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94 LEGAL PROBLEM ALIGNMENT AI initiatives should be driven by clearly defined legal, operational, or business problems -- not by novelty of the technology itself. While technology drives strategic innovation, a solution in search of a problem rarely works in the legal industry. If you hand out licenses to a new tool and hope for adoption, it fails every time. The expressions "shelf tech" and "throwing money into a trash can" come to mind. Being a devoted cinephile, I am also reminded of a quote from Steven Spielberg's classic film Jurassic Park. "[Y]our scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." While the line highlighted the importance of considering ethical and societal impact of scientific advancements in biotech, the analogy loosely translates to legal technology. Innovation for innovation's sake does not equal success in law firms and corporate legal departments. Instead, legal technologists must develop a thoughtful approach focused on the problems that AI can help solve and how to avoid the problems that AI can help create. Attorneys are problem solvers at their core, so starting with the problem and working towards a solution is no new feat. While carefully devising an integration strategy seems slow compared to the breakneck pace of AI advancement, rushing to deploy the "latest and greatest" tool without a clear strategy often backfires. AI must be incorporated into legal use cases specific to an organization's needs. Commonly marketed use cases include legal research, document summarization, brief drafting, and contract drafting. But asking an AI chatbot to draft a 60-page appellate brief from scratch may not yield the best results. Consider picking up "low-hanging fruit" while swinging for the fences. One area where AI excels is scaling tedious, typically nonbillable administrative work that consumes attorney time. An exemplar use case that has been developed at my firm centers around billable hour tracking and client invoice description generation. By integrating enterprise GenAI tools into our email, meetings, document management system, task planner, and timekeeping software to assist with that process, hours of administrative time per attorney per reporting cycle are saved. Practitioners can then use that time to do what attorneys are meant to do: provide value to clients. It takes hard work to ensure AI success. By developing a strategy that addresses real needs of attorneys, staff, leadership, and clients, the chance of successful AI adoption greatly increases. RISK MANAGEMENT, ETHICS, AND PROMPT FEAR Strategic adoption must account for confidentiality, privilege, accuracy, court orders, regulatory compliance, client requirements, and professional responsibility guidance. Like any scientific breakthrough, AI's impact depends largely on how it is used. AI can dramatically increase the capacity of legal professionals, enabling competitive advantage and cost-effective services, but only if implemented responsibly. For attorneys, that includes keeping risk management and ethical compliance in mind. The focus, however, should be on protecting value rather than enabling fear.

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