iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 15/05/2026

From a Fall 2025 report from the National Center for State Courts, AccessLex and TR, "The unprepared lawyer":

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 05/05/2026

Sinestro out here, undermining my self-confidence again.

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 02/05/2026

I’d pay real money for this one. Amazing work with the ‘83 White Sox logo.

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 28/04/2026

Stay off Polymarket. Stay away from prediction markets of all types. They're predatory environments, and you're the prey. (via Matt Levine's newsletter) www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 13/03/2026

Yeah, this looks like a legit return e-address.

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 25/02/2026

Will we soon see a large-scale migration of lawyers, leaving BigLaw and corporate practice to help individuals with their legal needs? I think so, and weirdly enough, AI could be the reason. My newest Substack newsletter explains why. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/the-rising...

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 11/02/2026

New from me at @slawdotca.bsky.social: As AI gradually becomes the primary engine of legal production, law firm business models built around lawyer-centrism inevitably will give way. Watch AI-native law firms for clues on what to do next. www.slaw.ca/2026/02/11/t...

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 04/02/2026

Lawyers' professional judgment is their most valuable asset. If we could isolate and apply its components, we could do everything from quality-testing AI to re-engineering lawyer formation. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/how-to-sur...

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 20/01/2026

How can we mobilize more lawyers to defend the rule of law? Maybe by making public service mandatory for lawyers --converting ineffective MCLE programs into competence-enhancing public legal service requirements. More in my newest Substack: jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/advancing-...

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 04/12/2025

Time to get the Christmas cards sent out.

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 03/12/2025

It’s been that kind of year.

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 20/11/2025

New from me at Substack: What happens when private equity meets artificial intelligence in the legal sector? The profit engine of law firms changes address -- and lawyers get a chance to rethink their purpose. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/the-migrat...

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 13/11/2025

New from me at Substack: My analysis of the surging wave of private equity activity in the legal sector. My message to lawyers and legal regulators: Be very, very careful here. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/private-eq...

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 29/10/2025

The sound of the '70s haunts the legal sector to this day:

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 28/10/2025

New from me at Substack: What happens when the capacity to solve legal problems is no longer exclusive to lawyers, and can instead be found on every desktop and smartphone? What does it mean when legal reasoning becomes ubiquitous? We're about to find out. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/the-new-le...

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 17/10/2025

I'm hoping the full list of research questions might be included in the full report if they send it. My info comes from these two articles: www.law.com/legaltechnew... and www.legaltechnologyhub.com/contents/can.... A couple of the questions are provided below:

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 17/10/2025

Nikki Shaver (@nikjet.bsky.social)'s summary of the report at @legaltechnologyhub.com is important: Nobody is saying that "AI is better than lawyers" in general terms. But there are still three significant takeaways from this report that really stand out for me:

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 17/10/2025

The big differentiator was "authoritativeness," which measures the strength and validity of primary and secondary sources and citations. The legal AI platforms significantly outperformed ChatGPT, as you'd expect. But both types of AI beat the lawyers (who hailed from a range of AmLaw 100 firms).

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 17/10/2025

But that first study didn't cover legal research; this one did. And the results should be a wakeup call for anyone still sleeping through the start of the legal AI era: Lawyers finished behind not only the legal research AI platforms, but also ChatGPT. (!)

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 09/10/2025

New from me at Substack: In the post-AI legal sector, lawyers will be called on for different functions than before. Here are three essential attributes lawyers must possess to meet that new demand. We need to start training lawyers to develop them -- now. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/three-core...

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 25/09/2025

Me, whenever the Harvey AI Discourse Machine powers up:

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 20/09/2025

www.economist.com/finance-and-...

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 16/09/2025

My newest Substack forecasts the imminent divergence of law firms from lawyers, with firms heading toward techno-commoditization and lawyers ascending to unique law-infused client guidance -- if we give lawyers the tools to make the transition successfully. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/the-diverg...

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 28/08/2025

New from me at Substack: Sooner or later, AI will take over most legal task performance, which will spark an identity crisis for many lawyers. So now's the time to re-envision what lawyers could and should do beyond "legal work" and upgrade to higher roles. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/the-identi...

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 30/07/2025

My newest Substack is both a deep dive into the two fundamental reasons why we have lawyers, and an urgent call for the legal profession to take up the challenge of the second role by defending our society's collective aspiration and moral architecture. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/what-are-l...

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 23/07/2025

In fairness, I once used the AI-generated image below on the first slide of a presentation to a large law firm retreat. I literally didn't notice it until we were loading up the Powerpoint that morning. But I had the presence of mind to ask the audience, "So -- notice anything odd about this image?"

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 28/05/2025

Another day, another lawyer filing AI-generated fake caselaw with a court. AI is inadvertently revealing a crisis of lawyer competence, and we're the ones who'll pay the price. My newest Substack explains why the legal profession is playing with fire here. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/the-fallac...

An image of a calculator on a lawyer's desk, but the buttons, rather than displaying numbers and mathematical symbols, display legal symbols such as a scale of justice, a courthouse, a casebook, and so forth. The digital display of the calculator reads: NOT AI.

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 16/05/2025

New from me at Substack: The only way law firms can absorb AI into their workflow and remain profitable is by switching away from the legal profession's longstanding (and terrible) definition of "productivity." Here's how to do it -- and what it will cost: jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/redefining...

An illuminated cog hovering over a pair of hands in front of a techno-colourful abstract backdrop. Title and subtitle:

Redefining productivity in legal services

Generative AI doesn't have to cause mass unemployment or mass overwork in the legal profession. We can use it to free lawyers from task performance and enter a new era of client-centred productivity.

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 09/05/2025

This morning’s abomination (at Loblaws Superstore).

Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse T-shirts, modified by maple leaves and with each character saying “Eh!” It’s just as awful as it sounds.

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 02/05/2025

My newest Substack reports on astonishing new AI advances, but suggests lawyers should think less about whether AI can mimic their skills and more about how to create client relationships where lawyers provide trusted oversight for their clients' affairs. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/trusted-ov...

Abstract image of a professional overseeing a broad array of client concerns and issues.

Title: Stewardship and the post-AI legal profession
Subtitle: Gen AI is climbing the "legal skills ladder" with alarming speed. What if lawyers responded with comprehensive “legal-plus” oversight of their clients’ affairs? Welcome to Peace Of Mind As A Service.

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 22/04/2025

This was obvious to me the first time I saw ChatGPT-4 in action in March 2023. The inevitable consequence of a "knowledge work accelerator" of this capacity was always going to be a fundamental undermining of time- and effort-based pricing. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/law-has-a-...

The classic "domino meme," in which a man prepares to knock over a tiny slab that will in turn knock over successively larger slabs until the largest inevitably falls. The smallest is labelled "Generative AI." The largest is "New legal pricing mechanisms."

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 11/04/2025

adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-...

Excerpt from article by Adam Tooze:

Something has happened to American political culture that divorces large parts of it from social reality. The result is that “cultural experiments” of the type that Trump and his gang are undertaking with the US economy are no longer shot down. The bubble is not burst. The madness is now everyone’s reality.

The analogue that is brought to mind is not so much the gerontocracy of the late Soviet Union as the delirium that followed in the post-Soviet 1990s.

Back in the early 2000s an aide to George W. Bush famously boasted to Ron Suskind: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

That was then. They were talking about laying Iraq to waste. In 2025, as the empire decomposes, with Mar-a-Lago as the “Green Zone” that delirious sense of unhinged world-making has come home.

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 07/04/2025

I have one piece of advice for everyone come Monday morning:

Image of Samuel L. Jackson from Jurassic Park saying “Hold on to your butts.”

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 01/04/2025

My newest Substack tackles the Trump attacks on BigLaw, the misguided responses of two top law firms, and the long-term consequence for large firms of their silence or surrender: They are burning their bridges with the next generation of lawyers. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/biglaw-giv...

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 28/03/2025

My hypothesis has been that AI will take most or all the cognitive tasks, so that what'll be left for lawyers are the human activities: building relationships, offering counsel, advocating with courage, providing judgment, etc. Here's the latest version of what I think "lawyer work" will look like:

A four-quadrant diagram setting out the following four activities that I believe will, or hopefully ought to, still be available for lawyers to perform even after AI cleans out all of our traditional cognitive tasks:

– Provide advocacy
– Deliver advice
- Facilitate solutions
- Chart strategies

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 19/03/2025

I very much like this way of framing the problem:

Excerpt from the article:

"The lawyer regulatory process is like a periodically refurbished old
house. It has never been razed and replaced, but it is continually repaired to replace worn out or obsolete parts and to refresh for technological and
societal changes. It has received makeovers, but not do-overs, perhaps
because starting from scratch would be too costly or because judges and lawyers have grown accustomed to its essential attributes and have built their professional lives around them. If courts built a regulatory process for a different category of legal professionals, should it resemble what we now have?

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 14/03/2025

I'd planned to publish this one next week, but with all the madness of current events, I felt I should send it out today for more timely consideration: Why law firms need to commission in-house intel units and build their own "Situation Rooms." jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/your-law-f...

The title and subtitle of my newest Substack: Your law firm needs a Situation Room. In a chaotic world, you can't sit back waiting for the next bombshell to drop. You need to anticipate, analyze, and address critical new developments — before they affect your firm and its clients.

Image: A diverse group of lawyers engaged in an intense discussion around a conference table in a modern, dimly lit office setting. A man in a light gray suit appears to be leading the conversation, gesturing as he speaks, while his colleagues, dressed in professional attire, attentively listen. Their serious expressions and body language suggest that they are addressing a pressing legal matter or strategizing in response to an urgent situation. The scene is illuminated by sleek overhead lighting, adding to the high-stakes and professional atmosphere of the meeting.

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 07/03/2025

You can use Generative AI to help produce your legal work, or you can continue to price your legal work by the hour. You won't be able to do both. www.law.com/legaltechnew...

Excerpt from an article about large law firms that've developed their own internal Gen AI systems:

When it comes to Davis Wright’s billing model, honesty with clients is key when AI comes into the picture and provides faster results.

"We bill honestly for the time that we spent, and if we're obligated to disclose that we used AI on something, we absolutely will, but we don't inflate the numbers to recoup hours we've eaten because we've figured out how to do something in five minutes instead of five hours,” Szabo said.

Lach said that in his case, there are slightly fewer billable hours depending on how AI is used, but Hogan Lovells has figured out how to supplement this.

“You add a license fee for the tool, or you work with flat fees and say, ‘listen, this is going to be a different approach now, we're going to move away from the billable hour a bit more, but we can basically fulfill your legal task for price X, which is going to be less than we would pay for if we would do it manually,’ and you basically allow the use of AI and we manage kind of how we solve the puzzle on our end … it's going to be a flat fee,” he said.

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 07/03/2025

1/ Last week, I posted on LinkedIn about Trump's attack on Covington & Burling specifically, and more broadly on the principle that lawyers are entitled (if not obliged) to represent anyone who seeks their help: "Does The Government Decide What Your Firm Will Do?" www.linkedin.com/pulse/does-g...

An AI-written Alt text for an AI-generated image: What a time to be alive.

"In a dimly lit, grand chamber, a long rectangular table takes center stage. At one end of the table sits a figure with his back to the viewer, his posture rigid and authoritative. Lined along the sides of the table are nearly identical men in dark suits, each one leaning forward with hands resting on papers, poised as if in a solemn council meeting.

Above them, a single chandelier casts a sparse glow, highlighting motes of dust in the air. Thin, web-like wires stretch from the portrait of a man mounted on the wall, branching out to smaller, faceless figures perched at various points around the room. These figures dangle overhead, connected by the threads as if manipulated or observed from on high.

The overall atmosphere is tense and foreboding, with the subdued color palette emphasizing a sense of secrecy and control. Subtle shadows dance across the walls, amplifying the painting’s dramatic, almost theatrical mood. The scene evokes themes of power, hierarchy, and the unseen forces that may guide important decisions behind closed doors."

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 28/02/2025

This seems the more apt comparison.

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 24/02/2025

I wrote this back in December 2023 in an article about lawyer self-regulation. I couldn't anticipate it would prove so applicable to the United States just 15 months later. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/the-loomin...

An excerpt from an article about lawyer self-regulation that I wrote in December 2023, and that now has very ominous application with the second Trump Administration:

"I want to be very clear here. The ability of the legal profession to remain independent from state control is extremely important. I italicize the modifier because some people who argue for “lawyer independence” don’t specify exactly what the profession is supposed to be independent of or from. Lawyers have no right to be independent of market forces or social norms. We’re part of society, not above it; we defend the rule of law, not the rule of lawyers.

But the spectre of state control of, or undue influence over, the legal profession is very real and stark. A government with authoritarian impulses — and there are plenty of examples all over the world, even here in the United States and Canada — understands that lawyers are specifically equipped and authorized to challenge arbitrary or unconstitutional acts of the state, and thus represent a significant obstacle to achieving authoritarian goals. Direct control over the legal profession would be a weapon powerful enough to tempt even moderate democratic governments; authoritarian regimes would not hesitate to use it.

Claims that lawyer independence is needed to protect society from malevolent state actors might have seemed overblown just ten years ago. They don’t anymore. The legal profession is right to vigorously defend its independence from the government."

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Jordan Furlong @jordanfurlong.com · 21/02/2025

Playing against the current mood, my newest Substack looks for and finds reasons to hope for better in legal sector innovation -- because we've already come so much farther from where we were. We've done it before, and we can do it again. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/and-then-t...

An AI-generated image of a group of young professionals standing in a downtown city space, looking up at a proud and inspiring abstract monument, surrounded by tall buildings. The text is the title and subtitle of the linked article: "And then they build monuments to you. In all this chaos, stop and remember: The legal profession has made extraordinary gains in just a few short years. Change for the better in law is here, and it's real. You can take us even farther."

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