I had the privilege of contributing to the forthcoming book, Law Librarianship in the Age of AI, published by the American Library Association. The book will be out in the fall, but is now available for preorder, so get it while you can, because this one is sure to fly off the shelves.

The book was edited by Ellyssa Kroski, director of information technology at the New York Law Institute and the editor and author of 37 books, including Law Librarianship in the Digital Age, for which she won the AALL’s 2014 Joseph L. Andrews Legal Literature Award.

My contribution to the book was its final chapter, “The Future of AI in Law Libraries.” As I noted at the outset of my chapter, it was a challenging assignment, given that I am neither a futurist nor a law librarian. But I enjoyed writing it and I hope it will provoke some thoughts and conversation. Once the book is out, I may be able to post an excerpt here.

I’d tell you who the other authors are, but for the fact that I do not know. But the summary on the ALA website says that topics the book covers include:

  • The benefits of AI to law librarianship, including areas like legal research, contract review, compliance, and administration, and their associated risks.
  • Four professional ethics rules that apply to the use or (non-use) of AI.
  • How lawyers and staff work side by side with AI, utilizing intelligence like RAVN ACE or FastCase to attack the drudgery of due diligence and document review.
  • Surprising machine-learning insights from tokenizing, stemming, and lemmatizing the text of Shakespeare’s plays.
  • The potential for chatbots and new natural language processing products to improve access to justice.
  • Ways to develop sought-after skills through new technology departments, practice management groups, and legal innovation labs.

All that for the bargain price of $69. So what are you waiting for? Order now.

(Full disclosure: I get not a penny of the proceeds.)

Photo of Bob Ambrogi Bob Ambrogi

Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.