The Usus Journal
Understand AI risk, protect client information, and choose firm software with more confidence. Every article is practical, sourced, and written for legal work—not for technology insiders.
20 practical guidesPrimary sources where availableVisible review dates
Essential guide · AI for lawyers
A documented legal example of fabricated authority, why fluent AI output can be false, and what lawyers should verify before relying on AI-assisted research.
Read the guideWhat this guide covers
Practical guidance
Choose a subject below. Every card opens a complete article with concrete questions, safeguards, or steps you can use.
AI for lawyers
Practical guidance on legal research, drafting, confidentiality, hallucinations, provenance, and meaningful human review.
A practical review method for checking legal authority, factual claims, quotations, omissions, and reasoning before AI-assisted work leaves a lawyer's desk.
Read article →A practical framework for deciding which legal tasks an AI tool may assist with, what evidence its output needs, and where human review must remain decisive.
Read article →A practical AI policy for law firms: approved tools, permitted information, required review, and a clear route for questions and exceptions.
Read article →A practical way to decide when AI use calls for client consent, disclosure, a court filing statement, or a conversation about fees.
Read article →A documented legal example of fabricated authority, why fluent AI output can be false, and what lawyers should verify before relying on AI-assisted research.
Read article →What ABA Formal Opinion 512 means for prompts, client information, provider terms, local AI, verification, and fees.
Read article →Law-firm security
Clear explanations of cloud risk, encryption, vendor diligence, devices, backups, recovery, and professional responsibility.
How to distinguish encryption in transit, provider-managed encryption, customer-held keys, and provider-blind designs when evaluating legal software.
Read article →How to find out whether your firm can actually restore files, calendars, email, and practice data after ransomware, device loss, or a provider outage.
Read article →A straightforward procedure for verifying wire instructions, stopping email-account fraud, and responding when a payment may have gone to an impostor.
Read article →Not all multifactor authentication provides the same protection. Here is how security keys, passkeys, authenticator apps, push prompts, and text codes differ.
Read article →A practical checklist for examining access, encryption keys, audit reports, contracts, incidents, exports, and the limits of every vendor's claims.
Read article →A plain-language guide to reasonable safeguards, vendor review, encryption, access, breach response, exports, and local-first alternatives.
Read article →Legal technology
Independent-minded analysis of cost, control, migration, interoperability, workflows, and the systems that run a firm.
A practical way to measure effort, scope drift, staff cost, effective hourly rate, and contribution margin without turning flat-fee work back into hourly billing.
Read article →A controlled migration method for preserving matters, relationships, documents, custom fields, billing history, and exceptions when a law firm changes systems.
Read article →How to evaluate legal software customization without choosing between a rigid generic system and an expensive platform that requires constant technical administration.
Read article →Why important matter information gets trapped in notes and spreadsheets, and how a cleaner field structure improves search, reporting, automation, and migration.
Read article →A migration-ready checklist for exporting matters, contacts, documents, billing, custom fields, communications, and the relationships between them.
Read article →A practical annual review of legal software pricing, add-ons, usage, exports, integrations, service changes, and the real cost of staying or leaving.
Read article →A once-a-year review of the technology risks that affect real legal work, from client communication and filing to AI, vendors, security, and recovery.
Read article →A five-year way to compare legal software pricing, add-ons, staff time, outages, data portability, and the eventual cost of leaving.
Read article →Usus Legal Technology Brief
Receive practical guidance, important legal-tech developments, and a short candid update on what Usus is learning and building.