I am staggered as I sit here in February 2026 to listen to the dialogue in most legal circles about the impact that AI is going to have on the practice of law. And I think that what people are getting wrong in particular is the speed with which there is going to be a seismic shift and displacement of a ton of lawyers due to AI. I can assure you that these billions and billions of dollars of capital that are being invested in AI and data centers and power generation, it is not to summarize your deposition transcripts. And it is not to do legal research for you through Alexis or Westlaw. The willful blindness, the failure to engage in what is going on that I see among lawyers, as I sit here in February 2026, is just astonishing to me. And I didn’t think about AI at all until January 2025.

Throughout all of 2025, I dedicated myself to learning everything that I could about it. And I poured myself in hundreds of hours of reading and podcasts. And all that I can say is that, and I will preface this by saying that I’m often wrong. It’s a good day if I’m only wrong a dozen times by lunchtime. But what is about to happen over the next 18 months, and I am talking to you in February 2026, is going to be a change that is going to be similar to when cavemen learned to tame fire and to use fire for their own purposes. This is going to be the most seismic shift in the way that humans interact with each other and interact with the world in many thousands of years. I think that this is something that is going to make the industrial revolution look like nothing.

And so if you’re sitting here thinking, “Well, Jeremy, you better double check that AI legal research or you better be careful it doesn’t come up with fake citations.” I would say, open your eyes and open your ears to what is going on right now. This is a video that’s probably not going to age particularly well because when a lot of you see this, it’s probably going to be years after this has already come true. But I think that the impact of AI on lawyers and on humanity is going to be more along the lines of, just as one example, AI solves the riddle of how we’re going to be able to generate enormous amounts of electricity. And with enormous amounts of electricity, desalinization of the oceans are going to be possible. And all of a sudden, everybody all over the world is going to have access to freshwater for the first time ever.

And a lot of places that still don’t have access to fresh water, they’re going to get it. And then you’re going to see the eradication of a lot of diseases that are causing a lot of these places to be unable to industrialize and to lean into technology. And it is going to fundamentally alter the way that commerce is done and that marketplaces are going to exist. And I mean, this is almost even a pedestrian example of the seismic shift that I see coming. And I can just guarantee you. If you are a lawyer right now sitting there thinking, “Well, maybe 10 years from now, this is a problem for somebody else. You heard it here first. I’m telling you, it is February 2026 right now. The next 18 months are going to be unlike anything that any of you have ever seen or any of you are predicting right now.

I hope I’m wrong, but I would be willing to bet my net worth on the fact that I’m not. And let me just assure you that the law is not going to be practiced in the way that you’re practicing it now. I think that there is going to be a seismic displacement of lawyers that don’t have their own client base. I think there’s going to be a seismic displacement of young lawyers that don’t have any particular skills that cannot be tackled through AI and it is exponentially advancing week to week, month to month things that I am able to do right now. In my practice, the ways that I’m using AI right now in February 2026 would’ve been unheard of to me just two months ago in December 2025. As a matter of fact, after having tried a half dozen AI applications throughout 2025, I had a major unlock in January 2026 and it is massively changing my business plan and the vision that I have for my law firm.

I am absolutely not planning on having the headcount in my law firm that I thought would be necessary just a quarter ago because of the leverage that I’ve gained through AI and the security risks and the risks of cases being hallucinated and all that sort of stuff, it is getting solved and it will be solved. And if you’re listening to this in the summer of 2026, I think it’s already been solved. I had something happen to me in January 2026. It was an AI unlock that I have been walking around telling my friends and family, anybody that will listen to me because they’re all annoyed with me now talking about this, that it’s the most significant thing that has happened in the 25 years since I’ve been a lawyer. And so if you are a lawyer and you’re listening to this in 2026 or 2027, whatever it is that you think is about to happen, you are massively underestimating it on an exponential scale.

And this is coming to a theater near you in 2026 or 2027. And if you’re a lawyer who is thinking about making a move to your own law firm, thinking about making an entrepreneurial move like I did, I think it’s a really good idea because I think that there is going to be an enormous amount of displaced lawyers that are going to have to go create their own law firms. And so certainly if you’re somebody that does not have your own book of business, if you are a service partner, if you are an associate, particularly a younger associate that doesn’t have any particular skillset other than doing legal research and writing and document analysis, watch out because I don’t know that the job that you have in February 2026 is going to be around all that much longer, but this is a great thing. This is a great thing for a lot of people because it’s going to push you into something that I think, even though it might be a little bit rocky in the short term, is going to be an unlock for most people that is going to allow them to live richer and fuller lives.

And let me say that I see a very positive vision of the future. I am optimistic about these changes that are coming about.

I believe that if you fast forward 10 years from now, there is going to be abundance and there is going to be benefits that are not even within the contemplation of people right now. But the technology has gotten here more quickly than people are going to be able to figure out how to add their humanity to the technology, to make it a positive force multiplier, to be able to do something in the short term that will cause the market to reward them. So I see a period of displacement. I think it’s going to be very acute in the next two, three, four, five years, 10 years from now, after people have already graduated college, if people still go to college with degrees and how to prompt AI or how to take their special emotional intelligence and make it a force multiplier, they’re all going to be great.

But in the short term, if you don’t have your own book of business and you’re thinking about starting your own law firm, let me just say that you should do it now because I think that there are going to be enormous numbers of lawyers, 10, 20, 30% of lawyers that work in large law firms, I think is conservative that are going to find themselves out of a job in the next 18 months, and they are going to lose out on the headstart that you are going to get if you beat them to market and you start your law firm more quickly than a lot of them are going to have to do when they are forced out due to market forces. Again, I think everyone is going to be better in the short term. I think the people who are going to be the ones who are going to lose out are those who are really caught flatfooted.

And I just cannot believe the dialogue that I’m hearing about law firms right now. Whatever you think is happening, it’s happening at a much grander scale and much more quickly than 95% of the lawyers that I’ve talked to understand. And so now is the time to pay attention and to think about how you would like to position yourself in the next few years as this enormous change plays out, whether you like it or not.