The legal profession is at a crossroads. Unprecedented change is disrupting the practice of law and the institutions that support it. Generative artificial intelligence and the rapid pace of technological advancement are reshaping law firm operations and workflows, while the rule of law is being stress tested, increasing the already-cavernous access-to-justice gap.
ABA Day is an opportunity for young lawyers to participate in real-life advocacy for important issues impacting lawyers and the practice of law across the country.
Before I ever stood in front of a jury, I stood on the turf at Georgia Tech as a college football player. I’ve also dug graves, worked on offshore oil rigs and branded cattle as a ranch hand. At first glance, none of these roles seem to have much in common with the world of high-stakes trial law that I’ve occupied for nearly 40 years. Yet each one instilled lessons and forged qualities that have been invaluable in the courtroom.
On Feb. 9, the ABA House of Delegates approved, revised and amended Resolution 702, adopting it as ABA policy. The resolution’s first “resolved” clause states: “That the American Bar Association supports and encourages free, open and civil discussion and debate on legal and policy matters among its members and recognizes there is value in having lawyers with a wide range of different views participate meaningfully in ABA leadership, programming, policy, and advocacy.”
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday heard oral arguments in one of the most high-profile cases of the term, Trump v. Barbara, a challenge to President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship. The executive order, issued Jan. 20, 2025, provides that only those born to citizens or green card holders are United States citizens. As the solicitor general says in the petitoners' brief: “In short, the order does not recognize children of illegal aliens or temporarily present aliens as citizens by birth.”
Every so often, a legal show comes along that makes me ask one important question: WTF am I watching? That’s roughly the experience of viewing Strip Law, the latest legal comedy on Netflix.
Law schools are sometimes faulted for not “teaching students to write well,” as if the goal were to mint stylists on demand. That’s not the complaint here. Let’s focus instead on a narrower problem: the concern that many graduates never learn even a small set of baseline drafting and advocacy ideas that every practicing lawyer should know. These are points so basic that they ought to be treated as shared professional grammar, not as optional refinements for aficionados.
Ari Kaplan, a legal industry analyst and the host of the Reinventing Professionals podcast, recently spoke with attendees at the 2026 Legalweek conference about current trends and opportunities in the legal sector for his annual mixtape.
Change is never easy, whether it’s transitioning your firm to generative artificial intelligence tools or acclimating to a new location for one of your favorite legal technology conferences. I was faced with the latter challenge earlier this month, when Legalweek, long hosted at the Midtown Hilton in New York City, moved to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center on the western edge of Manhattan.
