AI Sidebar
At the intersection of AI and law, the ground is shifting faster than almost anyone can keep up with. Hosted by Irene Liu of Stanford Law School’s AI Initiative, AI Sidebar brings together leading academics, technologists, policymakers, lawyers, and industry leaders to unpack where AI is headed and what it means for law, business, society, and all of us. From the heart of the Bay Area, where AI is being built, debated, and put to the test, the show cuts through the noise to unpack the biggest developments shaping law, business, society, and all of us. Each episode asks th...
Jason Boehmig on Building AGI for Law
What does it mean to build the next generation of legal technology when law firms, legal teams, and AI companies are all rethinking what lawyers can do?
In this episode of AI Sidebar, Irene Liu talks with Jason Boehmig, who leads Astra for Law, OpenAI’s legal vertical. Before joining OpenAI, Boehmig founded Ironclad, one of the companies that helped reshape modern legal technology.
Together, they discuss the evolution of legal tech and the future of AI in law. Boehmig reflects on the rise of legal engineering, the launch of Astra for Law, and what “AGI f...
Global Regulation, AI Safety, and Preparing for AGI
As frontier AI becomes more powerful, how can society balance its extraordinary promise with the safeguards needed to use it responsibly?
In this episode of AI Sidebar, Irene Liu talks with Tom Lue, Vice President of Frontier AI Global Affairs at Google DeepMind and the company’s first general counsel, about the rapidly evolving global AI policy landscape. Lue discusses how AI policy has changed since he joined DeepMind, why shared standards and safety frameworks matter, and what it means to prepare for AGI. Irene and Tom also explore open models, public-private governance, and AI’s potential to a...
How AI Is Reshaping Legal Hiring, Law Firm Roles, and In-House Careers
How is AI changing the legal hiring market, and what do lawyers need to do to stay competitive?
In this episode of AI Sidebar, Irene Liu talks with Anna Gorodetsky, a partner at Major, Lindsey & Africa who oversees in-house counsel recruiting, about what law firms and legal departments are looking for in the age of AI. Gorodetsky shares what she is seeing in the market, from new AI innovation roles at law firms to the pressure on in-house teams to do more with technology. Irene and Anna also discuss the practical AI experience employers increasingly expect, what...
Why Open Source AI Is Having Its Moment, and What Legal Leaders Need to Know
What does open source AI really mean, why does it matter, and what should legal and business leaders be thinking about as the landscape continues to evolve?
In this episode of AI Sidebar, Irene Liu talks with Heather Meeker, an internationally recognized open source software licensing expert, partner at TechLaw Partners, co-founder of Chinstrap Community, and author of Open Source for Business. Meeker explains why open source AI is harder to define than open source software, how open weights differ from truly open models, and why that distinction matters for lawyers advising companies on how these tools...
AI-Native, Lawyer-Centered: Building the Law Firm of the Future
What does it take to build a good AI-native law firm when the goal is not just efficiency, but giving lawyers more leverage, more agency, and more space for the human judgement at the heart of legal work?
In this episode of AI Sidebar, Irene Liu talks with Ryan Daniels, co-founder and CEO of Crosby AI and a Stanford Law School alum, about what he’s learned building an AI-native law firm focused on commercial contracts. Daniels explains what “AI-native” means in practice, how Crosby differs from both a traditional law firm and a legal tech company, and why...
How Agentic AI Is Redefining the Role of the Product Counsel
For product lawyers, the agentic era is changing more than the tools; it is changing how products are built, how risks surface, and how legal advice reaches the business. And who better to explore that shift than the creator of Claude for Legal and associate general counsel at Anthropic, Mark Pike.
Drawing on his experience at Slack and Anthropic, Pike offers a firsthand look at what product counseling requires when legal teams are advising not just on AI, but alongside it. Irene and Mark explore how lawyers can build trust with product and engineering teams, why technical c...
When AI Answers Beat Law Professors: What It Means for Lawyers and Law Schools
What does it mean for quality, legal expertise, and judgment when law professors actually prefer AI answers over answers written by other law professors in a blind study?
In this episode of AI Sidebar, Irene Liu talks with Stanford Law Professor Julian Nyarko, faculty director of liftlab and co-director of Stanford Law’s AI Initiative, about his recent study examining how legal experts evaluate AI-generated work. Nyarko explains what the study reveals, why its findings matter for both legal education and practice, and how rigorous research can help the profession determine when AI performs well, when it fa...
Legal Engineers: The New AI Role Reshaping Law
Legal teams are not just adopting AI tools, they need to reimagine the work; who should do the work, how it should be done, and what should be redesigned entirely.
In this episode, host Irene Liu sits down with Mary O’Carroll, CEO of LegalEng Consulting Group and a longtime leader in legal operations and legal technology, to discuss legal ‘rightsourcing’ in the age of AI. Drawing on her experience across Google, Ironclad, law firms, legal tech companies, and consulting, O’Carroll explains why buying AI tools is only the beginning, and why the real opportunity lies in reima...
CLO playbook: Leading through AI and Corporate Transformation
How can Chief Legal Officers lead AI transformation in ways that are strategic, practical, and tied to how legal work actually gets done?
In this episode of AI Sidebar, host Irene Liu sits down with April Miller Boise, former executive vice president and chief legal officer of Intel, to discuss how legal leaders can guide their organizations through both AI adoption and broader corporate transformation. Drawing on her experience leading Intel’s legal and corporate functions through a period of major change, Boise explains why CLOs must set the tone from the top, align AI strategy with bu...
Law Schools in the Age of AI
How should law schools respond when AI begins to reshape not only the tools of lawyering but the profession’s core responsibilities?
In the debut episode of AI Sidebar, host Irene Liu sits down with Stanford Law School Dean George Triantis, who lays out Stanford Law’s overall approach to AI: prepare students to use the technology fluently and responsibly, preserve the human judgment at the heart of lawyering, and help legal institutions adapt to a rapidly changing world. From the launch of Stanford Law’s AI Initiative to the rise of AI agents, legal tech tools, and AI...
AI Sidebar Trailer
At the intersection of AI and law, the ground is shifting faster than almost anyone can keep up with. Hosted by Irene Liu of Stanford Law School’s AI Initiative, AI Sidebar brings together leading academics, technologists, policymakers, lawyers, and industry leaders to unpack where AI is headed and what it means for law, business, society, and all of us.
From the heart of the Bay Area, where AI is being built, debated, and put to the test, the show cuts through the noise to unpack the biggest developments shaping law, business, society, and all of us. Ea...
