08/07/26: Legal Tech embraces vibe coding, big law entry level hiring declines, and more

0:04Welcome all to Legal Tech Week for August 7th, 2026. This is Bob Ambrogi and this is the show where we talk about the news of the week in Legal Tech and Innovation with our panel of Legal Tech journalists and experts and commentators and thought leaders and other glorious participants here. I write a blog called Law Sites and I have a podcast called Law Next. And our panelists today go around and do some intros. Coming to us for the last time for a while from the United States, Stephanie Wilkins. Hi, everybody. Yes, I'm Stephanie Wilkins, Director of Content at Legal Tech Hub. I will still be joining you when I can, but I am heading to Europe for a program in Finland for the next three or four months.

0:57So you might see me in my pajamas late at night with a glass of wine when I join in the future in the next few months. But I will not abandon you entirely. We could have a theme show where we all do that, just get in our pajamas and pour wine. I mean, if I inspire that, I feel my work is done. I don't actually have pajamas, but that's a whole other issue. All right. Newly shorn Victor.

1:25Thanks, Bob. My name is Victor Lee. I am assistant managing editor for the ABA Journal. And I was explaining before we came on the air, this was a choice. I've gone a little bald up top. So I figured, let's see how it looks with a little bit of hair. And then eventually I'll go, I'll do the Steve thing. i think it looks good i like it uh and uh joe joe patrice from above the law and thinking like a lawyer and occasionally the legal af show uh what uh i am yeah i i could i basically got really thin up top like when i was like 25 and then it kind of held and it's been that way ever since and i've been like waiting to see if it gets either better or worse and it's just kind of stayed i i have the photographic evidence to prove that this this happened to me like in my early 30s it's like i've just been i've just had white hair forever it's like uh but now that i'm old it doesn't look good it was okay when i was young but uh all right steve hey everybody uh steve Embry.

2:33I published the blog Tech Law Crossroads. I also write for Above the Law. And as I was explaining before we went on the air, once upon a time, believe it or not, I had a full head of hair. And now I have opted to not have a full head of hair.

2:51I don't have to buy combs. It's great. And a barber. I don't even have to go to a barber shop anymore. That's awesome. All right. And Reese. Hey, what's up? I'm Rhys. I'm the editor-in-chief for Eagle Tech News. And if you see flashes or hear tornado sirens, that's just an average summer day. We actually have a storm that's just about to come. So don't get freaked out if you hear weird sounds coming from the screen. and also just throwing it out there too. I think we should all take a trip to Turkey. Their hair trail plants are really cheap and they pay for your flight as well. How did you know that?

3:39I probably have plans.

3:44All right. I don't even know where to start this week. I've had a crazy day and I was racing to go through all of our stories. And I was actually thinking it could be good to start with Steve's story on big law entry-level hiring, in part because I was thinking, well, maybe it's not just another AI story. But then as I was thinking, I guess it is sort of another AI story. But anyway, let's talk about that. It was kind of interesting. There were a couple of articles. One was in law.com. I think Dan wrote it. And then Stacey for Above the Law wrote one as well. It stemmed from some statistics from the National Association for Law Placement.

4:25which is not an organization I'm familiar with, but reading the articles and looking at their quotes, they seem to be on the up and up. They've been around for a long time, yeah. Oh, have they? No, we just didn't know about them. They have reported for the second straight year, law firms, 500 persons, law firms, have reduced their entry-level hiring by 8 % this past year. And they've also noted that the summer associate hirings have been reduced, which would sort of suggest that for next year, the hiring will probably not go back up because most of the big law firms hire from the summer associate ranks, although not exclusively.

5:13the good news I guess was that because the pool of entry level associates, people graduating from law school was smaller last year than normal it didn't really affect the hiring affect the people that were looking for jobs with big law it's just that they're not hiring as many associates which sort of would make sense or at least entry level associates because A, a lot of what they do could be replaced by AI. And B, clients for a long time have not wanted to pay the hourly rates of first-year associates for obvious reasons. They don't particularly think they're of particular value. And in many ways, they're not, not because they're not trained as lawyers or not smart people.

6:03It's just they don't have the requisite experience. The other kind of interesting thing, and I'm not sure I can get my head around it, but apparently there are more associates or young lawyers working in big law firms than there are in any other sector, which seems a little inconsistent with reduced hiring. But the article explained that other sectors that were hiring lawyers, beginning lawyers like public service, have reduced their hiring significantly. So a lot of the overflow people would go into big law. So even though they're not hiring at a pace that they have been, reduced hiring, still most of the people that get out of law school are going to work for big law.

6:55By that, I mean maybe one in four, one in three, one in five, which is kind of interesting in and of itself. My feeling had been law schools for years have sort of trained toward bigger law firms, sort of implicit in how they approach things as opposed to focusing on solos or small laws, which makes sense. Most of the donations probably come from bigger law firms. So this could just accelerate that. But to me, the real headline is the big law firms are not hiring as many entry-level associates as they have in the past. And that's been something that would seem to be predictable, but now it looks like there's some hard statistics to support that's really happening.

7:44So it'd be interesting to see where we are next year if it continues to decline. oh it's interesting the like hybrid firms are essentially saying we can you know um just you know have agendic ai do the work of like you know um first and as we train the agendic ai it can become like you know a

8:15and as clients pressure firms to decrease cost and they you know they essentially are trying to force firms to adopt all this tech because they you know you know have this notion of like it can you know really you know decrease the amount of time and resources that the firm you know needs to complete the task. I'm curious if we'll see a trend of hybrid firms taking off and at the same time a slow attrition in hiring. And we've seen that trend of certain roles aren't as prominent as they once were. They haven't been completely cut off. Although, like, you know, like, you know, from 2022, like, you know, people started hiring less of, like, specific support staff and firms due to the fact that the firms could operate from out late, too, and, like, you know, shared res, like, share their res horses as well.

9:29and you know it's kind of crazy how everybody is concerned about job loss I think the job loss will happen slowly over time through like just less hiring and it's kind of like that like Hemingway quote like things you know change very slowly and then they change like you know like all of us I don't know I guess and I totally destroyed that quote so if anybody

9:59I think the quote had to do with bankruptcy and it was bankruptcy happens very slowly until it happens quick. All at once. I think that's it, yeah. But the concept's correct. I hope I don't have to experience the true quotation anytime soon. I mean, it's not really so, Because, I mean, you know, we've been kind of watching this for a while, right? It was like, it was, right after the pandemic, firms are going a little bit crazy with their hiring. Like, just, you know, throwing out these big, you know, getting these big classes, throwing out, you know, these big money offers. I know it doesn't really cover partners or whatnot, but just sort of the, you know, symptomatic of the whole industry.

10:41Like, you know, they were very much in growth mode. And now, you know, we have two years where the hiring has declined. And I mean, I guess that's somewhat inevitable as a market correction anyway. But the fact that now you have the AI component in there also, you know, puts like an actual, you know, there's an actual root cause to it. And so I think it's just going to continue, you know, going as we see this more and more, you know, with AI taking hold more in firms and whatnot. And also, I think the interesting thing was that in the article, I don't, forgive me if you mentioned this, Steve, just the summer associates programs are just like really in decline.

11:17you know and that used to be a that used to be a major pipeline for a lot of firms like that was how they got most of their first year classes so I could see that I could see those programs you know suffering even more it is kind of interesting too that I think the reports have been that the associate bonuses this year have actually gone up which is seems kind of not sure how to correlate the two I mean you're hiring fewer entry-level associates, but giving experienced associates more money. Well, the money's been up. Because if you look at other studies, I don't know if NAP tracks money as much.

12:00I think they're more placement-oriented. But if you look at ALM does studies for wages and salaries and money and whatnot, And also, I think Major Lindsey does stuff. I mean, they've all said there's more money coming in, especially the big law. So that's not a surprise at all. I mean, they have to pay their talent in order to stay. Otherwise, they're going to go to another firm. Well, yeah, and I guess it kind of makes sense, too. As you reduce the entry-level associates, the more experienced associates become more valuable because there's no pool for them to get experiences like they once did.

12:40So yeah, it's a pretty interesting set of statistics all the way around.

12:49All right.

12:55I wrote about something this week that Joe did a much better job writing about, which I love the Build-A-Bear analogy. I wish I had thought of that. But Lexus announced something this week. Joe, you wrote about it. You want to talk about it? Yeah. So Lexus announced, and they've been doing this for a while, for like a month and a half or something like that, if I recall, but they just went public with it this week, that they have a physical space where customers can come in and work directly with software engineers about the specific needs that they have. And they can work out building something within an hour or so, and then it can then move on.

13:42And if it passes Lexus's quality control on the back end, it could be built out into a whole thing within weeks. and I compared this to the business model of Build-A-Bear because I thought, I mean, that's all I could think of when I was thinking about it. It was just like people go to a place to get something custom built for them. Where have I heard that before? And I realized it was Build-A-Bear, which, you know, and it's not a knock. In a world where malls are basically becoming ghost towns, Build-A-Bear's stock is generally up. So it seems like there's still a market for this. And I think, you know, it plays into we talked last week a little bit about Describe's work, putting together some kind of opening up the door on some of the skills that they have in order to help people who are building their own bespoke systems and vide coding their own things to work with Describe.

14:44And it just seems like part of a greater trend that vendors are starting to see that people want to build custom and bespoke stuff. They're feeling comfortable doing that. And so how do you reach that market, whether it's, you know, putting your stuff out on GitHub, whether it's having a build a bear moment, whatever it is. But that seems like the shift that's happening. Yeah, I felt like it was a little bit different than what Describe is doing in the sense that the Lexus initiative is even primarily focused at building in enhancements to Protege and LexusNexus' own products. But then they will also, as part of the same initiative, work with a firm to kind of adapt Lexus products to whatever the firm might be wanting to build or incorporate integrate Lexus products into that.

15:44So it is kind of both sides of it. But it is interesting. I did write about it a little bit. I interviewed the CTO who's kind of running it for my podcast, which will be up Monday. It was supposed to be up today, but it's not um and uh so uh you know we talked about it it's it it's it's something also that i don't i think there's been like a great from what i'm understanding there's been a a significant increase over the last couple of years in general of this also the sort of the the use by uh tech companies of this i think they call them forward deployed engineers or whatever but where where you know a company will go take their engineers and basically send them into the law firm or send them into the corporate legal department to work side by side with deploying and integrating and rolling out and customizing the software to meet the needs of the clients.

16:42So there is obviously a lot of a big trend toward adapting products to fit the particular needs and workflows of specific customers. And also then, I guess I'm rambling here, but I thought the other interesting side of that was how many times have we all sat through demos? This is something we talked about on the podcast, but how many times we all sat through demos where, and with LexisNexis in particular, where they'll say, you know, we tightly, you know, we don't develop anything without customer feedback and all of our product or improvements are based on customer feedback. All the tech companies tell us that all of their product roadmap is driven by customer feedback.

17:29And here is a much more direct way to get that customer feedback to say, come on into our facilities, sit down with our engineers, sit down with our tech partners, and really, let's really kind of hands on try and build something. So I think it sounds interesting. And they say they plan to expand it internationally to other locations over the next couple of years. And they plan to even be doing some of it live on the floor at Iltacon as well, it sounds like. So kudos to them. I think it's a good thing. I think it's an interesting model. I mean, it would mean more to me if, you know, a company then like uses it like once or twice and never touches it again.

18:08because that is the Build-A-Bear experience I've had with my son where it's like he begs and begs for us to buy him one and we buy it and then he plays with it for like one day and then he never plays with it again. I'm not bitter or anything. But in all seriousness I think it's an interesting model because how many times have we sat through these demos or sat through these shows where all these firms are always saying for my practice I need a very specific type of software. I need a very specific solution and blah, blah, blah. And with so much consolidation that everyone's trying to be like a one-size-fits-all, if they have an option for people where you can kind of address that, like, okay, well, we'll build it to your specifications and that'll make them feel valued.

18:54And I think it could really help. But obviously, we'll see how it works if it's too labor-intensive or if it's not cost-effective for them. But yeah, it's definitely an interesting offering. I'd be curious to see how it works going forward. It actually seems like a trend to offer custom proprietary tools almost to clients. And I see the industry as a whole as kind of moving away from that one-size-fits-all off-the-shelf type of

19:35like offering. And the industry has always like, you know, like had to customize tools for, you know, like firms. However, like it seems to be a larger embrace throughout the industry of like, okay, like we have to, you know, like really tailor stuff to every client. And that's honestly why and how Harvey took off when it started in 2022. It was like, well, create custom tools and it was able to get those giant firm clients due to all of that. And I feel like TR and Access, they kind of like, you know, potentially could have that, you know, problem of like being an almost off the shelf solution provider.

20:32And, you know, it's a challenge to like say, OK, how am I going to offer like a custom bespoke tool for every client? and you know like it's almost like a crowdsourcing approach where you know the clients will come to what actually seems to be you know a pretty you know smart strategy to kind of capital lies on like you know client requests you know it's just kind of strange that like people actually have to go into the office you know who has the time and everybody's around the country too so like I found that you know kind of like odd but that's just me. Spoken like somebody who has worked remotely when his colleague for a while.

21:30No that's that's really a good point and the other thing is they say it's open to small firms, solos, which of course raises the question of how many solos are going to take a day off from their practice to go off and pitch ideas to LexisNexis. And it also is a little unclear even after my interview on sort of which ideas, who gets in the door. There's apparently going to be some form or something where you can kind of pitch an idea. It sounds like in some cases they've already kind of started to build the idea even before the person comes in the door, that it's something that's already a little bit of a work in progress.

22:10So, yeah, it's a little fuzzy around the edges, but that's all right. And I think they said they have like 20 people in there working on this full time. So that's quite a bit of a commitment to it.

22:28But during my interview with the CTO that's coming out on Monday, I asked him about whether LexisNexis is going to be working on building its own large language model in the way that we have seen that Thomson Reuters has been doing it. and he said that that's not something that they are working on at any point in the immediate future and they don't seem to need to work on that in the immediate future but meanwhile thompson reuters is pushing ahead with it's and i had a story this week i don't forget whether we talked about this last week i wrote about this week it actually had come out last week but they're uh the benchmarking they did of their thompson they've been building this their own uh llm they're calling it thompson and uh they did some benchmarking on it and the benchmarking was kind of interesting because uh you know sort of on its face anyway the it it it did pretty darn well uh it it they tested it against uh google deep mine anthropic open ai uh gpt 5.5 And on some of the benchmarks, Reuters, Thomson, Thompson beat all of the others.

23:55In some of the legal domain benchmarks, it beat or did comparable to the others. On some of the general domain benchmarks, it beat the others.

24:10and I thought that was interesting. All of this is based on basically a blog post from two Thomson Reuters executives where they didn't give out the raw numbers or a lot of the background on it. And so it's a little bit hard to quite fully evaluate the benchmarks. There was like one little sort of footnote in one of the graphics where it talks about the fact that you might say that Thompson got a little bit of an advantage in some ways in that it was given for Thompson was Thompson used test time scaling which as I understand it basically means is given more compute time and power than the other ones in some of these tests and also the gemini and opus they ran it in reasoning mode but gpt 5.5 they ran it in non-reasoning mode which is not as powerful uh and and when i asked uh frown thompson writers why that was he said it was just because gpt 5.5 in reasoning mode would have taken too long and they were rushing to get the report out uh and that they will later be putting out a report that has more detailed findings, including on that reasoning mode thing.

25:36And then the other part of the test was just kind of on legal research issues, what they call their retrieval test, where just comparing Thompson on sort of legal research research tasks versus GPT 5.4 or Sonnet 5. And no surprise here, Thompson did better than the other ones. And I say no surprise because again, what's interesting is this was Thompson using the TR database, whereas GPT 5.4 and Sonnet were just given the open web, but not access to the tr database to perform the same query so you i guess you would think and maybe this validates what you would think but that um but that uh you know the argument that all of these companies keep making is that part of their moat is that they have this this uh extensive and trusted database and that these benchmarking tests they just really seem to indicate that yes, if you're running your queries using the Thompson Reuters database, you're going to get better results on legal questions.

26:54So in a way, that's not a huge surprise. But it'd be interesting to see when the full reports come out. But they are beginning to start to deploy Thompson. And I think it's really interesting that they're putting the money into this. And I think ultimately, they think they're going to be saving themselves money and saving their clients' customers' money.

27:20They did, like, invest if I recall right, about 20 million. Yeah. And, you know, I've spoken to them in the past, too, like, they really are, you know, trying to win, like, AI risk because they think that they have the training and the resources and the expertise to really build a really advanced, you know, like industry-specific AI. And I guess like, you know, Thompson is that, you know, at least as far as they tell us. I mean, like I would be interested to see a third-party bench mark.

28:09I trust TR, although at the same time, I don't trust benchmarking from the company who's trying to evaluate their own tool. It's just like an instinct. And it would be interesting to have a Stanford or an LZI. and I'm curious too will this be the only legal tech provider who comes out with their own LLM I'm surprised it's taken this long for one to come out and I'm surprised that they're the only ones so far although hats off they seem to be out of the game Of course you remember what happened with the Stanford benchmarking two years ago now or something like that? Yeah. And when they, you know, Thomson Reuters was critical because they omitted

29:11Westlaw from the benchmarking tests. And then, was that the Stanford one or the Vales one? I think it was the Stanford one. And then they went back and did - I believe it was the Stanford one, yeah. Yeah. And then they went back and re-ran it with the Westlaw one. And it was like, shitty scores so be careful what you wish for they're like both equal the first time around and then when they redid it like tr got twice as bad yeah yeah and this vals i'm pretty as i recall they dropped out of that one right on the research question i think they were i think they were either declined to participate or they dropped out yeah i'm trying to remember now on the vals one because they carved research out from the whole original thing because there was just so much back and forth in it.

29:56I think most, I don't, I think a lot of people dropped out of that one. I'm trying to remember now. I should know this. I think they, like, almost, yeah, the VALS one, I think V-Lex, LexisNexis, and Thompson Reuters all dropped out of the reason. I can't remember whether they, some of them dropped out, some of them declined to participate in the first place, I think, so I'm not sure which was which. There were differences, yeah. Yeah, it's kind of a shame. We really have to get, like, an objective third-party benchmark, although it's probably the same problem when we ask them for a live demo. That's probably too much risk and too much fear and too much on the line.

30:35I mean, I was listening with any study. We don't have our own password to access it and try it ourselves. Also, I mean, with any study, people are going to pick it apart anyway. It's like, oh, well, you didn't test this, or not having this new methodology totally skews the results, even if it might not. But I mean, who's really going to understand this besides data scientists, right? I don't know. Look, 20 million investment into a product. I mean, if they're on the way to developing a good product, great for them. Releasing a study saying that it's already outperforming all these other ones, I don't know.

31:10I tend to take that, as someone wrote in the comments, take it with a grain of salt. But, you know, I mean, we'll see how it goes. You know. Yeah. Yeah. They did, I have this in my story, that they did address the sort of external benchmarking. They're not fully specific, but the quote they gave us was, internal evaluations are necessary because they allow us to test against the real workflows, failure modes, and quality standards our customers encounter. We also recognize the importance of credible third party validation and expect that this to be an important part of how Thomson Reuters is evaluated over time or how Thompson is evaluated over time.

31:54So, I mean, they didn't say they're going to actively pursue that, but they expect that to happen at some point. So a little bit of a noncommittal statement there. Yeah. I pulled it up in the VALS legal research one. None of the big three you mentioned were, ended up participating in it at all. Yeah.

32:16All right. Then where else? What else do we have? Stephanie, you don't have a story this week. Reese has a story. Oh, how did we not tie this to? Why did we not talk about Reese's story in conjunction with the Build-A-Bear story? Because it's quite relevant. But the law firm is working with tech companies to build custom tools. Yeah. I was eventually going to all tie it into a cohesive whole. So, you know, it's interesting. It all comes back to Build-A-Bear. It all comes back to Build-A-Bear. I was going to say that the build versus buy question is seemingly answered. And the answer is both at the same time.

33:02We are seeing a rise of law firms partnering with not just legal tech vendors, like you know we're also seeing them you know like co-create tools like Claude and open AI and Google as well so it seems to be like you know they found a sweet spot where the firms basically partner with a tech or a like AI provider and they create their own custom proprietary tools. And there are some huge ones too. I mean, like Freshfields, you know, has a partnership with Google and Claude and they are co-creating their own tools. And also like, you know, like helping Anthropic test out some like new Eagle tools as well.

34:05And like last week, Elke announced a partnership with OpenAI that will also lead to them creating proprietary tools. Stern Kessler, which is a New York firm, if I recall right, they partnered with TR to launch a proprietary patent tool. And there's a few others who have, you know, like the huge one too which was announced in 2026 um was the partnership between kirkland and palantir over a fund formation private equity platform um you know like it just like seems to be like they finally answer the build versus buy question and they're kind of like trying to thread the either in between the two.

35:03And it seems to be paying off. The question I have is like, you know, like there's a ton of firms, there's a finite number of AI companies and legal tech providers too. You know, will the firms that are able to secure these partnerships come out ahead? And are they all trying to, you know, secure these partnerships too up. Like, you know, like it does seem to provide them with a large competitive advantage. A firm who's able to create like, you know, custom tools within through open AI. I mean, that is, you know, quite a, out of the curve. And like, well, all firms really, you know, to take the same approach and can they all take this same approach too because all these tech providers just going to devote a ton of resources to these code of

36:15partnerships. And it actually seems like Harvey was the one to really

36:25strike hold. And everybody's trying to take the same approach of we can create custom tools and really have a good client pace in this industry. yeah well i feel like build versus buy was always destined to be a too narrow of a that dichotomy was never going to work i mean it was always going to be build partner by build i've heard people say build lease by build whatever i mean unless you're you know kirkland who can commit what was it 500 million dollars to building ai i mean that that's that's rare error that you're in if you can do that all of that internally you might be there are plenty of firms building things but they're on a smaller scale and if you really do want to do it on a big scale i think you have to go the partner route for most firms oh it's interesting i don't like um uh 2018 like we saw like a growth of like firms creating their like own tools and they had like you know like a huge IT team and voters too and data scientists I'm kind of curious if they're like it's cheaper just to partner because we have some people on staff and it's helpful except we cannot do what these giant tech providers do and it was always the refrain I've like heard from these firms too.

37:58It's like, we will create the tools that we can create. However, we don't ever, you know, assume we can compete with like a legal tech provider just due to the expertise and the teams of like, you know, IT experts that they have. So like, as, you know, firms get more advanced in the tools that they need and their tech acumen, are they starting to realize that the internal resources they have will only get them so far and that like they aren't going to keep like hiring and like building out their like internal you know tech to

38:4211 and team and it's cheaper to just you know like do these types of like partnerships and it depends on the firm too right because like the stern kessler example with tr like the stern kessler is dc based and they're completely an ip specialist right and they partnered to build a patent tool and so they have deep expertise in a narrow lane and i think there's that's just opens up more possibility and you'd be way more strategic about doing it than you know a general purpose firm, you know, a generalist firm that, you know, unless you have that$500 million, you're like, what do you, where do you even start and what do you attack?

39:23I mean, it's easier when your lane is narrowed first and it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. The other question I have is like, are the giant tech providers going to like staff up to some, you know, to allow these partnerships to like happen on a larger scale? And how are they going to step up to? And, you know, like, does that change the industry hiring because of associates aren't being hired? You know, do those like tech providers need to like, you know, like hire way more attorneys to like help them, you know, with these custom tools?

40:11All right. Well, I'm realizing I'm desperately off my transition game today. I missed the Build-A-Bear link to Reese's story. And then we were talking about Steve's story about fewer, lower hiring of first year associates. We could have also been talking about Victor's story, which is just how much trouble it is for people these days to even take the damn bar exam. Let alone get hired. This whole thing is hell. Well, we got there eventually, so it works. So, yeah, I mean, and, you know, for those of us who've taken the bar, you know, this is the best weekend of the year. This is the best week of the year, or last week was the best week of the year, where we all relive our wonderful experience being cooped up in a convention center or a hotel or a basketball arena.

41:06trying not to have a nervous breakdown while we fill in our answer sheets and whatnot. But so, yeah, the NextGen Uniform Bar Exam officially launched last week. And I don't know if you guys talked about it on the show last week. But, I mean, overall, I think it launched in 10 jurisdictions. It's going to roll out to more and more. And I think it's supposed to be fully implemented in a couple of years' time. But, you know, overall, it did okay, because you take it on a laptop, you connect to Wi-Fi, and you take the exam that way instead of doing the answer bubbles and, you know, the writing of the essays with a pen and whatnot.

41:51Yeah. But, you know, in Washington state and there were two other states, too, there were some technical issues. In Washington state, there were some really bad technical issues that forced the cancellation of the exam. Although people who had who had special accommodations to take the exam were able to take it and finish it. But but for the vast majority of of test takers, they they weren't able to even take it at all. So then they had so their options were basically to either take a makeup exam in September, sign up for the February exam. or get diploma privilege, but the diploma privilege, this just came out, I think, yesterday, the diploma privilege only, you know, if you do that, then you can only practice in Washington, whereas the whole point of the UBE is supposed to give you a portable score that you can then use to potentially practice in other jurisdictions and whatnot.

42:37So, you know, I mean, I remember thinking, well, what sane person would ever pick taking a bar exam again as opposed to just taking the diploma privilege? Well, I guess if you want to eventually practice in other states or other jurisdictions, then you have to take the exam then. But, you know, I mean, look, I mean, you know, yeah, it was it was it's a bad look for them. It's not it's not good. But on the other hand, it wasn't like California where they just kind of hastily rolled out the exam and didn't didn't do any preparation for it. And didn't, you know, we're kind of blindsided by some of the some of the problems and whatnot.

43:08I mean, this is the this is the Wi-Fi issue that really could have affected anybody. So so it wasn't it wasn't, you know, and they've been they've been running tests. they've been running test uh uh like you know like test events and sort of like um doing doing like kind of simulations and whatnot so it wasn't like they just you know were like hey let's let's let's do this on this day and hope for the best i mean they've been preparing it's just sometimes you can't prepare for these things um but unfortunately now you have all these washington uh bar takers who are who are kind of have to make a decision now about what they want to do but um but yeah so again sort of like shows the dangers of of the dangers of of uh as much as as much as people talk about what a great, you know, great, you know, for like having like an online bar that you could, you know, not have to worry about, you know, you know, yeah.

43:53Like not have to worry about, you know, all being in one place at the same time and whatnot, this kind of shows the dangers of relying on that. That is just truly the stuff of nightmares. Like I, it's been how many years since I took the bar? I don't even know. 24. And like, I still like, Think about it and never want to have to do that again. I mean, I don't, I guess, I don't know what else they could do, but I feel like you could at least pick two of those three options. Like, can you take diploma privilege and then retake it in September and maybe try to get more that way? I don't know. It just feels like there's no right answer, but I just like, that's just an unspeakable hell to me.

44:33I wrote about this separately the week before, and I wasn't covering Washington because we kind of broke it up. I covered the Missouri issues, but they were all all related. So three of the states they rolled this out to had massive disasters, the worst, of course, being Washington. And the take I had on it was I really zeroed in on when California tried to write its own version of an exam in order to get away from the NCBE. We heard nothing for a year but snide, snarky remarks from the NCBE and the state bar examiners about how, well, that's because they don't understand. They're not professional like us.

45:15And then these morons, after working on this for a much longer runway than California, still screwed it up. Because it's by design not something that you can ever really get rid of all the gremlins. The gremlins are going to show up because that's how this operates. The fact that you're trying to do the fact that you're putting people through this for an exam that doesn't. I always make the point that what it tries to test to have knowledge of generalist doctrinal subjects that you don't necessarily intend to practice off the top of your head is what in the real world we would call malpractice.

45:54So why is it that we test people to commit malpractice? It makes no sense. They should be we should do any number of things that are not this. But here we are. And so I was very heartened, as horrible as it was that it happened. I was very heartened that the karma and comeuppance came to the NCBE people for forcing me to go through a year where they mocked me for saying, you know, let maybe give California a chance to see if they can work it out.

46:28Why don't you tell us how you really feel, Joe? Yeah, I mean, I'm really like when I when when you ask, like at least several generations ago, when you ask like a Claude or a chat GPT, who is Joe Patrice, among the many things it would one of the quick first things that would spit out is like he really doesn't think the bar exam is very good. And I was like, oh, good. They're following. Yeah, I think it's bad. It's a bad test. I also think it is structurally bad for legal education because I think the diploma mill universe that we got into of bad law schools pumping out graduates who then couldn't practice is facilitated by this.

47:12because rather than have serious accreditation standards, we kind of shrug and say, eh, good enough, the bar will sort it out. And that has allowed a lot of unscrupulous actors to put people in bad financial case. I would much rather have diploma privilege and draconian accreditation standards, but that's what I've always thought. And there's also a dash of hazing in there too, right? Like we all had to do it. Totally. Yeah. It's like, if I had to go through it, then all of you have to as well. You know, it's, it's, you know, it's mainly what it is. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just like, what a horrible way to live your life.

47:52You know, like I had something horrible happen to me. So I hope you like, well, it's the ones you see that people all the time about like, well, we can't have national healthcare. I had to pay a lot for health bills. And I was like, why in the world would you say that? Yep. You know, the only conceivable part of it that makes a bit of sense is if you had a bar exam that was devoted strictly to general principles of ethics, because that's something that every lawyer ought to know. You know, but what do I care about the rule against perpetuity? What is it called? Yeah, the MPRE. Yeah, that's test.

48:35I actually have never been all that mad about that test. I actually think that was pretty good. The like, hey, don't steal from people is a pretty good test. Right. But the whole the rest of it is just, yeah, it's just hazing, if you say. Maybe you create state certifications for certain specialized practices. Like if you want to be licensed as a tax lawyer, you have to take it extra. Sure. I'm open to that. But like there's no reason that an M &A lawyer needs to know the rules of evidence off the top of their head. It just doesn't make sense. Well, and I think I think I think some we've made this point on this before.

49:13It's like, you know, you would never hire someone as a lawyer to like handle your complex M &A. And they're like, well, you know, I took it on the bar exam, but I practice criminal law. But I took M &A on the bar exam. I think I did it right. I mean, you wouldn't. You wouldn't. It's such a holdover from a, yeah. Yeah, it makes no sense. I took the Mass and New York bar the same weekend. It was because they had it so that you could take the, the multi-state of the middle, but you could take different states on either side of it. And the only reason I took, I think the New York bar at least had the New York civil practice rules, which were like different than anybody else had.

49:52That was like some justification for New York having a distinct test. But I mean, you know, we all know literally everything you learn in studying for the bar exam, as soon as you walk out of that test, it just goes away. I'll just I'll just promote another story that I wrote this week that a lot of people covered. So I shouldn't say it was just me. But last year, a woman taking the bar exam in New York suffered cardiac arrest. And rather than get her medical attention, the proctors were saying like, everybody stay calm, stay in your seats. You keep doing the test like whatever. And then there was a long delay.

50:32Nobody called 911 for a while. She's suing over that now. Now, the suit against Hofstra, where the site was, I wrote about how I get that you have to sue the site. But my concern is, you know, they are somewhat negligent in this process, one would think, to use your bar exam knowledge. But I don't blame them as much as the fear that organizations like the NCBE and the New York bar, the bar license folks put into these proctors to be like, you can't do anything that might make it seem like the test is compromised. Like they create a culture of please don't call anything an emergency. These are the people who didn't want you.

51:15They fought tooth and nail against moving the test remote during the pandemic. They just don't want anything to get in the way of their precious test. And in this instance, it was to tragic effect. Like she now claims she has brain damage and that's part of her lawsuit. She can't sue the bar because it is a state entity. She is bringing a claim in the court of claims, but it has a ton of limits and whatever. So she's not going to get the redress she deserves from them. uh but she will yeah she's gotta go she's got a lawsuit in both places and that it's just more of how this test is so stupid is it too on the nose to make that a fact pattern in the next year's bar exam right yeah i don't play your injuries that's terrible but like there is so much in what you described that it is it's an issue spotter yeah it's crazy yeah well and it's totally totally foreseeable right because it's like you know i was thinking i was thinking well if that happened to me during my exam, it's like, I, I would like to think that I would try to help or do something, but then I'm also thinking like, well, Hey, you know what?

52:26I don't want to get screwed over here by, you know, by getting disqualified because I jumped out of my seat or I did this or, or, and then, and I lost time for the exam. And I'm sure everyone's going through that in their minds. Like, well, Hey, do I do something here? And not that you really can, right? Because they, they, they have the place locked down. Like you're not allowed to bring in your phone. You're not allowed to bring in your wallet. You're not allowed to bring in like all this stuff. because they have a plastic bag that has your ID and pencils in it. Yeah. And an ID, like Kleenex, if you wanted it or something.

52:54Like, yeah. They don't even like it when women bring in tampons. So it's like, what are you supposed to do? And what about your concentration? I mean, you're sitting there supposedly taking the bar exam and then somebody's dying in the seat next to you. And it's like a little hard to think about the rule against perpetuities or whatever it is at that point in time, I would think. that's like the one thing we all say when we hear bar exam is the rule against perpetuities the whole thing is it's probably not even on the bar exam oh it is

53:26pretty much all i remember it's on the bar like two percent of the time i'm sure yeah everyone learns it waits for the question and then it never comes

53:39all right i wanted to mention just because we've talked a number of i actually didn't even put this on the story log but uh the site that andy perlman the dean of suffolk law school put up this week uh and i'm going to put a link to his site i actually wrote about it as well uh nope that's not the link that's um so we've talked a few times about loss where is the link we talked a few times about law school AI policies. We talked about, you know, Berkeley's kind of over-the-top policy of basically prohibiting all use of AI. And where is my link? Here we go. That's Andy's article. Andy's site. So, and we talked, I think recently we talked about the Chicago, Chicago came out with an AI policy a couple of times we've talked about in the show.

54:33But it's been kind of hard to get a sense of what's going on all over the country in this regard. So Andy Perlman last weekend, I think, sat down and vibe coded basically a website that he used ChatGPT, I think, to pull together all the policies. When I talked to him on Monday morning, I think it was, he had like 120 law schools in there. I'm just looking at it now. It's up to 160 law schools. And it's actually kind of interesting to read about because you're able to kind of get a sense. He's got a spreadsheet up there. You can download the spreadsheet. I did that and, of course, dropped it into Claude or Chad GPT, I forgot what I did, to see if they could identify some trends in there.

55:31And I thought one of the interesting trends that was revealed was that for all our criticism of Berkeley for its sort of absolute prohibition against using AI, that's kind of the general approach a lot of schools are taking. not as extreme as Berkeley's, but the sort of the default policy is some form of prohibition on using AI, various degrees of, you know, maybe you need permission from your professor or maybe you can't use it at all. But that's kind of the that's much more or less the trend. At the same time, though, these policies show that, in fact, more and more law schools are mandating some kind of training around around AI.

56:18And that's a good thing. More and more schools are developing curricula around it and courses around it. And that even a lot of schools now are mandating syllabus disclosure of AI. In other words, when professors create their syllabi for their courses, they have to indicate whether in how AI can or will be used in the course of the course. So I just thought it was an interesting resource and glad to see that Andy put that up there. I had totally missed this. This is really cool. I could nerd out digging into this for a while. Oh, you can totally nerd out on it. Yeah. Yeah. It's a rabbit hole. And it's not really surprising, right?

57:07I mean, you know, if you don't understand something, then your first thing is to ban it. I mean, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And like I say, it's up to 161, I think is what I just said. And there's only 190 was 193 or something. Law schools, ABA accredited law schools. Is that still a thing? ABA accredited law schools. So, you know, to be determined. Yeah. A significant number of law schools have policy. And Andy says there may still be others. I mean, he's encouraging people to add to it and file their own if he's missed anything. So it's something to be watched and followed. A little bit like Damien Charlton's hallucination site, only this is AI policies.

57:52The first comparison I thought of. Yeah, it's really cool. Yeah, good. All right. I think that's it. We made it through an hour and another week. and we will be back next week, maybe or maybe not, with a report from Finland. So long, everyone. All right. Everybody have a good week. See you. Have a good trip, Stephanie. Thanks. Yeah, safe travels.