and why agentic AI creates new governance and security questions for legal organizations.
In this episode:
How legal tech adoption has shifted since ChatGPT
Why AI value is moving from efficiency to quality
What AI-native firms mean for incumbent law firms
How law firms should evaluate legal tech startups
Why agentic AI raises new governance risks
What Nikki expects next for the legal tech market
Keywords:
legal tech, legal technology, AI in law, legal AI, law firm strategy, Nikki Shaver, Legaltech Hub, agentic AI, AI-native firms, law firm innovation, legal innovation, GenAI, legal tech bubble, future of law
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