Exploring GenAI with VAILL: Day 10 🗺

A 10-day journey into human-centered GenAI for legal professionals

🗺 Day 10: Creating Your AI Roadmap

Congratulations! You've reached the final day of our journey together exploring GenAI for legal professionals. Over the past nine days, you've started building a strong foundation in using conversational GenAI tools, practiced essential techniques, and developed a thoughtful approach to implementation. Today, we'll focus on bringing it all together and creating your personal roadmap for continued growth and success with GenAI.

Today's Focus: Develop your personalized strategy for ongoing GenAI integration while staying current with emerging trends and maintaining professional excellence.

🎯 Learning Objectives

• Create your personal GenAI implementation plan or “roadmap”

• Explore techniques for staying current with GenAI developments

• Develop strategies for continuous learning and adaptation about GenAI and technology in general

🔑 Key Concepts

Success with GenAI isn't about mastering a static set of tools—it's about developing an adaptable approach that grows with both the technology and your practice. At VAILL, we've found that legal professionals who thrive with GenAI (and technology in general) often focus on three key areas:

1. Strategic Integration: Building sustainable workflows that combine GenAI tools with professional expertise

2. Continuous Learning: Staying current with developments while maintaining core legal competencies (this is also an ethical obligation in most US jurisdictions!)

3. Thoughtful Implementation: Regularly assessing and adjusting how GenAI tools support your practice

Remember: The goal isn't to use GenAI everywhere, but to implement it thoughtfully where it truly enhances your work and allows you to focus on high-value activities that require your expertise.

💡 Pro Tips

• Start small and scale successful implementations

• Regular review and adjustment of AI workflows

• Build a network for sharing AI insights and experiences

• Document successful approaches and lessons learned

• Stay curious but maintain professional skepticism

✍️ Today's Exercise

Let's create your personal GenAI implementation plan through a structured approach:

1. Assessment & Integration: In your preferred GenAI tool¹ try this prompt: "Help me create a framework for assessing my current GenAI usage and planning future implementation. Please include:

   • Questions for evaluating current GenAI workflows

   • Criteria for identifying new GenAI opportunities

   • Methods for measuring success

   • Strategies for gradual expansion

   • Format this as a practical planning guide."

2. Learning Pathway: Follow up with: "Based on current trends in legal GenAI, please help me create a learning plan that includes:

   • Key areas to monitor and understand

   • Suggested resources for staying current

   • Skills to develop or strengthen

   • Signs that indicate a need for adjustment

   • Present this as a structured learning roadmap."

3. Implementation Strategy: Finally, develop a strategy to continue your AI journey. Consider giving the AI context by sharing the work you’ve done so far in this course, including any experiments that you would like to integrate more fully into your workflow. A suggested prompt: "Help me develop a 90-day plan for implementing GenAI in my work that:

   1. Starts with low-risk, high-impact areas

   2. Gradually expands successful approaches

   3. Includes regular assessment points

   4. Maintains focus on professional standards

   5. Create this as a week-by-week guide."
      

   Use this as a starting point and engage in a conversation with the AI to tweak and fine-tune a strategy that works for you. As part of this process, also consider what additional information you might share (documents to upload, websites to refer to) that could inform the AI to produce even more valuable and meaningful responses.

🔍 Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Trying to implement too many tools at once

• Forgetting to regularly assess and adjust

• Overlooking the importance of continuous learning

⚡️ Lightning Round (Optional)

Create your personal AI manifesto by using your preferred GenAI tool to review your notes from the past 10 days as well as your newly-created 90-day GenAI implementation strategy. From this review, create your manifesto that includes the following:

1. Identify your top 3-5 insights about GenAI in legal practice

2. Document your core principles for AI implementation

3. Set specific goals for the next 6 months

4. Ask the AI for feedback on your manifesto

5. Share your manifesto with a colleague for human feedback

🔄 Looking Back & Moving Forward

Over the past 10 days, you've:

• Built foundational GenAI skills

• Practiced essential prompting techniques

• Explored content creation and analysis

• Enhanced productivity workflows

• Developed learning strategies

• Understood ethical considerations

• Advanced your technical capabilities

• Compared different GenAI tools

Now you're ready to take the next steps in your GenAI journey!

📚 Additional Resources

• Article: Embracing GenAI at Work (Harvard Business Review, September-October 2024 magazine issue) - the article describes three kinds of “fusion skills” the authors recommend to get the most out of GenAI at work

• Podcast (with transcript): Chats, Bots, and Prompts: Make GenAI Work for You (Harvard Business Review’s Women at Work podcast, November 2024) - listen (or read the transcript) to learn how some GenAI power users are making the most of this tech right now

• Interactive: Upload your learning journal from this e-course into a new notebook in Google NotebookLM, along with your AI implementation strategy, your (optional) AI manifesto, and any of the resources we’ve shared that have been useful to you. Chat with the AI about what you've learned and your plans for using GenAI going forward. Ask it to help identify patterns in your learning and suggest areas where you might want to focus next, and consider updating your implementation strategy accordingly. Consider making this notebook an ongoing GenAI learning space and come back to it regularly.

👉 Your Next Steps

1. Follow The AI of Law from VAILL to continue learning about how legal professionals can thrive in this age of AI through practical applications and insights

2. Maintain your community of practice if you took this course with colleagues, or consider creating a community with co-workers or colleagues to support continuous learning

3. Explore advanced resources, including courses and workshops in GenAI (stay tuned for a new platform VAILL is launching in ‘25 to facilitate this!)

4. If you haven’t already, take VAILL founding co-director Mark Williams’ Coursera course, Generative AI for Legal Professionals. And, consider adding Vanderbilt prof Jules White’s Coursera courses Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT and OpenAI GPTs: Creating Your Own Custom AI Assistants to earn the Prompt Engineering for Law specialization!

Remember, this isn't the end of your GenAI journey—it's just the beginning! We're excited to see how you'll use these tools to enhance your work and advance the legal profession.

Thank you for learning with us. Stay curious, keep experimenting, and never hesitate to reach out to the VAILL team for support and inspiration!

Please keep in touch and share your continued discoveries with us at vaill@vanderbilt.edu.

1. Consider continuing your experiment from Day 9 and using Poe to run through today’s exercise in more than one LLM, like ChatGPT and Claude.