The AI Sidebar

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  Firms Are Growing Revenue With AI, Not Just Cutting Hours — Live from ILTACON 2026 29.09.2026 12Min.

  Recorded on the show floor at ILTACON, this conversation with Thomas Bueler-Faudree, founder of August, tackles the question he says he hears most from law firms: does adopting AI mean undercutting your own billable hours. Bueler-Faudree argues that legal work is inelastic, so firms that lower costs with AI tend to win more work rather than less, pointing to case studies of firms doubling revenue and scaling from 100 to 400 lawyers after adopting AI systems. He also breaks down why Australia and the UK have outpaced the US in AI adoption due to their different ownership rules, why long pilot programs with a mix of skeptics and early adopters matter more than rushing a rollout, and why he pushes firms to measure ROI in top-line revenue rather than time saved. The conversation closes with Bueler-Faudree's read on where the market is headed next, including the shift from firms using AI individually to firms restructuring around it at a firm-wide level.
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  How AI Is Quietly Transforming the Courts 22.09.2026 43Min.

  Most conversations about AI and the law focus on attorneys, but the courts themselves are moving fast in ways that get far less attention. Matt Davis, Vice President of Product Development at Tyler Technologies with over 20 years of experience in public sector courts and justice software, breaks down the three major categories where courts are actually deploying AI today: internal chatbots training up new staff, automation of repetitive clerk tasks like e-file review, and tools that help judges absorb case information faster without replacing their decision-making. Davis walks through real examples, including Orange County's internal chatbot, Alaska's AI tool for self-represented litigants navigating probate, and the Arizona Supreme Court's use of AI avatars to explain rulings in plain language for the public, and the conversation also covers the data custodian responsibilities courts carry, why judges and courts remain wary of AI touching outcomes even as they embrace it for analysis, and how Tyler's acquisition of FTR is shaping a new AI-powered experience for judges working with digital transcripts, before Davis and host Phillip Vaden close things out with a wide-ranging discussion on humanoid robots, AI safety, and where they each land on the optimist-versus-pessimist spectrum.
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  Legal Tech AI Recap: Google, Thomson Reuters, LexisNexis, and iManage All Make Their Move 14.09.2026 5Min.

  A packed couple of weeks in legal tech coming out of ILTACON 2026 in Nashville, TN. Host Phillip Vaden covers Google's launch of Gemini Enterprise for Legal, Thomson Reuters' new proprietary legal LLM, LexisNexis's shift toward an orchestration layer, and iManage's new platform and partnerships. He closes with a California bill that could restrict attorneys from delegating legal work to generative AI, and what it could mean for the legal AI market. 
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  Why Legal AI Needs an External Referee — Live from ILTACON 2026 08.09.2026 19Min.

  Recorded live at ILTACON 2026, this conversation with Dino Eliopulos, SVP of Innovation at Fulcrum GT, digs into why AI shouldn't be trusted to grade its own work. Eliopulos explains the case for building external systems that audit AI outputs rather than letting the AI evaluate itself, and how that traceability matters when a firm has to defend a disputed bill or explain how an AI-corrected time entry came to be. He also talks through the discipline behind Fulcrum's internal startup incubator, how unstructured legal work product like briefs and narratives is finally becoming accessible to AI, and what he tells firms asking how to measure ROI on their AI investments without having a business case in place from the start.
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  How Paralegals Are Becoming the AI Power Users of the Legal Industry 26.08.2026 42Min.

  Paralegals have been prompt engineers long before the term existed, and that background is shaping how they're approaching generative AI today. Kristine Custodio Suero, California Paralegal of the Year and paralegal educator at the University of San Diego School of Law, and Kelli Radnothy, a 20-plus year litigation paralegal with the Nevada Attorney General's office and chief ideas officer of KLR Paralegal, join the show to talk through how they're using AI tools in practice and in the classroom. They walk through their advice for paralegals just starting out, why starting low stakes and low risk matters before touching client data, and how they trained their own LLMs, nicknames included, to build confidence with the technology. The conversation covers the guardrails needed for confidentiality and ethics, the shift from task-based work to strategic work that AI is pushing paralegals toward, and why billing models may need to evolve alongside it. Suero and Radnothy also share how government and firm settings shape what tools they're allowed to use, their takes on Claude versus ChatGPT, and why they both land firmly on the techno-optimist side of the debate.
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  AI Adoption in Law Firms: What's Really Happening Behind the Numbers 18.08.2026 38Min.

  Generative AI usage among attorneys jumped from 31% to 69% in a single year, but most law firms still haven't caught up with formal policies or training. Attorney and legal tech columnist Nicole Black, who has covered the intersection of law and technology for two decades, breaks down what's driving that gap and what it means for firms trying to keep pace. She explains why solo and small firms tend to adopt new technology faster than their mid-size and large counterparts, and why immigration attorneys in particular are using generative AI at a much higher rate than other practice areas. Black also discusses the slow erosion of the billable hour, why in-house counsel and insurance defense attorneys are among the most likely to push firms toward flat rate pricing, and what the current wave of legal tech consolidation means for the tools attorneys rely on day to day. The conversation turns to the rise of vibe coding in the legal industry, including attorneys building their own case management software from scratch, and Black shares her own experience using AI tools to navigate a New York liquor license application for a winery she and her husband are launching. She closes with her honest take on where she lands between AI optimism and AI pessimism, and why she thinks regulation may already be behind the curve.
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  The AI Sidebar Trailer 24.06.2026

  AI isn’t coming for the legal profession. It’s already changing it. The AI Sidebar cuts through the noise around legal AI and legal technology. Hosted by Phillip Vaden, each episode explores how lawyers and litigation teams are using artificial intelligence in legal research, drafting, discovery, and practice management through honest conversations, real workflows, and practical takeaways you can apply immediately. Understand what AI actually means for legal practice and navigate the future of law with clarity and confidence, not hype. Presented by Infotrack.