The prevailing narrative I hear in the legal world is that Claude is the “most human” of the LLMs and, especially, a nuanced, sophisticated writer. When I report that the system has begun to fail my specific research protocols, the common response is a suggestion that I am simply using the wrong version and a
The Empathic Upsolver: Jonathan Petts
Hey there Legal Rebels! 👋 I’m excited to share with you the 68th episode of the LawDroid Manifesto podcast, where I will be continuing to interview key legal innovators to learn how they do what they do. I think you’re going to enjoy this one!If you want to understand how empathy, storytelling, and technology can
The GSA AI Clause Clock Is About to Start: What Schedule Holders Must Do Before Refresh 32 Drops
The comment period closed. The clause survived. When GSA issues Refresh 32, existing Schedule holders will have 60 days to accept — or risk losing their contracts. Here is how to use the time you have left.
The market has spent six weeks debating whether GSA’s proposed AI clause — GSAR 552.239-7001 — is good
The Fragile Equilibrium: George Walker CEO at Neuberger Berman, Perspective on the Economy
The digital ticker at the bottom of my workspace doesn’t just track price action anymore; it tracks the wild whacky trends of geopolitics.
Listening to George Walker and Shelly Banjo discuss the state of play, I am struck by the paradox of our current era. We are living through a period of “Economic Antifragility,” where
Gavel Launches Web-Based AI Contract Platform, Expanding ‘Gavel Exec’ Beyond Its Word Add-In
Gavel, the Los Angeles-based legal AI company, today announced the launch of Gavel Exec for Web, a browser-based expansion of its AI contract review and drafting product that until now has lived primarily as an add-in inside Microsoft Word. “With Gavel Exec for Web, lawyers can chat with an AI purpose-built for legal work, benchmark
Questel Launches QaECTER, a New AI Model Claiming State-of-the-Art Performance in Patent Search
Questel, an intellectual property software and services company headquartered in Paris, has released QaECTER, a new AI model designed specifically for semantic patent retrieval. The company says the model outperforms competing systems, including those that are significantly larger, across every query type, technology domain and jurisdiction tested. QaECTER is the product of Questel’s in-house AI
It’s Alive! New Law Practice Technology Book
Reading Time: 7 minutes
“Hey, publisher, I have an idea for a book. It’s called ‘Law Practice Technology.’” Not my most creative pitch, I will confess. It took more than that but I will admit to a certain amount of uncertainty when I decided to see if I could find a publisher for a new
Deepfakes, Voice Cloning, and AI Impersonation: The Global Rules Are Already Here, and They Don’t Agree
Deepfakes, Voice Cloning, and AI Impersonation: The Global Rules Are Already Here, and They Don’t Agree
A cloned executive voice. A fake endorsement. A synthetic campaign ad. A deepfake intimate image. Each of these can now trigger criminal liability, consumer-protection claims, platform-removal obligations, or identity-rights lawsuits—depending on where your business operates and which country’s law
Orbital CTO Andrew Thompson on Practice Area AI, Real Estate Law, and the Future of Legal Work
This week on The Geek in Review, we talk with Andrew Thompson, CTO of Orbital, about why legal AI built for a specific practice area has a strong claim in a market crowded by general-purpose models. Thompson explains how Orbital focuses on real estate law, using AI, spatial intelligence, and legal workflow design to support transactions involving property portfolios, title review, survey analysis, and complex documentation. With more than 200,000 property transactions processed and a major $60 million, Series B investment fueling its U.S. expansion, Orbital sits at the center of the debate over whether the future of legal AI belongs to broad model platforms or tools built for the messy details of actual legal work.
Thompson’s path into legal technology brings a practical operator’s mindset to the conversation. Before Orbital, he worked across software, fintech, proptech, and real estate marketplaces, where speed, accuracy, and operational friction shaped business outcomes. That background informs his view that successful legal AI starts with the work itself rather than the model alone. For Orbital, the key is teaching AI to think like a real estate lawyer at the right level of abstraction, then pairing the model with domain-specific tools, data, and workflows.
The conversation gets especially interesting when Thompson walks through Orbital’s use of spatial intelligence. Real estate law often turns written legal descriptions, old maps, title documents, surveys, and boundaries into high-stakes decisions about physical land. Thompson explains the challenge of moving from words on a page to points, lines, curves, and property boundaries on a map. This leads to a broader discussion of large language models, visual language models, OCR, and classical machine learning, with Thompson making clear that the best current systems still require a toolbox rather than blind faith in one model.
We also explore Thompson’s concept of the “prompt tax,” the hidden maintenance burden created when model behavior changes faster than product teams expect. Thompson describes Orbital’s mantra of “betting on the model,” which means building for where AI capabilities are heading while still delivering value today. He separates durable domain expertise from brittle prompt tricks, arguing that legal AI companies need reusable legal knowledge, strong evaluation habits, and a willingness to rebuild assumptions as models improve.
Looking ahead, Thompson sees the impact of AI arriving faster than the standard three-to-five-year forecast. He points to software engineering as an early signal for what legal work might experience next, with professionals increasingly orchestrating humans and AI agents together. The billable hour, client value, accountability, empathy, and judgment all come under pressure as AI handles more cognitive labor. For real estate lawyers and legal technologists, Thompson’s message is direct: the winners will be those who understand the work deeply, build with technical humility, and know when the map matters as much as the document.
Listen on mobile platforms: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Substack
[Special Thanks to Legal Technology Hub for their sponsoring this episode.]
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: Jerry David DeCicca
Transcript:
I’Asia Scarlett-Jones: How Subscription Pricing and Niche Branding Transform a Law Firm
Tired of the “fight to the death” model of family law? In this episode, you’ll hear how a modern family law founder rebuilt the divorce practice playbook with intentional branding, low-conflict strategy, and a subscription model that puts families—and profitability—first.
In this episode, Steve Fretzin and I’Asia Scarlett-Jones discuss:
- Origin story and career path into