The Geek In Review

Greg Lambert & Marlene Gebauer

Welcome to The Geek in Review, where podcast hosts, Marlene Gebauer and Greg Lambert discuss innovation and creativity in legal profession.

  1. 1d ago

    Brad Blickstein on Private Equity Thinking, AI Pricing, and the Law Firm Business Model

    We welcome back Brad Blickstein, CEO at Blickstein Group, to discuss how private equity principles may provide law firms with an alternative approach to profitability, governance, and even long-term growth. Blickstein's new book, WWPED: What Would Private Equity Do? was written to walk firms through how treating topics like pricing, technology, talent, and client relationships as part of the enterprise value instead of overhead expenses after year-end partnership distributions. Pulling from Jae Um's topics of Cream, Core, and Commodity framework, Blickstein talks about the legal work as the primary competitive battleground. Much like businesses that provide baked goods, firms have to separate the customized legal judgment from the repeatable legal processes, technology, and what alternative legal services providers offer. Law firm leaders should understand what scalable work is, begin building consistent systems to deliver that work, and truly professionalize pricing over relying upon what a partner's gut tells them. We also cover the Blickstein Group's 2026 Law Firm COO Survey where technology adoption and investment ranks as the leading strategic initiative with 38.1% identified practice silos as the largest structural issue and 27% of COOs listed lack of operational authority as another prime issue. COOs are struggling with being tasked with modernizing law firms, but not given the authority to actually overcome the base issues of decentralized partnerships, competing incentives, and overall firm political structures. Add AI into the mix, and the pricing question becomes even more important. Some two-thirds of the COOs surveyed confessed that they were not formally measuring any return on investment (ROI) in which they could later measure any law productivity or direct revenue increases. Blickstein points out that faster work in a billable hour model is not the type of math that law firms want to calculate, and that firms have to address this directly and redesign their overall pricing model on value received by the client, not hours worked by the lawyers. We all discuss the issues of alternative fee arrangements (AFAs) have face in the more than 30 years since Blickstein originally published an article titled "Alternative Billing Making a Comeback." AFAs bring with it issues of shadow billing, client trust factors, and the need to express value not tied to the amount to time spent on the work. We also break down the corporate buyer side and address the Blickstein Group's 18th Annual Law Department Operations Survey which identifies AI pilot projects in corporate legal departments, but very few operational deployments. These may be tied to the long running issue of poor data hygiene along with business objectives that are not clearly tied to overall corporate strategy. Brad gets to be one of the first to answer our new question of "what's true today that wasn't true a year ago?" A nice lead in to our Crystal Ball question. We cover AI token pricing and having to compete with the new "AI native firms" that are spinning up from former BigLaw partners. Listen on mobile platforms:  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠Substack⁠ [Special Thanks to ⁠⁠Legal Technology Hub⁠⁠ for their sponsoring this episode.] Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Blickstein GroupWWPED: What Would Private Equity Do?2026 Law Firm COO Survey findingsLaw Department Operations SurveyCream, Core, and Commodity legal-work frameworkLegaltech Hub: The Arithmetic of AI, Tokens and Claude in Legal WorkLegaltech Hub: Five Prompting Habits Costing You Tokens and AccuracyLegora introduces consumption-based pricingKirkland & Ellis and its $500 million AI investmentAnthropic Claude CodeLINKSTranscript:

    Brad Blickstein on Private Equity Thinking, AI Pricing, and the Law Firm Business Model

  2. Jul 27

    From AI Personas to Rogue Agents: Rethinking Legal Training, Security, and Value

    Fresh from AALL in Cleveland, Greg reflects on a conference filled with legal information professionals who understand how technology performs under real working conditions. These librarians purchase products, train users, support law schools and courts, and often serve as internal advocates for legal technology. Their expertise makes vendor engagement especially valuable, yet major product announcements were scarce. Marlene balances Greg’s conference report with stories from her hiking trip through Zion and Bryce Canyon, plus a brief comparison of Ohio and Utah karaoke culture. The conversation turns to the rapid growth of innovation attorney positions across law firms and legal organizations. Greg and Marlene describe these professionals as translators who connect legal practice, technology, workflow design, and organizational change. Firms are searching beyond traditional legal career paths for people who combine technical fluency with strong interpersonal skills. For law students and junior lawyers facing uncertainty around AI, these emerging roles offer broader career options beyond the familiar associate track. Marlene explores the growing use of AI personas and simulations for professional development. Deposition witnesses, opposing counsel, negotiation partners, and drafting reviewers now appear as interactive characters with distinct goals and behaviors. Lawyers receive a place to practice, make decisions, and receive feedback before working with clients or appearing in court. Greg connects simulation-based learning with legal fiction, including his Beyond the Model series, which uses a fictional law firm to explain AI systems, business pressures, and changes in legal work. The discussion takes a serious turn with a reported AI benchmarking incident involving an agentic model, a breached sandbox, and unauthorized access to Hugging Face resources in search of an answer key. Greg and Marlene examine the episode as a warning about containment, accountability, and excessive faith in technical guardrails. From there, they consider the renewed importance of knowledge management and security as AI systems gain access to documents, financial information, client data, and institutional expertise. Greg predicts growing attention around AI harnesses, structured software layers designed to guide model behavior and produce predictable outputs. Marlene closes with examples of AI moving into client intake, business qualification, and workflow decisions, including an AI legal receptionist designed for smaller firms. The larger shift involves moving beyond simple tool adoption toward redesigned workflows, staffing models, pricing structures, and client service. Token costs are creating immediate budget pressure, while clients are questioning which AI expenses belong on their bills. Greg and Marlene argue firms must connect AI spending with legal judgment, measurable value, and responsible delivery, rather than treating consumption as a proxy for progress. Listen on mobile platforms:  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠Substack⁠ [Special Thanks to ⁠⁠Legal Technology Hub⁠⁠ for their sponsoring this episode.]   Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Transcript:

    From AI Personas to Rogue Agents: Rethinking Legal Training, Security, and Value

  3. Jul 20

    AI Is Shifting the Bottleneck: Actionstep’s Triona Buckley on Building Smarter Mid-Market Law Firms

    In this episode of The Geek in Review, Greg Lambert hosts a solo conversation with Triona Buckley, Chief Product Officer at Actionstep, about generative AI’s growing influence on mid-market law firms. Buckley challenges a common assumption about legal AI: faster task completion does not always remove friction. An associate might produce a draft within seconds, only to transfer the burden upstream to a senior lawyer responsible for reviewing sources, reconstructing reasoning, and correcting mistakes. Buckley argues law firms should shift their attention from speed to systems. Standalone drafting and research tools address individual tasks, while system-level AI connects work across an entire legal matter. Embedded within everyday workflows, AI helps lawyers locate information, reduce administrative work, and preserve more time for client advice and professional judgment. The goal is a smoother operating model, rather than a collection of isolated tools producing faster documents. The conversation also examines institutional knowledge, especially within firms lacking large knowledge management or innovation teams. Buckley describes an approach where AI captures decisions, context, and reasoning as lawyers work. This creates a continuously expanding record of how the firm handles matters, advises clients, and applies professional judgment. Governance still plays a central role, including clear audit trails showing whether a person or an AI agent performed each action. Greg and Triona then explore AI as an individual tutor for junior lawyers. Remote and hybrid work have weakened the traditional apprenticeship model built around observation and informal office conversations. Drawing upon decades of firm experience, an AI tutor might question an associate’s assumptions, prompt additional research, and reinforce the firm’s preferred methods. Such systems offer structured practice while preserving the essential mentoring relationship between senior and junior lawyers. Another major theme is the hidden cost of delayed time entry. Actionstep’s Trace passive time capture technology monitors work across practice management, email, and document applications, then presents lawyers with matter-linked, billing-ready entries. More accurate records help firms recover otherwise forgotten time while producing better data for pricing, staffing, client estimates, and profitability analysis. Those insights grow more important as clients push firms toward fixed fees and output-based pricing. Buckley believes mid-market law firms hold several advantages during the AI transition. They often operate with fewer systems, maintain closer client relationships, and move through organizational change faster than larger enterprises. Success will still require disciplined implementation, trusted internal champions, connected data, and sustained attention to client service. Her message is optimistic but direct: firms with strong relationships, clean data, and a clear economic strategy will be better prepared for agentic AI and the changing business of law. Actionstep's U.S. Midsize Law Firm Priorities Report Metatags: legal AI, mid-market law firms, Triona Buckley, Actionstep, law firm innovation, AI legal training, legal practice management Listen on mobile platforms:  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠Substack⁠ [Special Thanks to ⁠⁠Legal Technology Hub⁠⁠ for their sponsoring this episode.] Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Transcript:

    AI Is Shifting the Bottleneck: Actionstep’s Triona Buckley on Building Smarter Mid-Market Law Firms

  4. Jul 14

    Why AI Will Create More Legal Work, Not Less: Filevine's Rizner and Anderson on Research, Access, and Human Judgment

    Predictions about artificial intelligence often focus on job losses and shrinking demand for lawyers. Filevine CEO and co-founder Ryan Anderson and product manager John Rizner offer a sharply different forecast. Drawing on the Jevons paradox, they argue greater efficiency will make legal services accessible to more people, encourage deeper legal research, and create work once excluded by cost. AI might reduce the effort required for individual tasks while expanding the overall volume and ambition of legal representation. The shift holds major implications for the access-to-justice gap. Faster drafting, research, and document review would allow lawyers to serve more clients without sacrificing professional judgment. Anderson expects family law, immigration, bankruptcy, criminal defense, and employment litigation to experience some of the earliest growth. Motions, witnesses, and legal theories once abandoned over expense become economically viable, although courts face their own capacity crisis as more disputes and arguments enter the system. Rizner explains how Filevine’s legal AI platform, Lois, applies machine learning to one of legal research’s oldest problems: traditional citators often return different results. Lois combines citation graphs with semantic analysis to locate opinions discussing related legal doctrines even when no direct citation connects the cases. A panel of models then evaluates potential conflicts and produces a structured memo. The goal is richer legal analysis focused on the precise holding or proposition a lawyer needs, rather than a simple flag attached to an entire opinion. Accuracy still demands disciplined human review. Filevine organizes citation verification into three levels: confirming the cited case exists, determining whether the case supports the claimed proposition, and checking whether the authority is still good law. The conversation also examines Rizner’s research into how different large language models approach efficient breach of contract. OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic models produced dramatically different recommendations, revealing embedded legal and economic preferences beneath seemingly neutral answers. The guests also explore how AI changes legal drafting, law firm economics, and the billable hour. Filevine’s acquisition of Pincites, now Lois for Word, reflects Microsoft Word’s continuing role as the shared language of legal documents, redlines, formatting, and negotiations. Efficiency does not automatically eliminate hourly billing. Lawyers might instead use saved time to produce more thoroughly researched arguments, stronger contracts, and work product approaching senior-level depth. Firms still need incentives rewarding efficiency rather than treating faster work as lost revenue. Looking ahead, Anderson and Rizner predict a proliferation of frontier and open-source models tailored to firms, individual lawyers, and specific client relationships. Legal teams will increasingly pair proprietary knowledge with selected models to produce highly specialized analysis. Yet model choice introduces jurisprudential bias, accuracy risks, and serious training concerns for junior lawyers. AI expands the range of available options, while experienced legal judgment decides which arguments deserve trust, which sources require verification, and which advice should reach the client. John Rizner Slides Filevine Primary Presentation - 2026 Listen on mobile platforms:  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠Substack⁠ [Special Thanks to ⁠⁠Legal Technology Hub⁠⁠ for their sponsoring this episode.] ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   Transcript:

    Why AI Will Create More Legal Work, Not Less: Filevine's Rizner and Anderson on Research, Access, and Human Judgment

  5. Jul 6

    Nikki Shaver on Legal AI Strategy, Agentic Governance, and Trusted Judgment

    What does legal AI value look like once speed stops serving as the headline metric? In this episode of The Geek in Review, Greg Lambert and Marlene Gebauer speak with Nikki Shaver, co-founder and CEO of Legal Technology Hub and a member of the inaugural Financial Times Law 50. Shaver argues that law firms need to move beyond time saved toward efficacy: stronger output, stronger client outcomes, and more effective legal advice. The conversation examines why the billable hour is far from finished yet no longer serves as the sole measure of legal value. Shaver compares hourly timekeeping to a taxi meter: useful for internal visibility, yet insufficient as the price signal for work transformed by AI. Workflow mapping, client discussions, and pricing discipline become central where an AI-enabled process compresses weeks of effort into hours. Corporate legal departments are adopting AI at a faster pace, bringing new pressure to outside counsel. Some in-house teams see AI as a route to keep more work inside, while others see room for firms to take on work that previously sat outside budget limits. Shaver frames the strategic question around delivering more for clients, especially in practice areas where a firm holds differentiated expertise. AI has not produced the promised empty calendar. Instead, lawyers report fuller schedules, longer documents, and a growing verification tax. Shaver flags the rise of 40-page forms, bloated redlines, and outputs that look polished yet lack sound reasoning. The episode makes a practical case for concise drafting, human review, and critical reasoning before any AI-generated material reaches a client or counterparty. Agentic AI raises the stakes. Legal Technology Hub’s AI Agents in Law Map tracks hundreds of solutions, yet governance has not kept pace with new autonomy, connectors, and downstream system access. Shaver urges firms to establish traceability, unique identifiers, risk-based human oversight, enforceable policies, and a clear view of where data travels. For firms aiming past baseline adoption, Shaver draws a line between routine personal use and strategic transformation. Daily use builds fluency, but competitive advantage grows from proprietary workflows, data foundations, client-facing collaboration spaces, and focused investment in the practices where a firm already excels. Her crystal-ball view is blunt: trusted judgment will become a scarce premium asset, AI-native firms will rise, and traditional firms will launch AI-native subsidiaries of their own. Listen on mobile platforms:  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠Substack⁠ [Special Thanks to ⁠⁠Legal Technology Hub⁠⁠ for their sponsoring this episode.] ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Transcript:

    Nikki Shaver on Legal AI Strategy, Agentic Governance, and Trusted Judgment

  6. Jun 29

    Own the Graph: Stephen Costigan on Private AI, Knowledge Infrastructure, and Law Firm Advantage

    For law firms, artificial intelligence has often arrived as a choice between speed and control. Stephen Costigan, founder of Atlas AI, argues that choice deserves a rethink. In this episode of The Geek in Review, we speak with Costigan about private legal AI infrastructure, knowledge graphs, and why a firm’s internal work product may become its most valuable long-term asset. Atlas AI focuses on turning documents, matter history, precedents, clauses, parties, and obligations into a curated legal knowledge graph inside a firm’s own environment. Costigan contrasts this approach with standard vector search and retrieval systems, which find text with similar language but often lack context around clients, matters, entities, and relationships. A knowledge graph offers structure, linking people, documents, clauses, and legal concepts in ways closer to how lawyers understand their work. The conversation also explores data quality, a subject with enough baggage to fill a records room. Costigan argues firms no longer need year-long cleanup projects before seeing results. Agent-led curation, entity extraction, duplicate resolution, and ontology mapping reduce much of the manual sorting traditionally associated with knowledge management. Human judgment still matters, especially around practice-area vocabularies and lower-confidence results, but the machines get assigned more of the janitorial work. Security and governance sit at the center of Costigan’s model. Rather than asking firms to trust a vendor’s assurances around privileged data, Atlas AI runs within a firm’s Azure environment, under firm-controlled keys and policies. Costigan frames this as a shift from confidentiality as a contractual promise to confidentiality as an architectural decision. For legal organizations handling sensitive client information, the location of data, embeddings, audit trails, and model interactions matters as much as the interface lawyers see on screen. Looking ahead, Costigan predicts a divide between firms renting generic AI tools and firms building durable knowledge infrastructure from their own experience. As routine drafting, diligence, and review work compress, firms with structured and reusable internal intelligence may productize expertise, offer new fixed-fee services, and rely less heavily on traditional leverage models. The future question, Costigan suggests, will not center on which AI tool sits on a lawyer’s desktop. The bigger question will ask who owns the knowledge behind the work. Listen on mobile platforms:  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠Substack⁠ [Special Thanks to ⁠⁠Legal Technology Hub⁠⁠ for their sponsoring this episode.] ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Transcript:

    Own the Graph: Stephen Costigan on Private AI, Knowledge Infrastructure, and Law Firm Advantage

  7. Jun 22

    AALL 2026 Annual Meeting Preview with Foster and Whytock: Leading with Aloha, Legal AI, and the Future of Law Libraries

    This week we welcome American Association of Law Libraries leaders Jenny Foster, AALL President for 2025-2026, and Jessica Whytock, AALL Vice President and President-Elect. The conversation offers a preview of the 2026 AALL Annual Meeting & Conference in Cleveland, Ohio, along with a thoughtful look at how the association is supporting legal information professionals during a period of institutional, technological, and professional change. Foster reflects on a leadership year focused on transparency, communication, and meaningful opportunities for member participation. From strengthening channels between members and AALL leadership to intentional volunteer appointments across committees and juries, she describes an association built through relationships. The goal is to ensure newer, mid-career, and seasoned law librarians all have a visible place in shaping the profession’s future. Advocacy also plays a central role in the discussion. Foster explains how AALL continues its work on access to legal information, public policy, and coalition-building, even amid staffing transitions. The association’s Government Relations Committee has continued meeting with members, offering advocacy training, rebuilding connections with peer organizations, and aligning its work with AALL’s strategic priorities. For law librarians, advocacy is both a long-term commitment and a practical responsibility tied to preserving authoritative legal information. The 2026 conference theme, “Leading with Aloha,” gives the Cleveland meeting its distinct point of view. Foster shares how aloha, rooted in kindness, unity, humility, patience, and meaningful connection, became a framework for leadership during uncertain times. More than 65 programs will explore topics ranging from generative AI and legal scholarship to physical collection strategy, access challenges, and the changing role of legal information professionals. Local programming connected to Cleveland’s history will bring an added sense of place to the gathering. Whytock looks ahead to her upcoming presidency with a focus on clear pathways for engagement, leadership, grants, scholarships, committee service, and professional growth. Both leaders see artificial intelligence as a catalyst for a deeper conversation about the identity and value of legal information professionals. Their message is straightforward: the future of law librarianship rests in human judgment, critical thinking, ethical discernment, context, access, and a community willing to bring more voices into the room. The 2026 AALL Annual Meeting in Cleveland offers a place for those conversations to move from aspiration into action. Listen on mobile platforms:  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠Substack⁠ [Special Thanks to ⁠⁠Legal Technology Hub⁠⁠ for their sponsoring this episode.] ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   Transcript:

    AALL 2026 Annual Meeting Preview with Foster and Whytock: Leading with Aloha, Legal AI, and the Future of Law Libraries

  8. Jun 15

    LexisNexis CTO Greg Dickason on Agentic Legal AI, Protégé, Shepard’s Verify, and the Future of Legal Work

    In this episode of The Geek in Review, we welcome Greg Dickason, Chief Technology Officer at LexisNexis, for a wide-ranging conversation on agentic legal AI, Lexis+ AI Protégé, and the movement from AI chat toward AI work. Dickason frames the shift through a simple contrast: earlier legal AI answered questions, while agentic workflows take on multi-step assignments, conduct research, create drafts, verify citations, and move legal professionals closer to finished work product. For law firms and legal departments trying to understand where AI goes next, this episode places agentic AI squarely inside legal workflow, legal research, drafting, and risk management. A major theme of the conversation is trust. Dickason explains how Shepard’s Verify extends the familiar Shepard’s signal beyond traditional research screens and into uploaded work product. Rather than asking lawyers to rely on AI-generated text without a verification layer, LexisNexis is building citation checking into the workflow, giving lawyers a path to confirm whether cited authority exists, whether authority is still good law, and how later courts treated the cited case. For lawyers worried about hallucinated citations, AI-generated briefs, and unreliable authority, this verification layer becomes part of the product architecture, rather than an afterthought. The discussion also explores the relationship between LexisNexis and Anthropic, along with the rise of legal AI skills. Dickason describes a market where model choice, orchestration, and legal skills increasingly matter as separate layers. Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and other model providers offer impressive foundations, yet legal work needs more than general-purpose intelligence. Large law workflows require legal content, expert reasoning, matter-specific playbooks, and firm-defined processes. Dickason notes the ability to upload firm playbooks as skills, giving firms a path to bring their own way of working into Protégé. Security receives equal billing with accuracy. As firms place client documents into AI vaults and connect work product to legal AI platforms, Dickason explains bring your own key, or BYOK, through a practical office-and-locked-cabinet analogy. The point is control: client content sits encrypted, access depends on the user’s key, and access stops when the key is withdrawn. He also discusses legal chunking, indexing, vector stores, retrieval-augmented generation, and knowledge graphs as part of building AI systems suited for legal documents, rather than generic file handling. The episode closes with a broader view of legal AI’s impact on junior associates, legal training, and access to law. Dickason does not predict the end of junior lawyers. Instead, he sees AI helping junior lawyers become senior faster through mock trials, mock depositions, and richer training environments. He also warns of risks from agent volume, security vulnerabilities, and legal systems struggling to keep pace with AI-enabled industries. The message is pragmatic and optimistic: agentic legal AI will change legal work, yet the winners will be those who combine trusted content, secure systems, verification, workflow design, and human judgment. Listen on mobile platforms:  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠Substack⁠ [Special Thanks to ⁠⁠Legal Technology Hub⁠⁠ for their sponsoring this episode.] ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Transcript:

    LexisNexis CTO Greg Dickason on Agentic Legal AI, Protégé, Shepard’s Verify, and the Future of Legal Work
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4.7
out of 5
26 Ratings

About

Welcome to The Geek in Review, where podcast hosts, Marlene Gebauer and Greg Lambert discuss innovation and creativity in legal profession.

Information

  • Creator
    Greg Lambert & Marlene Gebauer
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2026
  • Episodes
    364
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Greg Lambert & Marlene Gebauer
  • Show Website
    The Geek In Review

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