Move Carefully and Fix Things

Hello Friends in the Computer,

Aging is a funny thing. I haven’t had too many physiological changes - my hair is still its natural color and according to an aesthetician recently, I have the skin of a 30 year old. (However, I must admit that sometimes when I’m laying in bed I’ll hear a weird noise and I realize it’s coming from my body and I have been known to throw out my back by sneezing.) I mainly notice my aging when I realize how my perspective has changed. Most people under the age of 25 look like actual children to me. Fashion trends seem dumb and a waste of money to chase. And when I look at this picture…

…I realize that one of those people is a good guy trying to help people, one should be in jail, and it’s the exact opposite of how I perceived things when I first saw the movie at 8 years old.

Anyway, this is more link-y post, but also very much on the theme of Move Carefully and Fix things. Which was coined and is a great sticker set you can order for free from Bill Hunt who as worked in government IT (and a GovPunk 🤘) for a long time.

If you are not caught up on the Do Not Pay…stuff? drama? saga? shitshow? from last week, this is a good thread to get completely caught up…

(By the way, the author is a former SCOTUS clerk and law professor who decided “you know what, I’d rather write books” and is thus a legend in my mind.)

Kristen Sonday, who is both a creator and funder of A2J tech, wrote this really good medium piece from that perspective on the DoNotPay saga.

So many things about the situation bothered me last week, but one of the most annoying was the “you are either for DNP or against A2J Tech”. I think Kristin Hodgins has a good thread pointing out the problem with that attitude.

I had a blog post (literally brainstormed while I was making breakfast on Sunday so there may be gaps - let me know!) about things to ask an A2J Tech founder if you are “reviewing” the tool.

And in exciting and positive news….

DocketAlarm has revealed an integration with GPT3. You know what I like best about this? They provide a heads up to the user that this is still very much a work in progress.

I really think the “summarizing giant blocks of text” use case for various flavors of AI has some real legs for law. I got to meet with the folks behind LEX AI last year and ironically enough, my immediate thought was “hell with robot lawyers, this is a robot librarian!”

And finally speaking of building well and ethically, Theory and Principle has just announced T&P Studio to facilitate co-building legal tech. There are very few people that I will unequivocally vouch for, but Nicole Bradick and her team is definitely on that list.

FYI, going forward, after using my AALL Coffeechat with David Whelan as a therapy sessions, I decided that I should to try and return my newsletter to my original intention of sharing brief thoughts and links and keeping longer stuff on my blog. I’m sure I’ll promote the posts here and all the usual spaces.

By the way, let’s check in on the LinkedIn InfLAWencing…

Uh oh.

And just as little laginappe, I am old but I make the entertainment choices of a 17 year old. The YouTube and TikTok beauty community has been embroiled in MASCARA GATE coinciding DNP shenanigans and basically you can take this creator (who is one of my favorites) substituteDNP for Mikayla Noguerira and it works.

Okay, that’s all for now…

Be well,

Sarah