TL
Tech Law Talks
Reed Smith
Listen to Tech Law Talks for practical observations on technology and data legal trends, from product and technology development to operational and compliance issues that practitioners encounter every day. On this channel, we host regular discussions about the legal and business issues around data protection, privacy and security; data risk management; intellectual property; social media; and other types of information technology.
- 29 episodes
- Avg 23 min
- English
Counted on this page — what you have heard stays on this device, so it is not something the list can be paged by.
- TL#111November 5 · 37 min
Who owns AI-written code? IP rights and risks when AI helps with coding
In this episode of Tech Law Talks, Reed Smith’s Gerard Donovan, Sonny Grewal, Mike Forbes, and Tyler Thompson discuss the IP questions raised when developers use AI coding assistants or “vibe code.” They cover copyright authorship, trade secret and open-source licensing risks and mitigation strategies, and patenting when AI is part of the process. The group also shares practical steps in-house teams can take to protect their own IP and avoid infringing others’.
- Transcript
- Chapters
- TL#109November 3 · 34 min
AI at the crossroads: The legal questions every business is facing
Reed Smith Global AI Practice Co-Chairs Nick Breen, Gerard Donovan, and Tyler Thompson explore how organizations are moving from AI experimentation to enterprise-wide adoption and the complex legal issues that follow. From intellectual property and copyright disputes to governance, regulation, and emerging global frameworks, they share practical insights on the opportunities, risks, and decisions shaping AI strategy today.
- Transcript
- Chapters
- TL#108October 28 · 14 min
From records retention to AI readiness: Building a foundation for AI governance
A strong AI governance program starts with knowing what data you have, what you need to keep, and what should be disposed of. Reed Smith attorneys Anthony Diana, Therese Craparo, Kiriaki Tourikis, and Kristen Pologruto explain how a tailored records retention schedule can provide the foundation for more reliable data, smarter risk management, and responsible AI adoption.
- Transcript
- Chapters
- TL#107October 14 · 25 min
The missing foundation of AI governance: Getting data governance right
Effective AI governance starts with effective data governance. Anthony Diana, Therese Craparo, Kiriaki Tourikis, and Kristen Pologruto explore how organizations can strengthen the data foundation behind AI to improve results, manage risk, and build more defensible AI programs.
- Transcript
- Chapters
- TL#106September 30 · 20 min
AI compliance: AI in e-discovery, a new category of evidence
As AI becomes embedded across the enterprise, legal and compliance teams face new questions around discoverability, preservation, privilege, and the defensible use of AI in document review. Anthony Diana, Therese Craparo, and Michael Rubayo join Robert Cruz of Smarsh to discuss lessons from existing e-discovery practices and practical considerations for managing AI-generated information and emerging litigation risks.
- Transcript
- Chapters
- TL#105September 23 · 25 min
Europe’s digital rulebook: Understanding the DMA, DSA, and the new enforcement landscape
The EU’s Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act are reshaping how technology companies operate, compete, and manage online services. In this episode, Reed Smith attorneys Natasha Tardif and Léonie Dhellemmes break down the latest enforcement actions, multimillion-euro fines, and key compliance considerations for businesses navigating Europe’s rapidly evolving digital regulatory framework.
- Transcript
- Chapters
- TL#104September 16 · 22 min
AI compliance: What regulators expect in the age of agentic AI
As AI transforms communications monitoring and supervision, businesses face growing pressure to demonstrate that their compliance programs are effective, defensible, and well governed. In this episode of “Tech Law Talks,” Smarsh’s VP of Regulatory and Information Governance, Robert Cruz, joins Reed Smith lawyers Anthony Diana, Therese Craparo, and Michael Rubayo to explore evolving regulatory expectations, the shift from lexicons to AI-powered surveillance, and the ways that organizations can manage risk at a time when autonomous AI agents are becoming part of the compliance landscape.
- Transcript
- Chapters
- TL#103September 2 · 23 min
AI compliance: Managing recordkeeping risk as AI use accelerates
As the use of artificial intelligence accelerates across financial services and other regulated industries, businesses are facing difficult questions about when AI outputs, chatbot exchanges, and agent activity become records that must be retained. In this episode of “Tech Law Talks," Smarsh’s Robert Cruz joins Reed Smith lawyers Anthony Diana, Therese Craparo, and Michael Rubayo as they discuss emerging regulatory expectations, governance strategies, third-party risk, and the growing compliance challenges posed by agentic AI.
- Transcript
- Chapters
- TL#102March 11 · 20 min
Beyond the hype: Real-world challenges of AI-enabled e-discovery
Generative AI is transforming e-discovery, but with real-world deployment comes real-world challenges. In this episode of Tech Law Talks, host Anthony Diana sits down with Dera Nevin of FTI Consulting to cut through the hype, covering the myth of "one tool fits all," prompting complexities, pricing pitfalls, and how to identify use cases where AI actually delivers ROI.
- Transcript
- Chapters
- TL#101February 25 · 21 min
AI-enabled e-discovery: Speed to knowledge - how GenAI is reshaping litigation strategy
Reed Smith partner Anthony Diana sits down with Dera Nevin of FTI Consulting to explore how AI-enabled e-discovery is transforming litigation-and why the best time to adopt these tools is now. From accelerating early case assessment to revolutionizing privilege review workflows, Anthony and Dera break down where generative AI is already delivering real results-not just theoretical possibilities. They discuss how forward-thinking legal teams are training large language models to surface key documents, generate case timelines, and dramatically reduce time-to-knowledge on complex matters.
- Transcript
- TL#100February 11 · 24 min
AI-enabled e-discovery: Beyond TAR - How GenAI is rewriting the rules of document review
Generative AI is transforming document review-but are you ready to use it defensibly? In this episode, Anthony Diana sits down with e-discovery veterans Therese Craparo and Marcin Krieger to explore what makes GenAI different from traditional TAR, how to get your prompts right, and the pitfalls to avoid. Whether you're facing complex litigation or a regulatory investigation, tune in to learn how to make AI work for your next review.
- Transcript
- TL#99January 28 · 20 min
Trust, but verify: The critical role of validation in AI-powered e-discovery
AI is transforming e-discovery-but are your validation practices keeping pace? In this episode of Tech Law Talks, host Anthony Diana sits down with Kiriaki Tourikis and Marcin Krieger to tackle one of the most critical, and often misunderstood, aspects of AI-enabled discovery: how to prove your process was sound. The panel unpacks what validation really means, why it's far more than a checkbox exercise, and how it protects legal teams when opposing parties or courts come calling. They also share hard-won lessons on navigating aggressive discovery demands-and what not to agree to. Tune in for practical strategies to stay defensible as generative AI raises the stakes.
- Transcript
- TL#98Dec 18, 2025 · 27 min
Securitization: The principles of data center financing
Claude Brown, Jeffrey Stern, and Simon Hugo explore the various securitization structures within the data center sector, followed by an in-depth discussion on the environmental and social implications of data centers. This episode concludes with a comprehensive market overview of investment trends in the data center industry.
- Transcript
- Chapters
- TL#97Nov 12, 2025 · 24 min
Relativity aiR: Real-world results – accelerating review and case strategy with GenAI
In this episode of our AI-enabled e-discovery series, host Anthony Diana sits down with Reed Smith’s Marcin Krieger and Gravity Stack’s Sharri Wilner to unpack Relativity aiR: Relativity’s embedded generative AI framework for e-discovery. The conversation breaks down how aiR differs from traditional TAR/CAL, what it means to treat prompts as a “review protocol,” and where it delivers outsized value today. The team explores aiR’s two core applications: aiR for Review to accelerate responsiveness and issue coding across large data sets, and aiR for Case Strategy to summarize transcripts, surface themes, and drive smarter deposition prep. The team also discusses validation, defensibility, and emerging tools such as Air Assist, offering practical tips for managing risk, change, and ethics as GenAI becomes part of daily practice.
- Transcript
- Chapters
- TL#96Nov 10, 2025 · 18 min
Automating privilege: How TAR and GenAI transform e-discovery review and logs
Continuing our series on AI-enabled e-discovery, Anthony Diana, Therese Craparo, and Samantha Walsh tackle the thorniest privilege challenges and real-world use cases. They explore how AI – from tried and true technology-assisted review (TAR) to emerging generative AI – can accelerate privilege identification, sharpen quality control, and streamline (even automate) privilege logging, all while preserving human judgment where nuance matters. The conversation examines practical steps for the responsible adoption of AI today and looks ahead to the future of AI’s role in privilege review.
- Transcript
- Chapters
- TL#95Oct 22, 2025 · 23 min
Getting started with AI-enabled e-discovery: Do’s, don’ts, and lessons learned
Anthony Diana is joined by Therese Craparo and Marcin Krieger to start a new series on AI-enabled e-discovery. This series will look at practical and legal issues related to the use of AI in e-discovery, with a focus on actual use cases rather than theoretical discussions. Topics for this episode include how AI is currently being used in e-discovery, the rapid proliferation of tools on the market and the speed of their adoption, and guidance on how to get started – including key do’s and don’ts.
- Transcript
- Chapters
- TL#94Oct 14, 2025 · 31 min
Innovation vs. guardrails: The great AI regulation debate
Reed Smith’s Jason Garcia, Gerard Donovan, and Tyler Thompson are joined by Databricks’ Suchismita Pahi and Christina Farhat for a spirited discussion exploring one of the most urgent debates of our era: Should AI be regulated now, or are we moving too fast? Settle in and listen to a dynamic conversation that delves into the complex relationship between innovation and regulation in the world of artificial intelligence.
- Transcript
- Chapters
- TL#93Jul 7, 2025 · 28 min
Tariff-related considerations when planning a data center project
High tariffs would significantly impact data center projects, through increased costs, supply chain disruptions and other problems. Reed Smith’s Matthew Houghton, John Simonis and James Doerfler explain how owners and developers can attenuate tariff risks throughout the planning, contract drafting, negotiation, procurement and construction phases. In this podcast, learn about risk allocation and other proactive measures to manage cost and schedule challenges in today’s uncertain regulatory environment. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Hello, and welcome to Tech Law Talks, a podcast brought to you by Reed Smith's Emerging Technologies Group. In each episode of this podcast, we will discuss cutting-edge issues on technology, data, and the law. We will provide practical observations on a wide variety of technology and data topics to give you quick and actionable tips to address the issues you are dealing with every day. Matt: Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of our Data Center series. My name is Matt Houghton, joined today by Jim Doerfler and John Simonis. And in today's episode, we will discuss our perspectives regarding key tariff-related issues impacting data center projects that owners and developers should consider during initial planning, contract drafting, and negotiation and procurement and construction. So a bit about who we have here today. I'm Matt Houghton, counsel at Reed Smith based out of our San Francisco office. I focus on projects and construction-related matters both on the litigation and transaction sides. I was very excited to receive the invitation to moderate this podcast from two of my colleagues and thought leaders at Reed Smith in the area of capital projects, Mr. John Simonis and Mr. Jim Doerfler. And with that, I'm pleased to introduce them. John, why don't you go ahead and give the audience a brief rundown of your background? John: Hi, I'm John Simonis. I'm a partner in the Real Estate Group, practicing out of the Orange County, California office. I've been very active in the data center space for many years, going back to the early years of digital realty. Over the years, I've handled a variety of transactions in the data center space, including acquisitions and dispositions, joint ventures and private equity transactions, leasing, and of course, construction and development. While our podcast today is primarily focused on the impacts of tariffs and trade restrictions on data center construction projects, I should note that we are seeing a great deal of focus on tariffs and trade restrictions by private equity and M&A investors. Given the potential impacts on ROIs, it should not be surprising that investors, like owners and developers, are laser-focused on tariffs and tariff uncertainty, both through diligence and risk allocation provisions. This means that sponsors can expect sophisticated investors to carefully diligence and review data center construction contracts and often require changes if they believe the tariff-related provisions are suboptic. Jim? Jim: Yes, my name is Jim Doerfler. I'm a partner in our Pittsburgh office. I've been with Reed Smith now for over 25 years and have been focused on the projects and construction space. I would refer to myself as what I would call a bricks and sticks construction lawyer in that I focus on how projects are actually planned and built. I come to that by way of background in the sense that I grew up in a contractor family and I worked for a period of time as a project manager and a corporate officer for a commercial electrical contractor. And data center projects are the types of projects that we would have loved. There are projects that are complex. They have high energy demands. They have expensive equipment and lots of copper and fiber optics. In my practice at Reed Smith, I advise clients on commercial and industrial projects and do both claims and transactional work. And data of projects are sort of the biggest thing that we've seen come down the pipeline in some time. And so we're excited to talk to you about them here today. Matt: Excellent. Thank you both. Really glad to be here with both of you. I always enjoy our conversations. I'm pretty sure this is the kind of thing we would be talking about, even if a mic wasn't on. So happy to be here. I want to start briefly with the choice of topic for today's podcast. Obviously, tariffs are at the forefront of construction-based considerations currently here in the U.S., but why are tariffs so important to data center project considerations? Jim: So, this is Jim, and what I would say is that Reed Smith is a global law firm, and one of the things that we do in our projects in construction group is we try and survey the marketplace. And data center projects are such a significant part of the growth in the construction industry. In the U.S., for example, when we surveyed the available construction data from the available sources and subject matter experts, what we found is that at least for the past year or two, construction industry growth has been relatively flat aside from data center growth. And when you look at the growth of data centers and the drive for their being built by the growth in AI and other areas, it's really a growth industry for the construction and project space. And so something like tariffs that have the potential to impact those projects are particularly of concern to us. And so we want to make sure for our owner and developer clients and industry friends that we provided our perspectives on how to do these projects right. Matt: That makes a lot of sense. So we've sort of set the stage for the discussion today. I think we could go on for hours if we didn't give ourselves some guidelines, but there are really three critical phases of a project that a owner or developer should be thinking about how they're going to address tariffs. And those are the initial planning, the contract drafting and negotiation, and then the procurement and construction phase. Since planning comes first, and of course, of the Titleist podcast is tariff-related considerations when planning a data center project. Let's start with the planning phase and some of the considerations an owner or developer may have at that time. John, what do you see as some of the key portions of the planning process where an owner or developer needs to start addressing tariff-related issues? John: Tariffs and trade restrictions are getting a great deal of focus in all construction contracts. Tariffs impact steel and aluminum, rare earth materials. Data centers are big, expensive projects and can be impacted greatly. We're obviously in a period of great uncertainty as it relates to these types of restrictions. So I think in the planning stage, it may be somewhat obvious to say that that may be the most important time to mitigate to the extent possible some of the impacts. I think it starts in the RFP process. The requirements you're going to put on your design team and on your contractor to cooperate, collaborate, to mitigate to the extent possible the impacts of tariffs and particularly increased tariffs. You identify the materials and equipment subject to material tariffs and tariff risk. It increases, particularly those that might increase in the future, and I'd address those as best possible. You expect your team to be proposing potential mitigation measures, such as early release, substitutes, and other value engineering exercises. So that should be a very proactive dialogue. And you should be getting the commitment from the parties early in the RFP process and throughout the planning and pricing stage to cooperate with the owner to mitigate negative impacts, both in terms of cost, timing, and other supply chain issues. Jim, there's also some things we're seeing in the procurement space, and maybe you can address that. Jim: Sure. So, you know, as you're going through the RFP phase and sort of anticipating what you would ultimately want to build into your contract and how you're going to procure it, you want to be thinking ahead about procurement-related items. As John indicated, these projects that are big and complicated and that involve significant and expensive equipment. So you want to be thinking about essentially your pre-construction phase and your early release packages, your equipment or your major material items. And you want to be talking with your trade partners in terms of allowing that equipment to get there in a timely fashion and also trying to lock down pricing to mitigate against the risk of tariff-related or generally trade-related disruptions that could affect either price or delivery issues. So you want to be thinking about facilitating deposits for long lead or big ticket material or equipment items. And you want to identify what are those big equipment or material items that could make or break your project and identify the risk associated with those items early on and build that into your planning process. John: And there's some difference between different contracting models. If you were looking at a fixed price contract versus a cost plus for the GDP or a cost plus contract, obviously the risk allocation as it relates to tariff and trade restrictions might be handled differently. But generally speaking, we're seeing tariff and trade restriction risk being addressed very specifically in contracts now. So sophisticated owners and contractors are very specifically focusing on provisions that specifically address these risks and how they might be mitigated and allocated. Jim: Just to follow up on John's point I mean in theory there are you could you could have a fixed price contract versus at least in the in the US what we would describe as cost plus or cost reimbursable projects using a guaranteed maximum price or a not to exceed cap style agreement in our experience at least in the US they tend to be more of the latter type of project delivery system and even if you had a fixed price contract, one of the issues in the marketplace that we've been seeing really since COVID has been these force majeure or supply chain impacts. And the tariffs are really sort of almost an outgrowth of that or a different manifestation of the same types of effects that we would see. And so even if you had what was in theory a fixed price contract, one of the issues that you're going to quickly run into is that the contractors are going to want some carve-outs from that because of what we're seeing in the marketplace. Matt: I think you guys are basically making the natural transition into our next topic, sort of talking about the contract drafting and negotiation phase. When you're putting those thoughts into practice, what sort of provisions do you guys see as sort of the key contract provisions that owners and developers should either be including and or carefully negotiating or crafting into their contracts that involve these tariff-related issues? John: I think traditionally, the issue of tariff increases, tariff uncertainty, supply chain uncertainty, given the current political climate, would typically, you'd be looking to the force majeure provisions, you'd be looking to the change in law provisions that have traditionally been in construction contracts. As Jim mentioned, we are seeing a more direct focus on tariff-related issues in current contracts where the party very specifically discuss it, allocate risk, allocate commitments to collaborate. So we're seeing that as its own provision usually now and setting a baseline that any kind of a change order would be based on, giving commitments to work with each other. And if we're going to put those into separate provisions, then we need to make sure that as you look at your change in law, of course, with your provisions, that you don't also cover them in those provisions. You'd want to refer to the specific provision as opposed to picking them up in the more generic provisions. Jim: And just to follow up on what John was saying, I think one of the things you need to do is you need to look at your existing contracts. If you're using certain, if you're in the U.S., for example, and you're using some of the standard commercial templates like the American Institute of Architects or the consensus docs type documents, as opposed to a bespoke agreement, some of those actually don't contain a force majeure or a change in law provision. So in all likelihood, the contractor is going to suggest that one needs to be included, but I think you need to proactively plan for that. And as it relates to the specific issue of tariffs, one of the things that you want to focus on is your definition of change in law and whether or not, for example, an executive order issued by the president qualifies as a change in law. The bottom line is you want to be specific and you want to allocate your risk specifically to eliminate uncertainty and the risk of claims that follows from uncertainty. You know, I guess the other thing along with sort of the big issues of force majeure and change in law is if you're doing something like a cost plus type arrangement, one of the additional provisions that is going to be heavily negotiated is something called contractual or construction contingency. And contingency is typically a term that is used for essentially an allocation of money that has been set aside to cover the risk of unforeseen contingencies or unforeseen events that would cause the cost of the project to increase. Now, tariffs would often be viewed as a contingency, but one of the things that we're seeing in the marketplace is that contractors have a certain amount of money that they're setting aside for contingency related to other risks associated with, for example, unforeseen price increases because of supply chain issues and that sort of thing. And so they're reluctant to give up what has been set aside for general construction contingency to cover tariff-related risks. So that's one of the areas that is going to be heavily negotiated in that type of project and to what extent the owner has approval over approving of the use of that contingency. So that's something for that particular type of contract. John, what other types of contractual provisions in your experience are going to be critical? John: Following on your last point, Jim, first, I think contractors, at least in my experience, have been viewing the tariff risk as a very pure force majeure type risk that they can't control beyond collaborating on mitigation, but they cannot generally control it. So that if, you know, if they've done their pricing and bought out stuff and that changes, both they and their subcontractor are going to be looking for change orders if an additional cost is imposed on them. Now, we're seeing that contractors and some of the subcontractors sometimes absorb some of that risk, but it's almost always capped at, you know, some relatively low percentage of the cost increase. Jim, have you been seeing the same thing? Jim: I have been seeing the same thing, that the contractors are pushing back, that basically they view tariffs and tariff-related risks as being a different animal, that you should have a different mechanism for dealing with that risk. And one of the ways, as you pointed out, they view that as being essentially sort of like a force majeure or a change in law type issues where they're entitled to a change order. And then the issue then becomes, from a negotiating standpoint, what sort of provisions or planning do you anticipate in your change order provisions? And we've seen some development in that area as well. John, do you want to talk about what you've seen in terms of how these change order provisions are being drafted to account for tariff-related risks? John: Sure. One of the first items that's always addressed is a duty to mitigate. And that duty to mitigate, I think if it's properly drafted as both a covenant and a condition to recovery. It has more importance than the simple covenant, I believe, in that it precludes claims from a contractor that they just push forward and absorb what could be an exorbitant tariff. That the owner can say to them, we should be considering substitutes and value engineering and alternatives, and I want to pause to do so. So I think without crafting every possibility, the best way to do that is to have a collaboration clause. And we are not seeing much resistance with contractors. Jim: And I'll just follow up on that. To the extent that there's agreement that the tariffs would represent sort of a change and that they're entitled to a change order, One of the things that we're seeing is essentially a bit of horse trading between owners and contractors in the sense that owners may be willing to grant a change order for the costs associated with tariffs that were not included in their original pricing, but they're asking essentially for the contractors not to seek fee or markup on the additional costs that they would be incurring. At least that's what I've been seeing. John, has that been your experience? John: Yes. I think the tariffs, particularly if it's a substantial increase, I think there's more alignment and I don't think it's necessarily appropriate for a contractor to be profiting in that added cost to the project. And we see parties in general agreement on that. Jim: I would say the other contract drafting and negotiation issue is that what I've seen is when they're trying to develop it, essentially you draw sort of a bright line at the time of contracting or the time that the pricing is agreed upon. And then going forward, then, if there is some new tariff that would come in, then it's very important to provide timely notice of claims so that it can be addressed very quickly. So that's one of the provisions that I think is important. And then finally, sort of the flip side of the contingency coin is oftentimes these cost plus agreements have a shared savings provision. And so I would say that if tariffs are considered to be a contingency item, then the flip side of that is that the contractor would be entitled to some level of shared savings if they are able to bring it in under the guaranteed maximum price or the not-to-exceed cap. By contrast, if tariffs are treated as being something set apart from contingency, then oftentimes what I'm seeing is that it gets treated as an owner allowance item. That if it's used, it's used, again, without markup. But if it's not used, then it reverts back to the owner in its entirety with no shared savings being paid out. At least that's what I'm seeing in my area. John: Yeah, I think the one little twist on that, Jim, that I would throw out is if it's the contractors absorbing some of the risk of the tariff increases, in those instances, I have sometimes seen some of the sharing. But if they're not absorbing that risk, I think it's pretty appropriate for the owner to say you shouldn't be benefiting from the fact that the tariffs didn't come up and we had provided contingency for that. One last thing to think about, and I haven't seen a lot of changes in the provisions yet, but I've given a lot of thought to the fact that if you've got some extreme combative retaliatory tariffs that made a project uneconomic, you should be focusing on your right to pause and your right to terminate and making sure that those aren't penal to the owner. So I think that deserves some focus in this instance as well. Matt: Just my takeaway from all of this is that there's really a lot for owners and developers to think about here. And to give credit where credit's due, I think John mentioned this during our preparation for this podcast. Owners and developers really need to make sure that they're considering these issues during the initial planning and address them carefully and deliberately during the initial drafting and negotiation. Your guys' thoughts and comments remind me of a remark I heard from a pilot in passing in response to passengers' frustration at certain delays when their plane wouldn't take off. He said it was better to address the problems with the plane on the ground than in the air. And I think that aptly applies here to these sorts of projects. Let's make sure we address them before the project has taken off. But to round out our discussion, I want to transition to the third and overall final area, procurement and construction. So once a project is ready to take off and get underway, what sort of issues should owners and developers anticipate and be prepared to address as the project heads into the procurement construction phase? Jim, if we want to start with you. Jim: Yeah, so one of the things that I would say is planning is the best preparation for a successful project. And during, but you need to stay on top of the project as it moves forward. Some of our sophisticated clients, as they're building these projects, have developed things like tariff tracker spreadsheets, where they're identifying, they're breaking the project down into their different component parts and identifying specific equipment or material items that might be subject to tariffs, what the amount of those tariffs are, and who's bearing the risk of that. They are assiduously monitoring the windows for buyout packages to be completed so that once they get the go-ahead from the owner to lock in the guaranteed price or the capped price, it's very important that the prime contractor buy out those critical equipment and material and subcontractor packages to lock in that pricing and to lock in the best delivery schedules that they can get. And to monitor that as they're going forward to avoid any sort of slippage, either in terms of the project schedule or in terms of pricing. John: Jim, I think a lot of it begins with the identification of the high-risk equipment being incorporated into a data center project. One thing I would comment on is that I've had a fair share of sensitivity from my clients to the issue of who's making the decision on early procurement versus wait and see if the tariff situation changes versus pausing a project. I think the owners should be focused on trying to keep as much control as possible of those decisions, since they will be bearing the brunt of the cost and the brunt of the delay. Jim: One additional thought, and that is that during the course of the project, you may have situations where for various tariff or trade disruption type reasons, particular equipment, item of equipment or a particular material may not be available in the way that you want it. And so what we'll see is that there will be requests from the contractor to use alternates or substitutions that are designed either to control costs or to control schedule. And so that's going to be something also where you're going to have to work with your designer to evaluate those because sometimes the substitutions are not equal. But in other instances, if you can make a substitution and keep the project on track and on budget, it can be very helpful. So that's one of the things where, just from a procurement standpoint, handling of alternates and substitutions can be very important. John: Following up on Jim's last comment, we've talked mostly about contractor-related issues in this podcast. But I do think the front-end focus from the design team may be even more critical. It's going to happen naturally, I believe. But I think it is incumbent upon owners to get their design team to be focusing heavily on helping them mitigate the risks to the extent possible. If they're speccing equipment or speccing supplies that are, you know, subject to substantial risk, that's going to exacerbate the problem. And you can only solve it to someone's degree, contractor. So I think it should be focused on early again in the process and with the design team and the contracting team from a pricing standpoint and value engineering standpoint. Matt: Well, gentlemen, it's been a pleasure hosting this discussion with you today. Thank you very much for inviting me to be a part of it. Having worked with you both for some period of time, including, you know, basically living out of a hotel with Jim for a month at a time during arbitration. I know we could go for hours, but before we say goodbye, any final thoughts or key takeaways that you want to share with the audience in light of our conversation today? Jim: What I would say is that many of the lessons that the industry has learned and the tools that have been developed during the COVID crisis and in the post-COVID supply chain disruptions apply equally or applicable, at least by analogy, to the current tariff issues that you'd be facing on data center projects. We've learned a lot from those, and they can be applied here. So in some ways, it's a new dispute, but it's sort of a variation on an existing theme. The second is that many of the contractors that we're seeing are facing a somewhat uncertain environment, especially in the United States, in terms of the pipeline of available work that they have coming in compared to years past. And so these contractors tend to be willing to trade off certain things like markup on change orders for security related to not having to assume what they view as being undue risk that would potentially cause them, you know, sort of an existential threat to their company. And as long as they can get some cooperation from the owner, they likely are willing to negotiate on things like fee and other areas in order to get that security. John: I would add to Jim's comment just by saying that data center projects by their nature are fairly complex, fairly expensive projects. The contractors and subcontractors that you're dealing with are very sophisticated and understand the space very well. So I think there's an opportunity for the parties, assuming you can get alignment in your construction documents, there's opportunities for the party to work together to mitigate a risk that I think. Frankly, everyone would recognize as a force majeure type risk that nobody can anticipate what's going to happen politically in the near future. So the parties working together is important. Making sure the document creates alignment is important. Matt: Fantastic. Well, thank you both. I look forward to hopefully doing this again with you guys. Thank you again for very much for inviting me in to host this with you today. This has been our data center series podcast on tariff-related considerations when planning a data center project. For more information on Jim, John, or myself, please visit our profiles on reedsmith.com. Thank you for listening, and goodbye. Outro: Tech Law Talks is a Reed Smith production. Our producers are Ali McCardell and Shannon Ryan. For more information about Reed Smith's emerging technologies practice, please email techlawtalks@reedsmith.com. You can find our podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, reedsmith.com, and our social media accounts. Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Any views, opinions, or comments made by any external guest speaker are not to be attributed to Reed Smith LLP or its individual lawyers. All rights reserved. Transcript it auto-generated.
- Transcript
- Chapters
- TL
#92Apr 23, 2025 · 14 minAI explained: Introduction to Reed Smith's AI Glossary
Have you ever found yourself in a perplexing situation because of a lack of common understanding of key AI concepts? You're not alone. In this episode of "AI explained," we delve into Reed Smith's new Glossary of AI Terms with Reed Smith guests Richard Robbins, director of applied artificial intelligence, and Marcin Krieger, records and e-discovery lawyer. This glossary aims to demystify AI jargon, helping professionals build their intuition and ask informed questions. Whether you're a seasoned attorney or new to the field, this episode explains how a well-crafted glossary can serve as a quick reference to understand complex AI terms. The E-Discovery App is a free download available through the Apple App Store and Google Play. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Hello, and welcome to Tech Law Talks, a podcast brought to you by Reed Smith's Emerging Technologies Group. In each episode of this podcast, we will discuss cutting-edge issues on technology, data, and the law. We will provide practical observations on a wide variety of technology and data topics to give you quick and actionable tips to address the issues you are dealing with every day. Marcin: Welcome to Tech Law Talks and our series on AI. Today, we are introducing the Reed Smith AI Glossary. My name is Marcin Krieger, and I'm an attorney in the Reed Smith Pittsburgh office. Richard: And I am Richard Robbins. I am Reed Smith's Director of Applied AI based in the Chicago office. My role is to help us as a firm make effective and responsible use of AI at scale internally. Marcin: So what is the AI Glossary? The Glossary is really meant to break down big ideas and terms behind AI into really easy-to-understand definitions so that legal professionals and attorneys can have informed conversations and really conduct their work efficiently without getting buried in tech jargon. Now, Rich, why do you think an AI glossary is important? Richard: So, I mean, there are lots of glossaries about, you know, sort of AI and things floating around. I think what's important about this one is it's written by and for lawyers. And I think that too many people are afraid to ask questions for fear that they may be exposed as not understanding things they think everyone else in the room understands. Too often, many are just afraid to ask. So we hope that the glossary can provide comfort to the lawyers who use it. And, you know, I think to give them a firm footing. I also think that it's, you know, really important that people do have a fundamental understanding of some key concepts, because if you don't, that will lead to flawed decisions, flawed policy, or choices can just miscommunicate with people in connection with you, with your work. So if we can have a firm grounding, establish some intuition, I think that we'll be in a better spot. Marcin, how would you see that? Marcin: First of all, absolutely, I totally agree with you. I think that it goes even beyond that and really gets to the core of the model rules. When you look at the various ethics opinions that have come out in the last year about the use of AI, and you look at our ethical obligations and basic competence under Rule 1.1, we see that ethics opinions that were published by the ABA and by various state ethics boards say that there's a duty on lawyers to exercise the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness, and preparation necessary for the representation. And when it comes to AI, you have to achieve that competence through some level of self-study. This isn't about becoming experts about AI, but to be able to competently represent a client in the use of generative AI, you have to have an understanding of the capabilities and the limitations, and a reasonable understanding about the tools and how the tech works. To put another way, you don't have to become an expert, but you have to at least be able to be in the room and have that conversation. So, for example, in my practice, in litigation and specifically in electronic discovery, we've been using artificial intelligence and advanced machine learning and various AI products previous to generative AI for well over a decade. And as we move towards generative AI, this technology works differently and it acts differently. And how the technology works is going to dictate how we do things like negotiate ESI protocols, how we issue protective orders, and also how we might craft protective orders and confidentiality agreements. So being able to identify how these types of orders restrict or permit the use of generative AI technology is really important. And you don't want to get yourself into a situation where you may inadvertently agree to allow the other side, the receiving party of your client's data, to do something that may not comply with the client's own expectations of confidentiality. Similarly, when you are receiving data from a producing party, you want to make sure that the way that you apply technology to that data complies with whatever restrictions may have been put in to any kind of protective order or confidentiality agreement. Richard: Let me jump in and ask you something about that. So you've been down this path before, right? This is not the first time professionally you've seen new technology coming into play that people have to wrestle with. And as you were going through the prior use of machine learning and things that inform your work, how have you landed? You know, how often did you get into a confusing situation because people just didn't have a common understanding of key concepts where maybe a glossary like this would have helped or did you use things like that before? Marcin: Absolutely. And it comes, it's cyclic. It comes in waves. Anytime there's been a major advancement in technology, there is that learning curve where attorneys have to not just learn the terminology, but also trust and understand how the technology works. Even now, technology that was new 10 years ago still continues to need to be described and defined even outside of the context of AI things like just removing email threads almost every ESI order that we work with requires us to explain and define what that process looks like when we talk about traditional technology assisted review to this day our agreements have to explain and describe to a certain level how technology-assisted review works. But 10 years ago, it required significant investment of time negotiating, explaining, educating, not just opposing counsel, but our clients. Richard: I was going to ask about that, right? Because. It would seem to me that, you know, especially at the front end, as this technology evolves, it's really easy for us to talk past each other or to use words and not have a common understanding, right? Marcin: Exactly, exactly. And now with generative AI, we have exponentially more terminology. There's so many layers to the way that this technology works that even a fairly skilled attorney like myself, when I first started learning about generative AI technology, I was completely overwhelmed. And most attorneys don't have the time or the technical understanding to go out into the internet and find that information. A glossary like this is probably one of the best ways that an attorney can introduce themselves to the terminology or have a reference where if they see a term that they are unfamiliar with, quickly go take a look at what does that term mean? What's the implication here? Get that two sentence description so that they can say, okay, I get what's going on here or put the brakes on and say, hey, I need to bring in one of my tech experts at this point. Richard: Yeah, I think that's really important. And this kind of goes back to this notion that this glossary was prepared, you know, at least initially, right, for, you know, from the litigator's lens, litigator's perspective. But it's really useful well beyond that. And, you know, I mean, I think the biggest need is to take the mystery out of the jargon, to help people, you know, build their intuition, to ask good questions. And you touched on something where you said, well, I've got a, I don't need to be a technical expert on a given topic, but I need a tight. Accessible description that lets me get the essence of it. So, I mean, a couple of my, you know, favorite examples from the glossary are, you know, in the last year or so, we've heard a lot of people talking about RAG systems and they fling that phrase around, you know, retrieval augmented generation. And, you know, you could sit there and say to someone, yeah, use that label, but what is it? Well, we describe that in three tight sentences. Agentic AI, two sentences. Marcin: And that's a real hot topic for 2025 is agentic AI. Richard: Yep. Marcin: And nobody knows what it is. So I focus a lot on litigation and in particular electronic discovery. So I have a very tight lens on how we use technology and where we use it. But in your role, you deal with attorneys in every practice group and also professionally outside of the law firm. You deal with professionals and technologists. In your experience, how do you see something like this AI glossary helping the people that you work with and what kind of experience levels you get exposed to? Richard: Yeah, absolutely. So I keep coming back to this phrase, this notion of saying it's about helping people develop an intuition for when and how to use things appropriately, what to be concerned about. So a glossary can help to demystify things. These concepts so that you can then carry on whatever it is that you're doing. And so I know that's rather vague and abstract, but I mean, at the end of the day, if you can get something down to a couple of quick sentences and the key essence of it, and that light bulb comes on and people go, ah, now I kind of understand what we're talking about, that will help them guide their conversations about what they should be concerned about or not concerned about. And so, you know, that glossary gives you a starting point. It can help you to ask good questions. It can set alarm bells off when people are saying things that are, you know, perhaps very far off, those key notions. And you have, you know, you have the ability to, you know, I think know when you're out of your depth a little bit, but to know enough to at least start to chart that course. Because right now people are just waving their hands. And that, I think, results in a tendency to say, oh, I can't rely on my own intuition, my own thinking. I have to run away and hide. And I think the glossary makes all this information more accessible so that you can start to interact with the technology and the issues and things around it. Marcin: Yeah, I agree. And I also think that having those two to three sentence hits on what these terms are, I think also will help attorneys know how to ask the right questions. Like you said, know when to get that help, but also know how to ask for it. Because I think that most attorneys know when they need to get help, but they struggle with how to articulate that request for it. Richard: Yeah, I think that's right. And I think that, you know, often we can bring things back to concepts that people are already comfortable with. So I'll spend a lot of time talking to people about sort of generative AI, and their concerns really have nothing to do with the fact that it's generative AI. It just happens to be something that's hosted in the cloud. And we've had conversations about how to deal with information that's hosted in the cloud or not, and we're comfortable having those. But yet, when we get to generative AI, they go, oh, wait, it's a whole new range of issues. I'm like, no, actually, it's not. You've thought about these things before. We can attack these things again. Now, again, the glossary, the point of the glossary is not to teach all this stuff, but it's about to help you get your bearings straight, to get you oriented. And from there, you can have the journey. Marcin: So in order to get onto that journey, we have to let everybody know where they can actually get a copy of the glossary. So the Reed Smith AI Glossary can be found at the website e-discoveryapp.com, or any attorney can go to the Play Store or the Apple Store and download the E-Discovery App, which is a free app that contains a variety of resources. And right on the landing page of the app there's a link for glossaries and within there you'll see a downloadable link that'll give you a PDF version of the AI Glossary which again any attorney can get for free and have available and of course it is a live document which means that we will make updates to it and revisions to it as the technology evolves and as how we present information changes in the coming years. Richard: At that price, I'll take six. Marcin: Thank you, Rich. Thanks for your time. Richard: Thank you. Outro: Tech Law Talks is a Reed Smith production. Our producers are Ali McCardell and Shannon Ryan. For more information about Reed Smith's emerging technologies practice, please email techlawtalks@reedsmith.com. You can find our podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, reedsmith.com, and our social media accounts. Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Any views, opinions, or comments made by any external guest speaker are not to be attributed to Reed Smith LLP or its individual lawyers. All rights reserved. Transcript is auto-generated.
- Transcript
- Chapters