06/04/26: Ironclad founder joins OpenAI to develop products for legal, and more

Bob Ambrosi: Welcome all, to Legal Tech Week for June 5, 2028. 6 and 28. Whatever. Um, uh, this is the show where we talk about the top stories in legal tech and innovation from the past week. And, uh, as you see, we have an intimate panel here today. We are expecting one more panelist. Uh, I hope she shows up because, uh, she had a good story I wanted to talk about. Uh, but, uh, as for me, I'm Bob Ambrosi, and I write a blog called Lost Sites, and I have a podcast called lawnext. And among our many panelists today, uh, Steve, why don't you kick it off?

Steve Embry: Hey, Steve Embry here. I, um, write the blog Tech Law Crossroads and write for above the Law and on occasion, for ABA's Law Technology Today.

Joe Patrice: All right.

Bob Ambrosi: And Joe.

Joe Patrice: And I'm Joe Patrice. I'm the senior editor at Above. You can hear me. Okay. Uh, okay, good. At above the Law, uh, I have a podcast called Thinking Like a Lawyer in addition to this show. And I am not at home because I am attending, uh, the Netroots Nation conference where there was just a Supreme Court reform panel that I covered. Uh, which was exciting because, uh, some of you know, Ellie Mustall, he was on the panel, and he was as entertaining as he ever is, you know, so, like, just. Just broke the other panelists with, uh, some of the jokes he was telling.

Bob Ambrosi: So I haven't seen Ellie in, like, pretty much since he left above the Law. I think it's been a while since I've seen him. I don't know, maybe I run into

Joe Patrice: him here and there.

Bob Ambrosi: But, yeah, he's fun.

Joe Patrice: He is. Well, and that's the thing. He doesn't cover the tech side of law. Like, I have. I have my tentacles everywhere. He just kind of covers the courts and justice now. So.

Bob Ambrosi: Yeah, but, yeah, and he never really did cover the tech side law. But still, when he was above the law, you'd run into him here and there.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, we'd have events, the occasional bar,

Bob Ambrosi: at least, if nothing else. All right, well, uh, our audience of, uh, note takers is quickly assembling, so we need to do something. We talk about something for them to take, uh, notes on and, uh, give us a summary of at the end.

Steve Embry: Um, but we're soon going to have. We're soon going to have more. More notetakers than we have human attendees.

Bob Ambrosi: Yeah, well, we already have more note takers and we have panelists, I think. So. Uh, all right, well, we don't have Stephanie, so, um, I don't know where do you want to stand a lot of stuff to talk about. Panelists, tell us about your, I mean the audience tell us about your week and uh, is the chat even working? I'm hardly seeing anybody in the chat today. Somebody say hello if you're in the chat and reassure us that it's working. Um, so yeah, so I mean maybe Steve, we could just kind of talk with, talk about your conference uh, experience this week just to kind of kick it off because you got to go to Absolutely. Legal Geek and uh, sounded like a good guy.

Steve Embry: Yeah, uh, I went, yeah I went to Legal Geek which was in a one day conference in Chicago. Uh, the second year that I've, I've been. And I have to say it's, it's really a pretty cool conference. Um, it uh, about a thousand attendees. I would say a lot of probably bigger law folks, but not exclusively. But the thing that I really like about it is the speakers are given 10 minutes to give their presentation and it runs uh, it runs like that. They'll do like five in an hour as a 15 minutes and they'll take a break and then they'll do. And it, it's really cool because they, they have to be very focused and, and they really don't get 10 minutes, they really get eight minutes. Uh, so there's none of this um, getting upon the stage and talking about how great they are are and what they did this, how they did that. Very few of them used PowerPoint presentations. Some had a few you know, token slides. You can't use very many in eight minutes obviously. Um, and uh, the venue is really cool. It's a big um, kind of. They have a big courtyard, open ah, air courtyard and the, and then the vendors are at small tables in an open air area adjacent to that courtyard. So it's very kind of outdoorsy feel and it's, it was helped by the fact that it was really nice weather for, for Chicago, um, wasn't hot. Uh, a lot of presentations were on sort of practical things about AI and how to deal with vendors. Was one that I thought was really good. It was presentation by uh, Thompson Reuters, um, Venture capital guy that was, that was good. It was lot of talk about AI first law firms and how they're doing things. Um, and it was, it was, it was good, it was quite good. I had a good time, learned um, a lot of stuff. I've got one article just dropped on it. I've got another one coming out um, probably next week. Uh, the biggest issue walking in I think was um, AOM or whatever it's called, Cintrella, I think it is, uh, purchased Legal Geek late last year. And so the issue was really, you know, how's that going to change? Is it going to change? Um, and of course nothing changed this year. Um, you know, probably because the venue was already booked. I couldn't tell any real difference in the speakers. There weren't, uh, Gina Passarella spoke early on in the conference, um, gave a nice presentation. Uh, wasn't, didn't promote ALM or, or whatever they are or whatever they are now. Yeah, whatever they are.

Bob Ambrosi: Uh, Citronella.

Steve Embry: Yeah.

Bob Ambrosi: Right. Yeah.

Steve Embry: Their name did not appear any place that I saw in any of the, any of the literature. Certainly, uh, wasn't, you know, posted on a big screen or anything like that. Um, there was, I did notice a little quote, uh, on the Legal Geek website about the, the acquisition saying it will enable us to, to grow. And that made me wonder, you know, if the thing that's so unique and, and nice about the conference is it's, it is small. I mean with a thousand thousand people, it didn't seem like there were a thousand people there, uh, that thousand people registered. Uh, but that's what makes it kind of nice and it, you know, you know, the Ultas Evolve Conference sort of, you know, it was small the first few years and then this year it was bigger and it kind of lost a little bit of that sort of informality I think. Um, at, uh, at this year's conference, which was at the Gaylord and in Denver, um, Joy Heath Rush gave a, gave the final talk of the day and, and did a really nice job sort of summarizing all the themes and what had been discussed and where we are and all that kind of stuff. So you know, it was, it was a nice time. Got to see a Cubs game and had some fun. And all in all it was a good track. I think it's assuming it kind of stays like it is and doesn't, doesn't morph into something else. I think it's well worthwhile if nothing else to watch. These speakers have to give an eight minute presentation and have enough substance, substance in it to keep everybody's interest and, and, and uh, attention. So that, that was cool to see and, and they, most of them did a very good job. One, um, or two of them, I don't know how they, how they applied the hook, but nobody went over so they must have had some, you know, fraud stuck to them or something that they gave him a shock when it was about time was up. But I think, I think, I think last year I learned that they, they do make them practice and do run throughs in advance to make sure that they, they're not going to go over and um. So. But it was good. I was glad I went.

Joe Patrice: I definitely have done uh, I done that format before and it is, it is a lot of fun. Uh, it is very stressful to get everything in, in those short periods but very fun.

Steve Embry: You know. Interesting. I'm in another uh, organization. It's a, it's a trial lawyers organization and they had a conference last year and they just got so sick of what these hotels and convention centers are charging for AV equipment. They uh, just no PowerPoints, you're on your own. No PowerPoints and saved a ton of money. And the presentation frankly were just as good I thought. I mean because most PowerPoints, I mean let's face it, most of them are just like junk.

Joe Patrice: I mean now you can get uh, you get your AI to make your PowerPoints for you too. So.

Steve Embry: Yeah. Right. Be even worse.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Bob Ambrosi: So I'm um, trying to think A couple times recently I've been at some conferences where they've had not a whole day but where they've had segments that are the rapid fire, you know, 10 minute whatever talks like that. Um, and sometimes they can be really good. Sometimes they feel, sometimes they're not. Sometimes they feel like the presenter uh, is trying so hard to to be. Be clever and uh, uh, concise all at the same time that it starts to feel a little, little forced or a little uh, artificially uh abbreviated or something. I mean I've seen those go both ways but when they go well they are, they go really well. They can be a really good way to do it. I've never been to a full day of it. Like I've never been illegal.

Steve Embry: And I should make hasten to add that the rapid fire things were not the whole day they had. They had all morning was. Were rapid fire and then after lunch they had like round table discussions on various topics and then like the end last two hours of the conference were, were rapid fire. Um, and they had really good speakers. I thought um, I knew some of them but not all of them. But they were pretty impressive lot. And um, they, they did good work with stuff. They, they also have um, a couple of side rooms that they have presentations going on where vendors can, can give their presentations and various discussions kind of things. I didn't go to any of those but um, you know they looked kind of interesting and so that Was also going on at the same time, lots of breaks for networking. They really stress know, you know, meeting people and how many people here met five people during the break? And, you know, a lot of high five kind of stuff going on. So they really, you know, some of that can be a little, I don't know, goofy. But it. It went off okay. I mean, it wasn't. Wasn't too bad. So.

Bob Ambrosi: Yeah.

Steve Embry: Yeah.

Bob Ambrosi: All right. So, yeah.

Joe Patrice: Well, do we want to talk. Do we want to talk real quick about the story that none of us actually wrote but is still kind of interesting?

Bob Ambrosi: We can. Yeah, we've got other stories to talk about, but, yeah, we can talk about that. Yeah. Do you want to bring it up?

Joe Patrice: Yeah, sure. I'll make this mine. Uh, I didn't get a chance to write this up, but this week we learned that Kirkland is building, uh, an AI platform with the help of Palantir. Uh, so, fresh off of tapping everyone's phones and kidnapping people in the middle of the night, Palantir is going to run private equity work, too. So that's exciting. Uh, and it. It's an interesting development, uh, from my perspective, uh, seeing it because, you know, if. If Kirkland wants to build their own thing, which, you know, that. That is a big. A big development in and of itself that they feel they are of a size, that they want their own thing and not what everybody else has. Uh, one, two. They chose. Who they chose to work with is different, too. They, you know, like. Like at the end of a flight, you have many options for who you want to work with in AI, and you don't, but you have a handful of them. Uh, and they did not make that choice. They went to the national security side of things, which I thought was, you know, a little worrying, too. I mean, I put up a. I responded to it with just a picture M of Saruman and Sauron working together in Lord of the Rings. I feel like that kind of sums up my feelings about Kirkland and Palantir getting together, but. Hey, uh, what did everybody else think about this? Uh, was really my question, because I saw it. It was a big thing, but I was too busy to really dig into it.

Bob Ambrosi: Yeah, I don't know much about it either. I saw what I read on, uh, Artificial Lawyer, had a piece about it maybe just yesterday or day before. Uh, that's really all I know about it. My initial reaction, though, was to kind of say, whoa. Uh, only because there has been so much focus of, uh, late on the potential relationship between Thomson Reuters and Palantir, which Thomson Reuters keep saying we don't have that relationship. But uh, with regard to the data being used by ice, and I wrote about this a few times, but they're you know, the sort of, the advocates who are pushing Thomson Reuters to be more transparent about their contracts with ICE are saying that uh, ICE is taking that uh, Thomson Reuters data and combining it with Palantir technology to create this sort of hyper snooping uh, module that uh, gives ICE just unprecedented insight into the personal lives of every citizen in the United States. Uh, Thompson, uh, Reuters says, well our data does not integrate with Palantir. But then if you look at some of the contracts that some of the requisites uh, that ICE has put out in terms of their contracts with Thomson Reuters, they talk about the fact that the data has to be interoperable with these other platforms. There's this whole question of to what extent uh, is Palantir already sort of facilitating the uh, uh, dissemination of our data? Uh, and so I don't know. So then if you start working with a major law firm and helping them develop their artificial intelligence platform, um, it just starts to feel creepy. I mean I have no reason necessarily to think that there's something going to happen, but it just starts to feel really creepy.

Steve Embry: Yeah, that's kind of my reaction to it as well. Although I think last week we talked a little bit about, it's fairly unusual for a law firm to invest in this kind of thing at that, at that level. Um, because usually, I mean, you know, partners want their, want their payout at the end of the year and they don't want, leave money on the table. But I guess when you're as big as Kirkland is, you know, 500 million doesn't impact the 40 million dollar draw of any particular partner. So I mean maybe they're all cool with that, but it does. I, I don't um, know much about it either, but it does seem just slimy and creepy. I think that's a good way of putting it.

Bob Ambrosi: I guess also kind of raises the question if they are going to work with a company such as Palantir, why Palantir? And why not one of the, one of the major frontier models? Uh, uh, I mean if since they kind of made a big deal, I was saying we're not going to kind of co develop with, with OpenAI or anthropic, um, what advantage do they get out of doing this with Palantir? Um, as an alternative again?

Steve Embry: M. Yeah, it seems, it's, it seems like it's one of those things where you're. You're not. You're not going to gain much from it. That. But it really has a greater propensity to lose something because some clients may be like us and say we don't want to have our data and confidential material and all that in a system that been developed by people like these. So, uh, it's hard to see how that it's an advantage to do it. I can see how it might end up being a disadvantage.

Bob Ambrosi: Yeah.

Joe Patrice: I assume they have some business relationship beyond this. Like, I. Kirkland are their lawyers. Maybe. I. I don't know.

Bob Ambrosi: Yeah.

Steve Embry: Uh, that's also probably likely. Big client of the firm.

Bob Ambrosi: Yeah, maybe. Um, but it did also. So the story I was going to talk about this week, I had a couple talk about. One was this. This platform, Laverne, that I wrote about, uh, which. This kind of the exact.

Steve Embry: Does it come with Shirley. Laverne and Shirley.

Bob Ambrosi: Did you see my headline? Was. My headline was, can a legal AI platform be powerful, fun and free all at the same time? Laverne surely thinks so.

Steve Embry: Uh, we do have to realize that there's probably a considerable number of people in the audience that have no freaking idea what we're talking about right now.

Bob Ambrosi: Well, that's. I figured. I mean, I was actually curious whether any. Anybody would pick up on it. Um, but, uh, so far nobody, uh, has. But it's okay. Um, but, uh, when you talk, you know, you think about Kirkland spending all this money to build their. Their large language model, their platform, when there is suddenly this whole slew of, uh, these. These, uh, basically enterprising individuals who are putting out, uh, you know, either. Either vibe coding or directly coding. Um, probably. Probably nobody directly codes anything anymore. Um, but, uh, these platforms that, you know, a lot of them kind of promise to be almost as powerful or just as powerful as some of the big names out there. I mean, um, this guy, uh, you know, we talked. I think we talked about Mike Oss in another show. Uh, but. But Laverne is kind of a similar idea, only. Only what's really fun about it is that the guy who developed it, anti Iranin. I may not be pronouncing his name right sexually from Finland, but lives in Spain. Uh, but he's. He's been kind of having fun with it. He is a former law firm founder, and he was a founder of this, uh, uh, firm in Helsinki. That one of the characteristics of the firm was that they made a point of kind of having case, uh, teams that were Made up not just of lawyers, but of a mix of professionals with different insights and different skills. Uh, and so uh, he uh, wanted to try and develop a legal system, a legal platform that mimicked that approach. So Laverne is what he calls a multi agent legal system, uh, where. Where essentially you go in and uh, you. It's like playing this, like playing cards. It's like this. You can like pick your team. M. Uh. Uh. I think there was. What was. It was the NBA game where you kind of go in any number 82

Joe Patrice: and oh yeah, yeah, let's go.

Bob Ambrosi: Is that the one where you go in and pick your team and yeah, I mean there's a bunch, obviously a number of games like that, but it's sort of like, like that idea where you get kind of playing cards with different skills, different prices, uh, and you go in and pick your team, uh, and you submit a. When you submit, um, um, a project to it or a question to it. I mean you can either just kind of do it the normal way, uh, of just dropping something in, uh, but you can also uh, go through the sort of, the more uh, sophisticated approach where you assemble your team, your team gets together and kind of conducts this intake, asking you questions about the matter, trying to flesh it out. And then the agents kind of go to work, kind of like arguing with each other, researching and arguing with each other and presenting uh, cases and counter cases and whatever until uh, it all gets uh, kind of pulled together into a response. Uh, and uh, there are various ways you can kind of set the extent to which you want humans in the loop and where you want humans in the loop and all of that. But he's actually even got a little tool that's built into this where uh, he invites you to kind of compare it against uh, Legora or Harvey in terms of the results it generates. And he's uh, he claims that uh, he uh, generally uh, beats them uh, at their own game on a regular basis. Um, it's kind of a fun. I haven't actually used it. We had a very extensive demo uh, of it, uh, which. He demoed it for me. But it's all open source. Uh, it's uh, all up on GitHub. Uh, he does not want to make it a commercial product himself. He's. That he's too old for that I think was his quote. Uh, and uh, doesn't want the founder lifestyle of jetting around the world all the time and all of that. Uh, but he invites anybody to fork it off on GitHub and run with it and do what they want to do with it. Um, and to me it's just so interesting because we're just starting to see this is an interesting approach to it and a fun approach to it and I hope people will read the story and just go to his. I mean lots of documentation uh, uh, on the GitHub repo that you can read through and learn more about it. But um, even as Harvey and Liguoria get bigger and bigger we're seeing these enterprising individuals for the most part who are going out and trying to build systems that in many ways replicate what those big founders are doing, uh, and making them available on an open source basis. Micro S is also open source I'm pretty sure. Uh, and there's a couple of others out there as well that I'm not thinking of right now. So we're in an interesting place right now in terms of uh, tech. It's almost like there's this like rebel movement of people who want to, want to put the tech out there for free and uh, let other people build on it rather than have to pay tons of money for uh, subscription from a major provider.

Steve Embry: What's the computer operating system that was developed open source way back when? Linux. Linux.

Bob Ambrosi: Linux, yeah.

Steve Embry: Linux, yeah.

Bob Ambrosi: Yes.

Steve Embry: That's kind of, I was thinking it was kind of the similar thing happening. I mean vendors were developing operating systems and they reached a certain point and then the open source idea took hold and did pretty well.

Bob Ambrosi: Yeah, it's funny that you say that because it does. I was actually thinking how it does kind of remind me of like the earlier days of the Internet when there was this sort of uh, um. Rebel is not the right word. I'm not sure what I'm trying to think of but there was this sort of anarchic uh, atmosphere around it of people developing tools and putting them out for free uh, for anybody to use and this whole idea about sort of democratizing tech and democratizing knowledge and democratizing information. And then uh, along came AOL and others and the whole inchitification started.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Bob Ambrosi: Um, So uh, something uh, nice.

Steve Embry: Nice weather we've been having, isn't it?

Bob Ambrosi: Yeah, well so, but so actually something.

Steve Embry: I think there's Nicks.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Bob Ambrosi: Ah, how about the uh. Okay, we can talk about that. Um, but actually one other story that I had that was, it's sort of like weirdly loosely related was uh, the news this week about the original founder of Ironclad and the CEO of Ironclad until last year going to OpenAI, uh, because again, it's another. Another, um, uh, fork, I guess that word is in my head, I think, uh, in this, like, this increasingly competitive space, uh, around Legal AI, in which we're starting to see, on one hand we've got these startups coming out of nowhere, like Laverne and Mike. On the other hand, we've got the Harveys and the Lagoras of the world, and then we've got the whole anthropic thing. And now OpenAI, uh, is very clearly, uh, with the hiring of Jason Bomeg, uh, uh, making a big push into legal, uh, and uh, we are going to see, uh, a free for all, I think, coming up over the next six months to a year in terms of what these different companies are doing. And it's going to be fascinating to see how it plays out and whether there are winners and losers in, in whatever is to come.

Steve Embry: Yeah, yeah. Uh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, John.

Joe Patrice: No, go for it.

Steve Embry: No, you go first. I was gonna say something.

Joe Patrice: I mean, I, I was too. Yeah. Obviously this was, this was interesting because, uh, you know, we've. We've danced around this idea that the, that the big players, uh, coming into law and then they do. And then we all kind of hear people say, ah, ah, it's not good enough. You know, like, maybe. But they, they, they're committed. They, They're. They're gonna do this.

Steve Embry: I think that's right.

Joe Patrice: They're, they're throw. They're. They're making clear that that's what they are investing in. So.

Steve Embry: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting because, you know, what was it a year or so ago, there was that podcast with the Harvey founders and the, they were asking, what are you most worried about? And it was exactly this. Um, and they may be worried about other things now, but they were concerned that OpenAI would swoop in. Um, so then of course they had a lot of. But that won't happen. And we'll do this, we'll protect it, and we'll build a moat and we'll do this and that and the other. But it's obviously where they're headed.

Bob Ambrosi: Yeah. And I think in the case of OpenAI, as I understand it, uh, again, I credit artificial, uh, lawyer. I think he had an article on this a couple weeks ago about them getting more into legal, even before, uh, uh, Bomix, uh, News, uh, was announced. But I think in that article he talked about, from what he understands, their strategy is to kind of go deeper into a bunch of verticals. It's not Just Legal. Um, and uh, that makes sense that they become more, more uh, vertical focused, uh, across a number of major, major industries. Um, and I can see that the Anthropic, you know, anthropics side, they keep talking about the fact that Legal has been such a big user uh, of their products and uh, that with Claude Code in particular, I mean, I think we talked about this a couple weeks ago that one of the biggest user groups supposedly of Claude Code has been people in the Legal profess. And um. Very interesting. Right. I don't know for, for, for a profession that's always, that has this reputation as always being uh, slow to adopt technology or laggards when it comes to adopting technology. Uh, that's not happening anymore.

Steve Embry: You know, it's, it's interesting you say that Bob, um, because it's the presentations at Legal Geek. One of them was actually, actually Gina Pasavella's presentation was focusing on the fact that these, these new ways of getting work done with, with uh, OpenAI and Anthropic are very appealing to the business people in, in the, in the businesses who are then putting pressure on, in house counsel. Like you got to do more with less and you gotta, you gotta start managing the legal fees and outside counsel much better because these tools will enable you to do so much more. And her view was that a lot of the law firms are just, are, are blind to the fact that with these increased tools and increased vehicles for getting work done that they're not going to be able to just continue to jack up rates and continue to do things like they've been doing them over the years. And one of the things she cited, which I thought was interesting was that uh, particularly big law. I think she was probably referring to AMWA 100 or AM WA 50 that are hiring associates out of law school in record numbers. And they're not really um, thinking about the fact that with, with artificial intelligence they may not need quite so many associates. But as she put it, they don't want to leave any money off on the table. Which I kind of sort of summed up, you know, a lot of the attitudes that she was talking about. And I just, I just, if anybody's interested, I just wrote an article on this that appeared in above the Lawn talking about what she was, her conclusions, which, which were pretty interesting.

Joe Patrice: That said, we did get an article today that uh, that hiring of young associates was flat year over year. Uh, it did not go up. Uh, the article makes pains to say, don't blame AI for this yet. Uh, but I mean, that's what we. That's what we expect to see. And you know, this also, we had a report a week earlier that for the first time in years and years and years, uh, big law, the AMLA 100 firms hired more laterals than they did new hires, like out of law school. Uh, which. That's going to be another domino that falls in this rethinking how, uh, how the work model goes. Because at a certain point, some of these firms are going to decide that the tasks that they could. The brute force tasks they could give these juniors to justify their existence are going to disappear, and then it's just going to be a lateral hiring game, uh, all the way.

Steve Embry: Well, that makes sense.

Bob Ambrosi: With.

Steve Embry: With the a. With a lot of the AI First. AI first firms, they obviously, they have no use for associates.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Steve Embry: Or inexperienced lawyers, I should say. They want experienced lawyers that can use these tools. And I wondered about. I saw that headline that you mentioned, Joe, about the numbers dropping, and I wondered how that if I had seen that when I was at Legal Geek, I would have asked Gina about that. She was very definitive about. And I don't know what she was citing. I assume it's some ALA ALM research that they'd done.

Joe Patrice: But. Well, this was ALM too. So I think they're fighting. They must be fighting.

Steve Embry: Of course, a lot of it probably depends on the segment of the market that you're looking at too. I mean, if you look at it overall, AMWA 200 firms, you know, that's. That's much different than if you're focusing on, you know, AMWA 50.

Bob Ambrosi: So, yeah, of course, their head of research just left, so, uh, maybe they're. Maybe their data is falling out of date.

Steve Embry: All right.

Joe Patrice: Um, yeah, it was. It was the National Law Journal who published the one I'm thinking of, so.

Steve Embry: Oh, there you go.

Joe Patrice: So little intramural infighting, right, Bob?

Bob Ambrosi: Yeah, except I think isn't. I think that all these days runs through that same, uh, research division. Uh, it's all performed. It used to be like when I used to be at the National Law Journal. It was like we had our own research team and the American Lawyer had their own research team, and it was a whole different thing. But, uh, those were. Those were, uh, headier days with a little more money in the budget. Um, all right, so who is going to win the NBA final?

Joe Patrice: So we're all. For everyone watching, we're all sitting here waiting for Stephanie because we're going to talk about her story, and she's Just not shown up or given us any indication of why she hasn't. So we're.

Steve Embry: Well, I still have a story to talk about.

Joe Patrice: Oh, you do? Okay.

Bob Ambrosi: Yeah. Oh, we didn't. Oh, that's right. We started with you and then I forgot we didn't do your story.

Steve Embry: Yeah. Uh, so the story that.

Bob Ambrosi: Thank God.

Steve Embry: Yeah. I can, I can blabber about this for maybe five full minutes, but I did think it was, it was a, it was a lawsuit filed against the Wy Rein firm, which is A M Law 200 firm. They do a lot of um, insurance coverage and regulatory kind of work. Um, but it's a class action suit, uh, in light of a data breach that occurred which exposed a lot of allegedly uh, exposed a lot of um, personally identifiable information by people that had no direct relationship with the firm. And so these would be people like, whose medical records might be in a file or um, you know, um, e. Discovery in a case may reveal a lot of this, a lot of this kind of stuff. And so I just thought it was um, kind of interesting. I guess suits like that have happened before, but it, it raised in my mind, you know, when, when you have a business like m, you know, a health insurance company, obviously you have a duty to protect the, the, the HIPAA related information and confidential information of your customers. But I have to wonder, I mean, what, what duty a law firm has to protect information that was probably given to it by third parties. Uh, not their information maybe subject to some sort of confidential Audi court orders or agreed orders. But it's, it's of people that, that you, you have no, no relationship with. And you know, what, what duty and what obligation do you have to protect that? Uh, unless it's purely statutory? Um, you know, and of course anytime you get into these sort of data breach kind of issues and, and claims, there's always standing issues and you know, whether the, whether these people have been harmed and, and if so how, and you know, what's. Okay, so the information's been exposed on and on and on. But it was um, it was interesting also because apparently the, the hack occurred back in 2024. The law firm didn't discover it until June of 2025, which seems like a kind of a long time. But then they didn't bother giving. I shouldn't say that they didn't give notice until March of 2026 to all these people. Which seems like, you know, those three facts don't bode really well. I don't think in, in any sort of proceeding. But you get to, at the end of the day, you know, they, they may defeat this claim. It's a class action claim. So there's always, you know, issues of, of um, you know, how similar and, and all the claims are and all that get to the end of the day doesn't look good for a law firm to have this kind of thing happen to them, not to mention the time and energy and expense they're going to have to go to, to, to defeat it. And to me it just reiterates the need for law firms to be, you know, much more diligent, cautious with the cybersecurity stuff. I mean, you know, my experience had been, was it was kind of the last thing management ever wanted to talk about because like, it's boring, they don't understand it and, and it's a cost, it's not a revenue producing thing. So, you know, like, that's just a drag on our profits. You know, really. I mean, we law firms sit on some very critical and valuable information. And uh, you know, my perspective still is that most, most firms don't take it as seriously as they need to. Maybe this will be a wake up call. So that got four minutes, Bob.

Bob Ambrosi: I thought it was really interesting. I mean, I think what's interesting about it is, you see, well, there's a lot of things that are interesting about it, but the, the, the fact that these are not clients or people with sort of direct business relationships with the law firm that are bringing this suit highlights, uh, the exposure beyond what probably a lot of law firms are thinking about. I don't know if you got more information than exactly what kind of data it was, but you can just imagine that a law firm, in the course of litigation, discovery, whatever, could be getting all sorts of, um, personal data about all sorts of people who are not their clients. Uh, and obviously there is a duty to uh, uh, protect that. Um, and the fact that it seems, first of all, I think there's probably a lot more of these cases than we ever hear about. For the most part, firms don't want you to know when it happens. Uh, and sometimes the only reason it ever happens is the data shows up on the dark web and then somebody traces it back and figures out where the data came from and then the law firm has to talk about what happened. Um, but, um, the fact that it took them m a year to discover this breach really makes you wonder what kind of systems they had in place there.

Steve Embry: Yeah, yeah. And you know, as you were talking, I, uh, sort of blew by the point early on. But you know, in most, most M lawsuits when you produce personally identifiable information, you have a, a court order that requires it to be protected. And so now uh, like there's probably going to be a lot of claims that, that the firm violated the court orders by not adequately protecting this information, which is, you know, yet another headache that they're gonna, they're gonna have to deal with as a result of it. I mean, and, and like you say, Bob, there's just tons of stuff, I mean that, you know, not just medical records but all sorts of, you know, an IP lawsuit, IP litigation, there's all sorts of confidential stuff in there that just, it's exposed your, you know, it's, it's really problematic. And so it, it could be kind of a huge deal I think. Particularly, I mean if this lawsuit gets legs and, and goes someplace then you know, that's going to be, then it's going to turn into a major, major catastrophe, I think.

Bob Ambrosi: Yeah, I noticed a comment in the uh, chat about the, the HIPAA privacy rule applying to this and just trying to think that through in my head because I'm not sure law firms M are subject to hipaa. Uh, they're not health care providers and HIPAA only applies to healthcare providers. I know it's a kind of a loose definition of what's.

Steve Embry: Yeah, I think, I think they have to, they have to protect the stuff. I think, I think they're, they have

Joe Patrice: to do what their client does. Right? So.

Steve Embry: Yeah, that's right.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Bob Ambrosi: Uh, I guess if they're representing. Yeah, yeah, healthcare providers. Yeah, I guess that would be it. This comes up a lot in, I know in um, public records requests here in Massachusetts where I am, where uh, uh, some government entity will say I can't give you those files because they're protected by hipaa. And in fact there have been court decisions that unless you're like an ambulance driver or something, uh, for the most part HIPAA doesn't apply to uh, government entities unless uh, they're directly providing health care or ambulance drive or something like that. But you know, some town that has records, uh, uh, unrelated to a medical treatment or something, um, they're not obligated under hipaa.

Steve Embry: But anyway, I know once, I know one thing, I know one thing. If I were a client of Wiley Ryan right now I would be seriously looking at the representations that they made with respect to confidentiality and protection of data because just looking at the dates and the, in the time frame got to be kind of nervous, you know. I mean. Yeah, so so, you know, you got a lot of my stuff too.

Bob Ambrosi: Yep. Well, we were going to talk about the EM dash. We were going to have a spirited discussion about the EM dash because Stephanie wrote about it this week. Uh, and I can't think of anything else I'd rather talk about. But, uh, unfortunately Stephanie is off with Julie in Canada somewhere, I think.

Steve Embry: Um, yes, she's been kidnapped by a large language model that does not want anybody to discuss the EM dash. And one of us may be gone next week.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, no, I think, yeah, she kind

Bob Ambrosi: of turned the EM dash on its side so it looked like that. That's. Yeah.

Joe Patrice: Oh, yeah.

Steve Embry: Well, you know, it, it is kind of, you know, maybe sort of just kind of a pet peeve of mine. It, it, it's not so much the M dash that bothers me. What, what bothers me is like when, when writers, an analyst that I respect, write stuff, post it on social media that you can read like three sentences and know, just got some bot to write this, they didn't spend any time whatsoever. Maybe they thought of the idea. That's about the best that you can say for it. And it's just becoming so, so evident when that happens. I mean, it's not because, like, who do you think you're fooling by doing that? I can see it, um, immediately, and it just rubs me the wrong way. I mean, maybe it's because I kind of take the time to write my own stuff and use the bots for editorial help, but I mean, and in fact, I go out of my way frequently to make sure that it doesn't sound like it's coming from an AI, um, model. Just so. Because I don't want people to think that it damages my credibility. Although some of the people in the comments to what I said in LinkedIn didn't quite see it that way.

Bob Ambrosi: Well, I mean, yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Joe Patrice: Oh, no, I was just like, listen, I believe in the EM dash. I've always believed in the EM dash. Uh, it's the line from Office Space. Why should I change? They're the ones who suck. Uh, if, if AI is using it, like, I'm not going to stop using my EM M dashes over this. I, uh, do have. We do it above the law, have a slightly different style where we like, we, we don't let it get auto completed. You know what word will like, turn two hyphens into one. The ATL style when I got there was to keep it as two dashes. So I guess we have that, uh, to distinguish it, that it's not, not the bot, but, but yeah, no, I

Bob Ambrosi: just use the, I mean WordPress has, you can insert the em dash character in write in WordPress. Yeah, I mean I, the, what we all have going for us is that we've been writing since long before Gen AI came along. So if anybody doubts our use of the history of using the EM dash, uh, they can go back through our archives and see. Uh, I mean I've been a long time user of the EM dash and uh, I love the embassy. I use it liberally and I'm not going to stop using it uh, at all. And I also do, uh, use, use it with the little space on each side. And I think I talked about this on another show. But that, to me that literally goes back to my like print journalism days. Because you wanted the line in the type setting. You wanted the line to break if there was. You didn't want to have the word then the EM dash and the word without a space. Because then you would have a long thing like this that wouldn't break over to the next line when you're doing typesetting. So uh, you'd always put that space in there. But that's how, that's how long I've been using amdos. Remember print? I hate semicolons.

Joe Patrice: They're awful. So that's why you use dashes.

Bob Ambrosi: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steve Embry: That's the favorite one. But it, but it is, I think a valid, a valid point particularly for, for those of us that write a lot. Because, you know, the more people use AI to write their material, the more that becomes sort of the accepted standard in norm where if you write like a human rights like we all write, you know, at some point it's going to shift and people are going to say that thing, embry Road sounds really weird. That's, you know, what's wrong with that guy? He needs to write like, you know, chat GPT or something. That's kind of worrisome.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, the homogenization of style. Mhm.

Steve Embry: Yeah.

Bob Ambrosi: Yep. Well, uh, anything else?

Joe Patrice: I don't think so.

Steve Embry: I think we're running out of steam.

Joe Patrice: All right, kids, we get to end class early.

Bob Ambrosi: Yeah. As Tom and Ray Magliosi used to say, you've wasted another perfectly good hour of your precious time, uh, here with us today and we appreciate it. Uh, where's Stephanie's article?

Joe Patrice: I'll get it.

Bob Ambrosi: Okay. I've got it right here if you don't.

Joe Patrice: I had it. Okay. You got it?

Bob Ambrosi: Yep. All right. I'll drop it. Uh, all right, whatever. We can all drop it. Yeah, read it. Read. It's your homework. Read Stephanie's article. And next week, I want you all prepared to talk about the EM Dash with great, uh, great enthusiasm. So homework. Exactly. That's right, Joshua. Get to work. All right. Well, I appreciate everybody. Appreciate Steve, uh, and Joe, you guys. And Joe, I know it's a busy day for you, so I appreciate you making the show. And, uh, always hope to see you all here next week with a fuller cast of characters. Of characters. Exactly. All right. See you.