What AI Is Already Doing to the Legal Industry

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

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Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:23)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:24)

Tracy, I was at my cousin's wedding this weekend, and I have a lot of lawyers in my family. And every time I-

Tracy Alloway (0:31)

Oh, I didn't know that.

Joe Weisenthal (0:32)

Yeah, yeah, in my extended family, a lot of lawyers in there. And I'm always asking them what they do and stuff. Within five seconds of any conversation, I'm like, tell me about trials and techniques to sway the jury, et cetera, the stuff I see on TV. I am aware, though, that that is actually not that big of a part of many lawyers day to day.

Tracy Alloway (0:52)

Well, I have a lawyer in my family, too, an ex-lawyer, my husband, who did big law, big corporate law, absolutely hated it and got out of it, luckily. And so I have a feeling in this particular episode, I'm just gonna ask a lot of work-life balance questions based on my own experience, my husband's experience. But it is a huge industry, and it's one of those industries that I think all financial journalism actually doesn't do a good job of covering along with accounting. So we should talk about it.

Joe Weisenthal (1:27)

We definitely should talk about it. We should talk about it way more than we do. Within the AI conversation specifically, you hear a lot about the prospects of this being either like a force multiplier or a labor reducer, because my understanding is that a lot of especially junior lawyers, they're up all night, what are they looking for misplaced commas? Because those could be a big deal in contracts, right? And so in theory, and again, Tracy, I'm sure you know way more about this than I do. But in theory, that sort of seems like something AI might be good at. Like, oh no, if the comma is not here and it's there, then that totally changes the definition of this clause or whatever.

Tracy Alloway (2:03)

There's a famous case involving a comma that did exactly that. So many points to make here. First of all, I am vastly in favor of anything that makes corporate lawyers' lives slightly more efficient and happier. So AI could be useful here. But I also wonder, you know, the lawyer profession, they have things like templates and standard forms and stuff like that. So I also wonder how much of an improvement AI will be here. So I'm excited to talk about it.

Joe Weisenthal (2:32)

You know that, Tracy, when they get the AI tools really in place, they're just going to give them more work.

Tracy Alloway (2:36)

Yeah. That's what I suspect.

Joe Weisenthal (2:38)

Yeah, yeah.

Tracy Alloway (2:39)

By the way, I have a lot of stories of like partners calling from their fishing boats on the weekend, demanding that junior lawyers go into the office and like fix a comma and things like that.

Joe Weisenthal (2:51)

All right. Well, I'm really excited to see. We do have the perfect guest. Someone that I've known for a very long time, someone who just knows about a lot of stuff, someone who is a lawyer. We're going to be speaking with Joel Wertheimer. He's currently at Wertheimer Fleder LLP, a civil rights firm here in New York City. He is previously at the White House. He's done big law in the past. He knows a lot about a lot of stuff. He knows a lot about poker. He knows a lot about AI. Someone I think we had just talked to about anything. He knows a lot about elections. He just sort of knows everything. Joel, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots. Thrilled to have you here.

Joel Wertheimer (3:27)

Thank you for having me.

Joe Weisenthal (3:28)

Why don't you real quickly tell us like who you are, what do you do, why are we talking to you?

Joel Wertheimer (3:32)

I run my own civil rights law firm. I just partnered up. And we sue the government mostly for violations of civil rights. Sometimes that's arrest or wrongful convictions. Sometimes that's wrongful removals of kids in, let's say, child services for a shaken baby that was a accusation, that sort of thing. And we try to get people compensation for the wrongs of their constitutional rights. That's about 80% of what we do.

Tracy Alloway (3:59)

Personal question, are civil slash criminal lawyers, are they happier than corporate lawyers?

Joel Wertheimer (4:04)

I would say, on average, sure, but the distribution is probably pretty wide for each. You know, I do think on the... The nice thing on the plaintiff side, and it's like, I'm my own boss, I get to, you know, determine how much I work, and each extra case is just more money or less money, if I decide not to take it. And so I can sort of set my own work-life balance when I do that, you know, and it's constantly a decision of sort of what's the expected value of a case, and is it worth it to me in terms of the hours I have to put in.