🎙️ Carolyn Elefant Confirmed as First Speaker for The Lawyer’s Podcasting Conference!

I am pleased to announce the first confirmed speaker for The Lawyer’s Podcasting Conference: Carolyn Elefant, the lawyer, author, mentor, and longtime force behind My Shingle. ⚖️

Carolyn will join us in McLean, Virginia, on Friday, November 13, and Saturday, November 14, 2026, for two days devoted to helping lawyers create podcasts that build authority, serve their audiences, and hold up under professional scrutiny.

The event will be held at 1765 Greensboro Station Place, 9th Floor, McLean, Virginia 22102, roughly one minute on foot from the Greensboro Metro station on the Silver Line. That means attendees can arrive from Dulles or Reagan National by train, walk to the venue, and spend their time thinking about their show rather than their rental car. 🚇

Carolyn is the first confirmed faculty member aside from me, your host and presenter, and I could not be more pleased to begin the speaker announcements with her.

Why Carolyn belongs in this room

For decades, Carolyn has provided independent lawyers with serious, practical guidance on building sustainable practices. Through My Shingle, her writing, and her work in the solo and small-firm legal community, she has consistently addressed the questions that arrive after the easy answers run out:

• How do lawyers build an independent practice without compromising judgment?

• How do we communicate our value without overselling?

• How do we adopt new methods and technology without losing sight of professional duties?

• How do we create work that is sustainable rather than merely busy?

Those questions sit at the center of lawyer podcasting.

A podcast can be a powerful professional platform. It can make a lawyer easier to find. It can demonstrate substantive knowledge. It can introduce a lawyer’s voice and judgment before a prospective client ever makes contact. It can strengthen referral relationships and build a library of useful, durable content.

But the same microphone that helps a lawyer reach an audience can also create ethical problems at scale. A casual client story can disclose more than intended. A promotional claim can travel across jurisdictions. A discussion of a pending matter can create risk. A contractor, editor, virtual assistant, or AI tool can introduce questions of supervision, confidentiality, and verification.

Carolyn’s perspective will help keep the conference grounded in the reality of independent practice. 🎧

The ethics session is the centerpiece

The conference’s ethics block is not an obligatory closing slide. It is being designed as a dedicated CLE-oriented session and working exercise.

We will examine the practical rules that lawyer-podcasters need to understand before they publish.

Model Rule 1.6 is where client stories begin. “Anonymous” does not always mean unidentifiable. Details that feel harmless in isolation can identify a client when assembled by someone who knows the matter. Written informed consent is often the safer choice when a story is recognizable or commercially useful.

Rules 7.1 through 7.3 matter because a podcast can be a communication about a lawyer’s services. The analysis does not stop at federal or ABA language. Lawyers must also examine the advertising and solicitation rules in the jurisdictions where they practice and where their content is directed.

Rule 5.5 matters the moment a locally focused show reaches a national audience. A podcast host should understand the line between legal education and individualized legal advice, especially when listeners begin asking questions in comments, direct messages, or follow-up calls.

Rule 1.1, including Comment 8, addresses technological competence. The duty is not to become an audio engineer. It is to understand the benefits and risks of the technology a lawyer uses. That includes recording platforms, hosting services, transcription tools, AI-assisted editing, synthetic media, and the systems that distribute content beyond the lawyer’s direct control.

Rule 5.3 applies when nonlawyers assist with production. An editor, assistant, agency, or technology vendor can make podcasting manageable. The lawyer still has obligations to choose, instruct, and supervise those providers appropriately. That includes reviewing transcripts and show notes before publication, protecting client information, and maintaining final judgment over the content.

As I discussed in MTC: Hidden AI, GEO, and the ABA Model Rules, the question is not whether AI or discoverability tools are arriving in legal marketing. They are here. The question is whether lawyers will use them with care, transparency, and professional discipline. 🔎

What attendees will build

The conference follows the practical spine of The Lawyer’s Guide to Podcasting, then takes the work beyond the page.

Day One focuses on the strategic foundation: why lawyers should podcast, choosing a viable topic and audience, selecting a format, understanding SEO and GEO, and choosing equipment that fits the lawyer’s actual goals and budget. We are also planning hands-on gear work and a live recording with a candid teardown. 🎛️

Day Two moves from recording to publication: guest preparation and releases, editing and human review, show notes, hosting, RSS ownership, directories, distribution, marketing, repurposing, and the systems that keep a show alive after the initial excitement fades.

Then comes the ethical and operational work. Attendees will identify the rules that govern their own practices, choose a sustainable cadence, and leave with a realistic first-ninety-days plan.

A lawyer with a static bio page is easy to overlook. A lawyer with a thoughtful body of episodes, transcripts, show notes, and professional judgment is building a record that clients, referral sources, search engines, and AI answer tools can discover. The work still must be accurate. It must be ethical. And it must sound like the lawyer behind it. 🎙️

Carolyn’s confirmation is an excellent beginning. More faculty announcements are coming as they are finalized. Registration will open soon.

For now, reserve November 13–14, 2026, and follow the conference updates. Bring the show you have been meaning to start.

🗣️ Shout Out! Carolyn Elefant’s "Be the Bellwether AI Litigator" Summit — And Why I’m Demonstrating Perplexity for Litigation Research on September 17-18 ⚖️🤖

Every so often a program comes along that treats artificial intelligence the way practicing litigators actually experience it — as an evidence problem, a privilege problem, a candor problem, and only then as a productivity tool. 🎯 Carolyn Elefant’s Be the Bellwether AI Litigator summit is that program. It runs online September 17–18, 2026, and I am delighted to give it a full-throated Shout Out!

I have an interest to disclose. I am one of the presenters. On Day Two, September 18, at 11:00 a.m., I am demonstrating "Perplexity for Litigation Research" — a ten-minute, screen-shared walkthrough followed by five minutes of Q&A. No slides about the future of law. Just the tool, a real research problem, and the verification work that has to follow. You can see the full lineup in the Bellwether AI Litigator Summit agenda and register through the summit program page.

Why Carolyn Elefant Earned This Shout Out 👏

Carolyn has been the standard-bearer for solo and small-firm lawyers for more than two decades at MyShingle.com. She is a Cornell Law graduate, an ABA Legal Rebel, an inaugural Fastcase 50 honoree, and a recipient of the American Legal Technology Lifetime Achievement award. She has trained roughly 2,500 lawyers on AI ethics and policy since ChatGPT arrived. Critically, she still litigates. She fights energy cases at FERC, state PUCs, and in court. That matters. Her programs never drift into vendor theater.

The summit reflects that discipline. It is a day-and-a-half intensive built for solos, boutiques, larger firms, government lawyers, and public-interest litigators — the whole bench, not just BigLaw innovation officers.

Day One: Courts, Consequences, and Judgment ⚖️

Day One is themed "Courts, Consequences, and Litigation Judgment," and the faculty list is genuinely strong.

Carolyn opens at 10:00 a.m. with a survey of 800+ standing orders on AI use in courts. Let that number sit for a moment. Eight hundred. Adam Feldman follows with "What We Learned From the Hallucination Cases." Nathan Gaffney addresses privilege rulings. Hilary Gerzhoy and Professor Jonah Perlin pair scholarship with hands-on confidentiality guidance. Shlomo Klapper and the Hon. Brian D. Palmucci offer the judicial view at 1:00 p.m. Will Moye brings an expert’s ChatGPT war story, Nick Rishwain covers expert prompts and disqualification risk, and Christopher Kercher closes the day with the AI-native litigation firm.

That sequencing is not accidental. It tracks the ethical architecture most of us are still assembling.

The Model Rules Are Not Optional Here 📋

Regular readers know this drum. I keep beating it.

Model Rule 1.1, Comment 8 makes technology competence an ethical duty, not a hobby. Forty-one jurisdictions have adopted it. You cannot supervise what you do not understand.

Model Rule 1.6 governs confidentiality, and ABA Formal Opinion 512 sharpened the point: think hard before client-identifying information enters a public large language model. Gerzhoy and Perlin’s session goes directly at vendor terms, retention, and enterprise-versus-consumer platforms.

Model Rule 3.3 demands candor toward the tribunal. Fabricated citations are the most public failure mode of the past three years, and the duty to correct continues until the proceeding ends. I walked through the remedial protocol in 🪙🪙 MTC: When Reputable Databases Fail: What Lawyers Must Do After AI Hallucinations Reach the Court, where Stanford’s research showed Lexis+ AI hallucinating at 17% and Westlaw’s AI-Assisted Research at roughly 34%. Paid platforms are not a safe harbor. 🚨

Model Rules 5.1 and 5.3 put supervision of lawyers and nonlawyer assistance squarely on you. If your paralegal breaches confidentiality through a chatbot, that is your breach.

Model Rule 8.4(c) covers dishonesty and misrepresentation — increasingly relevant as altered and generated evidence reaches the courtroom. I covered that ground with Professor Jennifer Wondracek’s students in 🎙️ TSL.P EP# 132: AI, Deepfakes, and Metadata, including Mendones v. Cushman & Wakefield and the terminating sanctions that followed.

Day Two: Ten Lawyers, Ten Screens 💻

Day Two is the part I find most valuable, and not because I am on it.

Ten practicing litigators share their screens and run real workflows end to end. Porter Heath Morgan on in-house litigation management. Sarah Bashir on family law. John Stobart using Claude at trial. Regina Edwards on discovery. E. Aaron Cartright III generating thirteen litigation documents from one structured input. Arthur Rothrock running a case start to finish. Jim White on Obsidian. C. Todd Smith on Copilot. Descrybe.ai on emerging research tools.

Each demonstration answers four questions: What problem was the lawyer solving? What did AI actually do? Where did it fail? What did the lawyer have to verify?

That third question is the one vendors never answer. It is the reason this summit is worth your time.

My own segment will show how I use Perplexity to help with litigation research — building queries, evaluating sources, and, most importantly, the verification loop that follows every single output. Reading the underlying authority is not negotiable. If you have followed The Tech-Savvy Lawyer.Page Podcast, you know I treat AI drafts as hypotheses, never as answers. 🧪

Practical Details 📅

Registration is open, early-bird pricing is $249, and every participant receives the Bellwether Litigator Resource Kit — covering court AI-order tracking, pre-filing verification, citation and quotation checking, protective orders, vendor due diligence, and human-review protocols. Tickets are also available via Eventbrite.

Come for the judges. Stay for the screen shares. And please say hello during my Q&A. 👋

Congratulations, Carolyn. This one is going to matter. 🎉

REMINDER! Come Meet Michael! Launch Party 🎉 for The Lawyer's Guide to Podcasting (May 20)!

come meet the author May 20, 2026 in Bethesda, md.

If you’re still deciding about the May 20 launch party for The Lawyer’s Guide to Podcasting, here are three concrete things you’ll walk away with:

• A simple, lawyer‑tested podcast setup you can actually maintain

• A checklist of ethical and confidentiality questions to ask before you hit publish

• A few ready‑to‑use episode ideas tailored to your practice area

Looking forward to seeing you may 20, 2026.

Join us on Wednesday, May 20, 5:30–7:30 PM, at 4704 North Chelsea Lane, Bethesda, MD 20814. Please RSVP by midnight on Monday, May 18, so we can plan for food, drinks, and space!

👉 RSVP on Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/book-launch-party-the-lawyers-guide-to-podcasting-tickets-1988334439834

I can’t wait to see all of you!!! 🤗