{"id":16495,"date":"2026-11-03T20:09:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T20:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=16495"},"modified":"2026-11-03T20:09:00","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T20:09:00","slug":"putting-the-ai-in-legal-and-health-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=16495","title":{"rendered":"Putting the \u201cAI\u201d in \u201cLegal\u201d (and \u201cHealth Care\u201d)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By KIM BELLARD<\/p>\n

I once again have to thank The New York Times<\/em> for introducing me to a new concept. Sarah Kessler wrote<\/a> about the rise of \u201clegal engineering\u201d \u2013 for which, it turns out, one doesn\u2019t have to be either a lawyer or an engineer.<\/p>\n

Their role is to help integrate A.I. into the practice of law, whether at law firms or companies. That sure sounds like a prudent, if possibly belated, idea \u2013 and one suspects we\u2019re going to see such \u201cengineers\u201d in other fields. I certainly hope that healthcare is one of them, sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n

Irene Liu, the executive director of the A.I. initiative at Stanford Law School, explained the job to Ms. Kessler thusly: \u201cIf you were to just put it into an equation, it\u2019s law plus technology plus business process.\u201d That Venn diagram<\/a> gets pretty small very quickly.<\/p>\n

Mary O\u2019Carroll, the C.E.O. of LegalEng Consulting Group, also explained the role to Ms. Kessler: \u201cYou don\u2019t necessarily need a giant pyramid of lawyers anymore. People who have this kind of skill set don\u2019t have to have a J.D., and they don\u2019t have to be software engineers, but there\u2019s business process re-engineering, or this M.B.A. type skill, that I think is really necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Kessler notes that they are sometimes referred to as \u201cknowledge and innovation counsels,\u201d \u201cinnovation attorneys,\u201d or \u201clegal applications engineers,\u201d which may illustrate that the role is both new and evolving.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re considering why this role is important, note that the 2026 Legal Industry Report<\/em><\/a> from 8am found that 69% of legal professionals report personally using Generative AI (GenAI) tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude for work-related purposes, up from 31% a year earlier.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms. Liu\u2019s Law AI Initiative<\/a> joined Stanford Law School\u2019s Executive Education<\/a> to launch the Stanford Legal Engineering Academy<\/a> in September, a two-week residential program for intensive training in AI strategy, implementation, governance, and organizational transformation, starting in the summer of 2027. Adam Sterling, associate dean of executive education and strategic partnerships, said<\/a> the program was \u201cdesigned to prepare participants to act as chief AI leaders within their organizations, whether or not they hold that formal title.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUsing an AI tool is not the same as understanding how to redesign work around it,\u201d said<\/a> Julian Nyarko, professor of law and co-director of the Stanford Law School AI Initiative. \u201cThe leaders who will be most effective in this transition will be able to assess where the technology adds value, recognize its limits, and translate that understanding into new workflows, services, and organizational structures.\u201d<\/p>\n

Howard Glazer, a longtime partner at Ropes & Gray who became its head of practice A.I. about a year ago, told Ms. Kessler: \u201cIn the old days, there was technology and there was law. And as long as my email worked, I didn\u2019t have to talk to people who dealt with the technology. But now we actually provide our service and provide our product using the tools.\u201d More to the point, he added: \u201c\u2018Legal engineer\u2019 kind of makes it sound like someone made it up. But it\u2019s not. It\u2019s a role which the current environment just screams for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Legal tech firm Legora <\/a>, which describes itself as \u201cthe agentic operating system for legal work, supporting lawyers in research, review, and drafting across complex matters,\u201d claims to have some 200 legal engineers. \u201cWe\u2019re hiring hundreds, and competitors are hiring them, and our clients are hiring them,\u201d David Himmel, Legora\u2019s head of legal engineering for North America, told Ms. Kessler. \u201cIt\u2019s a true profession.\u201d<\/p>\n

She reports that legal AI firm Harvey<\/a>, which describes itself as \u201cthe operating system for legal and professional services,\u201d has similarly grown its team of legal engineers to over 200.<\/p>\n

Legora profiled<\/a> Ricardo Anaya, whom it described as its founding legal engineer for the U.S. He recalled: \u201cBy the time I came to Legora, I\u2019d been the lawyer, been the client, and worked on the product side. That\u2019s basically the job description for a legal engineer, though nobody called it that yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Anaya has found that there is often a gap between introducing an AI tool and its use. \u201cThe gap wasn\u2019t knowledge,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was that we were teaching the tool, not their work\u2026Most adoption problems are diagnosis problems, and diagnosis doesn\u2019t happen over video. That\u2019s why we go to them. Meeting lawyers where they are is a critical part of the job.\u201d<\/p>\n

If your industry has complicated workflows, you\u2019re going to use AI. If it has lots of arcane knowledge, you\u2019re going to use AI. And, of course, if people in it care about making money, you\u2019re going to use AI. If your industry doesn\u2019t yet have its version of a legal engineer to help master this transition, it will.<\/p>\n

Two years ago I wrote<\/a> about the need for more engineers in healthcare, noting that most people who present themselves as \u201chealthcare engineers\u201d are focused on designing, building, and operating healthcare facilities, although some felt it was (or should be) \u201cinvolved in all aspects of the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and management of illness, as well as the preservation and improvement of physical and mental health and well-being, through the services offered to humans by the medical and allied health professions.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

If they were doing all that, healthcare wouldn\u2019t be quite the mess it is today, with all parties seeing the system as dysfunctional. Healthcare needs its version of legal engineers \u2013 perhaps clinicians, perhaps not, but certainly people who understand how clinicians practice, how the system \u201cworks,\u201d and enough about AI to see where and how it can add value.<\/p>\n

Again, that Venn diagram gets small quickly.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d note that the American Medical Association (AMA) has launched the AMA Center for Digital Health and AI<\/a>, and named<\/a> the well-respected Jennifer Goldsack to head it up. Still, it is under the AMA\u2019s umbrella, and its own description says it \u201ceducates and supports physicians, and gives them a voice in how technology is used to enhance the patient and clinician experience,\u201d so if we\u2019re looking for radical system reforms or even putting patients first, we may need to look elsewhere.<\/p>\n

I remember when healthcare first started discovering the internet and \u201ceHealth\u201d became a thing. Then mobile came along and \u201cmHealth\u201d was the catchphrase. Smart people pointed out we\u2019d know when healthcare had truly adopted to the new technologies when things just became \u201chealth\u201d again. Same with AI.<\/p>\n

We need legal engineers and their equivalents now to help us transition to the AI world, but we\u2019re going to get to the point when AI is so baked into everything that we won\u2019t have distinct roles like them.<\/p>\n

Kim is a former emarketing exec at a major Blues plan, editor of the late & lamented\u00a0<\/em>Tincture.io<\/em><\/a>, and now regular THCB contributor<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By KIM BELLARD I once again have to thank The New York Times for introducing me to a new concept. Sarah Kessler wrote about the rise of \u201clegal engineering\u201d \u2013 for which, it turns out, one doesn\u2019t have to be either a lawyer or an engineer. Their role is to help integrate A.I. into the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":16492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16495"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}