https://www.lawnext.com/category/ken-crutchfield Tracking new and intriguing websites and products for the legal profession. Fri, 17 Jul 2026 12:56:30 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.9 https://www.lawnext.com/2026/07/whats-in-a-wrapper-comparing-a-hershey-bar-to-legaltech-ai.html Fri, 17 Jul 2026 12:56:30 +0000 https://www.lawnext.com/?p=53824 Anyone can make sweets, but not everyone can make a Hershey bar. The debate over legaltech startups offering nothing more than a “thin wrapper” around an LLM begs a deeper analysis of the value of a wrapper, particularly as open-source alternatives take root. Let’s start with a Hershey bar. You pay for the chocolate, right? […]]]> https://www.lawnext.com/2026/06/ken-crutchfield-is-kirklands-500-million-ai-investment-really-a-bet-on-data.html Wed, 17 Jun 2026 14:35:48 +0000 https://www.lawnext.com/?p=53459 When Kirkland & Ellis announced a $500 million investment in AI, much of the reaction focused on the dollar amount. That much money commands attention in the legal industry. But the dollar amount may not be the most interesting part of the story. The more important questions are what is Kirkland actually buying and what […]]]> https://www.lawnext.com/2026/05/ken-crutchfield-when-open-source-meets-legal-how-mikeoss-signals-the-end-of-legals-secret-sauce.html Fri, 08 May 2026 12:38:49 +0000 https://www.lawnext.com/?p=53092 Last week, Will Chen released MikeOSS, an open-source project on GitHub that claims to be feature-equivalent to Harvey and Legora. Among other things, MikeOSS has an assistant, a tabular review function, and reusable workflows. While it’s too early to tell how strong the technology is, the response in the development community has been viral. For […]]]> https://www.lawnext.com/2026/03/guest-post-the-new-physics-of-legal-tech-who-performs-legal-work-in-the-ai-era-part-3-of-3.html Thu, 12 Mar 2026 17:10:40 +0000 https://www.lawnext.com/?p=52632 This is the final installment in a three-part series examining the forces reshaping the legal industry. Part One and Part Two covered the macro dynamics of the AI industrial revolution and also the bending of UPL as consumers turn to AI products such as ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity for legal advice. Consumer behavior will lead, […]]]> https://www.lawnext.com/2026/02/guest-post-ken-crutchfield-on-10-reasons-the-market-overreacted-to-claudes-legal-skills-announcement.html Thu, 05 Feb 2026 16:21:41 +0000 https://www.lawnext.com/?p=52380 When Anthropic announced legal skills inside its Cowork environment this week, shares of Thomson Reuters, Reed Elsevier, and Wolters Kluwer tanked. Investors appeared to price in a new competitive threat from Claude. But Ken Crutchfield believes the market got it wrong. “I feel the market reaction does not reflect the reality of the situation,” he […]]]> https://www.lawnext.com/2026/01/guest-post-in-the-second-of-his-three-part-series-ken-crutchfield-looks-at-whether-upl-will-hit-the-breaking-point-in-2026.html Fri, 30 Jan 2026 19:57:34 +0000 https://www.lawnext.com/?p=52326 Where does all the pressure building in legal tech concentrate? On unauthorized practice of law (UPL), says Ken Crutchfield — and something’s got to give. In Part 1 of his series on “The New Physics of Legal Tech,” Crutchfield examined the macro forces shaping the industry. Now, in Part 2, he zeroes in on the […]]]> https://www.lawnext.com/2025/12/guest-post-ken-crutchfield-reads-the-tea-leaves-for-legal-tech-in-2026.html Mon, 29 Dec 2025 16:41:46 +0000 https://www.lawnext.com/?p=52044 Forget the bold predictions. Ken Crutchfield is focusing on something more fundamental: the physics of the legal tech market. In the wake of a banner 2025 — with Harvey hitting an $8 billion valuation, Filevine raising $400 million, and Clio’s acquisition of vLex — it is tempting to either celebrate the boom or fret about […]]]> https://www.lawnext.com/2025/11/guest-post-ken-crutchfield-on-what-business-robin-ai-and-other-legal-tech-companies-are-really-in.html Tue, 11 Nov 2025 19:39:39 +0000 https://www.lawnext.com/?p=51649 What does McDonald’s real estate strategy have to do with legal tech? More than you might think, says Ken Crutchfield. In the wake of Robin AI’s recent struggles to secure funding and reports of potential emergency acquisition talks, Crutchfield draws a compelling parallel to Ray Kroc’s revelation in The Founder that McDonald’s wasn’t really in […]]]> https://www.lawnext.com/2025/10/guest-post-what-waymos-autonomous-vehicles-can-teach-legal-tech-about-deploying-agentic-ai.html Thu, 30 Oct 2025 13:45:14 +0000 https://www.lawnext.com/?p=51540 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 […]]]> https://www.lawnext.com/2025/09/guest-column-is-harvey-playing-a-different-game-in-legal-ai.html Mon, 29 Sep 2025 16:32:57 +0000 https://www.lawnext.com/?p=51277 A Reddit post last week ignited a firestorm of speculation across the legal industry about the long-term prospects of legal AI company Harvey, with some dismissing it as little more than a ChatGPT wrapper. But is that criticism missing the point? In his latest column for LawNext, legal tech strategy consultant Ken Crutchfield argues that […]]]> https://www.lawnext.com/2025/08/guest-post-ken-crutchfield-on-how-legal-ai-innovators-can-get-first-mover-advantage-on-the-next-big-thing.html Thu, 21 Aug 2025 16:16:20 +0000 https://www.lawnext.com/?p=50857 First movers in legal tech often win the day, says Ken Crutchfield, but without also anticipating what’s ahead, an early move can be quickly outmoded. This is particularly true given the pace of development of major AI developers such as OpenAI, Google, Meta and others. But what if an AI innovator could know — or […]]]> https://www.lawnext.com/2025/07/guest-post-ken-crutchfield-on-agentic-ai-in-legal-and-the-critical-need-for-human-supervision.html Fri, 25 Jul 2025 15:03:44 +0000 https://www.lawnext.com/?p=50547 OpenAI just dropped a game-changer: ChatGPT Agent can now access your calendar, communicate with external systems, and perform tasks autonomously on your behalf. For legal professionals, this isn’t just another AI update — it’s a glimpse into a future where AI doesn’t just answer questions, but actively manages workflows, submits court filings, and orchestrates complex […]]]> https://www.lawnext.com/2025/07/guest-post-ken-crutchfield-on-clios-acquisition-of-vlex-have-we-seen-this-movie-before.html Thu, 03 Jul 2025 14:05:57 +0000 https://www.lawnext.com/?p=50288 It was major news this week when law practice management company Clio announced its acquisition of legal research and AI company vLex for $1 billion. But Ken Crutchfield, who 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 […]]]>