In this episode, Ruby Powers sits down with Sean Harrington, Director of the AI and Legal Tech Studio at Arizona State University's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, for a conversation about what it actually takes to build AI fluency — in law schools, in law firms, and in yourself.
Sean has been teaching hands-on AI courses for three semesters, running an AI ops operation across the ASU campus, and presenting at ABA TechShow on prompt engineering. He's spent thousands of hours with this technology and has a grounded, balanced take on where the profession is and where it needs to go.
What we explore:
✅ The Uneven State of AI in Law Schools: Less than half of law schools had any AI class as of 2024 — and of those, only 12% offered practical hands-on training. What ASU is doing differently, why some schools are still banning AI entirely, and what incoming students actually need to ask before choosing a school.
✅ Why Training Lawyers in AI Is Different: Unlike Microsoft Word or Westlaw, AI outputs are stochastic — they're never exactly the same twice. Add the high-profile hallucination cases and the career risk of getting it wrong, and you have a technology that requires a different kind of training altogether.
✅ How to Build AI Intuition: Sean's approach is brute-force repetition across as many applications as possible until every attorney has their own light bulb moment. What that looks like in practice — and why the attorneys who tried it once two years ago and gave up are the ones falling furthest behind.
✅ The Four-Part Prompting Framework: Why prompting still matters for complex tasks, what framework Sean uses and why he chose it, and what the difference looks like between a prompt that works and one that doesn't.
✅ The AI Ops Role Inside Your Firm: Why every firm with the capacity should identify an AI champion, give them a token budget, free up some of their time from the billable hour, and let them run. What that person does and why it's becoming a competitive necessity.
✅ AI Hygiene for Busy Attorneys: How to stay current when you can't spend three hours reading documentation. The newsletter diet, the Notebook LM trick, and why an hour a week of focused AI training is a realistic and meaningful commitment.
If you're trying to figure out how to actually get better at this — not just keep hearing that you should — this episode is the most practical starting point we've had.
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Hosted by Ruby Powers, your guide into the heart of law practice management. Each week, learn insights from leading legal minds, trailblazing attorneys, and expert guests who provide you with actionable advice, out-of-the-box solutions, and a fresh perspective on running your firm more effectively and efficiently. Prepare to open your mind, be inspired, and power up your practice to the next level.
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