AltaClaro’s Post

Our executive legal editor, Patricia A. Libby, authored her second piece for Bloomberg Law. Her last article discussed the crisis of critical thinking among early-career law firm associates. This piece covers what law firms can do about it. As a multi-decade large firm litigator, Libby has valuable views on how law firm associates can learn the skills needed to be effective lawyers. A few takeaways: 🖼️ Associates need the big picture. 😴 Learning methods that aren't experiential (i.e. lunch-and-learns) can fail to instill meaningful learning. 💪 Training should emulate real world legal practice. 📊 Firms should give data-driven feedback. https://hubs.ly/Q02DWDCJ0

Firms are growing their associate ranks by 2.7% per year as the market normalizes post-pandemic, with about 10,000 new associates added to NLJ 500 firms since 2018, the National Law Journal reported. With the costs of recruiting, onboarding and training a new associate estimated at approximately $400,000, that group of new associates could reflect approximately $4 billion in training and recruiting costs across the top 500 firms. 💵😲 AltaClaro works with law firms' internal professional development teams to reduce the time and cost of training new associates. Our team can assess your current training spend-per-associate and discuss ways to reduce this number. https://hubs.ly/Q02DJ3TN0

😎 It's hard to believe we're approaching the midpoint of the summer, with summer associates successfully completing heir first few weeks at law firms across the nation. At AltaClaro, we believe that the early experiences and insights gained during these weeks are pivotal in shaping legal careers. We hope the skills, knowledge, and connections these associates are building will serve as a strong foundation for their professional journeys. ICYMI, we're proud to be training summer associates on leading-edge topics like prompt engineering for #generativeAI at firms like Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP and across the AmLaw 200 on the fundamentals of legal practice. https://hubs.ly/Q02DgNth0 Wishing all of the summer associates the best as you continue to learn and grow as legal professionals! 🌻 #SummerAssociates #LawFirms #LegalProfessionals #LearningAndGrowth #AltaClaro

This Juneteenth, we'd like to express our appreciation to the lawyers who are doing pro bono work in the important area of racial justice. While Juneteenth commemorates freedom day, the fight for justice and equality continues. Check out the recently released Vault law firm rankings for pro bono practice for a list of top pro bono firms, including our clients Ropes & Gray LLP, Dechert LLP, Morrison Foerster, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Affiliates, Jenner & Block & Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP. https://hubs.ly/Q02CthY40

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP is on a hiring spree for M&A and private equity partners, according to Bloomberg Law. The firm has been hiring partners, mostly in London and New York, from rival firms, perhaps signaling the firm predicts an uptick in deal volume later this year and into next. https://hubs.ly/Q02ChH9z0 We help M&A and private equity teams skill up to prepare for busy seasons, with training for lawyers in Emerging Growth, M&A, Capital Markets, Tech Transactions and more. Get in touch to ensure your teams are prepared to handle whatever deal trends may come in H2. https://hubs.ly/Q02ChB8B0

Have you been following "Hallucinate-gate"? Last month's study from Stanford, “Hallucination-Free? Assessing the Reliability of Leading AI Legal Research Tools,” which found that generative AI-powered tools from legal research behemoths Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis hallucinated more than 17% of the time, has received significant pushback. The study was updated, but findings were, in some cases, even less flattering to some of the vendors. https://hubs.ly/Q02BMQTP0 Our take? Generative AI technology is changing and improving rapidly, even as it's being used in legal work. This isn't a reason for organizations to fall behind the adoption curve, but it is cause for better training. It's critical for organizations to train their professionals on how to use generative AI in a vendor-neutral way, critically assess its outputs and ⚠️watch out for hallucinations. We've trained 1,000s of lawyers and allied professionals in the AmLaw 200 on just this task.

ICYMI, our Executive Legal Editor, Patricia A. Libby, authored an insights article for Bloomberg Law on new lawyers and critical thinking. In her decades-long career as a litigator and law professor, here are some of the top examples she has seen where critical thinking is falling short: 📋 Drafting a contract using a sample agreement and leaving in provisions that don't belong there. 👆 Leaving arguments in a draft motion from a sample motion that are inapplicable. 🤷♀️ Citing cases without explaining how they support the proposition. ⛅ Marking up a document without considering business goals, resources or leverage. Read Patricia's piece here, and let us know in the comments: what are some things new lawyers sometimes miss? https://hubs.ly/Q02Bpm2S0

Thanks also to Dan Roe of The American Lawyer for your piece on law firms training summers on #promptengineering for #generativeAI. We're thrilled to be helping incredible firms like K&L Gates and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP train their associates and summers on this technology. In this piece, our CEO Abdi Shayesteh talks about the importance of vendor-agnostic prompt engineering training. As more and more tools hit the market, it's key for lawyers to learn the critical thinking skills needed to interact with generative AI. https://lnkd.in/eJxpMbF3

The hottest legal training course you can offer your summer associates? AltaClaro's prompt engineering course! Thanks to Justin Wise Bloomberg Law for your piece today on how we're training Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP's summer associates on prompt engineering for all variety of generative AI tools, and how we're also training 15 of the AmLaw 200's associates on this crucial skill, including K&L Gates. https://hubs.ly/Q02zvSh80 We're seeing more and more firms commit to providing training to adopt generative AI effectively, as our CEO Abdi Shayesteh points out in the piece: "For the first time the legal industry is moving at a better pace and looking at how to adopt this technology,” said Shayesteh. “It’s because they see the competitive advantage from those who adopt this the right way.” If you're NOT one of the firms included in this roundup, there's still time to deploy our prompt engineering training for your summer associates! Reach out here: https://hubs.ly/Q02zvSh90