The New Type of AI Attorneys Must Know: Agentic AI

Once upon a techy Tuesday, we met Generative AI—the glorified intern of the digital age. Type in a prompt, and voilà! Out pops a contract clause, a summary of a statute, or an opening paragraph that sounds vaguely like your law school professor after two martinis. Helpful? Absolutely. But proactive? Not so much.

Enter Agentic AI - the newest iteration that makes Chat GPT, CoCounsel and Harvey look like the slow kids in the relay race (at least until they add agentic AI to their platforms - which I guarantee they will). This is a task-tackling, initiative-igniting, workflow-whispering wunderkind your firm never knew it needed. Where generative AI waits for orders like a polite paralegal, agentic AI shows up with a color-coded action plan and pre-written reminders for your calendar.

So what’s the difference? Think of it this way:

• Generative AI writes what you ask it to.

• Agentic AI writes what you need, files it, schedules the meeting, and reminds you to eat lunch.

Generative AI is reactive: “Write a cease and desist letter.”

Agentic AI is proactive: “Draft the letter, cross-reference past disputes, send it to the client for review, and calendar a follow-up based on their standard 3-day turnaround time.”

Let’s put it in legal lingo: Generative AI is your paralegal or junior associate. Agentic AI is a combination of your firm's COO, office manager, filing clerk and more.

Agentic AI doesn’t just generate content - it executes. It follows through. It acts like it has equity.

This isn’t sci-fi. This is happening. Right now, agentic AI is redlining contracts, organizing discovery folders, pinging clients, prepping summaries, and politely nudging attorneys when deadlines loom.

Generative AI got us from blank page to first draft. Agentic AI is getting us from backlog to billable bliss.

If you want to know more and read specifically how this new Destroyer of Non-Billable Tasks is being used at law firms & in house departments, watch my column in Attorney at Law Magazine. My next couple of articles will be focused on exactly that.

Cheers,

Frederick