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The legal industry continues to see incremental gains for female lawyers in private practice in the U.S., according to a Law360 Pulse analysis, with women now representing 40.6% of all attorneys and 51% of all associates.
The Law360 Pulse Women in Law Report provides a data-driven view of U.S. law firms at the end of 2023. Here, we look at the representation of women at all levels of a typical law firm, from associates to equity partners.
The legal industry still has a long way to go before it can achieve gender parity at its upper levels. But these law firms are performing better than others in breaking the proverbial glass ceiling that prevents women from attaining leadership roles.
Female attorneys have reached a new high in their share of law firm equity partnerships, but firms' progress simply hasn't been significant enough to shatter the longstanding glass ceiling in the industry.
The number of legal professionals reporting they have used artificial intelligence has doubled since 2023, yet security and trustworthiness concerns are holding others back from adopting the technology, according to a report released Tuesday.
Ballard Spahr LLP expanded its leadership team this week with the addition of a business development expert who joined the firm after more than nine years with Norton Rose Fulbright, the firm said Monday.
Hong Kong-based legal document template provider DocPro Ltd. has raised half a million dollars in pre-seed funding for artificial intelligence product development, staffing and marketing, the company said Monday.
Legal recruiting software provider Flo Recruit Inc. has launched a career platform to make it easier for students to find jobs in BigLaw, the company announced on Monday.
Gunster Yoakley & Stewart PA has asked a Florida federal court to toss a proposed class action related to a data breach in 2022, arguing that the former client failed to state actual damages sustained by the potential class due to the cybersecurity incident.
From a majority recapitalization to the hiring of several new executives, a lot has happened in legal technology in the past few days.
Law firms should carefully conduct a demo and pilot to successfully roll out new software to staff, experts tell Law360 Pulse. Failure to do so could result in glitches, defects, delayed launches and excessive costs.
This was another action-packed week for the legal industry as BigLaw made big hires and Donald Trump's legal woes continued. Test your legal news savvy here with Law360 Pulse's weekly quiz.
E-discovery and managed review company KLDiscovery Inc. on Wednesday finalized a restructuring agreement announced in July, reducing its long-term debt and allowing lenders to gain company shares.
Law firms are taking a nuanced approach to fill new artificial intelligence-centric roles, including "testing" experienced professionals as consultants and thinking about potentially having data scientists work remotely, a panel of experts said Thursday.
The general counsel at legal tech company ContractPodAi doesn't believe lawyers need to be masters in AI. But they must take the steps to learn, understand and become knowledgeable about the developments taking place — or risk being left behind by other attorneys who are embracing innovation.
Legal technology company LegalZoom has chosen Noel Watson, who joined the company in 2020 as chief financial officer, to be its chief operating officer, according to a recent corporate filing.
The North Carolina Business Court on Monday did not outright reject a bid by a Lloyd's of London syndicate looking to unseal a complaint by Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft LLP seeking coverage for a November 2022 data breach, though the judge did admonish the syndicate for failing to consult with Cadwalader's counsel before filing the motion.
Venture-backed startup Darrow, which has a legal violation detection platform for plaintiffs lawyers, announced Wednesday the expansion of its client vetting platform to include mass arbitration matters.
Food and beverage gatherings, demos during meetings and statements from passionate advocates are just some ways law firms are getting attorneys excited about new technologies, a panel of leaders said Tuesday.
The University of California, Berkeley School of Law has announced it will launch its first law degree focused on artificial intelligence in 2025, and it is now accepting applications for the new master of laws degree program.
The U.S. Department of Justice is working to keep pace with the swift rise of the tools known as artificial intelligence, investigating potential fraud as its Criminal Division learns the nuances of the technology — an unsettling dynamic for some defense lawyers.
As more law firms track data to achieve profitability, vendor consolidation and the rise of generative artificial intelligence are forcing some to change how they protect profitability, a panel of law firm leaders said this week.
Enterprise legal management provider AdvoLogix announced Tuesday the launch of an all-in-one platform to allow legal teams to more easily manage both financial operations and legal cases using artificial intelligence functionalities.
Law360 Pulse caught up with Michelle Behnke, the American Bar Association's new president-elect, to discuss the challenge of keeping up with changes in the legal profession.
Creating a successful learning program depends on finding the right tool at the right price to properly train users within a law firm, a panel of experts said during a discussion on Monday.
Legal organizations struggling to work out the right technology investment strategy may benefit from using a matrix for legal department efficiency that is based on an understanding of where workloads belong, according to the basic functions and priorities of a corporate legal team, says Sylvain Magdinier at Integreon.
Mateusz Kulesza at McDonnell Boehnen looks at potential applications of personality testing based on machine learning techniques for law firms, and the implications this shift could have for lawyers, firms and judges, including how it could make the work of judges and other legal decision-makers much more difficult.
The future of lawyering is not about the wholesale replacement of attorneys by artificial intelligence, but as AI handles more of the routine legal work, the role of lawyers will evolve to be more strategic, requiring the development of competencies beyond traditional legal skills, says Colin Levy at Malbek.
Although artificial intelligence-powered legal research is ushering in a new era of legal practice that augments human expertise with data-driven insights, it is not without challenges involving privacy, ethics and more, so legal professionals should take steps to ensure AI becomes a reliable partner rather than a source of disruption, says Marly Broudie at SocialEyes Communications.
With the increased usage of collaboration apps and generative artificial intelligence solutions, it's not only important for e-discovery teams to be able to account for hundreds of existing data types today, but they should also be able to add support for new data types quickly — even on the fly if needed, says Oliver Silva at Casepoint.
With many legal professionals starting to explore practical uses of generative artificial intelligence in areas such as research, discovery and legal document development, the fundamental principle of human oversight cannot be underscored enough for it to be successful, say Ty Dedmon at Bradley Arant and Paige Hunt at Lighthouse.
The legal profession is among the most hesitant to adopt ChatGPT because of its proclivity to provide false information as if it were true, but in a wide variety of situations, lawyers can still be aided by information that is only in the right ballpark, says Robert Plotkin at Blueshift IP.
Alternative legal service providers can marry the best attributes of artificial and human intelligence to expedite turnarounds and deliveries for contract review, e-discovery and legal research, says Tariq Hafeez at LegalEase Solutions.
In order to achieve a robust client data protection posture, law firms should focus on adopting a risk-based approach to security, which can be done by assessing gaps, using that data to gain leadership buy-in for the needed changes, and adopting a dynamic and layered approach, says John Smith at Conversant Group.
To make their first 90 days on the job a success, new legal operations managers should focus on several key objectives, including aligning priorities with leadership and getting to know their team, says Ashlyn Donohue at LinkSquares.
Female attorneys and others who pause their careers for a few years will find that gaps in work history are increasingly acceptable among legal employers, meaning with some networking, retraining and a few other strategies, lawyers can successfully reenter the workforce, says Jill Backer at Ave Maria School of Law.
ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence tools pose significant risks to the integrity of legal work, but the key for law firms is not to ban these tools, but to implement them responsibly and with appropriate safeguards, say Natalie Pierce and Stephanie Goutos at Gunderson Dettmer.
To safeguard against the many risks posed by generative artificial intelligence legal tools, in-house counsel should work with their information security teams to develop new data security questions for prospective vendors, vet existing applications and review who can utilize machine guidance, says Diane Homolak at Integreon.
Opinion
We Must Continue DEI Efforts Despite High Court HeadwindsThough the U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down affirmative action in higher education, law firms and their clients must keep up the legal industry’s recent momentum advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the profession in order to help achieve a just and prosperous society for all, says Angela Winfield at the Law School Admission Council.
Law firms that fail to consider their attorneys' online habits away from work are not using their best efforts to protect client information and are simplifying the job of plaintiffs attorneys in the case of a breach, say Mark Hurley and Carmine Cicalese at Digital Privacy and Protection.