Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly becoming a part of the tools we use every day. AI can be found on our computers, our phones, our cars, and beyond. As AI systems grow more advanced, it becomes increasingly appealing to rely on them to generate content, ideas, and even finished works with little to no human input. But as AI takes on more of the creative process, a critical question emerges: what happens to the role of human authorship? When
Continue Reading AI Made It. Now Who Owns It?
This week, consumer advocate lawyers filed a nationwide class action lawsuit against a California-based tech company, Eightfold AI, in California state court.
In a new approach to going after the use of AI in employment decisions, the two named plaintiffs and the proposed class allege Eightfold violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”) by not giving job applicants notice of the use of AI in the application process nor giving them a chance to dispute any errors.
Vendors are going to use AI. In software work, it now sits inside everyday delivery: summarizing requirements, turning meeting notes into action items, accelerating early code scaffolding, generating test cases, even helping troubleshoot bugs. A services agreement works best when it assumes that reality and then asks a more practical question: where does the client’s information go, what rights attach to what comes back, and what stays true about ownership and confidentiality as tools evolve.
AI matters for IP
Continue Reading AI in Vendor Workflows: Protecting IP Through Contract Design
Another week, another resolution. This time, we’re addressing the AI elephant in the room. While the use cases for AI are myriad, the legal landscape is somewhat unknown and rapidly developing. But, for better or worse, employees are using AI. So, from trade secret risks to proposed legal oversight, employers need to address AI now.
The biggest mistake an employer can make is assuming their workforce isn’t using AI because
Continue Reading Employer New Year’s Resolution #3: Address Artificial Intelligence
Remember back in 2023 when everyone like me posted about the Mata v. Avianca case, which seemed to be the first (or at least, the first to earn national attention) case in which lawyers filed briefs with citations hallucinated by generative artificial intelligence. The lawyers ended up sanctioned, some of my nerd friends got a cool courtroom sketch out of it, and a lot of us thought that would be a sufficient cautionary tale. Don’t use AI if you
Continue Reading We Should All Know Better By Now, But We Don’t
More and more, I hear some version of the same question from business owners: “We made something valuable with the help of AI. Can we protect it?”
Sometimes the “something” is obvious, like marketing copy, a logo, a photo, a product description, a training guide, or software code. Sometimes it is less obvious but more important, like a pricing model, a customer segmentation strategy, an internal workflow, or a set of prompts that reliably produces good results for the
Continue Reading Protecting AI-Influenced Work: Why Copyright and Patents Can Fall Short, and Why Trade Secrets Often Matter More
Legal work runs on documents. Case files, contracts, discovery materials, correspondence – they accumulate. Whether you’re building a timeline from scattered dates, searching for contradictions in witness statements, or extracting key clauses from multiple agreements, the process is often slow, meticulous, and time consuming.
In my recent Wisconsin Lawyer article, “NotebookLM for Lawyers: AI That Focuses on Your Documents”, I explore a different approach to AI in legal practice—one that focuses exclusively on your documents rather than pulling
Continue Reading NotebookLM for Lawyers: AI That Focuses on Your Documents
The November issue of Wisconsin Lawyer features a practical guide I wrote on using generative AI effectively in legal practice. “AI Prompting for Legal Professionals: The Art of Asking the Right Question” offers a framework for attorneys looking to improve their interactions with AI tools while maintaining professional standards.
The central premise is straightforward: the same critical thinking skills lawyers use when interviewing clients or examining witnesses apply equally when working with AI. Vague information from a client
Continue Reading A Practical Guide on AI Prompting for Legal Professionals
Earlier this month, I had the privilege of making my annual trip to Wisconsin Dells to attend the 2025 Wisconsin Solo & Small Firm Conference. As with each year of the conference, it was a reminder that, even as attorneys characterize themselves with independence (solo and small firm attorneys especially so), community is essential. Solo and small firm attorneys face unique challenges of managing law firm operations themselves, including client intake, billing, legal research, and even drafting blog
Continue Reading Small Firms, Big Ideas; Reflections from the 2025 Wisconsin Solo & Small Firm Conference
Read Part 1: AI in Employment-Related Decisions Part 1: Big Tech and Federal Power
Across the country, state lawmakers are recalibrating their approaches to regulating the use of AI in employment decisions. This is in direct response to pressure from the technology industry and the Trump administration.
California initially considered broad mandates on AI use in hiring that would have imposed strict notice and impact assessment requirements on employers. Following pushback from industry groups and concerns about federal overreach,
State lawmakers across the country have been busy this year trying to curb the most consequential uses of AI in employment-related decisions. As those attempts moved from idea to legislation, two powerful forces have pushed back.
The tech industry is concerned about a patchwork of state rules, and the Trump administration has prioritized removing barriers to AI use. States are reacting by shifting their strategies to narrow, revise, and/or delay legislation. Employers would be wise to stay abreast of
Continue Reading AI in Employment-Related Decisions Part 1: Big Tech and Federal Power
Lawyers who fail to verify AI-generated content do so at their own peril – and now, potentially at the peril of fee awards. A California Court of Appeals decision adds a new wrinkle to the growing body of AI hallucination cases by asking: What happens when opposing counsel fails to detect an opponent’s fake citations?
A Familiar Story with an Unexpected Twist
In Noland v. Land of the Free, L.P., the attorney used ChatGPT to enhance his appellate briefs
Continue Reading Does Fee Denial Signal New Expectations for Detecting Opposing Counsel’s AI Hallucinations?
The rush to integrate AI is understandable. New tools promise faster drafting, richer research, and smoother operations. Adoption alone, however, is not enough. When powerful systems land in people’s hands without a shared understanding of how to use them well, the risks expand as quickly as the possibilities. A parallel track in AI literacy changes that. It develops users who are curious, appropriately skeptical, and legally careful. It also tends to produce better work.
By AI literacy, I mean
Continue Reading Adopt the Model, Train the Human: AI Literacy as the Parallel Track to Integration
While generally considered a business-friendly state, Texas is taking an increasingly important role in regulating how U.S. companies use their information technology.
Over the past few years, Texas has adopted path-breaking new data privacy and AI laws with potentially broad impacts for businesses—including those in the Midwest—that have Texas customers, and its attorney general is actively enforcing these laws in the marketplace. As the second-largest economy in the U.S., it’s time for businesses to pay more attention to what
Systems of Governance in the Age of AI
Governance, at its core, is about how we relate to one another. It is not just about laws or procedures. It is about who is heard, how power moves, who decides what matters, and how decisions are made real through collective agreement. Governance lives not only in legislatures or courtrooms, but in families, organizations, and everyday relationships.
Most governance systems rely on fixed tools: constitutions, codes, and legal frameworks that are
Continue Reading The Sovereign and the Circuit
Continue Reading SEO and Your Legal Content: Does Quality Need to Suffer to Rank?