Jordan Furlong
@jordanfurlong
Legal sector analyst, consultant, author, speaker, and reformer (he/him). I publish a free bi-weekly Substack newsletter: "We have the chance to turn the pages over." Luke 12:24-32.
From a Fall 2025 report from the National Center for State Courts, AccessLex and TR, "The unprepared lawyer":
I’d pay real money for this one. Amazing work with the ‘83 White Sox logo.
Stay off Polymarket. Stay away from prediction markets of all types. They're predatory environments, and you're the prey. (via Matt Levine's newsletter) www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Will we soon see a large-scale migration of lawyers, leaving BigLaw and corporate practice to help individuals with their legal needs? I think so, and weirdly enough, AI could be the reason. My newest Substack newsletter explains why. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/the-rising...
New from me at @slawdotca.bsky.social: As AI gradually becomes the primary engine of legal production, law firm business models built around lawyer-centrism inevitably will give way. Watch AI-native law firms for clues on what to do next. www.slaw.ca/2026/02/11/t...
Lawyers' professional judgment is their most valuable asset. If we could isolate and apply its components, we could do everything from quality-testing AI to re-engineering lawyer formation. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/how-to-sur...
How can we mobilize more lawyers to defend the rule of law? Maybe by making public service mandatory for lawyers --converting ineffective MCLE programs into competence-enhancing public legal service requirements. More in my newest Substack: jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/advancing-...
New from me at Substack: What happens when private equity meets artificial intelligence in the legal sector? The profit engine of law firms changes address -- and lawyers get a chance to rethink their purpose. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/the-migrat...
New from me at Substack: My analysis of the surging wave of private equity activity in the legal sector. My message to lawyers and legal regulators: Be very, very careful here. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/private-eq...
New from me at Substack: What happens when the capacity to solve legal problems is no longer exclusive to lawyers, and can instead be found on every desktop and smartphone? What does it mean when legal reasoning becomes ubiquitous? We're about to find out. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/the-new-le...
I'm hoping the full list of research questions might be included in the full report if they send it. My info comes from these two articles: www.law.com/legaltechnew... and www.legaltechnologyhub.com/contents/can.... A couple of the questions are provided below:
Nikki Shaver (@nikjet.bsky.social)'s summary of the report at @legaltechnologyhub.com is important: Nobody is saying that "AI is better than lawyers" in general terms. But there are still three significant takeaways from this report that really stand out for me:
The big differentiator was "authoritativeness," which measures the strength and validity of primary and secondary sources and citations. The legal AI platforms significantly outperformed ChatGPT, as you'd expect. But both types of AI beat the lawyers (who hailed from a range of AmLaw 100 firms).
But that first study didn't cover legal research; this one did. And the results should be a wakeup call for anyone still sleeping through the start of the legal AI era: Lawyers finished behind not only the legal research AI platforms, but also ChatGPT. (!)
New from me at Substack: In the post-AI legal sector, lawyers will be called on for different functions than before. Here are three essential attributes lawyers must possess to meet that new demand. We need to start training lawyers to develop them -- now. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/three-core...
My newest Substack forecasts the imminent divergence of law firms from lawyers, with firms heading toward techno-commoditization and lawyers ascending to unique law-infused client guidance -- if we give lawyers the tools to make the transition successfully. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/the-diverg...
New from me at Substack: Sooner or later, AI will take over most legal task performance, which will spark an identity crisis for many lawyers. So now's the time to re-envision what lawyers could and should do beyond "legal work" and upgrade to higher roles. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/the-identi...
My newest Substack is both a deep dive into the two fundamental reasons why we have lawyers, and an urgent call for the legal profession to take up the challenge of the second role by defending our society's collective aspiration and moral architecture. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/what-are-l...
In fairness, I once used the AI-generated image below on the first slide of a presentation to a large law firm retreat. I literally didn't notice it until we were loading up the Powerpoint that morning. But I had the presence of mind to ask the audience, "So -- notice anything odd about this image?"
Another day, another lawyer filing AI-generated fake caselaw with a court. AI is inadvertently revealing a crisis of lawyer competence, and we're the ones who'll pay the price. My newest Substack explains why the legal profession is playing with fire here. jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/the-fallac...