{"id":135582,"date":"2025-10-21T16:52:36","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T00:52:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/10\/21\/the-best-thing-about-cliocon-was-the-word-no-one-said\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T16:52:36","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T00:52:36","slug":"the-best-thing-about-cliocon-was-the-word-no-one-said","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/10\/21\/the-best-thing-about-cliocon-was-the-word-no-one-said\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Thing About ClioCon Was The Word No One Said"},"content":{"rendered":"

This year, \u201cagentic\u201d became the sexiest buzzword to hit vendor PowerPoints. It\u2019s everywhere from specific products to the era<\/em> itself. At times, it seems that no copy can leave the door without the word \u201cagentic\u201d crammed in there, despite it hitting the ear with roughly the same credibility as \u201cputting the law on the blockchain\u201d or \u201cbuilding a metaverse practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then, Clio did something remarkable at its 2025 conference: it didn\u2019t say it.<\/p>\n

Much like jazz, sometimes the most important part of a conference is what you don\u2019t<\/em> say. As CEO Jack Newton unveiled an ambitious future for the company\u2019s plan to take on the world as a more or less everything app for lawyers<\/a>, he wasn\u2019t talking about agents. By my count, Newton mentioned the term exactly twice during his keynote, and both times in passing reference to broader industry trends as opposed to describing Clio\u2019s own products. Instead, he opted for terms like \u201cautomation\u201d and \u201cteammates.\u201d These may seem like semantic differences, and to some extent they are, but the absence of agentic \u2014 the conscious omission of a ubiquitous term \u2014 says a lot about Clio\u2019s strategy and engagement with its users.<\/p>\n

As someone who has staked out a position as an aggressive hater of 2025\u2019s most overrused empty signifier<\/a>, I couldn\u2019t have been more pleased by this.<\/p>\n

In the legal industry, the term \u201cagentic AI\u201d means one of two things, and neither particularly useful. Either it\u2019s describing a truly autonomous system that takes user goals and some vague constitutional guidance to chart out its own workflow that it goes out and pursues before delivering a final product. This is what we in the business would call \u201cmalpractice.\u201d Agentic can also describe a series of vetted, cascading prompts we\u2019d otherwise just call \u201cautomation\u201d but for Silicon Valley gloss. Mercifully, most products calling themselves \u201cagentic\u201d in the legal space fall into the latter category \u2014 competent workflow automation that lawyers would embrace if it weren\u2019t wrapped in terminology that suggests their AI might go rogue and file a motion without them.<\/p>\n

While every other company at legal tech conferences this year has been tripping over themselves to hype their spin on agentic, Clio seems to have read the room \u2014 or, more precisely, the lawyers<\/em>. Chief Product Officer John Foreman, confirmed that this rhetorical choice was very much intentional. \u201cIf you\u2019re saying agentic, who are you talking to?\u201d Foreman asked. \u201cInvestors? Certain media publications? What if you want to talk a solo lawyer in the audience that needs to use this stuff? \u2018Agentic,\u2019 as a term, does nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Average attorneys don\u2019t want to send their work to agents. An agent is someone you hire to go out on your behalf and get you a better deal while hiding how the sausage is made. They do your work instead of you<\/em> and then ask for 10 percent. A \u201cteammate\u201d on the other hand is someone who works with you. An associate or paralegal is someone who does work for you that you \u2014 based on your actual experience \u2014 then redline into oblivion. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do agents do?\u201d Vice President of Legal Content and Migrations Chris Stock asked. \u201cAgents do stuff for you, but they don\u2019t always get it right. What do members of your team do? An assembled team works together, they get to the right conclusions together, they support each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHuman in the loop\u201d is the vogue pushback that agentic advocates make, but this is a superficial nod. You say \u201cwe\u2019ll keep you in the loop\u201d is what you say to the most annoying guy in your group while planning the after party. Lawyers shouldn\u2019t be in the loop<\/em>, they should be the center of the whole conversation. <\/p>\n

On the surface, what most companies are calling agentic might not differ from what\u2019s being called a teammate, but it carries a ton of subconscious baggage. If vendors set out to be agentic, the pressure is always on them to move more tasks behind the veil. But, as we\u2019ve put it around here, this \u201cGPT-sus take the wheel\u201d mentality just further moves the lawyer and their professional judgment out of the center. It\u2019s not enough to \u201cedit at the end,\u201d because lawyering is an iterative process<\/a> that requires those breaks in the process where the team can \u2014 to quote from the Bard \u2014 stop, collaborate, and listen. <\/p>\n

A lot of the magic happens when a junior shows a senior the work-in-progress. A system that jumps from input to final product, will still get an edit, but it\u2019s a different mental process than engaging with work product over and over throughout its production. \u201cIt\u2019s all about checkpoints,\u201d Foreman told me. \u201cYou\u2019re not necessarily going after automating this whole thing into a Rube Goldberg machine of AI.\u201d Figuring out ways to keep the AI actively leveraged while not losing the appropriate interruption points is a key difference between thinking in agent vs. thinking in teammate.<\/p>\n

This might not impress investors and podcasters as much, but it should make lawyers much more comfortable.<\/p>\n

The post The Best Thing About ClioCon Was The Word No One Said<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This year, \u201cagentic\u201d became the sexiest buzzword to hit vendor PowerPoints. It\u2019s everywhere from specific products to the era<\/em> itself. At times, it seems that no copy can leave the door without the word \u201cagentic\u201d crammed in there, despite it hitting the ear with roughly the same credibility as \u201cputting the law on the blockchain\u201d or \u201cbuilding a metaverse practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then, Clio did something remarkable at its 2025 conference: it didn\u2019t say it.<\/p>\n

Much like jazz, sometimes the most important part of a conference is what you don\u2019t<\/em> say. As CEO Jack Newton unveiled an ambitious future for the company\u2019s plan to take on the world as a more or less everything app for lawyers<\/a>, he wasn\u2019t talking about agents. By my count, Newton mentioned the term exactly twice during his keynote, and both times in passing reference to broader industry trends as opposed to describing Clio\u2019s own products. Instead, he opted for terms like \u201cautomation\u201d and \u201cteammates.\u201d These may seem like semantic differences, and to some extent they are, but the absence of agentic \u2014 the conscious omission of a ubiquitous term \u2014 says a lot about Clio\u2019s strategy and engagement with its users.<\/p>\n

As someone who has staked out a position as an aggressive hater of 2025\u2019s most overrused empty signifier<\/a>, I couldn\u2019t have been more pleased by this.<\/p>\n

In the legal industry, the term \u201cagentic AI\u201d means one of two things, and neither particularly useful. Either it\u2019s describing a truly autonomous system that takes user goals and some vague constitutional guidance to chart out its own workflow that it goes out and pursues before delivering a final product. This is what we in the business would call \u201cmalpractice.\u201d Agentic can also describe a series of vetted, cascading prompts we\u2019d otherwise just call \u201cautomation\u201d but for Silicon Valley gloss. Mercifully, most products calling themselves \u201cagentic\u201d in the legal space fall into the latter category \u2014 competent workflow automation that lawyers would embrace if it weren\u2019t wrapped in terminology that suggests their AI might go rogue and file a motion without them.<\/p>\n

While every other company at legal tech conferences this year has been tripping over themselves to hype their spin on agentic, Clio seems to have read the room \u2014 or, more precisely, the lawyers<\/em>. Chief Product Officer John Foreman, confirmed that this rhetorical choice was very much intentional. \u201cIf you\u2019re saying agentic, who are you talking to?\u201d Foreman asked. \u201cInvestors? Certain media publications? What if you want to talk a solo lawyer in the audience that needs to use this stuff? \u2018Agentic,\u2019 as a term, does nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Average attorneys don\u2019t want to send their work to agents. An agent is someone you hire to go out on your behalf and get you a better deal while hiding how the sausage is made. They do your work instead of you<\/em> and then ask for 10 percent. A \u201cteammate\u201d on the other hand is someone who works with you. An associate or paralegal is someone who does work for you that you \u2014 based on your actual experience \u2014 then redline into oblivion. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do agents do?\u201d Vice President of Legal Content and Migrations Chris Stock asked. \u201cAgents do stuff for you, but they don\u2019t always get it right. What do members of your team do? An assembled team works together, they get to the right conclusions together, they support each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHuman in the loop\u201d is the vogue pushback that agentic advocates make, but this is a superficial nod. You say \u201cwe\u2019ll keep you in the loop\u201d is what you say to the most annoying guy in your group while planning the after party. Lawyers shouldn\u2019t be in the loop<\/em>, they should be the center of the whole conversation. <\/p>\n

On the surface, what most companies are calling agentic might not differ from what\u2019s being called a teammate, but it carries a ton of subconscious baggage. If vendors set out to be agentic, the pressure is always on them to move more tasks behind the veil. But, as we\u2019ve put it around here, this \u201cGPT-sus take the wheel\u201d mentality just further moves the lawyer and their professional judgment out of the center. It\u2019s not enough to \u201cedit at the end,\u201d because lawyering is an iterative process<\/a> that requires those breaks in the process where the team can \u2014 to quote from the Bard \u2014 stop, collaborate, and listen. <\/p>\n

A lot of the magic happens when a junior shows a senior the work-in-progress. A system that jumps from input to final product, will still get an edit, but it\u2019s a different mental process than engaging with work product over and over throughout its production. \u201cIt\u2019s all about checkpoints,\u201d Foreman told me. \u201cYou\u2019re not necessarily going after automating this whole thing into a Rube Goldberg machine of AI.\u201d Figuring out ways to keep the AI actively leveraged while not losing the appropriate interruption points is a key difference between thinking in agent vs. thinking in teammate.<\/p>\n

This might not impress investors and podcasters as much, but it should make lawyers much more comfortable.<\/p>\n

The post The Best Thing About ClioCon Was The Word No One Said<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This year, \u201cagentic\u201d became the sexiest buzzword to hit vendor PowerPoints. It\u2019s everywhere from specific products to the era itself. At times, it seems that no copy can leave the door without the word \u201cagentic\u201d crammed in there, despite it hitting the ear with roughly the same credibility as \u201cputting the law on the blockchain\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}