As each year draws to a close, one of my favorite things is seeing what word of phrase various dictionaries and publications select as their “word of the year.” 

For example, this year Oxford University Press picked “brain rot,” Cambridge Dictionary picked “manifest,” and Merriam-Webster picked “polarization,” while Australia’s Maquarie Dictionary picked “enshitification” (a particular favorite of the legal tech journo crowd). 

This got me thinking that there should be a legal tech word of the year each year. And, as is often the case, sometimes when you want something done, you have to do it yourself. 

Well, not exactly by myself. I turned to the LinkedIn legal tech hive for input via a poll. Because LinkedIn only allows for four possible poll answers, I picked four words that I thought were the most likely suspects to be the winner. 

The results were... not what I expected. 

The winner by a landslide in my inaugural Legal Tech Word of the Year poll was: Hallucination. 

Hallucinations have for sure been the topic of much discussion in legal tech and have been at the crux of more lawyer missteps than I’d care to know about. It didn’t take long after the initial, now-infamous ChatGPT brief for us to run out of fingers for counting instances of parties submitting hallucinations to the courts (unless, of course, we’re operating in the uncanny valley of AI-generated hands). 

The reason I was surprised hallucination was the winner, though, is that I would have thought of it as 2023’s top legal tech word. I guess at least part of me hoped that we’d moved past our fixation on hallucinations as an industry – hence my inclusion of RAG and benchmarking, two words that grew in popularity in 2024 in response to the hallucination problem. 

Then again, in my recap of the first two years of GenAI in legal, I noted that hallucinated case briefs was one of the few areas where the industry hadn’t evolved from 2023 to 2024, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised. Either way, here’s to seeing fewer of them in 2025. 

I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a shoutout to a few notable write-in suggestions for Legal Tech Word of the Year 2024:  

• Use case  

• Wrapper 

• Prompt assist

• AI slop 

And while they may not have dominated the year, it’s worth noting that the list of new entries to the 12th edition of Black’s Law Dictionary added some interesting tech concepts, including biometric identification, cybersmearing, cyber-distortion, deepfake, digital abuse, and digital art. 

Of course, I must mention agents/agentic AI, which (unsurprisingly to me) received one-quarter of the votes. This is a concept that saw a popularity surge in the second half of 2024, though some mused that it hadn’t become mainstream enough yet. I predict it will be a big contender for Legal Tech Word of the Year 2025.  

Though, given the speed at which legal tech and GenAI are advancing, next year’s winner might be a word most of us haven’t even heard of yet. 

What I’m Watching: 

 Survey says: The Blickstein Group, in collaboration with FTI Consulting, released its 17th Annual Law Department Operations Survey. The 36-page report offers in-depth insights on the top considerations for legal ops professionals, from GenAI to law firm rate increases. 

 Partnership alert: Legal tech provider Litera announced a new strategic partnership with legal consultancy Fireman, an Epiq Company. The goal of the partnership is to enable faster and easier implementation of Litera’s Foundation platform with more assured results. 

 Accelerator applications open: LawTech Hub by Lander & Rogers, Australia's longest-running legal tech accelerator program, has opened applications for startups looking to be part of its 2025 cohort, with a focus on AI solutions. The 2024 all-Australian cohort produced several notable achievements, including new products, add-ins, and enhancements, as well as a $1.35 million funding raise. 

 Enhancing legal AI education: As part of an initiative out of the Ontario Bar Association called the OBA Real Intelligence on AI Academy, the OBA’s Innovator in Residence is seeking educational input from the legal tech industry in advance of the Academy’s beta launch. Legal AI vendors can provide information on product details to include in the Academy’s learning materials here. 

 Free legal AI tips: VAILL (Vanderbilt AI Law Lab) concluded its free, 10-day AI crash course in GenAI for legal professionals. Throughout the 10 days, VAILL provided practical tips for those looking to augment their legal workflows with AI in ethical and accessible ways. 

 Stop hiring humans?: AI platform Artisan intentionally stirred up controversy with billboards and other advertisements around San Francisco prominently touting the words “Stop Hiring Humans.” The tactic has seen strong backlash on social media from the freelance community in particular. The company stands by its “provocative” campaign. As a former long-time freelancer myself, I’ll agree to disagree. 

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.