Expanding Fault Lines in Legal Technology This article was originally published by the American Bar Association’s Law Practice Division’s publication, Law Technology Today in The Professional Infrastructure Series — Article I. This article is the first in a four-part series examining what may be a growing fracture within legal technology itself: a separation between technologies…
ABA Law Technology Today Publishes First Article in Professional Infrastructure Series ABA Law Technology Today has published the first article in a four-part series from TheFormTool on legal technology, professional responsibility, and control. The article, “Expanding Fault Lines in Legal Technology,” examines a growing tension in legal technology: the profession’s increasing dependence on systems optimized…
Who Controls Your Client Data During Document Automation? A Practical Question Before Any Automation Project A professional document can contain far more than words on a page. A lawyer may be working with client names, case facts, financial terms, draft clauses, settlement details, or confidential instructions. An accountant may be preparing documents that include tax…
The AI Gold Rush — and What It Means for Legal Documents We are in the middle of what can fairly be described as an AI gold rush. Across the legal technology industry, hundreds of vendors are racing to add artificial intelligence to their products. New platforms promise AI-generated contracts, AI drafting assistants, AI document…
Intelligent Systems Don’t Outsource Judgment There is a growing temptation in modern practice to confuse assistance with substitution. Technology now drafts, predicts, suggests, reformulates, summarizes. It is fast. It is impressive. It is increasingly persuasive. But none of it exercises judgment. Judgment is slower. It is contextual. It is accountable. And it belongs to the…
The Rediscovery of Rule-Based Automation in Legal Tech Why Rule-Based Logic Remains the Foundation of True Document Automation The legal-tech industry reaches inflection points in unexpected ways. One arrived recently when a well-known AI-forward document automation provider publicly acknowledged what many lawyers have practiced instinctively for years: rule-based automation is the foundation of accurate, reliable…
What if your legal assistant invented a case, a clause, or an argument—out of thin air? Imagine this: your legal assistant comes into your office with a draft pleading. It looks great—polished formatting, strong arguments, and even a few citations. But when you ask, “Where did this come from?” they shrug: “I made it up.…
AI Is a Tool. Judgment Is a Duty. AI can draft a clause; it can’t explain why it matters—or what it costs when it’s wrong. Our position is simple: every client deserves a Lawyer in the Loop™. We’re inviting Bar associations to partner on a 60-minute CLE: Evaluating AI for Legal Work—Ethics, Confidentiality, and Informed…
The Judge, the Machine, and the Missing Lawyer Why Mattox v. Product Innovations Research USA may mark the moment courts began defining Lawyer-in-the-Loop™. When federal judges invoke Rule 11(b), it’s never casual. That rule requires every lawyer who signs a pleading to certify that the filing rests on truth, evidence, and law—not invention. In Mattox…