Google’s recent outage wasn’t just an inconvenience — it was a wake-up call. As more and more law firms rely on AI tools and AI agents to perform critical tasks, they’re potentially creating a dangerous dependency that could paralyze key aspects of their practice when (not if) the AI grid goes down.

In her latest column for LawNext, AI strategist Jennifer Case delivers a sobering reality check: “AI Blackouts Are Coming: How Law Firms Can Maintain Enterprise Operations During Agent Grid Failure.”

Case discusses six critical failure scenarios every law firm should plan for — from regional cloud blackouts that freeze intake chatbots to policy changes that could block your contract review agent mid-deadline.

But Case doesn’t just sound the alarm — she provides the blueprint for survival. Her five essential steps include building redundancy into AI workflows, inserting human checkpoints, and running quarterly “blackout drills” to test your firm’s resilience.

Her bottom line: The firms that survive the coming AI blackouts will be the ones that planned for them.

Read Jennifer’s full analysis and get her practical action plan at LawNext: AI Blackouts Are Coming: How Law Firms Can Maintain Enterprise Operations During Agent Grid Failure.

Photo of Bob Ambrogi Bob Ambrogi

Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.