AI · The Business of Law · Since March 2023

Brainyacts.

293 essays on what AI actually does to legal practice. Written while it happened, not after.

Quoted in Thomson Reuters · Bloomberg Law
Why This Archive

Everyone became an expert in the last three years.

The record shows who was early.

I started writing days after GPT 4 shipped. Three years and 293 issues later, the field is loud and the slop is deep. This archive is the difference: timestamped thinking, tested claims, positions taken before they were safe to take.

Every issue dated · Every claim on the record · No hype
Start Here

New to Brainyacts, or sent here by a colleague?

Three essays carry the argument.

Collections

The archive, organized by argument.

Not by date. Six threads run through three years of writing. Each one reads in order.

Series · The Build

The Legal Engineer

The role, the economics, and the proof of work: I built the $320K job for a few hundred dollars.
Series · Complete in Three Parts

Human on the Hook

Accountability when AI does the work but a human signs the pleading.
Theme · The Money

The Economics of Legal AI

Billable hours, pricing, productization. The questions firms keep answering vaguely.
Theme · The Guardrails

Risk, Security and Supervision

The uncomfortable essays vendors wish I had not written. Governance for people who sign things.
Reference · Living Document

The Working Glossary.

The legal AI terms that matter, defined plainly, updated as the field moves. Link it. Forward it. Hand it to your associates.

Open the Glossary
Latest

Recent essays.

The full archive holds all 293 issues.

The Writer

Josh Kubicki. Professor, advisor, builder.

The newsletter is where the thinking happens first.

I teach at Indiana University's Maurer School of Law. I advise managing partners, chairs, executive committees, and practice group leaders on strategy: business models, practice group economics, competitive position, and what AI changes about all three. The essays here are the working notes behind that practice. Reporters, firm leaders, and GCs read them. Some even subscribe.

293
Essays
3+
Years Documented
7,100
Subscribers
Written while it happened.