Dan Regard

AI appears to be challenging the billable hour. It is. But not in the way many people think. The common prediction is simple: AI will make legal work faster, lawyers will bill fewer hours, and the billable hour will collapse. Maybe. But that is not the more interesting story. The more interesting story is this: the billable hour became dominant because litigation became unpredictable. And much of that unpredictability came from discovery — the long, expensive, adversarial search for facts.

This is the tenth article of a 10-part series on how technology is transforming evidence, litigation, and dispute resolution. In this installment, we’ll examine two legal cases on AI making their way through the judicial system: United States v. Heppner and Warner v. Gilbarco. Both cases highlight the evolution of legal analysis and drafting, as well as attorney-client privilege and work product doctrine in the AI era. The legal industry has been stepping on GenAI landmines for more than a year now.

This is the ninth article in a ten-part series examining how technology is reshaping evidence, litigation, and dispute resolution. In this installment, we focus on falsified data in litigation—how it arises, how to detect it, and what to do when it appears. Other articles in the series can be found here. Have you ever had the sense that a piece of evidence was off, but you couldn’t quite articulate why? It seemed too good to be true, too clean, too convenient. If so, you’re not alone.