The legal profession is undergoing one of its most significant transformations in generations. Private equity and venture financing are challenging long-standing restrictions on law firm ownership. Artificial intelligence is changing how legal work is performed. And new models of human-AI collaboration are transforming how legal talent is deployed. This short course asks what happens when these three forces collide. Questions to be addressed include: If investors finance law firms, who ultimately controls law practice - and how can governance and legal ethics rules protect independent professional judgment? How should law firms redesign staffing, training, and promotion when human lawyers increasingly work alongside AI systems? Can incumbent firms reinvent themselves as AI-native organizations, or will entirely new competitors reshape the market? Throughout the course, students will have the opportunity to engage directly with practitioners working at the frontier of these questions, and to develop a short paper or position memo on what the law firm of the future will look like as capital, technology, and talent converge. Elements used in grading: Paper.
1 units · Law Mandatory P/R/F
The legal profession is undergoing one of its most significant transformations in generations. Private equity and venture financing are challenging long-standing restrictions on law firm ownership. Artificial intelligence is changing how legal work is performed. And new models of human-AI collaboration are transforming how legal talent is deployed. This short course asks what happens when these three forces collide. Questions to be addressed include: If investors finance law firms, who ultimately controls law practice - and how can governance and legal ethics rules protect independent professional judgment? How should law firms redesign staffing, training, and promotion when human lawyers increasingly work alongside AI systems? Can incumbent firms reinvent themselves as AI-native organizations, or will entirely new competitors reshape the market? Throughout the course, students will have the opportunity to engage directly with practitioners working at the frontier of these questions, and to develop a short paper or position memo on what the law firm of the future will look like as capital, technology, and talent converge. Elements used in grading: Paper.
Offered in Autumn 2026 at Stanford University.