MTC: Staying Ahead of the Curve: Why ABA Techshow Is Not Optional for Today's Practicing Lawyer

the aba techshow is the perfect place for lawyers to learn the skills they need to know to meet aba requirements to stay abreast of the benefits and risks associated with relevant technOlogy used in the practice of law!

Let me be direct: technology is no longer a "nice-to-have" in legal practice. It is an ethical obligation. 🎯

The American Bar Association made that clear in 2012 when it amended Comment 8 to Model Rule 1.1 — the foundational rule governing competence. That comment explicitly states that a lawyer must "keep abreast of changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology." Not someday. Not when it's convenient. Now — and continuously. If you are a practicing attorney and you are not actively engaging in legal technology education, you are not just leaving efficiency on the table. You may be skating dangerously close to an ethical violation.

That is precisely why I keep coming back to ABA TECHSHOW — and precisely why I encourage every lawyer I speak with, regardless of their comfort level with technology, to attend.

🔑 ABA TECHSHOW Is Built for You — Yes, You

I want to address something head-on: the assumption that Techshow is a conference for tech enthusiasts and IT professionals. It is not. The 2026 conference, running March 25–28 at McCormick Place in Chicago, features over 100 technology vendors and programming explicitly designed for lawyers at every skill level — including those who still break into a cold sweat opening a new software interface. The sessions span everything from AI fundamentals to cybersecurity to practice management to video communication. There is a deliberate on-ramp built into the conference structure because the organizers understand that the legal profession is diverse in its relationship with technology.

I have been privileged to serve as a speaker and faculty member at TECHSHOW, and this year is no exception. At TECHSHOW 2026, I am co-presenting two sessions that I believe speak directly to where the legal profession is right now.

The first, Podcasting for Lawyers: The Truth Behind the Mic, pulls back the curtain on how lawyers can leverage podcasting as a powerful tool for building authority, deepening client relationships, and positioning themselves as thought leaders in their practice areas. In a media landscape saturated with blogs and social media posts, a podcast gives you something rare: an intimate, sustained connection with your audience. As you know, I run my own podcast — The Tech-Savvy Lawyer.Page Podcast — and in that session, alongside colleagues and previous podcast guest Ruby Powers and hopefully future podcast guests Gyi Tsakalakis, and Stephanie Everett, we share the real, actionable steps behind building compelling legal content. 🎙️ 

learn how setting up a podcast studio carries over to help with other legal events!

My second session, Camera Ready Anywhere: Mastering Video Meetings with Clients, Courts, and Colleagues, my co-presenter, Temi Siyanbade, and I explore the practical, professional, and ethical dimensions of virtual communication. As virtual meetings have become a permanent fixture of legal practice — whether you are conducting client consultations on Zoom, appearing remotely before a tribunal, or negotiating with opposing counsel on TECHSHOW — looking and sounding competent on camera is no longer optional. This session covers audio and video setup, lighting, platform best practices, and how to project professionalism in a digital environment. The irony is that many lawyers who are meticulous about their appearance in a courtroom give almost no thought to how they present themselves on a video call. That gap matters. It matters to clients. It matters to judges. And yes, it can matter to your reputation.

⚖️ The ABA Model Rules Are Not Suggestions

Let us return to the ethics piece, because I think it deserves more than a passing mention. ABA Model Rule 1.1 sets the standard for competent representation. Most lawyers understand this in terms of legal knowledge — knowing the law, understanding procedure, being prepared. Fewer appreciate that the ABA's 2012 amendment has extended that standard to technology.

As of today, 40-plus states have adopted some version of the technology competence obligation articulated in Comment 8. The District of Columbia most recently joined that group in 2025. This is not a fringe interpretation. It is a growing national consensus about what it means to be a competent lawyer in the modern era.

Rule 1.6 — governing confidentiality — also carries technology implications. A lawyer who fails to understand how their email system works, who stores client data on unsecured devices, or who falls victim to a phishing attack that exposes client files has potentially breached their duty of confidentiality. Rule 5.3 requires that supervisors ensure non-lawyer staff are also compliant with the Rules — and that includes how they use firm technology. The tentacles of technology competence reach throughout the Model Rules.

Conferences like TECHSHOW exist, in part, to help you satisfy these obligations in a practical, hands-on way. The ABA Law Practice Division has consistently described Techshow as an opportunity to understand the "benefits and risks" of technology — the exact language of Comment 8. This is not accidental. It is intentional alignment between the programming and your professional duties.

🚀 The Future Is Already Here — Are You Ready?

The 2026 theme — Innovation That Protects the Rule of Law — reflects something I have believed for years: technology, when adopted thoughtfully, does not undermine the legal profession. It strengthens it. AI tools are transforming how lawyers research, draft, and communicate. Wearable technology and augmented reality are beginning to reshape how we work and collaborate. Deposition technology is being revolutionized by AI-powered transcript tools and remote video platforms. None of this is science fiction. It is happening right now, in law firms across the country.

The question is not whether you will engage with these tools. The question is whether you will engage with them proactively — understanding their benefits and their risks — or reactively, scrambling to catch up after a client complaint or a disciplinary inquiry.

I am not here to alarm you. I am here to invite you. 🤝

your podcast studio set up iMpacts on you are perceived in the virtual legal landscape!

Whether you are a solo practitioner trying to figure out which AI tool is worth your subscription fee, or a partner at a mid-size firm wondering how to lead your team through a technology transition, Techshow offers you a safe, supportive, and genuinely energizing environment to learn. Most of the sessions are CLE-eligible. The vendors are accessible and eager to demonstrate — not sell. The community is collaborative.

More than four decades of working with technology and nearly 30 years of those in the legal arena have taught me one thing above all else: the lawyers who thrive are not necessarily the most tech-savvy. They are the most tech-willing — the ones who stay curious, stay engaged, and never stop learning. 💡

TECHSHOW is where that learning happens. I will see you there.

REGISTER HERE!

MTC

TSL.P Labs 🧪 Initiative: Why 96% AI Accuracy Still Fails Lawyers: Ethics, Hallucinations, and the Future of the Billable Hour ⚖️🤖

📌 To Busy to Read This Week’s Editorial?

Welcome to the TSL Lab’s Initiative. 🤖 This weeks episode builds on my March 3rd, 2026, editorial “Even Though AI Hallucinations Are Down: Lawyers STILL MUST Verify AI, Guard PII, and Follow ABA Ethics Rules ⚖️🤖” is a misleading comfort blanket for lawyers, and how ABA Model Rules on confidentiality, competence, diligence, candor, supervision, and client communication must govern every AI prompt you run. Our Google LLM Notebook hosts translate the theory into practical workflows you can implement today—from document grounding and tokenization to vendor due diligence and line‑by‑line verification—so you can leverage AI confidently without sacrificing ethics, privilege, or your professional license.

You will hear how document grounding changes what LLMs actually do, why uploading active case files to cloud AI tools can quietly trigger Rule 1.6 problems, and how cross‑border data flows, vendor training rights, and retention policies can erode privilege if you do not negotiate them carefully. 🔐 We also unpack practical safeguards like tokenization, internal sandbox testing, and bright‑line “danger zones” where AI must never operate unsupervised—especially on open‑ended research, choice of law, and any task that turns statistical text into real‑world legal risk.

Finally, we confront the economic paradox: when AI can compress 100 hours of document review into seconds, but partners must still verify every line to protect their licenses, what exactly are clients paying for—and how does the billable hour survive? 💼

In our conversation, we cover the following

• 00:00 – Why “96% fewer hallucinations” is still not good enough in law ⚖️

• 01:00 – How the remaining 4% error rate can trigger malpractice, sanctions, and ethics violations

• 02:00 – From IT issue to ethics issue: ABA Model Rules as the real constraint on AI adoption

• 03:00 – Document grounding 101: turning a free‑floating LLM into a reading‑comprehension engine

• 04:00 – The hidden danger of “just upload the file”: how Rule 1.6 confidentiality is instantly implicated

• 05:00 – Cloud AI architecture, cross‑border data transfers, GDPR, and privilege risk 🌐

• 06:00 – Model training nightmares: when your client’s trade secrets leak back out through someone else’s prompt

• 07:00 – Negotiating no‑training clauses and ring‑fencing vendor data use (before you upload anything)

• 08:00 – Tokenization explained: turning John Doe into “Plaintiff 01” without losing legal meaning 🔐

• 09:00 – What AI does well today: grounded summarization, clause extraction, and playbook‑based redlines

• 10:00 – The “danger zone” of tasks: open‑ended research, choice of law, and abstract legal reasoning

• 11:00 – Phantom case law: how LLMs manufacture perfect‑looking but fake citations (and Rule 3.3 candor)

• 12:00 – Sandboxing AI tools internally and measuring real‑world failure rates against known outcomes 🧪

• 13:00 – Building bright‑line firm policies around forbidden AI use cases

• 14:00 – Verification as a workflow, not a suggestion: what Model Rules 5.1 and 5.3 demand from supervisors

• 15:00 – The efficiency paradox: when partner‑level verification erases associate‑level time savings ⏱️

• 16:00 – Making AI verification as routine as a conflict check in your practice

• 17:00 – Falling hallucination rates, rising risk: why better AI can still make lawyers more vulnerable

• 18:00 – Client communication under Rule 1.4: when and why clients may be entitled to know you used AI

• 19:00 – “You can delegate the task, not the liability”: Rule 1.2 and ultimate responsibility for AI‑assisted work

• 20:00 – Treating every AI prompt and ToS as a potential ethics document

• 📝21:00 – The existential question: if AI drafts in seconds, what exactly are clients paying lawyers for?

👉 Tune in now to learn how to stay tech‑forward without becoming the next ethics cautionary tale, and start designing AI policies that actually protect your clients, your firm, and your bar license.

Word 📖 of the Week: Why Lawyers Need to Know the Term “Constitutional AI”

“Constitutional AI” is a design framework for artificial intelligence that aims to make AI systems helpful, harmless, and honest by training them to follow a defined set of higher‑level rules, much like a constitution. 🤖📜 For lawyers, this is not abstract theory; it connects directly to duties of technological competence, confidentiality, and supervision under the ABA Model Rules.

Most legal professionals now rely on AI‑enabled tools in research, drafting, e‑discovery, document automation, and client communication. These tools may use generative AI in the background even when the marketing materials do not emphasize “AI.” Constitutional AI gives you a practical way to evaluate those tools: are they structured to avoid hallucinations, protect confidential data, and resist being prompted into unethical behavior.

At a high level, a Constitutional AI system is trained to follow explicit principles, such as “do not fabricate legal citations,” “do not disclose confidential information,” and “do not assist in unlawful conduct.” The model learns to critique and revise its own outputs against those principles. For law firms, that aligns with the core expectations in ABA Model Rule 1.1 (competence) and its Comment 8, which require lawyers to understand the benefits and risks of relevant technology and stay current with changes in how these systems work. ⚖️

Constitutional AI also intersects with ABA Model Rule 1.6 on confidentiality. If an AI tool is not designed with strong guardrails, prompts, and outputs can expose sensitive client information to external systems or vendors. When you evaluate an AI platform, you should ask where data is stored, how prompts are logged, whether training data will include your matters, and whether the provider has implemented “constitutional” safeguards against data leakage and unsafe uses.

Supervision is another critical angle. ABA Formal Opinion 512 and Model Rules 5.1 and 5.3 stress that supervising lawyers must set policies and training for how attorneys and staff use generative AI. Constitutional AI can reduce risk, yet it does not replace supervisory duties. You still must review AI‑generated work product, confirm citations, validate factual assertions, and ensure the output is consistent with Rules 3.1, 3.3, and 8.4(c) on meritorious claims, candor to the tribunal, and avoiding dishonesty or misrepresentation.

For practitioners with limited to moderate tech skills, the key is to treat Constitutional AI as a practical checklist rather than a buzzword. ✅ Ask three questions about any AI tool you use:

1. Is this AI actually helpful to the client’s matter, or is it just saving time while adding risk.

2. Could this output harm the client through inaccuracy, bias, or disclosure of confidential data.

3. Is the AI acting honestly, meaning it is not hallucinating cases or claiming certainty where none exists.

If any answer is “no,” you must pause, verify, and revise before relying on the AI output.

In the AI era, your ethical risk often turns on how you select, supervise, and document the use of AI in your practice. Constitutional AI will not make you bulletproof, but it gives you a structured way to align your technology choices with ABA Model Rules while protecting your clients, your license, and your reputation. 

TSL.P Labs Bonus: Google AI Discussion: Everyday Tech, Extraordinary Evidence: Smartphones, Dash Cams, and Wearables as Silent Witnesses in Your Cases ⚖️📱

Join us for an AI-powered deep dive into the ethical challenges facing legal professionals in the age of generative AI. 🤖 In this Tech-Savvy Lawyer.Page Labs episode, our Google AI hosts unpack our January 26, 2026, editorial and discuss how everyday devices—smartphones, dash cams, wearables, and connected cars—are becoming “silent witnesses” that can make or break your next case, while walking carefully through ABA Model Rules on competence, candor, privacy, and preservation of digital evidence.

In our conversation, we cover the following:

• 00:00 – Welcome to The Tech-Savvy Lawyer.Page Labs Initiative and this week’s “Everyday Tech, Extraordinary Evidence” AI roundtable 🧪

• 00:30 – Why classic “surprise witness” courtroom drama is giving way to always-on digital witnesses 🎭

• 01:15 – Introducing the concept of smartphones, dash cams, and wearables as objective “silent witnesses” in litigation 📱

• 02:00 – Overview of Michael D.J. Eisenberg’s editorial “Everyday Tech, Extraordinary Evidence” and his mission to bridge tech and courtroom practice 📰[

• 03:00 – Case study setup: the Alex Preddy shooting in Minneapolis and the clash between official reports and digital evidence ⚖️

• 04:00 – How bystander smartphone video reframed the legal narrative in the Preddy matter and dismantled “brandished a weapon” claims 🎥

• 05:00 – From “pressing play” to full video synchronization: building a unified timeline from multiple cameras to audit police reports 🧩06:00 – Using frame-by-frame analysis to test loaded terms like “lunging,” “aggressive resistance,” and “brandishing” against what the pixels actually show 🔍

• 07:00 – Moving beyond what we see: introducing “quiet evidence” such as GPS logs, telemetry, and sensor data as litigation tools 📡

• 08:00 – GPS data for location, duration, and speed: turning “he was charging” into a measurable movement profile in protest and road-rage cases 🚶‍♂️🚗

• 09:00 – Layering GPS from phones with vehicle telematics to create a multi-source reconstruction that is hard to impeach in court 📊

• 10:00 – Dash cams as 360-degree witnesses: solving blind spots of human perception and single-angle video 🛞

• 11:00 – Why exterior audio from dash cams—shouts, commands, crowd noise—can be crucial to proving state of mind and mens rea 🔊

• 12:00 – Wearables as a body-wide sensor network: heart rate, sleep, and step count as quantitative proof of pain, fear, and trauma ⌚

• 13:00 – Using longitudinal wearable data to support claims of emotional distress or sleep disruption in personal injury and civil-rights litigation 😴

• 14:00 – Heart-rate spikes and movement logs at the moment of an encounter as corroboration of fear or immobility in use-of-force matters

• 15:00 – Why none of this evidence exists in your case file unless you know to ask for it at intake 🗂️

• 16:00 – Updating intake: adding questions about smartwatches, location services, doorbell cameras, dash cams, and connected cars to your client questionnaires 📝

• 17:00 – Data preservation as an emergency task: deletion cycles, cloud overwrites, and using TROs to stop digital spoliation 🚨

• 18:00 – Turning raw logs into compelling visuals: maps, synced clips, and timelines that juries can understand without sacrificing accuracy 🗺️

• 19:00 – Ethics spotlight: ABA Model Rule 1.1 competence and Comment 8—why “I’m not a tech person” is now an ethical problem, not an excuse 📚

• 20:00 – Candor to the tribunal and the line between strong advocacy and fraud when editing or excerpting digital evidence ⚠️

• 21:00 – Respecting third-party privacy under Rule 4.4: when you must blur faces, redact audio, or limit collateral exposure of bystanders 🧩

• 22:00 – Advising clients not to delete texts, videos, or logs and explaining spoliation risks under Rule 3.4 ⚖️

• 23:00 – The uranium analogy: digital tools as powerful but dangerous if used without adequate ethical “containment” ☢️

• 24:00 – Philosophical closing: will juries someday trust heart-rate logs more than tears on the witness stand, and what does that mean for human testimony? 🤔

• 25:00 – Closing remarks and invitation to explore the full editorial, show notes, and resources on The Tech-Savvy Lawyer.Page 🌐

If you enjoyed this episode, please like, comment, subscribe, and share!

TSL.P Lab's Initiative: 🤖 Hidden AI in Legal Practice: A Tech-Savvy Lawyer Labs Initiative Analysis

In this Tech-Savvy Lawyer Labs Initiative analysis, we use Google NotebookLM to break down the "Hidden AI" crisis affecting every legal professional. Microsoft 365, Zoom, and your practice management software may be processing client data without your knowledge—and without your explicit consent. We explain what ABA Formal Opinion 512 actually requires from you. We also provide a practical 5-step playbook to audit your tech stack and protect your license.

What you'll discover:
✅ Why "I didn't know" is no longer a valid defense
✅ Hallucination rates in legal research tools (17-33% error rates)
✅ How the Mata v. Avianca sanctions case proves verification is mandatory
✅ Tactical steps to identify and disable dangerous default settings
✅ Ethical guidelines for billing AI-assisted work

‼️ Don't let an "invisible assistant" trigger an ethics violation or put your professional license at risk.

Enjoy!

*Remember the presentation, like all postings on The Tech-Savvy Lawyer.Page, is for informational purposes only, does not offer legal advice or create attorney-client relationship.