Everyone's Wrong About AI and Access to Justice | Natalie Knowlton

Everyone's Wrong About AI and Access to Justice | Natalie Knowlton

Natalie Knowlton has spent 20 years working on what everyone in legal calls "access to justice", a phrase she calls "the buzzword to end all buzzwords." Now as the Associate Director of Legal Innovation at the Center on the Legal Profession at Stanford, she's focused on civil justice reform, family court, and the middle-market clients most lawyers forget are locked out too. During this conversation, Mike and Natalie discuss what AI can and can't do for access, why self-help isn't the fix everyone wants it to be, why the adversarial system was already broken before ChatGPT showed up, and what practitioners themselves would have to change for anything to actually improve. 📌 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗱𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀𝗹𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿: Get the latest news, trends, and tactics in legal AI—straight to your inbox. ➞ join free: https://www.spellbook.legal/newsletter [https://www.spellbook.legal/newsletter] 💎 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸: Draft and review contracts 10x faster ➞ try it free: https://www.spellbook.legal [https://www.spellbook.legal] 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗼𝗱𝗮𝘆's 𝗴𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalieanneknowlton/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalieanneknowlton/] Bluesky/X: natalalleycat 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗮𝗻: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikewhelanjr/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikewhelanjr/] 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀: 0:00 - Introduction 0:37 - Meet Natalie Knowlton 1:07 - What "access to justice" actually means 6:07 - Self-help and its limits 7:23 - Why pro se filings are flooding the courts 9:37 - The three functions of lawyers and where AI fit 10:46 - AI in the adversarial system 13:13 - The emotional good of being seen and heard 14:16 - The Nippon Life / OpenAI case 15:37 - Law as a credence good problem 16:41 - Small legal AI vs. big general AI on accountability 18:30 - Regulation and the trust vs. capability question 20:03 - What practitioners need to do next 22:11 - Bottlenecks surfacing older problems 22:33 - Connect with Natalie

Why Every Legal Team is About to Be Restructured with Alex Su (Latitude Legal)

Alex Su talks to the people who hire lawyers. As Chief Revenue Officer at Latitude, an alternative legal services provider that builds on-demand teams for firms and in-house departments, he sees the resourcing decisions, the AI pressure, and the trade-offs play out in real time. During our conversation, we spoke about why in-house teams keep growing, why "judgment" isn't something you type into a chatbot, and what lawyers need to underline when their bosses ask what humans still do. 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗯𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗔𝗜 𝗶𝗻 𝗣𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1RqIrtq [https://open.spotify.com/show/1RqIrtq]... [https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbEpxcTU4OFJwQkVYS2twa0I4ZXhVU1haNHlYd3xBQ3Jtc0ttWU5CWVVtY2Ezdm9Qbk5VWHdyUE85bWRMTU4ydUpFWVBpR3N2Yk04T3dNTDNHZThkQlg0anZiLVdMNGp2NDFja2pYNFp5RkdUWjh0Vi1xVDVfVGVJajZXYk1RckVjUVJvTGVVRGUxV04xVHg4ZGJzWQ&q=https%3A%2F%2Fopen.spotify.com%2Fshow%2F1RqIrtqTgbng2BGuzr4aAq&v=9UB4guQyC3k] Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast]... [https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbHNPc2RqbHBsNEs0ZHRzYzAzbXRTVlVxeG9Wd3xBQ3Jtc0trLW1xYVdyMTlTWDlWRGNmc01BNm1QQXNQWW5hc05sTURPeGlmY0o5a3VicWFqeGN2RkdOS2pjRlVPSlhDSUVaV3owXzZhWGQ1Z3h6Njh3MlhkTDZvblZrdWZmdDlObmU3LUlTRXg3Vl9fR2IzLWlhVQ&q=https%3A%2F%2Fpodcasts.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Fai-in-practice%2Fid1846506529&v=9UB4guQyC3k] 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗼𝗱𝗮𝘆's 𝗴𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-su/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-su/] https://www.alexofftherecord.com/ [https://www.alexofftherecord.com/] 📌 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗱𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀𝗹𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿: Get the latest news, trends, and tactics in legal AI—straight to your inbox. ➞ join free: https://www.spellbook.legal/newsletter [https://www.spellbook.legal/newsletter] 💎 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸: Draft and review contracts 10x faster ➞ try it free: https://www.spellbook.legal [https://www.spellbook.legal]

The Client Side of Legal AI with Hilary Bowman

Hilary Bowman built Querious to solve the most frustrating moment in legal practice - when something unexpected comes up in a client meeting and the lawyer has to say "let me research and follow up." After more than a decade as a healthcare attorney at law firms and in-house at enterprises like IBM, she founded Querious to sit inside attorney-client conversations on Zoom, Teams, or phone and surface issues, questions, and follow-ups in real time. In this conversation, she flips the usual AI for lawyers script and asks what these tools actually do for clients - why most clients want a relationship partner instead of a black box, why timely follow-ups beat fancy portals, and how language tools finally let lawyers meet clients where they are. 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗼𝗱𝗮𝘆's 𝗴𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hilarybowman/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/hilarybowman/] https://www.querious.ai/ [https://www.querious.ai/] 📌 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗱𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀𝗹𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿: Get the latest news, trends, and tactics in legal AI—straight to your inbox. ➞ join free:  [https://www.spellbook.legal/newsletter]https://www.spellbook.legal/newsletter [https://www.spellbook.legal/newsletter] 💎 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸: Draft and review contracts 10x faster ➞ try it free:  [https://www.spellbook.legal]https://www.spellbook.legal [https://www.spellbook.legal] 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀: 0:00 - Introduction 0:50 - Meet Hilary 2:03 - What Querious does in a client meeting 2:45 - From healthcare law to founding a startup 4:10 - What clients actually want from a lawyer 5:21 - The lawyer as relationship partner and traffic cop 6:55 - The black box problem of hourly billing 7:30 - Bridging asymmetries between lawyer and client 8:03 - Why law can't have a Domino's Pizza tracker 10:36 - The most powerful LLM unlock for clients 12:38 - Where AI ends and creative lawyering begins 14:22 - Change costs and tool adoption 15:55 - Speed to value: narrowing the scope 17:45 - Building feedback loops with clients 20:18 - One thing to implement on Monday 22:15 - Connect with Hilary

Why AI Won't Fix Your Broken Workflow with John Grant

AI tools won't solve your overwhelm if your processes are the problem. John Grant is a fourth-generation lawyer turned workflow consultant. He spent a decade in tech before practicing law, and another eleven years helping firms fix how work actually moves. In this conversation, he breaks down the "magical thinking" behind AI adoption, why the real bottleneck is almost never where lawyers think it is, and how speeding up the wrong step actually makes everything worse. He also explains the concepts of "definition of done" and "definition of ready," why legal has an immature relationship with quality assurance, and what courts are already seeing as AI-assisted filings flood systems that aren't built to handle them. 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗼𝗱𝗮𝘆'𝘀 𝗴𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnegrant/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnegrant/] https://agileattorney.com [https://agileattorney.com]  [https://greenlinelegal.com]https://greenlinelegal.com [https://greenlinelegal.com] 📌 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗱𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀𝗹𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿: Get the latest news, trends, and tactics in legal AI—straight to your inbox. ➞ join free:  [https://www.spellbook.legal/newsletter]https://www.spellbook.legal/newsletter [https://www.spellbook.legal/newsletter] 💎 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸: Draft and review contracts 10x faster ➞ try it free:  [https://www.spellbook.legal]https://www.spellbook.legal [https://www.spellbook.legal] 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀: 0:00 - Introduction 0:42 - Meet John Grant 2:13 - What is Greenline? 3:18 - AI hasn't reduced work 4:30 - The optimism bias and the planning fallacy 6:00 - AI and the last mile problem 7:09 - Output vs. productivity: the developer study 8:06 - Effort is not value 9:21 - Reimagining what value actually means 10:00 - There's only one bottleneck 11:16 - Why improving the wrong step makes things worse 12:10 - AI-assisted pro se filings are flooding courts 13:45 - More but worse vs. less but better 14:00 - Where bottlenecks actually form in legal 15:27 - Legal's immature relationship with quality assurance 16:15 - Quality control is chosen friction 17:21 - Definition of done and definition of ready 18:06 - Failure demand and rework 19:29 - Lawyering is a caregiving profession 22:39 - The board game analogy: multiple ways to lose 23:32 - The Agile Attorney 101 podcast series 25:04 - Takeaway: AI won't solve overwhelm without design 25:38 - Connect with John

Are AI Notetakers Ethical for Lawyers? with Wendy Meadows & Michael Eisenberg

In this episode, Mike walks through the New York City Bar's recent opinion on using AI to record, transcribe, and summarize client conversations, and boils it down to four duties you probably already follow. Then mediator Wendy Meadows shares her full workflow, including Fathom for capture, Clio for document production, Spellbook for quality control, and how it turned a two-hour MOU into a 20-minute job. Michael Eisenberg breaks down consent rules, one-party vs. two-party states, and why none of this is actually new. 📌 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗱𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀𝗹𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿: Get the latest news, trends, and tactics in legal AI—straight to your inbox. ➞ join free: https://www.spellbook.legal/newsletter [https://www.spellbook.legal/newsletter] 💎 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸: Draft and review contracts 10x faster ➞ try it free: https://www.spellbook.legal [https://www.spellbook.legal] https://www.linkedin.com/company/spellbookai/posts/?feedView=all [https://www.linkedin.com/company/spellbookai/posts/?feedView=all] https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikewhelanjr/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikewhelanjr/] https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottas/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottas/] 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀: 0:00 - Introduction 1:46 - The New York City Bar opinion (Formal Opinion 20256) 2:45 - Risk 1: Consent and one-party vs. two-party states 4:48 - Risk 2: Confidentiality and ABA Rule 1.6(c) 6:06 - Risk 3: What if the client records the call? 8:46 - Why these rules aren't new 9:05 - Wendy's practice: mediator on Zoom all day 10:00 - Turn off the defaults 10:51 - Using it like an associate 12:27 - Drafting direct examination from a transcript 13:08 - Spellbook as the quality control layer 14:48 - Predicting the future: insights in context 16:01 - Why the good outweighs the bad 16:37 - Connect with Wendy and Michael