Happy New Year, everyone! And welcome to the world, Generation Beta – the first generation to live their entire lives in the time of GenAI.
Fittingly, the dawn of this new generation has already brought with it new technological advances. Not even a week into 2025 we already saw some big announcements that point to where the rest of the year might be heading.
First and foremost, we have the strongest claims yet that we’re about to see the advent of artificial general intelligence (AGI) — a type of AI that is purportedly capable of matching or surpassing human intelligence. Speculation that OpenAI was on the brink of achieving AGI started a few weeks ago, when the company released its o3 model as part of OpenAI’s 12 Days of Shipmas. Now, Sam Altman has confirmed it on his personal blog:
“We are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it. We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents ‘join the workforce’ and materially change the output of companies. We continue to believe that iteratively putting great tools in the hands of people leads to great, broadly-distributed outcomes.”
Between AGI and agents, that’s one buzz-filled prediction.
GenAI’s grip on legal has also already strengthened in 2025, with the filing of the first fully AI-drafted federal complaint in what’s being touted as “the first OpenAI o1 pro guided litigation, and perhaps one of the first AI guided lawsuits filed in the Federal system.” Unsurprisingly, people have mixed reactions in general, and some are less than impressed with the work product.
And while it may seem like it, AI’s not the only thing rapidly changing the legal landscape. If the first week of 2025 is any indication, we might see the fire reignited under organizations with non-attorney ownership looking to offer legal services. Already this week, KPMG came into the new year swinging by creating a subsidiary named KPMG Law US and applying for an Alternative Business Structure license in Arizona. It's the first of the Big 4 to do so. If the application succeeds, I wouldn’t be surprised to see others follow suit.
Given how fast technology and AI are evolving these days, what we’ll be looking back on a year from now is anyone’s guess. One thing seems certain, though: we’re in for quite a technology ride in 2025.
If you don’t think your reaction arsenal is prepared for it, at least we’ll have new emojis to work with this year, according to Emojipedia. I'll admit that many of these seem more aligned with hiding crime scene evidence in the woods than legal tech. But I predict that “unamused face with bags under eyes” will be a breakout hit.
What I’m Watching:
Try it for free: Descrybe.ai rolled out a new search tool built upon a knowledge graph that enables descrybe.ai to quickly identify relationships between judicial opinions stemming from their underlying legal principles. While the tool will eventually become the company’s first paid offering as part of its Legal Research Toolkit, you can currently give it a free test run.
Shifting law firm business models: The Thomson Reuters Institute, in conjunction with the Georgetown Law Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession, released the 2025 Report on the State of the US Legal Market. Key findings focus on changes in law firm pricing models, recent law firm economic performance, current demand growth for law firm services, the shifting law firm talent model, and more.
There’s a new legal tech Commander in town: The ever-impressive Richard Susskind has redefined legal tech success once again by being promoted to CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the King's New Year Honours List 2025 for “services to Information Technology and to the Law.” Congratulations, Richard!
A boost for in-house: Spellbook announced its official expansion into supporting in-house legal teams with the release of Playbooks. The new tool will allow in-house teams to codify their contract negotiation approaches, including information on preferred language and fallback positions, allowing them to manage more contracts faster.
Law firm science fair: Seyfarth Shaw recently held an internal competition aimed at driving innovation across the firm. Dubbed the SEYance Fair, the open call for innovation projects received nearly 60 submissions proposing ways tech and AI could improve the practice and business of law. The winning entry, an AI-based tool aimed at more efficiently serving clients, is currently being developed by the firm’s Seyfarth Labs team.
Facebook? More like Fakebook: Meta recently made waves by announcing it would officially allow AI-generated profiles on Facebook and Instagram, and even help people create them. In a surprise to absolutely no one, they’re already shutting some of them down amidst controversy. Now, who could have foreseen this would be a problem? [Insert new “unamused face with bags under eyes” emoji here.]
More childhood horror movie fodder: Every January 1, a new treasure trove of intellectual property enters the public domain when its 95-year copyright expires. This year, Popeye, Tintin, Singin’ in the Rain, and other classics have joined the likes of Mickey Mouse in being free for public use. In 2023, when Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain, it took someone only five months to create a horror movie based on the character and launch a whole movie release. Given the advances in AI in the last two years, expect to see a Popeye slasher film any day now.
Editor’s Note: This is the latest installment of my weekly Tuesday column on recent developments in legal tech and AI that have caught my attention. You can find the previous column here. If you have news or stories that you’d like to see featured in a future column, please contact me at stephanie@legaltechnologyhub.com.
