Author: National Law Forum

A group of in-house attorneys developed the National Law Review on-line edition to create an easy to use resource to capture legal trends and news as they first start to emerge. We were looking for a better way to organize, vet and easily retrieve all the updates that were being sent to us on a daily basis.In the process, we’ve become one of the highest volume business law websites in the U.S. Today, the National Law Review’s seasoned editors screen and classify breaking news and analysis authored by recognized legal professionals and our own journalists. There is no log in to access the database and new articles are added hourly. The National Law Review revolutionized legal publication in 1888 and this cutting-edge tradition continues today.

Texas Attorney General Launches Investigation into 15 Tech Companies

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton recently launched investigations into Character.AI and 14 other technology companies on allegations of failure to comply with the safety and privacy requirements of the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment (“SCOPE”) Act and the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act.

The SCOPE Act places guardrails on digital service providers, including AI companies, including with respect to sharing, disclosing and selling minors’ personal identifying information without obtaining permission from the child’s parent or legal guardian. Similarly, the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act imposes strict notice and consent requirements on the collection and use of minors’ personal data.

Attorney General Paxton reiterated the Office of the Attorney General’s (“OAG’s”) focus on privacy enforcement, with the current investigations launched as part of the OAG’s recent major data privacy and security initiative. Per that initiative, the Attorney General opened an investigation in June into multiple car manufacturers for illegally surveilling drivers, collecting driver data, and sharing it with their insurance companies. In July, Attorney General Paxton secured a $1.4 billion settlement with Meta over the unlawful collection and use of facial recognition data, reportedly the largest settlement ever obtained from an action brought by a single state. In October, the Attorney General filed a lawsuit against TikTok for SCOPE Act violations.

The Attorney General, in the OAG’s press release announcing the current investigations, stated that technology companies are “on notice” that his office is “vigorously enforcing” Texas’s data privacy laws.

For more on Texas Attorney General Investigations, visit the NLR Communications Media Internet and Consumer Protection sections.

Kroger/Albertsons Ruling Provides Lessons for Merger Remedy Divestitures

On December 10, a federal court in Oregon issued a preliminary injunction against Kroger’s proposed $24.6 billion acquisition of Albertsons, which would have been the largest supermarket merger in US history (Albertsons terminated the merger agreement after the ruling).¹ The Federal Trade Commission, the District of Columbia, and eight States filed the suit in February 2024, alleging that the transaction would substantially lessen competition in violation of Section 7 of the Clayton Act. The opinion by Judge Adrienne Nelson tackled a number of interesting antitrust issues, including the government’s allegation that the merger would reduce competition not only for grocery store sales but also for union grocery store labor. However, one of the most instructive aspects of the opinion is the court’s rejection of the defendants’ proposed divestiture package.

We have outlined the scope of the competitive problem that the divestiture needed to mitigate, the parameters of the proposed divestiture, and the deficiencies the court found. Companies assuming that divestitures will eliminate regulatory concerns about the anticompetitive impact of a transaction should examine whether there is a divestiture package that is commercially acceptable and that can account for the concerns Judge Nelson highlighted. The antitrust agencies and courts will almost certainly use this latest judicial decision as guidance when evaluating such proposals.

Competitive Problem

The government’s economic expert offered what the court found to be a persuasive market concentration analysis showing the merger would be presumptively anticompetitive in 1,574 local geographic markets for “supermarkets” and 1,785 local geographic markets for “large format stores” (i.e., traditional supermarkets and supercenters, natural and gourmet food stores, club stores, and limited assortment stores). The court also found evidence (ordinary course documents and witness testimony) of substantial head-to-head competition between the merging firms bolstered the government’s case. Finally, the court credited the government’s expert’s analysis showing that the loss of head-to-head competition would lead to price increases at numerous stores. The government thus put forth a multiprong prima facie showing that the merger would lessen competition substantially. On rebuttal, the defendants first sought to establish that competitive entry and merger efficiencies would mitigate the merger’s anticompetitive effects, but the court was not convinced. The defendants then attempted to show that their proposed divestiture remedy would solve the competitive concerns.

Divestiture Proposal

Defendants entered into an agreement — contingent on the merger closing — to divest 96 Kroger stores and 483 Albertsons stores to a third party. The proposed third-party divestiture buyer is primarily a wholesaler but has acquired retail chains in the past and currently operates approximately 25 stores. The divestiture package also included ownership of four store banners, a license to use two other banners in certain states, ownership of five private label brands, a temporary license to use two other brands, six distribution centers, and one dairy manufacturing plant. A transition services agreement provided the divestiture buyer the right to use certain of the defendants’ services, technology, and data for periods ranging from six months to four years.

Deficiencies

The court explained numerous ways in which the Kroger-Albertsons divestiture package was inadequate to sufficiently mitigate the anticompetitive effects of the merger and overcome the government’s showing of a substantial lessening of competition:

Many markets unaddressed – The court noted that 113 of the presumptively unlawful markets did not contain even a single store to be divested, meaning the divestiture would have done nothing to change the merger’s anticompetitive effects in those markets. (The high number of unaddressed markets was in part a function of the fact that the defendants’ economic expert utilized a market definition method and applied market concentration presumption thresholds that differed from those the government advanced and the court adopted.)
Many markets insufficiently addressed – Other markets contained divestiture stores, but those divestitures were insufficient to take away a presumption of harm. Crediting the government’s economic expert, the court noted that even if all the proposed divestitures were perfectly successful, the merger would still have been presumptively unlawful in 1,002 local supermarket markets and 551 large format store markets based on market concentration levels.
Risk of unsuccessful divestitures – The court also agreed with the government’s analysis showing that if divested stores were to lose sales or close, the number of presumptively problematic markets would rise significantly. For example, if the divested supermarkets were to lose 10 percent of their sales, the number of presumptively unlawful markets would increase from 1,002 to 1,035. If they lose 30 percent of their sales, the number would increase to 1,276.
Mixed and matched assets – The divestiture package did not represent an existing, standalone, fully functioning company but rather a mix of stores, banners, private labels, and other assets. This meant the buyer would have had to rebanner 286 of the 579 divested stores (and for some of these stores, the buyer would not be acquiring any banner currently used in the state). The court cited testimony from the government’s expert in retail operations and consumer shopping behavior, as well as other witnesses, explaining that rebannering is complicated and risky. The divestiture buyer also would have eventually lost access to many Kroger and Albertsons private label brands that customers are familiar with and would need to replace those with new private label products. The court noted witness testimony emphasizing the importance of private label brand equity and recounting the time required to launch a new private label brand.
Divestiture size – The court expressed concern that with only 604 total stores (25 existing stores plus the 579 divested stores), the divestiture buyer may not have replaced the competitive intensity lost from Kroger and Albertsons, each of which had thousands of stores.
Divestiture buyer’s experience – The court was concerned that the divestiture buyer had no experience running a large portfolio of retail grocery stores. The 579 divestiture stores included hundreds of pharmacies and fuel centers, whereas the buyer’s current 25 stores include only one pharmacy and no fuel centers. The court also noted that the buyer’s experience offering private label products was much more limited than what the divestiture stores demand and that the buyer currently lacks any retail media capabilities, which would have taken three years to set up.
Divestiture buyer’s track record – The buyer has made divestiture purchases in the past, which the court noted have not been successful. Specifically, the buyer acquired 334 retail grocery stores between 2001 and 2012, but only three remained under its operation by the end of 2012 (the rest were closed or sold off). The court also cited evidence that the buyer’s current stores are performing below expectations.
Transfer of employees – Approximately 1,000 Albertsons employees agreed to transfer to the divestiture buyer, including Albertsons’ current Chief Operating Officer, who had experience with prior divestiture integrations. The court found, however, that these transfers would not have fully mitigated the buyer’s inexperience and lack of success in grocery retail and could not overcome difficulties inherent in the selection of assets and structure of the transition services agreement in the divestiture package.
Divestiture buyer’s independence – The court viewed the transition services agreement as broad in services and time. It noted that the buyer would remain interdependent with the merged firm for many years. The court expressed particular concern over the fact that Kroger would have provided sales forecasting data and a base pricing plan to the buyer, which the buyer could have adjusted only by communicating with Kroger’s “clean room.”

1 Federal Trade Commission v. Kroger Co. & Albertsons Cos., Inc., 2024 WL 5053016, No. 3:24-cv-00347 (D. Or. Dec. 10, 2024).

“Don’t You Have to Look at What the Statute Says?” – IMC’s Oral Arguments

As we noted earlier on TCPAWorld, the IMC odds against the FCC might be better than initially thought due to the panel of judges from the Eleventh Circuit hearing the oral arguments. Oral argument recordings are available online.

And the panel did not disappoint in pushing back on the FCC.

The conversation hinged on the FCC’s power to implement regulations in furtherance of the TCPA’s statutory language. This is important because the FCC is limited to implementation, and they are do not have the authority “to rewrite the statute” as was mentioned in the oral arguments.

Judge Luck (HERE) had some concerns with the FCC’s limitations on the consumer’s ability to consent. The statute, according to Luck, intends to allow consumers to agree to receive calls. If that is the case, then a limitation of the consumer’s ability to exercise their rights is an attempt to rewrite the statute.

Luck agreed that implementing the statute is fine, but limiting the right of consumers to receive calls they consent to receive is over reach. Luck continued “Just because you [the FCC] are ineffective at enforcing the authority doesn’t mean you have the right to limit one’s right, a statutory right, or rewrite those rights to limit what it means.”

The FCC attempted to argue that implementation of statute by their very nature is going to lead to restriction, but Judge Luck pushed back on that. According to Luck, there are ways to implement statutes that don’t restrict a consumer’s statutory rights. This exchange was also telling:

LUCK: Without the regulation do you agree with me that the statute would allow it?

FCC: Yes.

LUCK: If so, then it’s not an implementation. It’s a restriction.

Luck was not the only Judge who pushed back on the FCC. Judge Branch (I believe because she was not identified) also strongly pushed back on the FCC’s restriction on topically and logically associated as an element of consent. Branch stated that the FCC was looking at consumer behavior and essentially stated too many consumers didn’t know what they were doing in giving consent. The FCC stated “I think we have to look at how the industry was operating…” only to be interrupted by Branch who questioned that statement by asking “Don’t you have to look at what the statute says?”

YIKES.

Finally, the FCC’s turn in oral argument ended with this exchange:

JUDGE: Perhaps the question should be “We have a problem here. We should talk to Congress about it.”

FCC: Congress did task the agency to implement here.

JUDGE: It’s given you power to implement, not carte blanche.

DOUBLE YIKES.

There was also a conversation around whether or not the panel should issue a stay in this case. The IMC argued that yes – a stay was appropriate due to the uncertainty in the market.

It’s pretty clear that the judges questioned the statutory authority of the FCC to implement the 1:1 consent and the topically and logically related portions of the definition of prior express written consent.

While we don’t have a definitive answer yet on this issue, we do know this is going to be a lot more interesting than everyone thought before the oral arguments.

We will keep you up to date on this and we will have more information soon.

FTC Closely Monitoring Healthcare Lead Generators As Open Enrollment Begins

The Federal Trade Commission is watching the healthcare lead generation industry closely.

On December 10, 2024, the Federal Trade Commission announced that it has sent warning letters to 21 companies that market or generate leads for healthcare plans. The letters were sent as open enrollment season for healthcare plans is ongoing. They provide guidance and provide about deceptive or unfair claims that likely violate laws enforced by the FTC.

The letters were sent to companies that provide marketing or advertising, including lead generation, related to Affordable Care Act Marketplace health insurance and healthcare-related products, such as limited benefit plans and medical discount programs.

“It is critical for consumers’ health and financial well-being that marketers of health plans be honest about the plans they and their partners are offering,” said FTC lawyer Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “The FTC has been watching this important sector closely, especially during open enrollment season, and these warning letters put companies on notice that unlawfully marketing or advertising health plans to consumers can result in serious legal consequences.”

Based on information collected by FTC staff and the agency’s enforcement experience in this area, the types of claims FTC staff has warned about include those that may:

misrepresent the benefits included in a healthcare plan, including any insurance benefits;
misrepresent that a healthcare plan is major or comprehensive medical health insurance or the equivalent of such health insurance;
misrepresent the costs of healthcare plan; and
falsely claim that consumers who enroll in a healthcare plan will receive free offers, cash rewards, rebates, or other incentives.

Consult with a season FTC defense lawyer if you are a lead generator or marketer of health insurance leads in order to minimize risk of government scrutiny.

The letters provide examples of prior relevant FTC actions against marketers and lead generators that operate in this field, including Simple Health, Benefytt Technologies, Partners in Healthcare Association, and Consumer Health Benefits Association.

While the letters do not allege any wrongdoing by any of the recipients, they encourage the companies to conduct a thorough review of their advertisements to ensure they are complying with applicable laws and rules, and the letters note that the FTC is closely monitoring this marketplace for unlawful conduct that is harming consumers.

OIG Releases Special Fraud Alert About Suspect Payments in Marketing Arrangements Related to Medicare Advantage and Providers

On December 11, 2024, the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“OIG”) issued a special fraud alert warning about certain marketing schemes that involve questionable payments and referrals between Medicare Advantage (“MA”) health plans, health care professionals, and third-party marketers (e.g., agents and brokers) and that can mislead MA enrollees into choosing specific health plans or providers that may not be in the MA enrollees’ best interests or meet their needs (“MA Marketing Alert”). As we have previously advised, special fraud alerts are few and far between—OIG has only issued six in the past 20 years. The importance of the MA Marketing Alert, like its predecessors, should not be taken for granted because it may be instructive as to subsequent enforcement action taken by OIG and/or the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”).

In the MA space, historical enforcement actions taken by both OIG, under their administrative authorities, and DOJ, under the False Claims Act (“FCA”), have related to alleged MA risk adjustment payment inflation schemes. See, e.g., DaVita, Sutter Health, Beaver Medical, Martin’s Point, and Cigna. While allegations of this nature continue to be a focus area (e.g., in OIG’s work plans), a light is also now being shone on inappropriate marketing schemes that could violate the Federal anti-kickback statute (“AKS”). And, based on historical empirical data connecting DOJ’s enforcement actions taken subsequent to OIG’s issuance of special fraud alerts, that light may broaden and brighten.

For example, in July 2022, OIG issued a special fraud alert about arrangements involving telemedicine companies. In a footnote, OIG provided three enforcement actions resolved under the FCA as examples of allegedly problematic arrangements. After providing the footnote examples, OIG described bullet-pointed “Suspect Characteristics” that tracked the allegedly inappropriate characteristics of the footnote examples. Since the alert’s issuance, DOJ has recovered millions under the FCA and also criminally charged and convicted many individuals and entities for allegedly submitting or causing the submission of more than $3.1 billion (in 2023 and 2024 pursuant to DOJ’s nationwide takedowns) in allegedly fraudulent Medicare claims resulting from telemedicine schemes.

While the MA Marketing Alert provides footnotes of only two enforcement actions resolved under the FCA as examples of allegedly problematic arrangements, the bullet point list of “Suspect Characteristics” is broader than and reaches beyond the footnote examples. This may signal OIG’s awareness of and current investigations into allegedly inappropriate arrangements relating to “Suspect Characteristics” that have yet to be settled or resolved.

It is possible that there may be forthcoming enforcement actions in these areas. And they may follow the same trend of enforcement actions taken by DOJ relating to telemedicine schemes after OIG’s July 2022 special fraud alert. We also note that the MA Marketing Alert aligns with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ recently finalized regulatory updates relating to MA health plan marketing arrangements with agents, brokers, and Third-Party Marketing Organizations, which will be effective January 1, 2025, and prohibit such parties from creating direct or indirect incentives “that would reasonably be expected to inhibit an agent or broker’s ability to objectively assess and recommend which plan best fits the health care needs of a beneficiary.” Proskauer’s Health Care Group will continue to monitor these developments in and provide updates about these areas of scrutiny and enforcement.

OSHA Issues Final Rule on Personal Protective Equipment for Construction Workers, but It Could Start Back at Square One

On December 11, 2024, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued a statement that it had finalized a rule amending 29 C.F.R. 1926.95(c) to require construction employers to make personal protective equipment (PPE) available that “properly fits” their employees.

Quick Hits

On December 11, 2024, OSHA finalized a rule requiring construction employers to provide properly fitting PPE, effective January 13, 2025, though it faces potential rollback due to political opposition.
The new OSHA rule aims to address PPE fit issues, particularly for smaller workers and women, but lacks clear guidance on defining “properly fitting” PPE, causing industry concern.
Despite OSHA’s assertion that the term “properly fits” is sufficiently clear, industry feedback highlights the need for more detailed regulatory text and clarification on compliance.

This change has been on OSHA’s to-do list for quite some time. In 2011, an OSHA advisory committee first put it on the radar—followed by a written proposal five years later. The 2016 proposal was ultimately thwarted after receiving staunch opposition from both the construction industry and the first Trump administration. Although the rule was finalized this month, it will not become effective until January 13, 2025—but may not make it that far. As a result of the upcoming change of administrations and with both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Congress being under Republican control, it is likely that the rule will either meet the same fate as its 2016 counterpart or be reversed via the Congressional Review Act (CRA). A CRA reversal would effectively result in a permanent prohibition on such rulemaking in the absence of express legislation from Congress.

The regulation was published in the Federal Register on December 12, 2024. The added language to the construction standard mirrors the current PPE fit requirements found in the general industry and shipyard standards. In OSHA’s notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) issued on July 20, 2023, the agency set a comment period on the proposal through September 18, 2023. During that period, comments from industry skeptics and supporters alike mirrored those previously seen.

OSHA reiterated its primary claim that PPE that does not properly fit is an issue for “smaller construction workers,” particularly women, and that implementation of the standard could increase productivity and expand the market for differently sized PPE. Many supporters of the regulatory change submitted comments reflecting that female employees praised the change and bemoaning instances of working with improperly fitting PPE. The preamble highlighted instances in which female employees had created improvised PPE when their PPE did not properly fit.

The industry’s comments acknowledged the essential nature of PPE for all employees while also continuing to express concern about the lack of clarity and guidance on how this rule would be actually implemented by employers. The core of the industry’s concern remained that the rule creates a requirement that an employee’s PPE must “fit properly” but it does not provide an explanation for how “properly fitting” PPE will be defined. Many comments highlighted this hole would create a significant opportunity for employees to complain about whether the provided PPE “properly fit” them if the PPE was simply uncomfortable. There is also no guidance on what factors employers or OSHA’s investigators should consider when evaluating whether PPE properly fits and employee and is therefore compliant with the standard.

OSHA previously dismissed this issue, stating that “employers in general industry have had no issue understanding the phrase ‘properly fits’ with regard to PPE.” The preamble reflects that several commentors requested more detailed regulatory text and clarification of responsibilities and some included recommendations. The American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA) recommended an operational definition for compliance, while the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) agreed with OSHA but noted the term was not universally understood. Other comments highlighted the need to consider how the body changes during pregnancy in the determination of whether PPE “properly fits” but did not suggest a specific definition for the phrase.

Ultimately, OSHA came to the same conclusion as before that the phrase “‘properly fits’ provides employers with enough information that they can select PPE for their workers that will adequately protect them from the hazards of the worksite without creating additional hazards.” OSHA pointed to the minimal confusion in other sectors and few citations for improperly fitting PPE as a suggestion that most employers can comply with the standard using the phrase “properly fits” without a definition.

We previously warned that this lack of clarity would mean that employers would still have to determine whether the range of sizes they offer would comply with the requirement for properly fitting PPE. One question to resolve is whether the “universal fit” of the PPE would assist with compliance. OSHA did note in a footnote in the preamble that one comment included an objection to the term “universal fit” arguing that “[n]o PPE is universal fit, even the most adjustable PPE may not fit workers on the extremes of anthropometric data.”. In light of this comment, OSHA acknowledged that:

[A]t the tail ends of the distribution of human variation, some adjustable PPE will not fit. For the purposes of this analysis, however, OSHA maintains that some items of PPE that come in standard, adjustable sizes will fit nearly all individuals working in the construction industry and so maintains this designation for a limited number of items in this analysis.

While this does mean employers can use the “universal fit” as a blanket mode of compliance with the standard, OSHA’s comment indicates that use of “universal fit” should allow compliance with “nearly all individuals working in the construction industry[.]”

Ultimately, while this rule remains a likely rollback priority for the second Trump administration, employers should still be mindful of the January 13, 2025, effective date.

A Holiday Surprise for U.S. Distilleries: TTB Unveils Long-Awaited ‘American Single Malt’ Standard of Identity

Standards of identity and viticultural area designations add significant complexity to the production and labelling of alcoholic beverages. While not exactly a holiday miracle, many distillers are rejoicing over the TTB’s new rule on American whisky (or whiskey) [1].

On Dec. 13, 2024, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) issued its long-awaited final rule (the “Rule”) that establishes formal definitions for both “American single malt whisky” and “straight American single malt whisky”. In both cases, the TTB is requiring that the base mash or wort for the whiskey be:

1) fermented from 100 percent malted barley produced in the United States;

2) be distilled to 160 proof or less at the same distillery [2] in the United States;

3) be stored and aged in either used, new charred, or new oak barrels no greater than 700 liters (185 gallons);

4) not use any neutral spirits; and

5) not use any coloring, flavorings, or other blending materials with the exception of caramel color (which must be disclosed on the label).

Like other whiskys such as bourbon and rye, a “Straight American single malt whisky” must be aged at least two (2) years. The new Rule is scheduled to be published on Dec. 18, 2024, and takes effect on Jan. 19, 2025.

Notably, the new Rule allows distillers to use a wide range of barrel sizes, and also permits the use of new charred, new uncharred, and used barrels. This may lead to a number of different styles and expressions in the American single malt category and will allow distillers the ability to repurpose for their American single malt whiskys the same barrels they have used for other products. This brings better efficiency and, potentially, lower costs to production.

These new standards of identity help provide clarity to distilleries in Pennsylvania and beyond that are already producing whiskys made from malted barley, and may also help U.S. malt houses[3] that are already working with distilleries to better cross-market the whiskys made with local malt. Likewise, the new Rule preserves the ability of breweries and distilleries to continue to partner on fermenting malt for use in American single malt whisky by not requiring the fermentation (or storage or bottling) to occur at the place of distillation.

It is noteworthy that prior to the adoption of the Rule, many distilleries were producing and labeling products as “American Single Malt” whisky despite the absence of specific standards, and the TTB has previously approved Certificates of Label Approval (COLA) for those products that generally met the definition of a “malt whisky” before the new Rule. Because the new Rule provides additional requirements, the TTB has provided a “transition period” that allows distillers in the U.S. to continue to use the term “American Single malt whisky” or “straight American single malt whisky” for products that met the applicable standards before the new Rule, but only if those products are bottled before Jan. 19, 2030.

Distillers that are currently producing products they intend to market and label as “American Single Malt” should ensure either that those products comply with the new Rule, or that they are bottled prior to Jan. 19, 2030. The new standards will be added to Section 5.143 of the Code of Federal Regulations, which will include the following chart:

While these new standards add new requirements, the new Rule is expected to provide clarity and a boost for producers of American Single Malt. We hope you find a bottle of American Single Malt in your stocking next year!

Endnotes

TTB Regulations allow the use of “whisky” or “whiskey” for products that meet the definition of “whisky”.
The new Rule does not require that fermentation and distillation occur at the same distillery, leaving open the option to have the mash fermenter at a different location such as a brewery. Likewise, aging and bottling can occur at a different location than where the distillation occurred.
See, e.g. Double Eagle Malt (Montgomery County, PA) and Deer Creek Malt (Chester County, PA).

What to Expect in 2025: AI Legal Tech and Regulation (65 Expert Predictions)

Oliver Roberts is Editor-in-Chief of AI and the Law at The National Law Review, Co-Head of the AI Practice Group at Holtzman Vogel, and CEO/Founder of Wickard.ai

As 2024 comes to a close, it’s time to look ahead to how AI will shape the law and legal practice in 2025. Over the past year, we’ve witnessed growing adoption of AI across the legal sector, substantial investments in legal AI startups, and a rise in state-level AI regulations. While the future of 2025 remains uncertain, industry leaders are already sharing their insights.

Along with 2025 predictions from The National Law Review’s Editor-in-Chief Oliver Roberts, this article presents 68 expert predictions on AI and the law in 2025 from federal judges, startup founders, CEOs, and leaders of AI practice groups at global law firms.

Predictions from The National Law Review’s Editor-in-Chief Oliver Roberts

Oliver’s Predictions for AI Regulation: In 2025, I do not expect Congress to pass any comprehensive federal legislation that limits or prohibits the use or development of AI. However, I expect more federal investment in AI research and education and the imposition of more restrictive export controls on the export of AI technologies to adversarial nations.

While plaintiff publishers battle AI companies in court over alleged copyright infringement, I do not expect Congress to step into this copyright debate in 2025. Even though copyright law falls within Congress’s purview in the U.S. Constitution, I predict that Congress will let the cases play out in court before Congress steps in. Still, Congress will likely monitor this situation in 2025 because an adverse ruling for AI companies could significantly impair the LLM training and development process in the U.S. and have harmful downstream effects for U.S. innovation and national security.

I predict that President-elect Donald Trump will fulfill his campaign promises by revoking President Biden’s Executive Order on AI (E.O. 14110) in January 2025 and replacing it with an order prioritizing AI innovation and investment. President Trump’s appointment of David Sacks as “White House AI & Crypto Czar” also portends a free market approach to AI in the coming year.

Similarly, I do not expect any federal agencies to issue regulations restricting AI use or development in 2025. During the Biden Administration, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Federal Election Commission (FEC), and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) refrained from issuing new regulations on AI. Under the Trump Administration, I predict the same inaction—with one caveat. Despite his restrained approach to AI regulation, incoming FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has supported FCC rulemaking requiring callers to disclose their use of AI-generated calls and text messages. With public comment completed and this proposed rule still pending, it is possible that the FCC issues final rulemaking in 2025—although I find it unlikely that the FCC would ultimately deviate from the Trump Administration’s laissez-faire approach to AI regulation.

In the absence of federal legislative activity, I expect states to be very active in AI regulation. At least 33 states formed AI committees or task forces in 2024, so I expect the issuance of many AI reports and recommendations, leading to more legislative activity. I expect at least a majority of states to pass laws banning, limiting, or requiring watermarking on AI-generated deepfakes, especially in elections and in the creation of sexually explicit content.

To date, the only state to pass comprehensive AI legislation is Colorado with the Colorado AI Act, which will take effect in February 2026. Given rapid advancements in AI and the bill’s heavy-handed approach, I predict that Colorado will be forced to amend the Colorado AI Act to reduce regulatory obligations on developers prior to its implementation. I

Further, I predict that many state legislators will copy the “risk-based” approach to AI regulation, which is at the core of the European Union AI Act and the Colorado AI Act. One example of this is the draft Texas Responsible AI Governance Act (“TRAIGA”), which is set to be introduced by Republican Texas State Rep. Giovanni Capriglione in January 2025. If enacted, TRAIGA would become the nation’s most restrictive state AI bill. However, given Texas’s pro-business political climate, I anticipate that this bill will fail to pass.

I also believe that many legislatures will come to recognize the illogical and overreaching nature of these “risk-based” regulatory approaches. For instance, TRAIGA prohibits the use of AI systems for “social scoring,” yet it does not ban social scoring conducted without AI. This discrepancy highlights a fundamental flaw in such frameworks: they penalize the use of AI broadly without fully addressing the underlying harmful behavior. This approach not only stifles innovation and burdens smaller businesses but also focuses on speculative risks rather than addressing actual harms, creating a fragmented and overly restrictive regulatory landscape. As AI rapidly develops, I expect legislatures to eventually ditch this approach.

Oliver’s Predictions for AI Technology: In 2025, I predict that lawyers and law firms will realize that AI will replace lawyers in the coming years. Since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, we’ve heard the adage, “AI won’t replace lawyers, but lawyers who use AI will replace those who don’t.” I’ve always thought this was overoptimistic, and perhaps defensive thinking from legal practitioners. Whether you’re reading this article now, in 2025, in 2026, or 2050, AI technology is at its weakest point at this very moment. It is only improving.

Given rapid advancements in LLM reasoning capabilities and improving agentic and multimodal functionalities, I believe that AI will replace entry-level lawyers within the next 5 years. Along with improvements in LLM capabilities, Google’s recent breakthrough with its quantum computing chip Willow portends a quicker timeline for the commercialization of quantum computing technology, which will provide even stronger computational power and “be the most revolutionary technology in human history,” as I previously wrote about in June. For perspective, Willow was able to “perform[] a computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 1025 or 10 septillion years,” according to Google Quantum AI Founder Hartmut Neven.

But similar to the ever-changing definition of Artificial General Intelligence (“AGI”), I do not believe there will ever be a clear demarcation for when we achieve fully operational legal intelligence (“FOLI”), which is the point at which an LLM can perform legal tasks with the proficiency of a lawyer. Rather, I expect this to be an evolving debate with practical manifestations in the form of law firms downsizing staff or reassigning lawyers to quality control, while AI agents execute full workflows autonomously and semi-autonomously. And even if we achieve FOLI, I believe there will always be managing attorneys and associates reviewing the final work product and incorporating human judgment as needed. I predict that these discussions will become more prevalent in 2025.

In 2025, I also expect an internal movement within “big law” firms to better document their internal knowledge and processes, so this data can be leveraged to fine-tune and customize in-house LLMs, as I detailed previously here.

Finally, I predict that in 2025, legal AI companies will enter into licensing agreements with legal-specific publishers to secure access to high-quality legal analysis for training their models. Thus far, OpenAI has already demonstrated this approach by licensing content from mainstream publishers. And legal AI startups have begun hiring former “big law” lawyers to enhance the performance of their systems through human-in-the-loop feedback. Establishing a steady pipeline of training data directly from legal professionals via legal publications could significantly improve the fine-tuning of legal-specific LLMs, paving the way for more accurate and reliable applications in the legal field.

Predictions from 65 Industry Leaders

In addition to my predictions, I asked 65 industry leaders about their predictions for legal AI in 2025. Here’s what they had to say:

Hon. Allison H. Goddard | Magistrate Judge, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California

2025 Prediction: Federal courts will begin to leverage the benefits of GenAI in their workflow. The law school graduates who begin federal clerkships will have used GenAI for legal research and writing, and federal courts will benefit from that experience. The “robots” won’t be making decisions for the courts, but they can help improve the efficiency and accuracy of our work.

Biggest Surprise 2025: GenAI will improve access to justice by making the legal system more accessible and understandable to pro se litigants.

Kirk Nahra | Partner, Co-Chair Cybersecurity and Privacy Practice and Artificial Intelligence Practice, WilmerHale

2025 Prediction: We will continue to see regulatory enforcement of false representations about AI, but will also see new investigations into misuse of AI. There will be an emphasis on specific consumer harms that will be driven by anecdotes, which will threaten the broader regulatory structure for AI. Much of this will be driven at the state level, and will create real tensions with appropriate development of AI as a useful tool benefiting both industry and consumers.

Biggest Surprise 2025: I am watching two things. I think we will see aggressive investigations in AI that will over-value specific examples of problems in a way that threatens the appropriate development of AI. I also think we will see situational legislation at the state level specifically addressing individual situations, leading to a chaotic development of legislation on these issues.

Kathi Vidal | Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office

2025 Prediction: In an increasingly global economy, AI challenges traditional notions of responsibility and ownership (including intellectual property), demanding a global framework that balances innovation, creativity, equity, and protection. In 2025, we may see countries diverge on regulations and legal frameworks, highlighting the need for international cooperation and a harmonized approach. As AI research encounters limits to scaling training data alone, new paradigms such as retrieval-augmented generation and inference-time scale will be needed to advance progress in AI – the implication of which the legal community has yet to fully explore. We will also likely see market-driven solutions that address both data limitations and copyright owners’ concerns related to the use of their copyright-protected works in training.

Biggest Surprise 2025: Though I wouldn’t characterize it as a surprise, we will see a rise in companies and product offerings performing certain legal tasks with AI, and we’ll see reactions from the judiciary and government bodies to ensure submissions comply with traditional and evolving standards for accuracy, veracity and trustworthiness.

Bridget McCormack | CEO and President, American Arbitration Association

2025 Prediction: AI is not slowing down, it will continue to grow exponentially. We haven’t witnessed an asymptote in the technology and I expect we will continue to see order of magnitude improvements. Adoption will not slow down either. According to Andreessen Horowitz AI budgets for enterprise companies grew 2.5x from $7 million in 2023 to 18 million in 2024 and I expect to see AI spending ramp up even more in 2025. Lawyer adoption will continue to skyrocket as well.

Biggest Surprise 2025: Despite AI’s growth, lawyers will find themselves busier than ever. Like WebMD which led to an increase in doctor visits, GenAI tools like EvenUp are already leading to an increase in claims filed.

Danny Tobey | Partner, Global Co-Chair, and Chair of DLA Piper Americas AI and Data Analytics Practice

2025 Prediction: Organizations are waking up to the massive potential of AI—and the risks it brings if not properly managed. One of the biggest hurdles for organizations is keeping up with the surge of new laws and standards and understanding how they all fit together. I believe the future belongs to organizations that take a proactive approach to compliance, leveraging advanced technology-based solutions to navigate these complexities, all while ensuring they have the right legal expertise to stay ahead.

Cassandra Gaedt-Sheckter | Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher

2025 Prediction: There are likely to be many predictions on the growth of AI development, adoption by companies, and reading tea leaves on regulation. All are very possible. Importantly with these developments, I believe the transactional considerations from a privacy, IP, and data protection perspective, are bound to grow, regardless of how any of those topics pan out, and that AI will be an increasingly significant target for PE and business growth. The focus on these areas in M&A transactions–whether analyzing the risks associated with deploying AI (use and implementation), or AI developers–of which there will be increasingly more where the line is blurry, and many will be both; the outsourcing and services agreements; and the related corporate governance issues; will grow. AI in 2025 from a transactional perspective is likely to be what privacy was in 2016-2020, in many ways, including with respect to regulatory compliance, emerging to receive nuanced attention as a topic in transactions, and DPAs. DPAs will no longer focus mostly on data privacy, but rather focus on data processing more generally.

Biggest Surprise 2025: A comprehensive AI law would be a huge surprise.

Jill Holtzman Vogel | Managing Partner, Holtzman Vogel PLLC | Virginia State Senator (2008-24)

2025 Prediction: Like Holtzman Vogel, I expect every competitive law firm in the tech space to launch an AI Practice Group by the end of 2025. As AI is becoming integrated in all aspects of business, the dual need for legal and technical expertise has never been more important. I believe tech companies greatly value this dual expertise, and law firms will adapt accordingly in the new year.

Mark McCreary | Partner, Chief AI & Information Security Officer, Fox Rothschild LLP

2025 Prediction: I believe that there will be two major trends in 2025, the first being legal generative AI tools will likely feature more robust natural language capabilities, enabling advanced drafting, real-time analysis, and predictive litigation outcomes. What I mean is that prompting will become less relevant and less likely to lead to results that vary in quality based on the prompt itself, and the tool will be more successful in understanding what the user needs. Second, I believe that product development will focus on domain-specific AI, tailored to niche legal areas like family law or tax compliance. The idea of having one tool that can handle dozens of tasks will become less relevant, partly because of the exorbitant costs we have seen, and partly because practitioners generally need laser-focused tools to help with tasks for which generative AI is well-suited.

Biggest Surprise 2025: The biggest surprise in legal AI in 2025 is likely not a surprise to many people, but it will be that bar associations, legal groups, and courts will continue to try and put hard and fast rules around attorney use of AI. Creating black and white requirements, such as when client-specific consent to use AI is required (beyond what is already required and prohibited under current ethical rules), or disclosures of court filings when an AI tool is used, will create unnecessary impediments and negative inferences that will slow the adoption and use of legal AI tools.

Mark Williams | Co-founder & Co-Director, Vanderbilt AI Law Lab (VAILL)

2025 Prediction: All roads lead to agents, whether it’s legal-specific products, frontier models or anything in between, agentic AI and moving beyond the chatbot interface will be the theme. That goes for governance frameworks as well which up to now generally don’t seem to account for this form of deployment in an in-depth way.

Biggest Surprise 2025: What won’t be a surprise! With a new federal regime, I think unpredictability in AI regulation could be the norm.

Fred Lederer | Chancellor Professor of Law and Director, Center for Legal & Court Technology, William & Mary Law School

2025 Prediction: As at least claimed AI use and benefits increasingly penetrate the legal world, particularly low cost open source applications, lawyer misunderstanding of AI will become ever more evident, leading to error and confusion. Multi-jurisdiction attempts to regulate AI, many of which will lack sufficient specificity for lawyers, will create conflicting rules yielding concerns about jurisdiction and liability. Meanwhile, most law schools will continue to largely ignore AI implications. Hopefully, we will survive the confusion and concentrate on forging useful guidance and controls.

Biggest Surprise 2025: The degree to which relatively inexpensive AI products will penetrate the legal profession’s day-to-day operations.

Julian Nyarko | Professor of Law, Stanford Law School; Associate Director, Stanford Human-Centered AI Institute

2025 Prediction: As the legal industry grapples with artificial intelligence’s potential, I hope and expect 2025 to see a crucial shift toward more rigorous and systematic evaluation frameworks for legal AI tools, moving beyond the current state of limited understanding and ad-hoc assessments. Combined with the emergence of more “hybrid experts” – professionals equally versed in both legal practice and AI technology – this could drive incremental yet meaningful improvements in legal AI applications. Rather than dramatic advancements, I expect 2025 to be characterized by steady, measured progress as the industry focuses on refining existing technologies and establishing better standards for their use.

Biggest Surprise 2025: I would be particularly excited to see creative uses of multimodal models (those that work not only with text, but also audio, video etc.) in the legal domain, e.g. for AI assisted coaching.

James Ding | CEO & Co-founder, DraftWise

2025 Prediction: As the pace of AI model progress begins to slow, the focus will shift towards building value on top of existing model capabilities. We’re already seeing this — AI providers are increasingly productizing advancements (e.g., OpenAI’s chain-of-thought reasoning and Claude’s desktop automation), which offer tangible applications to users. Vertical AI solutions, once dependent on foundational models, are now accelerating through active usage and deployment, providing real-world feedback that helps refine future models. While we may be reaching the end of a rapid growth curve, we will see a move toward more refined, applied versions of Generative AI that prioritize practical integration over groundbreaking leaps.

Biggest Surprise 2025: We’ll continue to be surprised by the rate at which lawyer willing and excitedly adopt AI and readily use AI in their day to day.

Daryl Lim | H. Laddie Montague Jr. Chair in Law; Associate Dean for Research and Innovation; Founding Director, Intellectual Property Law and Innovation Initiative; Co-hire, Institute for Computational and Data Sciences and Affiliate, Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence, Penn State University

2025 Prediction: Law firms will increasingly adopt sophisticated generative AI tools to streamline drafting, contract analysis, and predicting litigation outcomes, boosting both efficiency and access to legal services. Workflows will evolve to integrate AI into routine tasks like discovery and billing, allowing lawyers to concentrate on strategic and client-focused responsibilities. There will also be a growing emphasis on ethical AI certifications and compliance audits as firms and corporations prioritize responsible AI usage. Additionally, legal AI will revolutionize dispute resolution, with AI-powered platforms facilitating mediation, arbitration, and early case assessments online.

Biggest Surprise 2025: A black swan event could involve a crisis where AI systems are weaponized to manipulate legal proceedings—fabricating evidence, falsifying contracts, or influencing arbitration decisions in high-stakes cases. This could force rapid, coordinated action among global legal and regulatory bodies, highlighting vulnerabilities in the reliance on AI and prompting a reevaluation of digital trust and cybersecurity standards in international legal practice.

Andrew Perlman | Dean, Suffolk University Law School

2025 Prediction: As Bill Gates and others frequently say, we overestimate the amount of change in two years and underestimate it over ten. We are still only 2 years into the generative AI era, so I predict that 2025 will not bring about a fundamental transformation of the legal industry. Rather, we will continue to see a steady and material increase in the adoption of such tools as part of a trend toward a seismic shift in how legal services are delivered in the long term

Biggest Surprise 2025: Some lawyers may be surprised by their clients’ enthusiasm for generative AI. Far from being skeptical about these tools, clients will recognize that generative AI, when properly and ethically deployed, can improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of legal services.

Dennis Kennedy | Director, Center for Law, Technology & Innovation, Michigan State University

2025 Prediction: The real battle for the future of legal services will happen in the middle market in 2025, not in BigLaw, as corporate clients demand AI-driven efficiency and alternative providers and mid-sized and small firms demonstrate better ways to meet client needs. Look for signals from corporate law departments bypassing their traditional large outside counsel firms to work directly with firms and providers who better leverage AI with fair pricing models. Corporate legal departments will accelerate this trend by building sophisticated internal AI capabilities, expanding legal operations teams and partnering with legal tech companies rather than paying law firm premiums for routine work. Big firms will face an existential choice between becoming technology companies that practice law or slowly losing relevance as their traditional client base erodes.

Biggest Surprise 2025: In 2025, the legal profession’s retrenchment on AI initiatives and defensive approaches to AI regulations and adoption will accelerate its own decline by giving alternative providers room to innovate while lawyers remain stuck. Like the Maginot Line, the legal profession’s elaborate defenses of the guild will prove useless as clients and other providers using AI simply route around them.

Bonnie Shucha | Associate Dean, University of Wisconsin Law School

2025 Prediction: The critical thinking skills that law schools have always instilled in students will become even more essential in 2025 under ABA Formal Opinion 512, as lawyers must make informed decisions about whether and how to use generative AI in their practice. As these technologies become standard features within legal software and practice management systems, more law schools will respond by offering foundational instruction to ensure all students understand AI basics and specialized electives that delve deeper into AI implementation and ethics. The core skills of critical thinking, legal analysis, and professional judgment will become even more crucial as lawyers learn to ethically and effectively navigate an increasingly AI-augmented practice environment.

Biggest Surprise 2025: The biggest surprise in legal AI in 2025 may be how smaller, rural communities creatively leverage generative AI to address critical shortages of legal personnel, potentially transforming how these jurisdictions deliver essential legal services.

Amy J Schmitz | Professor & John Deaver Drinko-Baker & Hostetler Chair in Law Director, JusticeTech Co-Director, Translational Data Analytics Institute Responsible Data Science CoP Michael E. Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University

2025 Prediction: Legal RAG systems will gain even greater prominence, and law schools will ramp up education around use of AI in the practice of law. Meanwhile, we will see further proliferation of regulations and guidance around use of AI — leading to a legal patchwork on a global level.

Biggest Surprise 2025: The bubble will burst with respect to general LLMs, and neurosymbolic AI will emerge as a new “shiny thing” in the AI space.

Bradley Collins | CEO – LegalTechTalk

2025 Prediction: I believe LegalTech is where FinTech was 15 years ago and Insurtech was 8 years ago from an investment (& adoption) perspective, expect to see an accelerated number of startup unicorns arising in this space, both from B2B SaaS startups, as well as ALSPs that will start to compete with law firms. We will see more and more law firms and legal departments investing big into legal AI platform roll outs, now that we have tried and tested learnings from ‘early movers’. We will also see many more law firms trailing more ‘pilot’ campaigns with vendors as they test and learn new products that continue to enter the market.

Biggest Surprise 2025: The biggest surprise (yet a real possibility) will be that the Netflix of legal is born, i.e. a tech startup that competes with the big firms (of course not without hurdles and challenges to get through). We’ve seen big disruption from the likes of Revolut, AirBnb, Uber, Netflix, Amazon to name a few in other industries over the years – is Legal the next to be disrupted in a similar way?

Jonathan Askin | Professor of Clinical Law, Brooklyn Law Incubator & Policy Clinic

2025 Prediction: I predict we’ll see a flood of AI-created inventions. Because patents require human inventors (at least in the United States), many of these inventions will be open-sourced to the world. On the virtuous side, many new medicines designed by AI to target various illnesses will be cheaply available without pharmaceutical company gatekeepers. On the nefarious side, some designer drugs (and other illicit products like weapons) will also be invented, open-sourced, and readily self-manufactured (or available through cryptocurrency payments) and widely available without any government oversight.

Biggest Surprise 2025: We’ll see multiple failed attempts for international treaties attempting to develop an international framework to govern the use and misuse of AI systems.

Ross Guberman | Founder and CEO, BriefCatch

2025 Prediction: Many attorneys and judges will be shocked at how effectively GenAI products and agents begin to think strategically about cases and transactions and predict outcomes.

Biggest Surprise 2025: It will become commonplace for clients to ask law firms why they’re not using legal tech to reduce bills and avoid errors.

Blake Rooney | Chief Information Officer, Husch Blackwell

2025 Prediction: Artificial intelligence in 2025 will begin to transform legal work through intelligent process chains – where one AI task naturally flows into the next. Imagine an AI that doesn’t just summarize a deposition but automatically extracts action items, drafts follow-up requests, and perhaps even takes on more of the process. For attorneys, this progression from sequential manual steps to fluid, interlinked AI assistance could dramatically boost their daily productivity. The key will be AI that understands the natural flow of knowledge work rather than just handling isolated tasks.

Biggest Surprise 2025: Advances in document generation via AI will start to mature and accelerate attorney productivity in 2025. Several products and the large language models themselves are becoming far more capable.

Ted Theodoropoulos | CEO, Infodash

2025 Prediction: In the two years since ChatGPT’s release there has been a lot of fear, excitement, uncertainty and experimentation. There has been very little true transformation up to this point in how legal work gets done. 2024 has largely been a year of experimentation as evidenced by the dozens of academic studies evaluating the capabilities of both the frontier models and legal specific vendor platforms. That trend will continue through the first half of next year as we continue to separate the wheat from the chaff; however, we should see real progress towards transformation as implementation efforts gain traction in the second half of 2025.

Biggest Surprise 2025: Prompt engineering will die a slow death in the next 12 months. AI systems will provide more structured interfaces than an empty text box for users to communicate what they want and will ask the necessary clarifying questions when necessary.

Manny Griffiths | Co-Founder & CEO, Hona

2025 Prediction: The cream for document-producing AI companies will rise to the top. So many companies have gotten funding, but only a handful will make it. Tools that are built within Case Management Software are going to be the most highly adopted. It makes sense to have the tools directly in the system of record.

Biggest Surprise 2025: Non-document or summary-related AI products will get hot. You will see more voice AI and automation AI tools take off in the legal market.

Gabe Teninbaum | Asst. Dean of Innovation, Strategic Initiatives, and Distance Education and Professor of Legal Writing at Suffolk University Law School

2025 Prediction: By 2025, legal AI will shift from supporting tools to decision-making partners, with agentic systems managing tasks like compliance monitoring and preliminary dispute resolution. The surprise won’t be AI’s capability—it will be the speed at which clients demand its adoption. Regulation will likely lag behind, forcing the profession to navigate uncharted ethical and practical territory. The lawyers who thrive will be those who embrace AI as an ally rather than resist it.

Biggest Surprise 2025: The biggest surprise in legal AI in 2025 will be the emergence of agentic AI—systems capable of taking autonomous, goal-driven actions within set parameters. These tools won’t just assist lawyers but will independently draft contracts, conduct negotiations, and even manage compliance, pushing the profession to redefine what it means to “practice law.”

Mike Swarz | Director of Marketing @ Trellis

2025 Prediction: 2025 will see heightened demand for a legal productivity solution – leveraging AI and state court data to automate legal tasks! Legal teams will discover a solution, harnessing the largest repository of state court data, to help them: evaluate cases, automate brief drafting, suggest winning strategies, and more. Win rates will be boosted, and playing fields leveled, for those who engage and capitalize on this new legal tech.

Biggest Surprise 2025: ‘Google’-searching state trial court records – across the country – to uncover key intelligence (& analytics!) on: judges, verdicts, opposing counsel, motions, rulings, dockets and other legal issues. This is now the norm.

Jeremy Ben-Meir | Co-Founder & COO at PointOne

2025 Prediction: The integration of AI into cloud-based platforms will continue to push large firms toward cloud technology. However, to access the latest AI advancements, these firms must balance the benefits of cloud adoption against the familiarity of maintaining their on-premise systems. Through this process, they will have to develop new methods to evaluate these new hybrid solutions.

Biggest Surprise 2025: As industry adoption of AI solutions increases, expectations and enthusiasm will encounter real-world challenges (e.g. reliability and consistency). For certain product categories, this will put downward pressure on demand as buyers become more discerning and focus on solutions that demonstrably enhance efficiency and reduce costs.

Daniel Lewis | CEO, LegalOn Technologies

2025 Prediction: In-house legal teams will take center stage. They’ll showcase the successful adoption of AI tools and demonstrate big efficiencies in contract review, redlining, and answering questions from across the business.

Biggest Surprise 2025: Legal AI will not upend law firms’ billable hour, but it will continue to enable and accelerate the flow of legal work moving in-house.

Colin Levy | Director of Legal and Evangelist, Malbek

2025 Prediction: I envision a proliferation in multi-modality models, e.g. more powerful models capable of Models capable of integrating text, image, audio, video. 2) Further evolution of Generative AI solutions from simply being tools to being autonomous agents capable of decision-making and executing tasks in constrained environments.

Biggest Surprise 2025: Likely further debate over detecting real vs created imagery and video as well as further debate around use of Gen AI in education and at what levels of education.

Jon M. Garon Professor of Law and Director of the Goodwin Program for Society, Technology, and the Law @ Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad College of Law

2025 Prediction: As predictive AI systems drop in price, they are going to become essential for many legal business operations, including e-discovery and legal informatics. The hype around retrieval-augmented generation will fade as hallucinations continue to limit AI’s use in legal research. Instead, the largest potential use will be for forum shopping and the use of predictive AI to anticipate the tendencies of sitting judges, a practice that will also raise ethical concerns.

Biggest Surprise 2025: The potential for user-operated agents will grow exponentially as these apps create the power to automate calendaring, meeting coordination, note-taking, work-out buddies, and much more, becoming true personal assistants. Lawyers will need to be careful that the agents do not disclose personal or client data, but with that problem solved, these will grow into a significant new market.

Sateesh Nori | Senior Legal Innovation Strategist

2025 Prediction: In 2025, we will begin to see consumer-facing legal AI tools hit the market. The “unauthorized practice of law” rules will be relaxed in many more states. Finally, my elderly parents will be using AI in their everyday activities.

Biggest Surprise 2025: We will see the demise of UPL restrictions.

Isaac Rutenberg | Associate Professor of ICT Policy and Innovation, Strathmore University (Kenya)

2025 Prediction: I expect that the mainstream news media will start saying (loudly) that an “AI winter” is here, and that AI has been overhyped. At the same time, a majority of people in the tech industry will not agree, and will (relatively quietly) push forward with new products and technologies. I also predict that major advances will be made in language translation and preservation (including both human and animal languages).

Biggest Surprise 2025: The frequency of product liability lawsuits involving AI systems will see a large increase – people claiming they have been damaged by an AI tool (chatbot, etc.).

Kathleen (Katie) Brown | Associate Dean for Information Resources, Charleston School of Law

2025 Prediction: In the coming year, law librarians will emerge as the leaders of AI and generative AI instruction within the legal academy. Their unique blend of technological savvy and deep understanding of legal research positions them perfectly to guide this critical educational shift. We’ll see law librarians developing innovative curricula, curating AI tools, and providing hands-on training that bridges the gap between traditional legal education and cutting-edge AI applications. This leadership from law librarians will be instrumental in preparing the next generation of lawyers to thrive in an AI-enhanced legal landscape.

Biggest Surprise 2025: Despite the crucial need for advanced AI-powered verification tools, the rapid evolution of generative AI will continue to outpace our ability to reliably detect and authenticate AI-created materials.

Paul H. McVoy | Shareholder, Repario

2025 Prediction: I think that law firms and companies will continue to show a great interest in using AI in their work, but in the short term, will spend as much time and money, or more, vetting the output than if they had not used AI at all. Further, I believe that parties will challenge the use of AI, especially for discovery purposes, and courts will require detailed validation in order to endorse the use of AI tools. I am not sure that developers will be able to provide the information Judges will want to make them comfortable.

Biggest Surprise 2025: I think by the end of 2025, AI expertise will be a highly valued asset among employers in the legal field. Those who master the art of using AI will be sought after as next-gen assets and will be compensated accordingly.

Arunim Samat CEO, TrueLaw

2025 Prediction: By 2025, law firms will increasingly adopt proprietary AI models to scale expertise and improve services like investigations, compliance, and due diligence. The push from clients to leverage AI for better cost and quality outcomes will intensify. AI will primarily augment lawyers, enabling them to handle more work efficiently while streamlining workflows. We’ll also likely see clearer regulatory frameworks for AI, ensuring greater transparency and accountability in its use within legal practice.

Biggest Surprise 2025: The biggest surprise in legal AI in 2025 will be how law firms begin to adopt product-focused mindsets, moving beyond traditional services. This shift, driven by the potential of AI to scale expertise and create innovative tools, could fundamentally change how legal value is delivered and perceived.

Yonathan Arbel | University of Alabama, School of Law

2025 Prediction: Courts increasingly embrace “generative interpretation” (Arbel & Hoffman, 2024) to assist legal interpretation. The rise of the “x10 lawyer” – legal professionals who masterfully wield AI to multiply their capabilities – will reshape competitive dynamics. Strong, but somewhat ambiguous, dis-employment effects for lawyers. Rising pressure to regulate AI in legal practice will accelerate adoption of the Uniform Artificial Practice of Law (UAPL) framework.

Biggest Surprise 2025: The pace of adoption will be surprising to those who still hold a skeptical view of AI in legal practice.

Dana Neacsu | Director, Ken Gormley Law Library | Associate Professor of Legal Skills, Thomas R. Kline School of Law

2025 Prediction: These are personal opinions, informed by my research and writing, and they do not reflect my institution’s: By 2025, legal AI will likely see widespread adoption of generative AI tools tailored to drafting, contract review, and predictive analytics. Productivity will be a wash because of the need for critical review of the content, data security, bias, accountability, and client confidentiality. Responsible automation will become a buzzphrase, though few will really understand what that entails. Finally, there will be a clear bifurcation of AI-free-of-charge and AI-for-a-fee.

Biggest Surprise 2025: The U.S. will refuse to regulate AI at the federal level.

Cat Casey | Chief Growth Officer, Reveal

2025 Prediction: AI has gone from the fringes to the forefront and is transforming the legal industry faster than you can say “ChatGPT.” By 2025, it’ll go from shiny new toy to must have—seamlessly woven into legal workflows, becoming the backbone of smarter, faster, and sharper decision-making. In 2025 there will be no more endless debates and “what-if” scenarios; AI will begin to be fully embedded in the tools you use daily. This isn’t just evolution; it’s revolution. The era of AI-driven law is here, and it’s reshaping everything—from how we work to how we win. AI isn’t just along for the ride; it’s driving the future of law.

Biggest Surprise 2025: In 2025, I think we may begin to speak about AI less because it will begin the shift from novelty to normality. The what if questions will be replaced with practical tech evaluation and integration in a meaningful way. And the hype will not slow, but the hyperbole will start to fade.

Rose J. Hunter Jones | Partner, Hilgers Graben

2025 Prediction: While non-U.S. jurisdictions will likely lead the way in AI regulation, focusing on transparency and accountability, the U.S. may lag behind, leaving firms to navigate a patchwork of evolving guidelines. On the product development front, emerging AI technologies will face challenges in integrating with established industry-standard tools, forcing lawyers to weigh the benefits of sticking with familiar systems versus adopting new, potentially transformative solutions. Generative AI will continue to push boundaries, reshaping how lawyers research, draft, and strategize while amplifying their expertise.

Biggest Surprise 2025: The biggest surprise in legal AI in 2025 will be the slow pace of adoption, despite the technology’s potential to significantly reduce legal fees while maintaining or even improving accuracy. The legal industry’s inherent risk aversion will continue to stymie widespread implementation, leaving many firms hesitant to fully embrace the transformative potential of AI.

Tali Green | Co-Founder & CEO of Goodfact

2025 Prediction: Litigation lawyers will become disillusioned with the LLM-powered chronology tools that flooded the market after the arrival of ChatGPT in November 2022. Litigators will recognize that an effective AI summary requires first having a solid handle on each of the granular facts in a case. Litigators will continue to search for a tool that provides both a high level overview of their case as well as detailed and accurate depiction of each underlying fact.

Biggest Surprise 2025: Judges will start to use AI to automate a lot of their work flows, including to review and build chronologies of parties’ documents. Courts will also start to encourage or even require litigants to use AI-powered tools to more clearly and succintly convey information to the Courts.

Chris Williams | Legal Tech Expert at Leya

2025 Prediction: Legal AI products will continue to improve rapidly, with enhanced features and foundational model capabilities. However, market penetration will remain modest, and 2025 won’t be the year of a major revolution. Clients will grow more comfortable with AI use in law firms, making adoption easier. The Jevons Paradox will likely come into play, as lawyers become exponentially more productive, they will simply do more, and law firm revenues will increase.

Biggest Surprise 2025: The most surprising aspect might be that foundational models don’t change as much as anticipated. While many are looking for groundbreaking advancements like GPT-5, the real changes in value are likely to come from how people use the technology, integrate with existing solutions and apply it to create meaningful and scalable workflows tailored to specific industries.

Agbo Obinnaya | Founder & CEO, Case Radar (Nigeria)

2025 Prediction: The products will get better and with more marketing, there will be mass adoption of legal AI products.

Biggest Surprise 2025: VCs will pay more attention to the legal tech generative AI industry, especially in Africa where the legal industry is experiencing conflicting decisions by the courts.

Evan Shenkman | Chief Knowledge and Innovation Officer, Fisher Phillips

2025 Prediction: By late 2025 we will see the greatest AI value from powerful GenAI tools that don’t require user-provided prompts, but which offer powerful, real-time assistance to attorneys nonetheless. Think about tools that can listen in on depositions, trials, or client intake meetings, and provide the attorney — in real-time — with AI-powered guidance and assistance (issue spotting, identifying inconsistencies or falsehoods, etc.) based on the tool’s prior review and analysis of the entire case file. Or tools that can continually review the case docket, and then unilaterally alert the attorney of what just happened, what now needs to be done, and include GenAI-created proposed drafts based on prior firm samples. These tools are already in the works, and will be mainstream soon enough.

Biggest Surprise 2025: Litigation funding will grow significantly in 2025, lured by GenAI’s promise of more powerful and accurate case valuation and assessment models than ever before. This will bring about an unexpected increase in new case filings, more protracted lawsuits, and greater judicial backlogs.

Ken Withers | Executive Director, The Sedona Conference

2025 Prediction: I predict that starting in 2025, AI application developers will coalesce around a common foundational or “constitutional” LLMs that act like an operating system, built on trusted sources with tested built-in controls to minimize or eliminate biases, hallucinations, or malicious uses (granted, criminals will always think up some new way to extort victims or create chaos). This might take some time to come to fruition, but things happen quickly when markets pressure is brought to bear – enterprise or subject-specific AI applications built on a widely respected foundational LLM would presumptively enjoy much greater market and legal acceptance. I’m hoping that more technically sophisticated readers will say, “Oh, that’s already in the works…”

Biggest Surprise 2025: I’ve been fascinated to see the use of AI by archaeologists to re-examine ancient artifacts, especially the use of GenAI to translate previously inaccessible or undecipherable ancient texts. This will alter our understanding of the past, and while this may not have immediate “practical” application in business or government, it may have a more profound impact on history (and therefore the future).

Mitchell Kossoris | Co-Founder and CEO, Deposely

2025 Prediction: As we move into 2025, AI is positioned to increasingly bridge gaps in areas like depositions, contract negotiation, and litigation strategy. Platforms like Deposely are demonstrating how AI can transform traditionally convoluted workflows and reduce the reliance on costly experts while maintaining high-quality outcomes. These advancements will continue to empower leaner firms to leverage sophisticated legal strategies previously accessible only to BigLaw. In this sense, 2025 will see AI level the playing field — more small and mid-sized practices will reclaim their “good lawyer time” and operate more efficiently than ever.

Biggest Surprise 2025: Biggest surprise? Look for document drafting/templating to surpass legal research as lawyers’ most common use of AI in 2025. AI is being promoted from legal assistant to co-counsel, and acting more and more as a force multiplier for legal professionals, making the practice of law more proactive and data-driven.

David Moncure | Principal, Crowe LLP

2025 Prediction: Technology will continue to outpace the law. In the United States, they will continue to be a growing patchwork of state level regulation as we’ve seen in the privacy arena over the last few years. Companies will begin to reevaluate their information governance programs to account for the data proliferation that results from the use of AI.

Biggest Surprise 2025: The use of AI-assisted technology for eDiscovery document review will become readily accepted, like current uses of TAR and CAL.

Annie Lespérance | Head of Americas at Jus Mundi

2025 Prediction: The automation of legal operations will increase in 2025 thanks to genAI. While adaptation to and adoption of this new technology will remain very gradual, the development of solutions tailored to the legal sector will accelerate. The process of strengthening adoption will make it possible to really distinguish the most relevant use cases, as well as the data to be exploited as a priority. Law firms will also have to choose between generalist, turnkey solutions and those developed in-house. This choice will have an impact on their investments, and is likely to put the brakes on the development of generative AI products, which is currently ongoing.

Biggest Surprise 2025: While the number of regulations surrounding the development of AI and the tech industry is increasing in Europe ( DSA, DMA, AI ACT, DORA), the 2024 U.S. elections result point in a different direction when it comes to possible AI regulation in the U.S. market. Admittedly, law firms and legal tech companies operating on a global scale will still need to be compliant to the more stringent regulations in effect.

Nicola Shaver | CEO, Legaltech Hub

2025 Prediction: Agentic AI, with the capability to automate legal workflows end-to-end, will become more prevalent in 2025, as will AI-enabled workflows generally. We will see a move away from the chatbot model to generative AI that is built in to the systems where lawyers work and that mimics the way lawyers work, making it easier to adopt. Lawyers should expect to access custom apps for their legal practice areas in places like their document management or practice management systems, and will adopt the tools that they like at a deeper level. In 2025, some lawyers will be using generative AI on a daily basis without even noticing it, since it will be an enabler of so many systems in the back end with less of the prompting burden sitting with end users.

Biggest Surprise 2025: For the legal industry, technology has been traditionally been considered either a boring support area or a niche area of innovative products that don’t work terribly well. In 2025, legal technology will start being a mainstream interest for lawyers who realize that AI has become a true partner to them, providing them with the ability to do better work faster.

Heidi K. Brown | Associate Dean for Upper Level Writing, New York Law School

2025 Prediction: Innovative law schools will teach GenAI literacy in a way that ensures law students learn fundamental legal analytical and writing skills yet also understand how Large Language Models realistically function in the legal context. Innovative law firms will change their recruiting models to make space for law students who may not necessarily have the best grades or be enrolled at high-ranked schools but have invested dozens (perhaps hundreds) of hours experimenting with a variety of GenAI tools in learning and performing legal tasks, making GenAI-related mistakes in low-risk settings, and building knowledge about how to successfully partner with GenAI to research, write about, and apply law in increasingly complex client scenarios—effectively discerning good from mediocre/bad GenAI output.

Biggest Surprise 2025: The most successful legal writing-related AI tools in 2025 will stop touting speed as their top feature and instead (truthfully) demonstrate that their models understand the importance of accurate, nuanced, and methodical rule structure in legal analysis. Good legal writers structure legal analyses around rule components, such as (1) a checklist of required elements, (2) a set of factors the decision-maker must weigh, OR (3) a standard to apply, like the summary judgment standard, or the strict scrutiny standard; analytical legal AI models that reliably understand how to accurately structure pertinent legal rules, then methodically apply such rule structures to legally significant client facts, will be more valuable and desirable to real legal writers than velocity.

Dean Pelletier | Founder, Pelletier Law

2025 Prediction: Law firms and in-house legal departments will differentiate themselves through data in retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems that supplement foundation models (FMs). Curating high quality, up-to-date RAG data, i.e., data which can be described as external to an FM or proprietary to a firm or department, will involve a legal data point person in charge of executing a specific RAG data game plan. So, this is another example where experience, creativity and judgment of humans will still matter.

Biggest Surprise 2025: As law firms and in-house legal departments digest their AI use case data, AI-induced gaps in associates’ knowledge and skill bases will emerge. The result will be a renewed focus on in-person associate mentoring and training.

David W. Opderbeck | Professor of Law, Seton Hall University Law School

2025 Prediction: Court decision and settlements in some copyright lawsuits over training data; increased state-level regulation of safety and accountability; the FTC backing off AI enforcement initiatives

Biggest Surprise 2025: The wildcard is the budgetary and policy effect of the Musk-led “DOGE” initiative on both AI incentives and regulation at the federal level, which no one can predict.

Dorna Moini | CEO/Founder, Gavel

2025 Prediction: Hybrid lawyer/self-service legal platforms will become as ubiquitous as online banking. Consumers will complete complex processes like divorce or estate planning online through intelligent, adaptive workflows. These services will involve lawyer assistance at key touchpoints in the legal process, making legal services more affordable and allowing legal professionals to serve more consumers.

Biggest Surprise 2025: The first AI-drafted amicus brief could be cited in a Supreme Court ruling, setting a precedent for AI in high-stakes legal strategy.

Kipp Coddington | Professor of Practice, University of Wyoming College of Law

2025 Prediction: LLM’s based on Karl Friston’s Free Energy Principle will continue to advance towards broad commercialization. These systems learn like Homo sapiens do instead of vacuuming up large data sets from the Internet.

Biggest Surprise 2025: Peer-reviewed papers suggesting that AI systems can exhibit what Homo sapiens will perceive as “consciousness,” with uncertain legal outcomes.

Jordan Domash | Founder & CEO, Responsiv

2025 Prediction: AI won’t replace lawyers, but it will put pressure on the largest law firms as advanced tools become more widespread. In-house legal and compliance teams, empowered by AI, will handle more work internally before seeking outside counsel. At the same time, technology will enable experienced solo practitioners to offer a broader range of services than ever before, significantly expanding their capabilities and reach. While the expertise of a seasoned partner will always hold value, the threshold for what justifies a $1,000 to $2,000 per hour rate will be raised.

Biggest Surprise 2025: In 2025, we’ll come to recognize that while broad-based foundation models from OpenAI and Anthropic are powerful, they won’t provide a complete, end-to-end solution for legal work. Instead, legal innovation will be driven by applications built on these models that prioritize explainability, are grounded in authoritative content, and foster trust through a carefully curated user experience.

Michael Grupp | CEO, BRYTER

2025 Prediction: 2025 is the year of agents – and agents will become more powerful: more workflows, better integrations, better UX.

Biggest Surprise 2025: Boring use cases will be back, combining workflows and AI.

Kara Peterson | Co-Founder, Descrybe.ai

2025 Prediction: In 2025, legal tech will center on reasoning models capable of verifying their own work, offering significant value to the legal industry. By reducing the need for legal professionals to manually review every AI-generated output, these models will boost productivity, enhance trust, and drive faster adoption.

Biggest Surprise 2025: AI in legal tech is advancing so rapidly that by 2025, it will reach areas once considered untouchable. Small, agile teams will be able to challenge industry giants in ways previously unimaginable.

Saketh Kesiraju | CEO, SwiftLaw

2025 Prediction: Solo and small law firms are going to accelerate adoption of AI tools while big law firms are going to start critically evaluating the value of enterprise Legal AI solutions. As a result, I think tools that provide robust evaluation infrastructure for LLM-generated responses is going to be crucial. There will also be more online legal services for immigration, family law, personal injury, and other civil practices.

Biggest Surprise 2025: The biggest surprise will be that the largest company in this category will end up building and selling to court systems (the US government).

K.C. Halm and Filipp Kofman | Partners, Davis Wright Tremaine

2025 Prediction: In 2024, law firms experimented with generative AI through trials and proofs of concept, exploring its potential without committing to definitive solutions. We anticipate 2025 will be a turning point, as firms transition from experimentation to deploying best-in-class generative AI-powered legal tech in full-scale production, as law firms and their clients have found ways to adopt and operationalize generative AI in a safe and responsible manner.

Cecilia Ziniti | CEO & Founder, GC AI

2025 Prediction: Get ready – 2025 is when in-house legal teams insist on AI that gets them. Smart legal departments will expect their AI platforms to understand and act on their company’s preferences and risk tolerance. Early adopters are already using legal AI for every kind of task, and this trend will expand as entire legal teams increasingly embrace that spirit even more. They will ask “How can I do this better or faster or more strategically with AI?” – while using great prompts as the new great templates.

Biggest Surprise 2025: In 2025, GCs and CLOs will embrace how helpful legal AI is now. The collective “aha moment” will inspire AI adoption among corporate counsel across industries. In-house teams are leading the way here and that will continue.

Jason Torchinsky | Partner & Co-Head of the AI Practice Group, Holtzman Vogel PLLC

2025 Prediction: In the AI Practice Group at Holtzman Vogel, we expect to see a sharp increase in AI regulation at the state and, possibly, the federal level, which will require many tech companies to navigate a maze of AI regulations and statutes. In our work advising members of Congress and political organizations on AI, we’ve seen a growing interest in regulations requiring water marking on AI-generated content and an emphasis on data privacy. Our prediction is that legal tech companies, and AI companies generally, will need to dedicate more resources toward lobbying and compliance in 2025.

Jennifer Carter-Johnson | Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Michigan State University College of Law

2025 Prediction: As the capabilities of legal AI continue to grow in 2025, law schools will begin to more fully embrace the challenges that the technology brings to the training of new attorneys. Legal AI scares many in legal academia with its potential to be used as a crutch in learning or for outright cheating. These challenges will force law schools to innovate in how they teach law students (and faculty!) how to leverage advancing AI capabilities in an ethical manner and with practical applications.

Biggest Surprise 2025: We will hit a tipping point in legal education as to how many schools will begin to purposefully address AI challenges. In the future, we will look back at the AI educational models developed in 2025 as the backbone of a new era of legal education.

Raj Sonani | Senior AI Product Manager at LexisNexis

2025 Prediction: I predict that legal AI will drive transformative efficiency gains in regulatory compliance, particularly in SEC reporting. AI-powered tools will continuously monitor changes in SEC requirements, provide instant compliance risk assessments, and create predictive narratives about potential corporate financial trajectories. Additionally, AI will enable automatic comparison of SEC filings across entire industry sectors and peer groups. Furthermore, AI-powered legal research will continue to advance, while a growing focus on AI ethics and bias will ensure responsible AI adoption in law.

Biggest Surprise 2025: The biggest surprise will be the rapid adoption of Agentic AI, enabling law firms and legal departments to respond to complex legal queries in near real-time. This will revolutionize the delivery of legal services, making them more efficient, effective, and client-centric.

Eddie Nasser Paxton AI | Legal Product Lead

2025 Prediction: In 2025, legal professionals will find themselves collaborating daily with AI colleagues embedded seamlessly into their firms’ workflows—complete with their own digital identities, distinct personalities, and specialized practice niches. These AI co-workers won’t just run silent tasks in the background; they’ll attend team meetings, identify issues, propose projects, and even engage in client outreach and updates. Firms will begin assigning mentorship cohorts that include both human and AI members, enabling young associates to learn from seasoned partners and trusted AI counterparts alike.

Biggest Surprise 2025: Breakthroughs in model development will open new product avenues that were previously impossible, from client facing AI to near instantaneous commercial contract review.

Jim W. Ko | Ko IP & AI Law PLLC

2025 Prediction: A series of settlement agreements in the pending copyright cases against the unauthorized use of copyrighted works in training AI models will set the market. The dollar values for some will be massive in the aggregate—in the $100s of millions and maybe even in the billions. The per person harmed or per violation value these amount to, though, will be comfortably within the range of the ongoing cost of doing business for the major AI providers.

Biggest Surprise 2025: In 2025, there will continue to be no trial awards or settlements in third-party liability claims for the implementation of AI above $10M per person harmed and only a handful above $1M, with the possible exception of for copyright and right-of-publicity cases. The number of algorithmic discrimination cases filed will increase, but the amounts awarded per person harmed will not.

Sean Allan Harrington | Director of Technology Innovation, University of Oklahoma College of Law

2025 Prediction: General-purpose frontier AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Gemini, with advanced agentic workflows, will likely outperform specialized legal models by enabling firms to develop custom solutions through no-code or low-code tools. These models will leverage firm-specific documents and open data to automate complex tasks, eliminating the need for expensive platforms like Harvey. For firms whose practice areas don’t rely on paywalled datasets in Lexis or Westlaw, these AIs will offer unparalleled adaptability and cost-efficiency. Agentic workflows will further enhance productivity by automating decision-making processes, empowering mid-to-small-sized firms to create superior, bespoke solutions without the steep costs of traditional systems.

Biggest Surprise 2025: A top 50 law school will revolutionize legal education by successfully scaling an online JD program that enhances accessibility and affordability. This breakthrough will disrupt the competitive landscape, drawing students from similarly ranked schools and forcing others to adapt or risk obsolescence.

Greg Siskind Co-Founder – Visalaw.ai

2025 Prediction: Most lawyers have only dipped their toes in the AI waters using the large public LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. More legal-specific tools aimed at small and mid-sized law firms will debut in the coming year that will allow a lot more lawyers to affordably and ethically use generative AI in their practices. That will include products in the legal research, analysis and drafting space. Many will begin using generative AI tools regularly because the products they are already using – particularly office suites, case management and billing products – will start rolling out AI features. Separately, I also expect the regulatory environment to become more clear as more and more state ethics’ bodies clarify how their rules apply to the use of generative AI and malpractice carriers start to get their hands around how these tools are being used by their insured law firms and what risks should be ultimately be covered.

Biggest Surprise 2025: There will be major fights in various states over the application of Model Rule 1.5 on reasonable fees over the issue of whether lawyers must pass on all cost savings of using AI to their clients.

Kerri Braun | Senior Corporate Counsel, AI/ML, Trade Secrets, and Data Strategy @ Cisco

2025 Prediction: As far as the law is concerned, I think we will start to see a shift in initial attitudes that works created with the assistance of AI are not copyrightable. It may be years before AI is viewed as a tool used to aid in human expression, but as the technology is becoming commonplace and better understood, this mindset will start to soften.

FDA Issues New Guidance on Cosmetic Product Registration and Listing

On December 11, 2024, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) issued updated guidance for industry on the registration and listing of cosmetic product facilities and products. The guidance provides recommendations and instructions to help individuals and companies comply with the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulations Act of 2022 (MoCRA).
MoCRA mandates that cosmetic companies report serious adverse events to FDA within 15 business days, register their facilities and list their products, ensure product safety before marketing, and comply with FDA’s authority to access records and order recalls if products are found to be unsafe or misbranded.
The updated guidance outlines the statutory requirements for submitting cosmetic product facility registrations and product listings. It finalizes the frequently asked questions (FAQs) in Appendix B (Q1-19) and introduces three new FAQs (Q20-22) for public comment.
- Q20 outlines the responsibilities of a U.S agent, which includes assisting FDA with communications, responding to product inquiries, helping schedule inspections, and receiving documents on behalf of the foreign establishment;
- Q21 explains that multiple buildings within three miles can share one FEI number if they are part of the same establishment and management, and can be inspected together; and
- Q22 indicates that a product listing is generally required for all cosmetic products, including free samples or gifts, unless specific exemptions apply.
The comment period is open until January 13, 2024, and comments can be submitted through the docket.

December 2024 Legal News: Law Firm News and Mergers, Industry Awards and Recognition, DEI and Women in Law

Thank you for reading the National Law Review’s legal news roundup, highlighting the latest law firm news! As the country enters the final month of the year, the legal industry does not appear to be slowing down. Please read below for the latest in law firm news and industry expansion, legal industry awards and recognition, and DEI and women in the legal field.

Law Firm News and Mergers

Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C. announced that they are opening the firm’s 58th office in Baltimore. The office will be shared with Shawe Rosenthal, which will help strengthen both firms’ presence in the city.

The new office, which will open its doors on January 2, 2025, will be led by Parker Thoeni. An experience team of attorneys will be joining him, including shareholders Courtney Amelung, Paul Burgin, Chad Horton, Darryl McCallum, Mike McGuire, Fiona Ong, Mark Swerdlin and Veronica Yu Welsh, of counsel Gary Simpler, Eric Hemmendinger, Stephen Shawe and Elizabeth Torphy-Donzella, and associates Evan Conder, Jordan Dunham and Jamie Salazer.

“We are thrilled to welcome the talented attorneys and business professionals from Shawe Rosenthal to the Ogletree Deakins family,” said Liz Washko, Managing Shareholder of Ogletree Deakins. “This expansion will allow the firm to deepen its relationships with clients in Maryland and further enhances our firm’s ability to serve clients in the Baltimore – Washington, D.C. region.”

von Briesen & Roper, s.c. announced the addition of Erik M. Gustafson as an associate in the Litigation & Risk Management Practice Group in the firm’s Milwaukee office.

Mr. Gustafson will focus his practice on insurance coverage and analysis, first-party property coverage and bad faith counseling and claims. He received a J.D., magna cum laude, and a Certificate in Litigation Practice from Marquette University and a B.A., summa cum laude, from Creighton University.

Jake Oresick joined Tucker Arensberg, P.C. as a Senior Counsel attorney. He brings with him extensive experience in labor and employment, real estate, construction, insurance, commerical litigation and environmental law.

Mr. Oresick’s practice focuses on representing individuals, insurers and businesses in matters such as trade secrets, construction defects, breach of contract and insurance bad faith. His client-focused approach has shown a proven track-record of resolving complex disputes.

“We are excited to welcome Jake to the firm,” said Irving Firman, Managing Shareholder. “His legal skills and dedication will enhance our firm’s ability to provide exceptional litigation services.”

Legal Industry Awards and Recognition

Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP announced that four of their attorneys were named to Georgia Trend’s Legal Elite for 2024. The list recognizes lawyers from across 15 different fields.

Laura Hester, Stephen Opler, Sidney Welch and Scott Zweigel were recognized as among the best in their respective fields. They were chosen based on nominations by members of the state bar who live in Georgia.

Ward and Smith, P.A. attorneys Grant Osborne, Will Oden and Ken Gray are now recognized by the North Carolina State Bar Board of Legal Specialization as specialists in Employment Law. They are among the first twelve ever recognized in the state.

The Ward and Smith attorneys were instrumental in creating the new Employment Law specialization program, which recognizes attorneys with experience and knowledge in federal and state employment law.

Ronald A. Christaldi, a partner at Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, LLP and President/CEO of Shumaker Advisors Florida, was awarded the 2024 H.L. Culbreath Jr. Profile in Leadership Award by the Tampa Bay Chamber. It is the region’s most esteemed recognition for those whose leadership has impacted the community.

Mr. Christaldi has previously been named by Florida Trend Magazine as one of the top 100 lawyers in Florida and by the Tampa Bay Business Journal as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in the nation.

“Ron embodies the spirit of this award through his selfless contributions and unwavering commitment to making Tampa Bay a better place for all,” said former Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, who currently serves as Executive Vice President and Principal U.S. Cities Practice for Shumaker Advisors Florida. “His leadership continues to inspire and create a lasting impact across our region.”

DEI and Women in Law

Barnes & Thornburg LLP announced that Dallas partner Ashley Deweese was named a 2024 Connect CRE Lawyers in Real Estate Award honoree for the Texas region. The award recognizes distinguished real estate attorneys.

Ms. Deweese focuses her practice on commercial real estate in the office, multifamily, hospitality, industrial, healthcare and retail arenas. She has broad experience in representing developers, borrowers, buyers and sellers in the development of property, as well as in dispositions and acquisitions.

Bracewell LLP partner Catherine D. Little was named by Hart Energy’s Oil & Gas Investor Magazine as one of its 2025 Influential Women in Energy. The platform recognizes women who have excelled in the oil and gas industry.

Ms. Little was recognized for her track record of helping clients excel during energy transition initiatives and regulatory requirements, as well as counseling clients on oil and gas pipeline compliance and enforcement matters.

She regularly manages large-scale confidential audits and investigations to assist clients in identifying legal risks, as well as preparing defenses to favorably resolve criminal investigation matters.

Moore & Van Allen announced that Wealth & Estate Planning Member Caitlin Horne was appointed to serve a two-year term as Chair of the Board of Directors for InReach, a nonprofit that provides services to individuals with developmental and intellectual disabilities.

Ms. Horne has served as a board member and volunteered with InReach for the past four years. She has held leadership positions as Chair of the Personnel Committee, as well as the Nominating Committee.

Author: National Law Forum

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Endnotes

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What to Expect in 2025: AI Legal Tech and Regulation (65 Expert Predictions)

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December 2024 Legal News: Law Firm News and Mergers, Industry Awards and Recognition, DEI and Women in Law

Law Firm News and Mergers

Legal Industry Awards and Recognition

DEI and Women in Law

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Competitive Problem

Divestiture Proposal

Deficiencies

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Endnotes

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Law Firm News and Mergers

Legal Industry Awards and Recognition

DEI and Women in Law

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