How AI is Exposing Decades of Legal Incompetence ft. Nicole Black

Everyone’s worried that AI will take their job. But what they should be worried about is AI exposing how bad some people have been at their jobs. In this episode of Between the Briefs, hosts Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens welcome Nicole Black, Principal Legal Insight Strategist at 8AM, for an eye-opening discussion on how AI is really shaping the ground reality of law today.

What You’ll Learn:

Why hallucinated case citations and fabricated legal propositions represent a systemic competence crisis

How to build internal AI governance policies and training frameworks that protect your firm

The strategic difference between guardrailed AI systems and open-ended legal research AI

Why not using AI may soon constitute malpractice once hallucination problems are solved

How to evaluate legal tech adoption for firms of all sizes, from solo practitioners to large firms

Why authentic access-to-justice promises often mask profit-driven corporate interests

Her insights as a legal technology authority make for essential listening.

Highlights:

00:00 Introduction

00:01 From Public Defender to Legal Tech Pioneer

00:06 The Evolution of Social Media in Legal Practice

00:10 AI Adoption and the Hallucination Crisis

00:13 Incompetence Exposed: AI's Real Impact on the Profession

00:18 Professional Obligations vs. Malpractice Standards

00:20 Guardrailed AI for Accuracy; Legal Research Remains Risky

00:21 Building AI Governance Policies Before Crisis

00:22 Scaling Tech Adoption: Solo Firms to Large Practices

00:25 Evaluating Legal Tech: What to Look For

00:27 Gen X Resilience: Learning Law Without Modern Tech

00:29 What Makes a Great Lawyer: The Public Defender Advantage

00:31 Access to Justice: Cynicism, Capitalism, and Real Impact

00:34 The Writer's Journey: Passion Meets Technology

00:36 Using AI in the Writing Process

00:40 Predicting the Future of Legal Tech

00:41 Nicole’s Hot Take: AI Exposing Legal Profession's Ugly Underbelly

00:43 Key Takeaways & Final Thoughts

Quotes:

"2017 is when you first started seeing legal tech products with AI in them, not generative AI, but AI. Once ChatGPT rolled out in November 2022, it has certainly impacted the practice of law. The rate of adoption is unlike anything I've seen before. It pretty much doubles year over year in terms of legal tech adoption."
"I don't even think it's a misdeployment. It's all the pressures the lawyers are under - they're far worse than they used to be in terms of billable hours, client demands, and competition. What's happening now is that what ChatGPT spits out looks really good. It's convincing, it sounds good, it looks good - and people are just assuming that it's accurate without verification."
With technology and AI, you have a professional obligation to understand the technology and make an educated decision about whether to use it or not use it. Right now, I think it's arguably malpractice not to understand AI and make a decision about when and when you shouldn't be using it, but we're certainly gonna get there faster than we have with previous tools."
"Generative AI and its hallucinations are just exposing the ugly underbelly of incompetence that's always existed in our profession. A lot of people have gotten away with incompetent legal work for far too long and been given the benefit of the doubt. But now when a case doesn't even exist, it's so easy to prove that they didn't read it, and this is just exposing incompetence that's been getting worse."