It says something about our collective attitude towards generative AI in legal that this blog’s most-read story of the year was about lawyers getting sanctioned for hallucinated case citations.

In fact, it will probably not surprise you to learn that, of my 40 most-read stories of the year, 24 involved generative AI in some way. Whether they were stories about gen AI products, gen AI studies, or gen AI screw-ups, they clearly drew readers’ attention and interest.

The top 40 included stories about major AI products such as CoCounsel and Harvey. They included stories about notable AI studies, such as Stanford’s analysis of AI legal research tools and Clio’s of trends in AI adoption. They include stories about ethics rulings on lawyers’ use of AI.

But AI was not the only topic that drew readers’ interest. There was scandal, as well. Three of the top 40 stories, and two of the top five, involved the sudden departure of the CEO of UnitedLex, amid allegations that he had engaged in predatory behavior involving minors.

The most-named company among the top 40 was Thomson Reuters. Several of those stories involved its gen AI products, including CoCounsel, but there were also stories about its closing of a law practice management product and its launch of an API portal.

Other stories among the top 40 included:

  • Clio’s record-setting raise of $900 million.
  • Two parts of my four-part series on the consolidation of ownership of law practice management products.
  • My essay on the justice gap in legal tech.
  • My essay on whether there is a gen AI divide between larger and smaller law firms.

One surprise to my was that my recent recap of the TLTF Summit made the list. It was a surprise because I published the recap just two weeks ago, and generally the most-trafficked posts are the ones that have been up longer and had the benefit of accumulating hits over time. The fact that the TLTF post quickly garnered enough hits to make this list shows how much interest there is, broadly speaking, in that conference.

The 40 Most-Read Posts

Here’s the list of my 40 most-read posts.

  1. Not Again! Two More Cases, Just this Week, of Hallucinated Citations in Court Filings Leading to Sanctions (Feb. 22, 2024).
  2. UnitedLex CEO’s Sudden Departure Appears to Be Due to Personal Allegations Unrelated to Work (Oct. 13, 2024).
  3. Harvey AI To Move Out Of Early Access Phase, Release More Affordable Versions Of Its Custom AI Models (May 1, 2024).
  4. A Week After Appearing on My Podcast, UnitedLex CEO is Abruptly Replaced By Company’s General Counsel (Oct. 10, 2024).
  5. In Redo of Its Study, Stanford Finds Westlaw’s AI Hallucinates At Double the Rate of LexisNexis (June 4, 2024).
  6. Is Gen AI Creating A Divide Among Law Firms Of Haves and Have Nots? (June 19, 2024).
  7. It’s the Battle of the AI Legal Assistants, As LexisNexis Unveils Its New Protégé and Thomson Reuters Rolls Out CoCounsel 2.0 (Aug. 12, 2024).
  8. Stanford Will Augment Its Study Finding that AI Legal Research Tools Hallucinate in 17% of Queries, As Some Raise Questions About the Results (May 28, 2024).
  9. AI Adoption By Legal Professionals Jumps from 19% to 79% In One Year, Clio Study Finds (Oct. 7, 2024).
  10. Federal Court Suspends Florida Attorney Over Filing Fabricated Cases Hallucinated by AI (March 14, 2024).
  11. ABA Issues Ethics Opinion on 30-Year-Old Technology whose Use Is Waning. My Question: Why Now? (May 9, 2024).
  12. In First Ethics Ruling on Gen AI, ABA Says Lawyers Must Have Reasonable Understanding of the Technology, But Need Not Become Experts (July 30, 2024).
  13. New Legal Ethics Opinion Cautions Lawyers: You ‘Must Be Proficient’ In the Use of Generative AI (June 24, 2024).
  14. Legal Tech Startup Ai.law Can Now Draft the Complaint for Your Lawsuit (March 21, 2024).
  15. The Five Most Momentous Legal Tech Fails (April 11, 2024).
  16. Law Student’s Gen AI Product, Lexplug, Makes Briefing Cases A Breeze (Feb. 7, 2024).
  17. Thomson Reuters Lays Out Plan To Provide CoCounsel AI Assistant Across Every Professional Vertical It Serves (April 17, 2024).
  18. Thomson Reuters Is Shutting Down Its Firm Central Law Practice Management Software (Feb. 10, 2024).
  19. Thomson Reuters’ Message to Law Firms: Adapt to Market Changes or Become the Pan Am of Legal (Jan. 9, 2024).
  20. As Thomson Reuters Expands Casetext CoCounsel, the AI Legal Assistant, to Canada and Australia, It Provides Details on U.S. Growth (Feb. 20, 2024).
  21. The Justice Gap in Legal Tech: A Tale of Two Conferences and the Implications for A2J (Feb. 5, 2024).
  22. ROSS Cofounder Returns To Legal Tech with Startup Using AI To Surface Judges’ Decision-Making Patterns (Feb. 29, 2024).
  23. Clio Sets Legal Tech Funding Record with $900M Raise at $3B Valuation; LawNext Has Exclusive Podcast Interview with Founder Jack Newton (July 23, 2024).
  24. LawNext: A Year Into His Tenure, UnitedLex CEO James Schellhase on How the Company Is Embracing Innovation (Oct. 1, 2024).
  25. The 25 Largest Legal Tech Investments of All Time (July 24, 2024).
  26. LawNext: Thomson Reuters’ AI Strategy for Legal, with Mike Dahn, Head of Westlaw, and Joel Hron, Head of AI (Feb. 28, 2024).
  27. New President of Thomson Reuters Legal Segment Says Industry Needs Open Benchmarking on Gen AI (June 13, 2024).
  28. The Shrinking Ownership of Law Practice Management Technology (Part 2 of 4): A Scorecard of Who Owns What (Sept. 17, 2024).
  29. The Shrinking Ownership of Law Practice Management Technology (Part 1 of 4): A Market Dominated by Just Six Ownership Groups (Sept. 16, 2024).
  30. Supreme Courts of Delaware and Georgia Act to Regulate Use of Generative AI in the Courts (Nov. 1, 2024).
  31. At the Third TLTF Summit, Legal Tech Leaders Convened in Miami for Three Days of Dialogue and Serendipity (Dec. 9, 2024).
  32. Hotshot, the Legal Learning Platform, Releases First Five in Planned Series of AI Training Videos for Lawyers (March 6, 2024).
  33. Exclusive: iManage Reveals Details On Its Growth, Lays Out Plans to Further Leverage Gen AI, Partnerships (March 13, 2024).
  34. Recent Reports of Law Schools’ AI Adoption Have Been Greatly Exaggerated (July 2, 2024).
  35. Federal Court Dismisses ROSS Intelligence’s Remaining Antitrust Claim Against Thomson Reuters (Sept. 30, 2024).
  36. New Gavel Feature Uses AI to Convert PDFs into Automated Document-Generation Workflows (June 25, 2024).
  37. New AI Features In Practical Law Enable Users To Ask Legal Questions And Find Relevant Contract Clauses (Jan. 24, 2024).
  38. Some Lawyers Using Venmo Are Exposing Confidential Client Information — and they May Not Even Know It (Sept. 4, 2024).
  39. Thomson Reuters Launches Developer Portal Giving Access to Over 100 APIs for Legal, Tax, Risk and Fraud (April 15, 2024).
  40. Breaking News: LexisNexis To Acquire Contract Drafting Company Henchman (June 3, 2024).
Photo of Bob Ambrogi Bob Ambrogi

Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.