LawDroid Manifesto Podcast

Hey there Legal Rebels! 👋
I’m excited to share with you the 82nd episode of the LawDroid Manifesto podcast, where I will be continuing to interview key legal innovators to learn how they do what they do. I think you’re going to enjoy this one!
In this episode, I got to talk to my dear friend Patrick Palace. Patrick runs Palace Law in Tacoma, Washington, but he’s also been serving as president of the National Conference of Bar Presidents. In that role, he’s pursued the NCBP Pledge, to preserve the independence of the legal profession and the judicial system, ultimately resulting in the ABA’s unanimous adoption of Resolution 400—known as “The Pledge.” For that reason, I have dubbed him, the Principled President.
If you want to understand how bar leaders across the country came together to defend the rule of law and the independence of the legal profession, you need to listen to this episode. Patrick is at the forefront of that effort and has a unique vantage point on where the legal profession stands and where it’s headed.
LawDroid Manifesto is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Standing for the Rule of Law in an Age of AI and Political Pressure
Join me as I interview Patrick Palace, owner of Palace Law in Tacoma, Washington and outgoing president of the National Conference of Bar Presidents.
Patrick walks through the year-long strategic planning process he led as president, including an unusual twist: using an AI chatbot as a thought partner to help fourteen bar leaders turn a three-day retreat into a full year of prioritized goals and action items. He explains how that planning process led to a podcast, a legacy fund, a diversity scholars program, and, at the center of it all, an initiative called the Pledge.
The Pledge is a set of shared principles including upholding the rule of law, preserving judicial independence, and promoting public trust in the legal system, moved from a grassroots signing effort among bar presidents to a full ABA resolution. Ultimately, Resolution 400 passed unanimously before the ABA House of Delegates, without a single nay or abstention.
We also get into the harder conversation: what AI means for the future of legal practice, the billable hour, young lawyers, and the massive unmet demand for legal services that Patrick believes AI is finally positioned to help close.
The Skinny
Patrick Palace spent his year as president of the National Conference of Bar Presidents building a strategic plan with an unusual collaborator: an AI chatbot custom-built to act as a thought partner during a three-day leadership retreat. That planning work produced a podcast, a legacy fund, a member survey, an expanded diversity scholars program, and national awards, but the centerpiece was the Pledge, a short set of shared professional values around the rule of law, judicial independence, and public trust. Patrick and bar leaders across the country brought that pledge to state bars, regional conferences, and eventually the floor of the ABA House of Delegates, where it passed unanimously as Resolution 400. The conversation then turns to AI’s effect on legal practice: the risk to the billable hour, what happens to young lawyers’ training ground as automatable work disappears, and Patrick’s view that the real opportunity is a massive underserved legal market that AI-augmented lawyers are finally positioned to reach.
Key Takeaways
* An AI chatbot, purpose-built for strategic planning, compressed what would normally take three full days of retreat work into about three hours, producing five goals per community across ten communities, each with action items and timelines, but ultimately board reviewed, revised, and approved.
* That planning process produced concrete outputs: the Leading the Bar podcast (22 episodes in year one, roughly 9,000 downloads), a legacy fund, a membership survey, an expanded diversity scholars program, and five sets of national awards.
* The Pledge is a short set of shared professional values, including upholding the rule of law and the Constitution, preserving the independence of the legal profession and judiciary, promoting public trust, ensuring access to justice, and fostering unity.
* Hundreds of bar presidents and dozens of bars, both mandatory and voluntary, signed the Pledge, which was then sponsored by the Washington State Bar Association and brought to the ABA House of Delegates as Resolution 400.
* Resolution 400 passed unanimously, with no nay votes and no abstentions, a result Patrick calls one of the happiest days of his career.
* Patrick argues that being quiet about attacks on the rule of law is not neutrality, it’s the opposite, and that lawyers have a professional obligation to speak up.
* On AI: Patrick frames the lawyer’s enduring role using Jordan Furlong’s three A’s (advocate, advice, atmosphere), arguing that AI will absorb low-level, high-volume legal work while the human components of lawyering remain irreplaceable.
* The billable hour model is under real pressure. If AI compresses hours of work into minutes, firms built entirely around billable hours may struggle, while firms that shift toward outcome-based models will have an advantage.
* Patrick sees a large latent legal market, potentially in the trillions of dollars, made up of people who currently get no legal help at all, that AI-augmented lawyers could finally begin to serve.
* His message to bar leaders and lawyers: prioritize defending the rule of law and professional independence first. Only once that foundation holds can the profession productively address AI adoption, access to justice, and practice growth.
Notable Quotes
* “First we kill all the lawyers... there’s a front line of protecting the rule of law and democracy, and it’s lawyers. And if you get rid of them, then you no longer have a democracy, you no longer have a court system, you no longer have protectors of the Constitution.” Patrick Palace [13:22 to 13:55]
* “There was not a single abstention, there was not a single nay coming across the floor of the House of Delegates. And when the gavel came down and it was announced that it was passed, it was honestly one of the happiest days of my life.” Patrick Palace [17:43 to 18:20]
* “Being quiet is not being neutral. Not speaking to protect your profession is not being neutral. In fact, it’s the opposite.” Patrick Palace [42:19 to 42:57]
* “AI ChatGPT doesn’t come to the closing argument. When your client comes into your office and tells their story and needs to connect with somebody, needs to know that someone’s going to be their advocate... AI is not going to do that.” Patrick Palace [28:39 to 28:58]
* “If we don’t stand first for the rule of law and the independence of our profession, then we don’t get to talk about AI. We don’t get to talk about access to justice.” Patrick Palace [41:04 to 41:28]
* “Democracy does not defend itself. The rule of law does not defend itself. The courts cannot defend themselves. And our independence is not going to last unless we stand up to be independent.” Patrick Palace [44:38 to 44:57]
Clips
First We Kill All the Lawyers
Neutrality Is No Longer Neutral
Blockbuster Versus Netflix Moment
Is The Billable Hour Dead?
Patrick’s year as president of the National Conference of Bar Presidents shows what’s possible when thoughtful, principled leadership and AI work in partnership. The same year that produced an AI-assisted strategic plan also produced a unanimous ABA resolution defending the rule of law, proof that these two threads, technology and principle, aren’t in tension so much as they’re both required. As AI reshapes what lawyers bill for and who they can serve, Patrick’s point is clear: the principled foundation has to come first.
Closing Thoughts
What strikes me most about this conversation with Patrick is how naturally the two halves of it fit together, even though on the surface they seem like different topics. We used AI to help plan a year of work, and that year of work culminated in lawyers standing up, unanimously, to defend the very rule of law that makes the profession worth protecting in the first place. That’s not a coincidence. The tools we build are only as good as the principles guiding the people who use them.
I’ve said it before on this show, AI is not going to replace the human core of what we do as lawyers, the advocacy, the trust, the judgment in the room with a client who needs someone in their corner. But it can absolutely help us think bigger, plan better, and reach the people our profession has left underserved for too long. Patrick’s point about the latent market, the people who need legal help and get none, is one I hope more of us devote our efforts to. That’s where AI’s real promise lies: in helping us reach the people we’ve never had the capacity to reach.
Thank you, Patrick, for a year of real leadership, and for taking the time to show us the way!
By the way, if you would like to meet other superlative legal innovators in person, and enjoy an exceptional awards gala celebration, don’t miss the Oscars of Legal Innovation: the American Legal Technology Awards, this October 25, 2026, in Boston. Reserve your Early Bird tickets today and save $100.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lawdroidmanifesto.com/subscribe

Hey there Legal Rebels! 👋I’m excited to share with you the 81st episode of the LawDroid Manifesto podcast, where I will be continuing to interview key legal innovators to learn how they do what they do. I think you’re going to enjoy this one!
Jim Calloway is a bit of a legend and I’m so honored he spent some time with me to share his story. He has a natural charisma and affinity for helping people — which he used over his career to help lawyers better understand how they can utilize technology to benefit themselves and their law practices. And that’s why I’ve dubbed Jim, “The Lawyer’s Lifeline.”
If you want to understand how solo and small firm lawyers actually adapt to technology, and why the human connection still matters more than the machine, you need to listen to this episode. Jim spent close to three decades helping lawyers across an entire state run better practices, and he brings a rare, grounded point of view on where AI fits into all of it.
LawDroid Manifesto is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

From Solo Practice to Shaping a Profession
Join me as I interview Jim Calloway, retired director of the Oklahoma Bar Association’s Management Assistance Program and winner of the 2025 American Legal Technology Lifetime Achievement Award.
In this conversation, Jim walks us through his path from a small Oklahoma town to a large commercial litigation firm, and then to opening his own solo practice when the big-firm lifestyle didn’t fit. That decision, made early and somewhat by instinct, set him on the road to nearly 30 years of helping lawyers across Oklahoma modernize their practices, long before “legal tech” was a category anyone talked about.
Jim also shares his thinking on AI today, where he sees real risk for lawyers who aren’t already good at their work, and real opportunity for lawyers who use it to sharpen skills they already have. He’s candid about the profession’s access to justice gaps, the courts clogged with self-represented litigants, and why he believes the human relationship between lawyer and client is the thing AI won’t replace.
The Skinny
Jim Calloway grew up in a small Oklahoma town, studied journalism and political science before law school, and spent a year at a large commercial litigation firm before deciding the associate lifestyle wasn’t for him. He opened his own solo practice in Norman, Oklahoma, working divorce and bankruptcy matters, while running a computer bulletin board on the side, a hobby that turned out to be the reason he got hired to run the Oklahoma Bar Association’s Management Assistance Program. Over nearly 30 years in that role, Jim taught lawyers across all 77 of Oklahoma’s counties how to adopt new technology, built a successful solo and small firm conference modeled on ABA Techshow, and became one of the field’s most recognized voices, culminating in the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Legal Technology Awards last year. Now retired, he continues to write and speak about how technology is reshaping practice.
Key Takeaways
* Jim’s early electronic bulletin board hobby, run on a second phone line his wife agreed to, gave him the credibility that led directly to his 29-year career in law practice management.
* Many young lawyers who don’t know what they want end up opening a solo practice in whatever town they happen to be in; Jim’s own path started that way.
* Resistance to legal technology was rarely about the tools themselves; it was often about established lawyers being to busy or close to retirement to change.
* Getting busy lawyers to adopt new practices means competing for their attention against an already full desk, not convincing them technology is good in the abstract.
* Jim built a successful solo and small firm conference by directly modeling ABA Techshow, including bringing in strong outside speakers and learning that entertaining delivery makes technical information stick.
* Information is not legal advice; Jim draws a clear line between helping someone understand a courtroom process and telling them what to do, which is where access to justice work can safely operate.
* Unbundled and limited scope legal services let lawyers help self-represented litigants with a specific task, like document drafting, without taking on full representation.
* Jim believes AI will make good lawyers better and expose lawyers who were already weak in their work, pointing to hallucinated briefs as an example.
* AI may shrink the total work available for solo and small firm lawyers.
* Jim argues the strongest protection solo and small firm lawyers have is staying connected to their communities, because people still prefer working with people they know and trust.
Notable Quotes
* “If you’re good at something, AI will help you be better. If you’re not great at something, you may be the one who is in court talking about hallucinated briefs.” Jim Calloway [35:07 to 35:28]
* “If you spend 50 minutes with AI and you build the client five hours, that’s unethical no matter what set of ethics rules you operate under.” Jim Calloway [35:41 to 36:19]
* “People, at least for a while longer, still trust other people more than they trust machine output.” Jim Calloway [37:41 to 38:11]
* “Information is not legal advice. When you see somebody in the courthouse that looks lost and you say, are you lost? Can I help you? That’s not practicing law. That’s just sharing information.” Jim Calloway [26:36 to 26:56]
* “You’ve got to focus on taking care of yourself. If you don’t plan it, if you don’t schedule it, it’s not going to happen, because something will happen every day at a law firm to take up all your time if you let it.” Jim Calloway [41:09 to 41:37]
Clips
How I Landed the Job I Didn’t Expect
Unbundled Law: Help Without Full Representation
The $1000 Switch Moment
AI Helps, Until It Hallucinates
Jim’s career traces a straight line from small-town Oklahoma to national recognition in legal technology, but the thread running through all of it is the same: technology is only useful to the extent it serves people on the other side of the desk. Whether it was an electronic bulletin board in the 1990s or AI today, Jim’s approach has been to meet lawyers where they are, respect how full their days already are, and show them, often with humor, why a new tool is worth their attention. That same instinct shapes his read on AI now. He’s not dismissive of the risk, particularly for lawyers tempted to skip the diligence that has always separated good lawyering from bad, but he’s equally clear that the relationship between a lawyer and their very human clients is not something a model replaces.
Closing Thoughts
Jim’s story is a reminder that innovation rarely comes from a grand plan. It comes from someone’s human curiosity, noticing a gap, experimentation - a computer bulletin board here, a canceled keynote speaker there, and taking the leap into the unknown. What struck me most about Jim is his disarming good humor and practical approach. He’s not selling hype in either direction. He sees technology’s benefits clearly, and he sees the risk to lawyers who use those gains as a shortcut around due diligence just as clearly. But the point he kept coming back to, and the one that AI cannot replace, is for lawyers to use their humanity to their advantage: stay present in the community, show up, be known, and let people trust you the way they’ve always trusted a person, not a machine. That’s not nostalgia. That’s a strategy that will be effective for many years to come.
By the way, if you would like to meet other superlative legal innovators in person, and enjoy an exceptional awards gala celebration, don’t miss the Oscars of Legal Innovation: the American Legal Technology Awards, this October 25, 2026, in Boston. Reserve your Early Bird tickets today and save $100.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lawdroidmanifesto.com/subscribe

Zach Abramowitz has advised law firms, legal departments, and legal tech companies since 2018, and he's watched legal AI adoption up close from the very beginning. In this episode, he explains why so many lawyers had a rocky first experience with AI, why psychology matters as much as capability, and why he believes legal-specific companies, not the big AI labs, will ultimately win the application layer. He also shares an unconventional path through Talmud scholarship and New York stand-up comedy that shapes how he thinks and speaks today. For more conversations like this, visit www.lawdroidmanifesto.com.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lawdroidmanifesto.com/subscribe

Hey there Legal Rebels! 👋I’m excited to share with you episode 79 of the LawDroid Manifesto podcast, where I will be continuing to interview key legal innovators to learn how they do what they do. I think you’re going to enjoy this one!
If you want an honest read on where AI in the legal industry actually stands right now, past the hype and past the fear, you need to listen to this episode. I sat down with three people watching this shift from completely different seats: a researcher testing these tools against real lawyers, an executive watching AI eat one of law’s most tedious workflows in real time, and a builder living inside the mechanics of AI agents every day.
LawDroid Manifesto is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The State of AI in Law: What’s Real, What’s Hype, and What Comes Next
Join me as I sit down with Megan Ma, Joanne Sprague, and Damien Riehl, recorded live at the third annual LawDroid AI Conference, for a State of AI panel that strips away a year of hype and asks a simple question: what has AI actually delivered in the legal industry, and where has it clearly fallen short?
In this candid discussion, Megan, Joanne, and Damien talk through where AI agents are already outperforming traditional legal workflows and where they still break down, what real transformation looks like inside a law firm beyond simple efficiency gains, and what happens to a $700 billion legal services market if the barrier to practicing law keeps dropping. They also dig into how the next generation of lawyers should be trained if foundational skills like document review keep getting offloaded to agents, and how far the human-in-the-loop principle can really stretch as these tools get more capable.
Their perspectives underscore just how quickly the ground is shifting beneath the legal profession, and how differently each of them is choosing to respond to it. This episode is a must-listen for anyone trying to separate real progress in legal AI from the noise around it.
The Skinny
This episode brings together three different vantage points on AI in the legal industry: an academic researching how law firms actually deploy these tools, an e-discovery executive watching AI reshape one of law’s most tedious workflows in real time, and a legal tech builder living inside the day-to-day mechanics of AI agents. Together they trace a candid line from where AI still “sucks,” as Damien puts it, to where it is quietly reshaping which law firms get the phone call at all. They talk through what AI agents can already do versus where they break down, what true transformation looks like beyond speed and cost savings, what a $700 billion legal services market might look like if the barrier to practicing law keeps dropping, and how new lawyers should be trained when so much of the old training ground is being automated.
Key Takeaways
* AI’s biggest legal-industry impact so far isn’t speed, it’s culture: attorneys are experimenting with these tools for the first time, and retention on the tools that work is high.
* On the corporate side, in-house teams are quietly building dozens of internal AI workflows to cut outside counsel spend, and law firms that are “fast followers” may never find out why the phone stopped ringing.
* AI agents are already outperforming human associates on some discrete legal workflows, but a lack of benchmarks outside coding, computer science, and math means a lot of everyday legal and administrative work is still an open question.
* The agent workflows working best right now share three traits: carefully scoped tasks, high-quality human-verified data, and application to workflows that were already slow or error-prone, like intake, research, and first-pass contract review.
* Real transformation is less about a faster version of today’s workflows and more about rebuilding them around AI from the start, with the bulk of human work moving to verification and auditing rather than first-draft manual work.
* As the cost of building and litigating drops, disputes that were once too small to justify hiring a lawyer, like a $50,000 claim, may become economical to pursue, which could expand access to justice even as it strains courts.
* Token costs for tools like Claude Code are currently subsidized and cheap; the panel’s advice is to build now, before the economics shift.
* Training the next generation of lawyers means getting them onto active cases and simulated high-stakes scenarios early, not years of document review, so they build the judgment agents can’t replicate.
* “Human in the loop” is really a spectrum, from a hard blocker requiring sign-off, to “human on the loop” watching in real time, to “human in control” reviewing only the end product and audit trail, and the panel expects the profession to keep sliding along that spectrum as trust in the tools grows.
Notable Quotes
* “I think that Hemingway said that bankruptcy happens slowly and then quickly. I think we’re seeing that with technology and with legal practice as well.” Damien Riehl [05:15 to 05:25]
* “What we noticed was that the machines were already outperforming the human associates that were doing those exact same workflows.” Megan Ma [16:38 to 16:45]
* “We are so still in our GeoCities, Ask Jeeves moment of this particular technology.” Joanne Sprague [37:13 to 37:21]
* “It’s super cheap to build right now. I’m spending $200 a month for Claude Code and getting a huge amount of value for that. But that’s not going to last forever. So I would say that if you’re thinking about building, jump in now.” Damien Riehl [39:07 to 39:28]
* “Every single day your job is to look for that needle in the haystack, what could go wrong. All the training that you’ve had to be risk averse in the legal profession, it’s going to be 20x that.” Megan Ma [48:19 to 48:31]
Clips
AI is Killing Law Firm Billable Work
Machines Outperforming Associates
Legal Work Unrecognizable Soon
Why I Still Hired A Lawyer
Strip away everything else from this conversation and one thread runs through all three panelists: the tools are already good enough that the interesting question isn’t whether AI can help, it’s how lawyers build the judgment, verification habits, and accountability structures to work alongside it responsibly. Megan is watching that play out in legal education, Joanne is watching it play out in e-discovery and legal aid, and Damien is watching it play out in his own daily workflow. Different vantage points, same conclusion.
Closing Thoughts
What stuck with me most from this conversation is how consistently these three perspectives converged from completely different vantage points. Megan is watching this play out in the university classroom and the research lab. Joanne is watching it play out inside legal practice. Damien is watching it play out in his own workflow, hour by hour. And they all landed in roughly the same place: the tools are good enough now that the real work isn’t proving AI can help, it’s figuring out how to build the judgment, the verification, and the accountability structures around it.
I think lawyers need to hear Damien’s point about the phone not ringing. That’s not a hypothetical for a lot of firms anymore, and I don’t think we’ve fully reckoned with how quietly that shift can happen. At the same time, this conversation didn’t leave me pessimistic. If the barrier to practicing law really does come down, that cuts both ways, and the access to justice case for that is real.
Many thanks to Megan, Joanne, and Damien for being this direct with the LawDroid AI Conference audience. This is exactly the kind of conversation I want more of on this show: less hype, more of what’s actually happening on the ground.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lawdroidmanifesto.com/subscribe

Tifiny Swedensky spent years inside the Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing world before founding Sharp Cookie, the fractional CMO practice she runs today for law firms. In this episode of LawDroid Manifesto, she explains why marketing needs an owner, not just a plan, and why the tools promising to replace that owner keep handing firms a to-do list without ever doing the work. Drawing on the Doorman Fallacy and the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect, she offers a grounded, practical read on where AI genuinely helps and where human judgment and follow-through are still irreplaceable. She also makes a compelling case for Substack as an underused marketing tool for attorneys. Listen, reflect, and see your own practice a little differently at www.lawdroidmanifesto.com.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lawdroidmanifesto.com/subscribe