You should be curious and be experimenting, says Microsoft Assistant General Counsel

Generative AI is quickly changing the way lawyers work, and ignoring how the technology functions is no longer an option, according to Microsoft Assistant General Counsel Ben Glatstein in a discussion with Irene Liu at the Berkeley Center for Law and Business.

“Just to be a mediocre lawyer in general, you have to understand AI,” he said. “If you want to be a great AI lawyer, I think you should be playing around with the technology, you should be curious and you should be experimenting.”

I loved that last line

… you should be curious and you should be experimenting.

Thanks to Nick Abrahams for alerting me to this article. In the week before I submit my manuscript to Wiley for Digitally Curious, any mention of AI or technology and the word curious certainly piqued my interest.

There can be no better endorsement for why anyone in any industry, not just law, should stay up to date with the latest trends by leaning forward and being digitally curious.

Those who have seen me present live or virtually since 2018 will know that I ask my audience how digitally curious they are in the first moments of my talk.

More recently, I have been asking who in the audience has used ChatGPT, and most people indicate they have. When I ask people to stay standing ONLY if they use it daily, many people sit down. It’s clear that while they have been interested in Generative AI, they haven’t been curious about integrating the tool into their daily workflow.

Watch the video below to see what happened in all of my recent talks when I asked about using ChatGPT.