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The Name Game: Law Firm Trade Names Are Still Underutilized

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During and after the pandemic, bar associations removed certain rules that were antithetical to remote practice, including so-called ‘ bona fi d e office’ rules, in many jurisdiction s .     Now, while not directly related to remote practice, bar associations also took aim at the prohibition (in some jurisdictions ) on brand names .  These days, not a single bar association ethics code proscribes the use of brand names by law firms.     And yet, the majority of law firms still choose a business names with the principal lawyers’ names in it.     In many ways, that’s a missed opportunity.     A brand name confers lots of benefits on law firms .  First, just slapping someone’s name on a business, offers up nothing about what the business does .  With a brand name, you can allude to, or define , the services you deliver .  For example, if you add ‘injury’ to the brand name for a personal injury law firm, that gives folks a ...
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Hiding in Plain Sight: Prompt Injection Attacks Are a New AI Threat

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Artificial intelligence is a massive productivity driver for every business category , including for law firms.     Of course, as with any new technology , AI does not come without risks.     That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use AI in your law practice .  As an attorney, your obligation is not to eliminate risk, but to take reasonable precautions against it.  The first step in that process is understanding which credible threats exist around the use of AI.     Unfortunately, there is a new one you should be aware of: prompt injection attacks.     Prompt injections are , in ess ence , commands hidden in AI data inputs .  The AI tool will follow embedded commands, as well as direct user inputs, because it does not effectively differentiate between the two.     Now, users can inject prompts on their own – some do so to try to ‘ jailbreak’ AI products – but, what business owners are more concerned about would be pr...
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Combiner Wars: AI Usage Is Yet Another Reason for Lawyers to Stop Siloing Data

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Law firms traditionally have an issue with data seepage, in the sense that most do not have a single repository for all firm documents – so, those files end up congregating in other spaces, like: a random Dropbox account, or a thumbdrive , or on somebody’s desktop.     Now, that’s a problem , in general – you should have all your law firm data in one place, rather than being siloed, because it makes it far easier to find things, collaborate on documents, manage data security and integrate systems .     And, if that wasn’t enough of a reason to organize your law firm documents into a single holding tank (honestly, that should be: Google Drive , if you use Google Workspace & Microsoft Sharepoint , if you use Microsoft 365 ), there is another pressing compulsion, now: your increasing use of artificial intelligence.     There’s a lot of concern right now about frontier AI models breaking containment ( which has already happened , numerous times), bec...
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