The relentless, frenetic excitement surrounding Artificial Intelligence feels familiar. For anyone who remembers the turn of the millennium, it’s a clear echo of the dot-com bubble, a time of speculation about a new technology completely detached from business fundamentals.

Back then, optimism for an internet-driven economy sent stock prices for companies like AOL to astronomical

ABA Formal Opinion 512 provides welcome guidance on ethical obligations for lawyers, demanding competence in understanding AI’s benefits and risks (Model Rule 1.1), diligence in protecting client confidentiality (Model Rule 1.6), clarity in client communications (Model Rule 1.4), candor toward tribunals (Model Rule 3.3), effective supervision of AI use (Model Rules 5.1, 5.3), and reasonableness

1. Several AI tools matched, and in some cases outperformed, lawyers in producing reliable first drafts.

2. The top AI (Gemini 2.5 Pro) marginally outperformed the top individual human lawyer: 73.3% vs. 70% reliability rate.

3. Specialized legal

AI in the legal world is not a sentient being. It doesn’t argue cases, it doesn’t replace lawyers, and it certainly doesn’t understand the law in the way the best lawyers can.

What it can do is process large amounts of text quickly and find patterns in ways that mimic certain kinds of legal work—especially the repetitive