Bench & Bar May/June 2025

LAWYER WELLBEING

F or lawyers, memor y truly does change over time—not just in terms of cognitive facility, but also as a function of what we find ourselves called upon to remember. It was once considered among the most critical measures of courtroom effectiveness to have internalized the names, dates, essen tial holdings, and most quotable passages of as many relevant cases as possible in our carefully delineated areas of specialization. It’s still important, of course, to know our Memory By Dr. Eric Y. Drogin way around the issues in a more than cursory fashion, but these days we can also rely on a fair amount of help. Not just on the eve of battle, but actually while taking fire at trial, lawyers can access all sorts of information with astonishing rapidity on the basis of searches conducted in real time with handheld devices—a far cry from the era when bulky, multivolume state and regional reporters would most effectively have been marketed by bundling them with health club memberships. The most recent of technological inno vations are threatening to nudge us still

further from traditional notions and applications

of memory. This refers, of course, to AI (Artificial Intelligence), the biggest single game-changer in legal practice since short hand. Although current examples of purely AI-driven legal reasoning are often as easy to spot as the products of voice recognition software were at the turn of the century (for example, “a turnkey’s climate privilege was inserted”), come back in, say five years and try to discern between the work product of the slickest AI-wielding apps versus that of an undercaffeinated associate.

46 may/june 2025