I Walk The Line: Legal Ethics & The Impact Of Technology On Lawyer Burnout

Legal ethics has long suffered from a cultural lag issue. 

Technology, like the recent insurgence of AI, moves much faster than legal ethics boards can craft technical responses to it.

So the likely reply to changes in the world is usually to find an old school example and extrapolate.

But in this recent episode of the Non-Eventcast, we decided to dig a little deeper.

We invited Megan Zavieh of Zavieh Law onto the show to talk about modern legal ethics issues and provide us with real answers about how to handle them.  And, because most of these modern legal ethics issues center on issues of technology, Megan also touches on how technology can be used to both accelerate and stall lawyer burnout. 

Megan starts by discussing how lawyers can use AI ethically — which, yeah, of course we were going to cover that (6:31, 8:23). Next, we postulate about how ethics opinions will treat AI for lawyers (10:18, 12:50). 

Megan also covers the importance of setting communication boundaries between lawyers and clients (24:29) in light of ethical obligations (22:55).

We separately turn to the effects of the pandemic, and how it brought about an increased reliance on technology for lawyers (and, everyone) (15:30), and how this negatively affected mental health while contributing to attorney burnout (18:22). 

Lastly, Megan talks about how the right technology can assist attorneys in de-stressing (20:39).

Join us for this wide-ranging conversation, which can positively affect your mental outlook, including when you gain a better handle on managing those thorny ethics questions you have but were afraid to ask.

And if you’d like to consider an upgrade to your own tech stack, feel free to check out our Practice Management Buyer’s Guide here.

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Jared Correia, a consultant and legal technology expert, is the host of the Non-Eventcast, the featured podcast of the Above the Law Non-Event for Tech-Perplexed Lawyers.