Creative Counsel Law

not legal advice, just my inner monologue and intrusive thoughts #LiveLoveLaw

Hot take: unregistered is unserious. Your brand is not an asset until it is trademarked. Until then, it’s just an aesthetic.

@AdamStarrLawyer @AMandoSch I’ve put almost this exact phrase in an email before 😅 Sometimes being an a-hole is warranted.

@AMandoSch Every single person reading the brief thinks he’s an a-hole.

Some douchebag lawyer just filed his Reply brief to me and stated that "any 1L law student would understand this basic principle of property law." That's funny, because the Judge didn't understand it last time we were in Court, hence the brief. And guess what, he's a Professor at a law school. I mean was, he got fired and married his student. Anyways, someone's having a bad day, and it's not me. I can't fucking stand lawyers in general. I assure you most of them are just as terrible as people warn 🤣

Just rewatched Black Mirror’s “Hated in the Nation” episode from 2016, and in 2026 it feels more like a documentary than dystopia. Autonomous AI with no human oversight. Facial recognition and mass surveillance funded by the government. All pitched as public good. We should be paying attention. It was way too damn accurate. law.unimelb.edu.au/news/caide/bla…

Unrelated, but related, this Command X app lets me cut and paste files and folders as a Mac user 🤌🏼💋 and the guy who created it is my hero. I don’t want to copy and paste files, I don’t want to move files, I want to CUT and paste them using the Mac equivalent of Control X. sindresorhus.com/command-x

I was showing my wife something on my macbook at the weekend. Told her to "right click" on the trackpad. She had no idea what I was talking about. Asked a friend that came over too and was met with the same confusion. Having an existential crisis. Does no one use right click?!?

THIS. I’ve been saying this. When AI companies claim they want to “institutionalize proprietary knowledge” and “streamline complex internal workflows” through “customized, trainable models” that ingest firm’s historical documents, templates, and procedures…babes, that’s not ultimately for your benefit. It’s for theirs.

@Wildlaw406 @ItsMattsLaw Came here to say this.

@ItsMattsLaw Frequently, you get to play therapist.

being a lawyer is acting in a play where you’re constantly shifting parts

@LauderRobe51182 @SellersCounsel That’s…not how legal ethics rules work.

@SellersCounsel People ask for advice on forums and social media all the time, and lawyers reply. No one assumes liability except the individual who acts on proper/improper advice. Liability rests on the individual who acts based on the advice - it always has.

AI companies are providing professional services. They’re just hiding behind “I’m not a lawyer” or “I’m not a doctor” disclaimers. Either they need professional liability, or they need to stop. Pick one.

How is “informed consent” and “assuming the risk” even possible in any kind of meaningful sense, if people aren’t qualified to understand and evaluate the difference between AI’s legal output and advice from a licensed lawyer who’s trained, experienced, and professionally accountable for the counsel they give?

@SellersCounsel I get what you're saying. But it really is better than no lawyer and no doctor, in many situations. I don't like the idea of forcing people to not use AI or not allowing AI to help people. I prefer to let people decide.

Early in my legal career, an experienced surveyor I worked with and really respect explained to me that surveying is an art, not a science. I had a client who just couldn’t wrap his head around the concept there wasn’t one single precise, accurate conclusion or interpretation that was inherently the correct one, it’s a compilation of deed descriptions, surrounding parcels, physical markers, topography, historical context, and judgment all being reconciled together. Law is kind of similar in that respect.

Exactly this! Even with the right inputs AI can’t replace counsel that lawyers give. It may be possible to have it learn to analyze documents for what you (as an attorney) like to add or change and save time but I still can’t imagine ever turning over an entire legal workflow to AI

The law isn’t a vending machine. The problem with the whole premise that “AI will replace lawyers” is the flawed assumption that people know how to give AI the right facts in the first place and actually know what they need. They don’t. They often give their subjective version of the story, not a legally complete one. They don’t know what facts matter, what legal issue they actually have, or what legal risks are hiding in the details. And of course they don’t. They’re not lawyers. They didn’t go to law school. They haven’t read thousands of cases or spent years practicing law and learning how small differences can change the entire analysis. Law is more like a choose-your-own-adventure book than a math problem. Lawyers are trained to spot certain patterns, anticipate potential plot twists, and know which outcomes are more likely than others. AI can replace some legal busy work. It can’t replace legal judgment and experience. Even AI tools built for lawyers still get things wrong. Access to information is not the same as expertise. Getting an answer is not the same as getting a right answer.

One thing I’ve noticed is that when I request some kind of legal analysis and specifically ask AI to recommend the most aggressive strategies available to Party A (hypothetically my client) as a thought exercise or ask for suggested language for a certain clause drafted heavily in Party A’s favor, AI still tends to drift back toward neutrality and subtly advocate for Party B or sneak in terms meant to protect Party B that aren’t actually favorable to Party A.

@creativeatlaw Yes. I have a colleague that sends me AI legal analyses. I’ve looked at 15 of these things and they are wrong every time. Even simple questions about filing deadlines can’t be answered correctly.

That’s a great analogy! And completely tracks with my experience working with engineers. I’ve found they can get really hung up on contract provisions because they’re used to working in situations where if you analyze something hard enough, you can determine one clean, definitive answer. But legal analysis and interpretation just doesn’t work like that. You can’t just look at one piece of the story or one clause in isolation. Everything has to be considered together contextually, as the sum of its parts.

@creativeatlaw Yes. I often tell them the law is a tool box and we may have to pull several tools out until we find one that works… I represent many engineers who think the law is a checklist. This trips them up and especially on the role of AI

@310Ventures @SMB_Attorney Lol, thanks for your concern.

@creativeatlaw @SMB_Attorney If you think that AI can’t be a better lawyer than you then you are gonna have a tough time in the future

You guys don’t get it yet. Everyone keeps saying AI is going to replace lawyers. I don’t think people understand how this actually plays out. Let’s say you use AI to draft a contract. The contract misses something important. A year later it costs you two million dollars. What do you do? Right now, you sue your lawyer. In the AI world, you’d sue the AI company. Two things can happen. Option 1: The AI company has liability for legal advice. If that’s the case, every AI company will immediately stop letting consumers use AI for real legal work. The liability risk is massive. Option 2: The AI company has no liability because of disclaimers. If that happens, every state bar in the country will say consumers are being exposed to unregulated legal advice and call it the unauthorized practice of law. And they’ll shut it down that way. Either path leads to the same outcome. Consumer AI will be limited to generic “Wikipedia-style” legal information and LegalZoom level document prep. But the real AI tools? Those will live inside law firms. Lawyers will use them to move faster, analyze more data, and run way more matters at once. The M&A lawyer doing 5 deals at a time will do 50. Trial lawyers will run far more cases simultaneously. The idea that AI replaces lawyers probably dies. The more likely outcome is that AI supercharges the best lawyers and makes the profession even more profitable than ever.

Yes, brilliant idea. Let’s hold the lawyers representing the Department of Justice to a lower ethical standard than every other attorney. Nothing says “justice” quite like *less* accountability and *less* independent oversight for the people we’ve entrusted with enforcing the law for the entire country.

@310Ventures @SMB_Attorney That’s not the flex you think it is. Sounds like your lawyer just understood exactly how much you value legal protection.

@creativeatlaw @SMB_Attorney I did this exact thing with Grok 4.20. Took the Lawyer 10 minutes If you’re using some free AI then that could be a problem

@BecauseCulture @bscholl THIS, but applicable everywhere. Especially because the people cutting corners usually aren’t the ones living with the consequences. Those get pushed downstream and affect the people buying, renting, or occupying the building.

@bscholl Believe me, if you are in Miami, you want the permitting process because it's the ultimate quality control in a place where everyone is trying to cut corners at best.

Actually, we shouldn't have building permits at all. Building should work like driving: have reasonable rules. Break them in trivial ways, get fined. Break them in serious ways, lose your license. Hurt people recklessly and go to jail.

@310Ventures @SMB_Attorney This scenario typically means review takes twice as long for the the lawyer than normal because the contract is so bad/inappropriately drafted for the client’s actual legal needs.

@SMB_Attorney Option three, you have AI draft a contract and then you pay a lawyer to review it. He spends 10 minutes on it instead of three hours