I’d like to think I’ve been part of organizations connecting lawyers with people for good for the last thirty years. Our success measured by our level of care and how many people we’ve helped. My latest and maybe my last cause, The Library at LexBlog.
Knowing the loved ones people lost twenty five years ago today and with it realizing life is so short, it’s important – to me and the teams I’ve had the privilege to lead – to show we care and to make a difference.
Connecting lawyers with people for good? I don’t mean a directory of lawyers, high search rankings, or digital marketing or advertising so that lawyers get connected to people.
I mean harnessing the insight of legal professionals for the good of people, whether consumers, corporations, government agencies, the judiciary or others. World wide.
The Library, with the power of AI, preserves and structures for citation the publishing of legal professionals. Such publishing can be used by legal research publishers, such as HeinOnline, where The Libray already flows, to legal research and AI platforms, such as Clio/vLex, where The Library already flows and to LLM’s via an MCP, and other platforms.
More than researching as I have been accustomed to as a lawyer for over three decades, legal insight is parsed and delivered via new ways with AI. A more effective delivery, and more effective use methods.
Take the case of a consumer or small business person. Heck anyone. Thirty years ago, people online went to message boards on AOL, bulletin boards, listservs or usenet groups seeking legal information and with it, maybe the name of a good lawyer.
Twenty five years ago we saw legal information published by organizations, government agencies and a few caring lawyers shared via links on Yahoo and then, Google.
Twenty years ago we saw the democratization of legal publishing with publishing platforms for law, à la LexBlog.
But as the amount of publishing increased and with it Google pushing lesser publishing to the top access to legal insight diminished. Let alone lawyers and law firms deleting their publishing for marketing and business reasons.
So now we reach 1.4 million published works from legal professionals in the Library, with about another 5 million from just the U.S. to come.
Connecting lawyers with people for good means now means a whole of things, and we’re just getting started.
- A consumer or small business person “talking” with Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini about a situation they are in. They may not know the issue is a legal matter. They get better info than with an LLM trying to guess things from primary law and guessing what is reliable and authoritative insight. Guided by their AI conversation they learn they have a legal situation, what it means, what their rights or liabilities may be, what a lawyer may do and what to look for in a lawyer.
- The consumer or small business may choose to do transactional work or litigate on their own.
- The consumer or small business has reduced their legal costs, or eliminated them altogether if they choose not to see a lawyer. The law is becoming accessible.
- Legal professionals see more clients with the professional’s costs going down making legal professionals more accessible.
- Legal professionals have access to perhaps the greatest insight in the world from niche focused authorities, world wide. We’re no longer burying insight on websites, email newsletters and the like.
- Legal professionals working on pleadings or documents will have built in solutions “advising” on their work. Solutions powered by the insight of authoritative legal professionals, world wide.
- The Judiciary will have insight far beyond that shared by lawyers appearing before the court.
- Legal academics and law students will have insight unavailable before now for legal education as to both the law and the business of law.
- Structured publishing with a permanent citation so that preserved insight/data may be cited and is never lost.
The above are just some of the ways we connect lawyers with people for good.
The World Wide Web, digital publishing and now an AI powered library providing the infrastructure for countless platforms. Connecting lawyers with people for good for thirty years and counting.