[EDRM Editor’s Note: The opinions and positions are those of Michael Berman.]

Tom O’Connor’s book, “Artificial Intelligence for the Rest of Us” (Gulf Coast Legal Technology Center & Nextpoint 2025), is available from Amazon for $29.95. The co-authors are Rakesh Madhava, Brett Burney, Elizabeth Guthrie, and David D. Lewis.

I reviewed Tom’s prior book, “Ediscovery for the Rest of Us,” in Book Review:  Any Ship Can Be a Minesweeper – – –  Once (Apr. 28, 2023). In that blog, I said that, when it comes to electronically stored information, Tom O’Connor is a national treasure.  He has a wealth of litigation-related ESI experience, helped run the prestigious Georgetown E-Discovery Academy, lectures on recent cases and developments in the law, has published several books and blogs, and is a consultant.  He has generously shared his encyclopedic knowledge with countless less-experienced attorneys and other legal professionals. I added:

There is an old military saying that “any ship can be a minesweeper – – – once.”  Tom’s latest book shows general practitioners and business executives how to avoid the mines. For example, he discusses: ESI budgeting; do-it-yourself options; use of native files and phasing to reduce cost; and when a vendor or consultant is needed, and when one is not necessary.

Michael Berman, E-Discovery LLC.

His newest book on AI “for the rest of us” follows in that tradition. Tom counsels, in the words of the NY State Bar Association, “be cautious, be curious, be vigilant, be brave.” That reminds me of a phrase anonymously attributed to a U.S. Marine Gunnery Sargeant: “You, you, and you… Panic. The rest of you, come with me.”

Like ABA Formal Op. 512, Tom views AI as “a springboard or foundation for legal work….”  It is a means to an end. Tom calls it an “enhancement tool.”

Still, at the end of the day, AI is really just a stochastic¹ parrot.  It finds statistical relationships in massive data sets to convincingly generate human-like text, but lacks the true semantic understanding behind the word patterns.

Tom O’Connor, Artificial Intelligence for the Rest of Us (Gulf Coast Legal Technology Center & Nextpoint, 2025).

Tom quotes Miles Kington: “Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom in not putting it in a fruit salad.”  AI can help spot patterns.  But, Tom correctly argues: “The real intelligence? That still comes from lawyers.”

The Introduction, by Mr. Madhava, makes the point that automating and speeding up tasks is exciting and “prudence does not require paralysis.”  The book begins with a description of AI and states that “the ‘reasoning’ to which AI developers refer differs significantly from human reasoning….”

Tom provides a brief history of AI. Listing twelve legal use cases, Tom suggests asking two critical questions: “First, ‘What specific problem is this tool trying to solve?’ Second, ‘What type of AI technology is it employing to address that challenge?’”  Obviously, it would be ill-advised to deploy a contract generation tool for use in e-discovery and evidence review.  In that regard, the book lists twelve questions to pose to an AI vendor.

In an interesting experiment, Tom asked four different GenAI models to identify the Top 5 use cases for AI in the legal field. The results were not consistent. For example:

• Three of the four models topped the list as “legal research.” However, another listed “legal document review and analysis” as the top use case.
• Two models ranked “contract review” second.  One ranked legal research, and another listed “document review and analysis,” in that category.

One valuable discussion is Tom’s seven practical tips for implementing AI.  They include, as a starting point, defining the problem before selecting technology. And, Tom points to a quality control issue that I have experienced: “You don’t want to spend more time checking AI outputs than you would have spent doing the work yourself.”

Tom cites a 2025 survey by eDiscovery Today that found that only 12.2% of the respondents are not using GenAI at all.  He points to most of the usage on the “right side” of the EDRM for summarizing documents, answering questions directed against a body of evidence, and looking for contradictions.  He suggests that operations on the “left side” of the EDRM, such as early case assessment, have received slower acceptance.

The book suggests including AI in an ESI Protocol.²  It suggests discussing how the technology may (or may not?) be used. That is an important and hotly-debated topic.  See “Against an AI Privilege” – Are Prompts Discoverable?  Is Output? (Jan. 2, 2026).

The ethics discussion is comprehensive. In very brief summary, it lists several ethical duties: 1) competence by understanding the technology; 2) confidentiality by protecting client information; 3) supervision of the use of AI; and, 4) recommended client disclosure.

The Glossary provides useful definitions of critical terms, such as “tokens,” “recall,” “precision,” “parameters,” “Large Language Model,” and “Retrieval-Augmented Generation” (“RAG”).  It even points out that the “GPT” in ChatGPT stands for “Generative Pre-Trained Transformer.”

Notes

1. “A stochastic process or system is connected with random probability.” STOCHASTIC | English meaning – Cambridge Dictionary ↩︎
2. An “ESI Protocol” is Not a Rule 26(f) “Discovery Plan” (Nov. 24, 2025). ↩︎

Assisted by GAI and LLM Technologies per EDRM GAI and LLM Policy.