For more than two years, lawyers have been told that success with generative AI depended on writing better prompts and a search for the perfect “magic wand” prompting formula. That was the wrong lesson. The real change in 2026 is not found in the model itself, but in the professional posture required to use it.
Prompting or Negotiating? A Systems Design Lesson for Legal AI
I had a long session recently with a public genAI tool that taught me something more important than the topic I started with.
The lesson was not about whether the model was “smart enough.” It was about control. At a certain point, I realized I was no longer simply prompting an LLM. I was negotiating
Human-in-the-Loop Is Systems Stewardship
An investigation into why serious AI work depends less on clever prompts and more on defending invariants, boundaries, and human judgment.
At the end of a long, technical AI session this week, something became clear to me: human-in-the-loop is being misunderstood in ways that matter.
The issue wasn’t whether the system could generate outputs quickly
The Holmesian Leap: Solving the “Wicked Problem” of Access to Justice with AI
- The Problem: The self-represented litigant (SRL) crisis is not a simple “information gap” but a “wicked
Is the Legal Profession Ready to Win the AI Race? America’s AI Action Plan Has Fired the Starting Gun
The Starting Gun for Legal AI Has Fired. Who in Our Profession is on the Starting Line?
The legal profession’s “wait and see” approach to artificial intelligence is now officially obsolete.
This isn’t hyperbole. This is a direct consequence of the White House’s new “Winning the Race: America’s AI Action Plan.” After spending the last
HyperCard: Illustrating My AI Prompting Approach
I’ve been working on organizing and optimizing my AI prompts and prompting methodologies. I noticed that I have two major categories of approaches.
The first I call “complex, structured prompting.”
Google Gemini describes that, and I think accurately, as “a systematic, engineered way to interact with AI. It’s about building a personalized ‘cognitive operating system’
Are Only 25% of US Lawyers Now Litigators?
Is the legal profession shifting away from litigation, perhaps dramatically? Do we need to rethink legal education in light of changing practice patterns? Are only 25% of US lawyers now litigators? Is that percentage decreasing and at what rate? How can we find out?
I heard a while back that only a relatively small percentage
How Can Law Professors Effectively Teach AI Literacy to Law Students? LegalRnD AI Studio
How Can Law Professors Effectively Teach AI Literacy to Law Students?
Last spring at the Michigan State University College of Law and the MSU Center for Law, Technology & Innovation we introduced the “LegalRnD AI Studio,” a groundbreaking mini-course series designed to elevate law students’ AI literacy, focusing on practical skills in generative AI. I
Legal AI Best Practices and Definitive Answers, Legal AI Geniuses and Gurus, and Legal AI Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!
As summer arrives and my grading season has ended, I find myself eagerly anticipating some quality time experimenting with generative AI. After a spring semester filled with teaching a course on AI and the Law and conducting numerous prompting experiments, I am ready to continue my exploration.
This excitement is tempered by the sheer volume
Four Scenarios for the Future of Legal Education
I’m starting to publish regular blog posts from my generative AI experiments in what I now refer to as my “AI Lab.” In this post, I offer for your consideration the output generated by ChatGPT after a series of prompts I tried. I’m now calling what I’m doing “promptcrafting,” because, hey, why not? “Prompt