Sandeep Jaggi, Associate General Counsel and Director of Patents at Intel, gave a talk on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the practice of law. Some of the topics covered include:

• How AI may revolutionize the practice of law and the lawyer's role in it
• Skills to acquire to practice law in the age of AI
• Skills that are relevant today and will endure beyond AI

Sandeep has 27 years of experience in patent law, including 14 years as head of corporate patent and legal departments. He also has 11 years of prior experience as an engineer at NASA and as a founder/CEO of a technology company. Currently, he is the director of patents at Intel Corporation, overseeing patent strategy, intelligence and operations. He focuses on using AI and machine learning for patent portfolio management and is the developer of TULIP, a cloud-based AI-enabled software for patent workflow and portfolio management. Sandeep is a registered patent attorney and holds a PhD in electrical engineering.

Tara Eberline, Partner-in-Charge of Foulston Siefkin’s Kansas City Office, discussed the challenges and opportunities presented by automated text generation within the legal practice from two perspectives—first, as an employment lawyer guiding her clients through challenges surrounding the implementation of AI in their businesses, and second, as a law firm leader who is grappling with the topic within her own firm. 

A 2006 Iowa Law alum, Tara Eberline is an experienced employment lawyer who advises public and private employers on complex workplace challenges at all stages of the employment relationship. When disputes arise, she represents clients before state and federal agencies and defends clients in workplace harassment, discrimination, retaliation, and other employment-related lawsuits. Tara also serves as the Partner-in-Charge of Foulston Siefkin’s Kansas City Office and a member of the firm’s executive committee.

Tonja De Sloover, Vice President & Assistant General Counsel, Litigation at IBM, spoke on how AI could be used within in-house legal departments and what the expectations are of outside counsel in using generative AI. She also touched on where generative AI may be helpful within the legal in-house practice in the future.

Large language models such as BERT and GPT have taken the world by storm in just a few years. While their origins are at least 75 years old, these models with their deep neural network architectures are special in that they seem to exhibit general artificial intelligence. Their "knowledge" stored in massive distributed representations, acquired by unsupervised training on extremely large data sets of texts, images, etc., that span many different languages have enabled a wide range of applications with a level of success not seen prior to the last 5 or so years. This talk covered two broad objectives:

• To provide a panoramic view of our research wherein we use large language models as a tool to address research objectives. 
• To highlight  research focused directly on improving our understanding of these large language models. 

The talk concluded with  thoughts on the extent to which large language models exhibit general artificial intelligence.

Padmini Srinivasan is a Professor in the University of Iowa Department of Computer Science.

NIL produced nearly $1 billion in earnings for intercollegiate athletes in its inaugural year. Analysts argue that the shockingly high totals are the result of disproportionate institutional support for revenue-generating sports. Although NIL earnings can exceed six-figures for some athletes, first-year data reveals that significant gender disparities exist. 

Tan Boston is an assistant professor of law at Northern Kentucky University, where she teaches property and sports law. Her career includes stints in the NCAA’s governance and general counsel departments. Having written multiple law review articles on NIL and gender equity, her scholarship appears in or is forthcoming in the Louisiana Law Review, Richmond Law Review and the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. She will discuss NIL’s impact on female athletes and the Title IX implications of creative NIL financing.

The presentation can be viewed here.

In the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s new name, image and likeness era, Jeremy Bloom, a college football star and Olympic skier, has largely been forgotten. But it was Bloom’s plea for common sense relief from NCAA amateurism rules 20 years ago that first put the organization at an NIL crossroads that ultimately led to a series of strategic wrong turns and have left the NCAA begging Congress for relief from its missteps. University of Iowa professor Dan Matheson, a former NCAA associate director of enforcement, talked about the history behind today’s NIL era in college athletics and the challenges ahead for the NCAA.

View the presentation here.

Prior to July 1, 2021, NCAA college athletes were prohibited by the NCAA from monetizing from their name, image or likeness and from hiring an agent to represent them in their marketing efforts. With the passing of NIL, the door has opened for college athletes to make money, build their professional brands and work with agents and commercial brands on marketing campaigns.  

In this discussion, Khalil Wilkes will reflect on his prior Stanford football student athlete experience and current work with WME Sports agency and discuss the evolution of the college “student athlete” experience since the inception of NIL. Come to learn more about NIL, how it has changed the college athlete’s experience, and how agents and commercial brands are utilizing the influence of college athletes in this new era.

Watch the recording here.