Technology’s Effect on Advocacy
on my judgment. The court is relying on my candor. Opposing counsel is entitled to expect that quotations and citations have not been fabricated or distorted. That responsibility has remained constant throughout every change in legal research. It was true when lawyers consulted printed Shepard’s volumes. It remained true when Westlaw and Lexis made research faster. It remains true now that AI can generate pages of polished legal prose in seconds. Artificial intelligence has made me a faster lawyer in some respects. It has also made me more cautious about anything that sounds polished before it has been verified. The easier it becomes to produce authoritative-sounding language, the more important it becomes to insist on source-based analysis.
I came to law because I had been a plaintiff. I know what it feels like to wonder whether the person representing you has found the controlling case, preserved the crucial issue, and understood the record well enough to protect what matters. That experience still informs the way I practice. Every client who enters my office is entrusting me with a story that may already have been doubted, minimized, or ignored. My responsibility is to ensure that the story is preserved in the record, supported by the evidence, and presented under the governing law with absolute integrity.
Technology can help me do that work. It can never relieve me of the obligation to do it well.
22
Consumer Attorneys of California
FORUM September/October 2026
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs