Followers of technology know that AI (Artificial Intelligence) and the invasion of the robots is a trending topic. One of the themes is that the robots are coming and they are going to take all of our jobs. Venture capitalist, Marc Andreessen, not a fan of the “sky is falling” thinking, tends to tweet humorous quips about the looming robot crisis.

On March 6^th, when the latest employment data were released, Andreessen tweeted the chart below with the comment, “The robots are really dropping the ball.”

A few days earlier I had attended a panel on “The Law Firm of the Future” sponsored by CodeX and the Palo Alto Area Bar Association. CodeX is a multidisciplinary laboratory operated by Stanford Law School and the Stanford CS Department.

The arc of the meeting was set by the first speaker, Vivek Wadhwa, who presented research on the results of IBM’s Watson AI Engine in diagnosing cancer. Watson’s successful…

No profession is immune from disruption. A business with a value of $400 billion per year is a attractive target for newcomers, ranging from financial institutions to startups. Can legal ward off its challengers? Not without changing.

“The Innovator’s Dilemma” refers to Clayton Christensen’s theory that successful companies are too focused on customers’ current needs and that they fail to adopt technologies that will fulfill customers’ future or unspoken needs. When the goose is laying the golden eggs, it can be challenging to focus on what happens after the goose is gone. Think of Blockbuster’s collapse to Netflix or Amazon’s decision to develop the Kindle. The question for the mammoth book retailer was whether they should dig in their heels and fight ebooks which threatened to cannibalize their hard copy book sales. Jeff Bezos was savvy to the Innovator’s Dilemma and chose to lead in ebooks. Today Amazon controls 67% of…