ACE Talk: Sarah Glassmeyer

Words from the Women+AI Summit, 1 February 2025 @ Vanderbilt Law School

Hi. I’m Sarah. Here’s the deal with me, by which I mean, here’s how I usually introduce myself when someone makes the mistake of giving me a microphone and an audience. I’m a legal technologist by profession, a lawyer and librarian by training, and an Appalachian by the Grace of God. So that’s where I’m coming from – literally - and the main factors that shape my perspective on the world.

The title of my talk is “Ma, I am a Wise Old Man.” And I’m going to explain that in a minute.

First, I want to take you back to November of 2022 when my world was completely rocked. I speak, of course, about the fact that the legal tech start up that I was working for suddenly and unexpectedly folded, and I found myself without a job.

I mean, it was sudden and unexpected to me. Maybe I should have paid more attention to staff meetings.

Then, a week or so later there was some news out of Silicon Valley about this new type of AI, but when I tell you that I could have given less than a doohockey about it, that does not even scratch the surface of my apathy at that point.

And then I got covid.

So welcome to the winter of my discontent.

Now, I was very lucky and pretty much slid into a great new job, which was actually a bit of an upgrade to where I had been. And I’m not just saying that because my boss and a few coworkers are in the audience right now. Side note: women owned and staffed legal tech companies – get into it.

But still.

If you have ever lost a job or had any sort of major life change really, it can take a lot out of you.

Around late Spring/early Summer of 2023, I pulled myself out of my hole and noticed that people were still talking about this Gen AI thing. I saw a very interesting use case demonstration by a technologist named Michael Bomarito – who is a man, but I do not hold that against him – and I was suddenly very intrigued by the possibilities.

Of course, months had gone by since the November announcement and I was like “Oh no, maybe I’ve missed the boat.”

So, let’s get to the title of my talk.

One of my favorite movies is Thirteen Days. It’s a behind the scenes look at the Cuban Missile Crisis. It’s a Kevin Costner movie, and as with all Kevin Costner movies, he’s basically playing Kevin Costner. Specifically, this time he plays a long-time friend of the Kennedy family named Kenny O’Donnell who works in the Kennedy White House.

So, you have JFK, RFK, and Kevin Costner trying to figure out how to deal with the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis. JFK in particular is haunted by WWI and how countries used old 19^th century playbooks to deal with new 20^th century weaponry and geopolitical alignments.

If you’re thinking to yourself, “hey, is that a metaphor for using AI in law?” Yes. Yes, it is. Thank you for noticing.

But anyway, they bring in various types of experts, people like Dean Acheson who was a long-time diplomat, but no one really knew how to really deal with this situation. Finally, Kevin Costner realizes: “there are no wise old men to consult, there’s just us.”

So that’s part one.

Part two is from this story I love about Cher.

So, Cher, post Sonny and Cher, post successful solo career, post OSCAR is talking to her mother, and her mom says something like “Don’t worry, one day you’ll find a rich man to take care of you.” To which Cher replied “Ma, I am a rich man.”

Now, I could take 45 minutes to unpack that statement, but as my talk is just supposed to be five, I’ll just say: WERK.

Let’s now go back to the summer of 2023. I looked around at what was happening in legal tech with regards to AI and realized a few things:

1) No one really is The Expert. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of expertise, including much in this room right now. But given how multifaceted both law and considerations around Artificial Intelligence are, there’s no one way to approach or view this topic. Also, the use of LLMs and Generative AI in law is SO new and changing rapidly and I’m REALLY smart. I figured there was no way that everyone was so far ahead of me that I couldn’t catch up.

2) I don’t want to say that it wasn’t happening, but I wanted there to be more consideration and conversation about the things I cared about or – and because I’m delightful like this - what I thought other people should care about. So much energy around AI is essentially about how to get rich people richer, and while there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s not what gets me out of bed in the morning. I care about things like Access to Justice, societal impacts of technology, upstream issues like training bias and content organization and ownership, and smart use of tech.

3) I took inventory of what I could offer and – as important – what I actually enjoy doing. Because I can do a lot, but I don’t really like doing much of anything. I can build or work in product – either for myself or others - and I seriously considered that, but like I said I have a pretty sweet gig. And I don’t want to Girl Boss my way into 80-hour work weeks. Because I’m also lazy. I get a lot of enjoyment out of demystifying tech, enlarging the community of informed creators and users of it, and also generally being a pain in the butt on the Internet and telling people what to do. So right now, that’s where I’m concentrating on my energies. It may change in the future or maybe not.

To wrap up, here’s what I want to leave you with:

If you think it’s too late for you to join the conversation and work in AI, it’s not.

If you think you have nothing to offer, I assure you, you do.

And if you ever start to doubt the above, channel your inner Cher (and a little Kevin Costner, but mostly Cher) and tell yourself “Ma, I AM the Wise Old Man.”