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Year-end takeaways on AI’s impact, fails and future in Legal Practice

With a specific focus on the practice of law, OBA’s Real Intelligence on AI Newsletter is here to help you understand AI – to keep you informed, engaged, compliant and ahead of the curve.

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Practice Directions on the Responsible Use of AI in Court

As the OBA continues to focus on AI regulation of non-human, potentially dangerous, competitors, the courts are providing guidance on how to use this tool. Their recently released AI practice directions on responsible use of AI in court for both civil and family law proceedings aim to promote transparency, accuracy and accountability.

Learn more

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Real Intelligence on AI Program Spotlight

Gain CPD Hours by Getting Caught Up on Real Intelligence on AI

On-Demand Programs

The OBA hosted a great variety of practical, insightful programming in 2025 that brought leading experts and innovative lawyers together to uncover Real Intelligence on AI. If you missed any of these highly applicable conversations centred on how lawyers can use AI tools effectively and responsibly in a way that leaves them more time to focus on the critical work where lawyer skill, judgement and empathy are central, now is the perfect time to get caught up. Check out popular, recent sessions at your convenience:

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Latest Analysis from Lawyers …

OBA members have been sharing their AI expertise and opinions in an array of intriguing Section articles. We’ve rounded up some of the most recent AI reading:

Did you miss out on our Copyright in the Age of AI: Legal Implications and Emerging Issues program? Stream it on-demand from our Real Intelligence archives.

… and From Around the Web

From the curious to the serious, this AI news is making headlines:

Key quote: “Given that the technology of AI generations is moving so fast, I think developing the techniques to counter that will also be a continuous process. So it’s basically like hitting a moving target, and the better AI is at generating fake text, images and videos ... the more work we need to put into detecting them.”

Key quote: “The next two years represent a critical window for lawyers to pivot towards the most powerful technology the legal profession has ever seen. We will begin to transition away from worrying about the competence of lawyers who use generative AI systems and begin worrying about the competence of lawyers who don’t.”

Key quote: “Thanks to Huang, Son, Altman, and other AI titans, humanity is now flying down the highway, all gas no brakes, toward a highly automated and highly uncertain future … Humanity will determine AI's path forward.”

Key quote: “If I wanted to change people’s minds about AI, to give them the good news that this technology would bring, I would start with what it could do for the foundation of human prosperity: scientific research.

Key quote: “Sixty percent of organizations evaluated such [enterprise grade] tools, but only 20 percent reached pilot stage and just 5 percent reached production. Most fail due to brittle workflows, lack of contextual learning, and misalignment with day-to-day operations."

Key quote: “’It does seem fluent in the basic grammar of jokes, but sometimes they’re slightly off,’ said Robinson, a professor of American studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. ‘They may be moderately funny, but I think they’re really missing an important element of what makes us laugh.’”

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Did You Know?You can ask your AI provider for a Prompt Guide? A panel discussion during the Harnessing AI in the Practice of Law for Lawyers and Legal Technologists program highlighted in many ways the critical skill of prompting precision whey using professional generative AI tools. As Rose Leto, Neinstein LLP, noted, “Googling and using AI are very different – the words you need to put in to get the response you want are very different.” The method she has found most useful is to first offer the context – “tell AI who  I am, what I’m doing, the theory of my case” – and then proceed with the smaller questions to see what kind of output the tool provides, and pull those relevant pieces together and refine your approach before asking the larger questions. Beyond that, she offers this tip that while basic risks being overlooked: “Ask your provider for a prompt guide … they know how they generated the system.” They know how to utilize it to best effect!  

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Asking your Colleagues about their Everyday AI Use?

ITLA CEO Joy Heath Rush, who moderated the joint-program panel discussion on AI as a Tool, Not a Substitute, for Legal Expertise, shared that at the end of similar professional events they’ve gone around the room and asked people what cool and interesting things they’re using AI for in their personal lives. “People are taking pictures of their refrigerators and asking for a recipe that uses what’s in the refrigerator, they’re doing travel itineraries, they’re composing a toast for their niece’s wedding,” she says. “It helps take the fear out when you know you can use these things personally – it gives you a sense of what it’s good at.”  She recommends this to lawyers as a good exercise to undertake within their practice groups or workplaces.

View the full Harnessing AI in the Practice of Law for Lawyers and Legal Technologists program on-demand here.

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