AI in Law Practice

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Lorraine McGowen brings us today’s podcast from the City Bar’s Presidential Task Force on Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technologies. The discussion covers expanding legal use cases (research, drafting, due diligence, e-discovery, deposition and hearing prep, judicial chambers), ROI concerns due to verification burdens, and persistent hallucination risks. Panelists emphasize “trust nothing and verify everything,” including checking citations, quotations, and whether law remains good. We review ethics and court-rule developments (New York Part 161; proposed California SB 574), sanctions trends, confidentiality and privilege risks from public AI tools, client restrictions and protocol controls, record retention and supervision frameworks, international implications such as the EU AI Act’s risk categories and penalties, and the need for AI literacy and ongoing training.

Lorraine McGowen is Co-Chair of City Bar’s Task Force and a Partner at Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe. She is joined by these experts in the field:

Maura Grossman – Research Professor, School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo

David Keyko – Partner, Pillsbury, Winthrop, Shaw, Pittman

Sabina Ahmed Liconte – Head of Legal and Chief Compliance Officer, the Americas, ICBC Standard Bank Group

Adele Hogan – Partner, Hogan Law Associates

Ann Heo – Co-Chief of Discovery Compliance and Litigation Unit and Chief of the Prescription Drug Investigations Unit, Officer of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor for the City of New York

Kristin Baylis – Senior Technology Counsel, Orrick

00:00 Why AI Matters Now

03:08 Meet the Expert Panel

05:56 AI Use Cases Explosion

08:36 ROI and Productivity Wins

10:23 Hallucinations and Prompting

12:16 Will Hallucinations Disappear

13:38 Training and Trial Sim Tools

15:07 Ethics Rules and Sanctions

23:03 Court Orders and Disclosures

25:34 International Impact EU AI Act

34:59 Client Disclosure and Engagements

37:43 Firm Protocols and Controls

43:08 Technical Guardrails for Clients

45:45 AI Disclosure Duties

46:47 Joint Defense Protocols

47:49 Public Tools Pitfalls

51:23 Enterprise Versus Public

53:44 Transactional Verification

01:03:39 Litigation AI Sensitivities

01:08:18 Confidentiality Guardrails

01:14:58 Agentic AI Vendor Risks

01:20:09 In House Versus Firms

01:27:24 Key Takeaways Closing