Fresh off his first Waymo ride, Ken Crutchfield observes that autonomous vehicles had to be trained to navigate real streets and make life-or-death decisions years before legal tech began exploring agentic AI. Now, as law firms rush to deploy AI agents, there are crucial lessons to be learned from Waymo’s journey, he says.

In his latest column for LawNext, What Legal Innovators Can Learn About Agentic AI from Waymo, Crutchfield draws parallels between Google’s autonomous vehicle rollout and the current wave of agentic AI adoption in law, offering practical guidance on managing deployment, expectations and the inevitable chaos along the way.

Crutchfield is principal of Spring Forward Consulting and has been an executive at LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters and most recently Wolters Kluwer, where he was vice president and general manager of legal markets for Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S.

Read his full post in the LawNext resources library.

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.