If there’s one thing I’m not, it’s an early adopter. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not a Luddite either. I enjoy and appreciate technological developments, though I often begin using them later than others do. We didn’t have color television, or for that matter a push button telephone, for our first 14 years of marriage until we moved to Teaneck in 1984. And I was still listening to vinyl records long after CDs took over the market, continued with CDs after they were replaced by Spotify, and didn’t get an iPod or iPhone until they were many versions in. Sure, I use social media, but as a baby boomer, I limit myself to Facebook; no Twitter (oops, X), Tik Tok, Instagram, or, God forbid, Truth Social. And I wasn’t much different as a lawyer, where for most of my career, even after WestLaw was available, my research platform (using my great-niece Tova’s language) was — gasp! — books.

It’s therefore not surprising that I haven’t used Artificial Intelligence very much. As a retired lawyer, I do, of course, understand AI’s benefits as a first step in legal research. I emphasize first step, though, because using it for final briefs has resulted in hundreds of embarrassing instances of attorneys relying on AI-invented hallucinated cases and quotes. I can’t fathom how, especially in an adversarial system where your, well, adversary is fine-combing your work to find even the smallest error to exploit, lawyers can submit arguments based on decisions they never read. In my briefs, I always read and cite-checked every case mentioned, as well as every word appearing between quotation marks. Failing to do so not only violates basic professional ethical standards, but also, especially in light of the now-current exorbitant billable hourly charges, constitutes theft of the fees paid by clients for such (non)work.

In my current non-legal life, however, I recently realized it was time to join the 2020s. So, just as I moved from (a) reading print books to (b) listening to books on tape through wired earbuds on a Walkman to (c) listening to audio books downloaded to my iPhone in seconds from........

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