Rockville, MD — The 2026 Midwest ACEDS Chapter learning series was built around a deliberately narrow question: what can artificial intelligence do for legal work right now? Not in a vendor roadmap, not after the next model release, but today. Across six virtual sessions, practitioners, consultants, technology leaders, and members of the judiciary discussed how AI is being folded into legal workflows, decision-making, evidence analysis, and case strategy. The series veered away from theory and focused on the practical applications of what is working, where are the incremental gains, and which practices are producing measurable value.
Session 1: Foundations in AI for Legal Professionals … Buckle In!
The opening session set the baseline: how the technology got here, what it can and cannot realistically do, and how legal teams are starting to use it day to day. Mike Quartararo of ACEDS moderated, joined by Paul O’Hagen (Epiq), Julie Brown (Vorys), and Jeff Chivers (Syllo). The main takeaway was a shared vocabulary and a calibrated sense of capability, the difference between what a tool demonstrates and what it delivers when pressure tested.
Session 2: AI in Action- Lessons from Legal Practitioners
Angela Shapiro of Butzel Long moderated a panel with Joel-Henry Mansfield (Nationwide), Martha Louks (McDermott), and Brandon Mack (Tanenholz & Marr). This was the practitioner session: successes, lessons learned, and cautionary tales from people actually running these tools in production. The focus was less “here is the tool” and more “here is where it added value, here is where we got burned, and here is what we would ask before adopting the next one.”
Session 3: AI for Real or Fake?
Generative tools have made digital content easy to create and manipulate, which pushes authenticity from a baseline assumption to an important issue. Brett Burney (Burney Consulting) moderated a forensic panel with Rob Fried (Page One) and Sarah Thompson (BlueStar), working through real examples of validating, collecting, and evaluating evidence when its provenance is contested. For anyone handling ESI, this is the session with the most immediate defensibility implications.
Session 4: Virtual Vendor Fair
Seventeen providers gave concise demonstrations of how AI has been built into existing legal tools. The format was designed for comparison shopping across the landscape in a single sitting, with direct lines to providers for closer looks.
Session 5: Judicial Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence
David Horrigan of Relativity moderated a panel with U.S. Magistrate Judge Patricia Barksdale (M.D. Fla.), U.S. Magistrate Judge Allison Goddard (S.D. Cal.), and Judge Michelle Rick (Michigan Court of Appeals). The discussion covered developing case law, courtroom expectations, professional responsibility, and how AI is starting to touch judicial processes. If you wanted to know what disclosure and verification expectations look like from the bench rather than from a CLE slide, this was where to look.
Session 6: Interactive Workshop: Implementing AI in Legal Practice
The series closed with a working session rather than a panel. Jennifer Case, J.D., founder of Law Tech AI, guided participants through practical strategies for adopting AI safely and effectively in small and midsize firms the step where the preceding five sessions turn into an actual plan.
Why It Works
Materials from all the sessions remain available at ediscovery.aceds.org/aceds-midwest-ai-series. If you are trying to figure out where AI belongs in your practice, we encourage you to go take a look!
Written By Brandon Mack, Counsel and Director of Legal Technology and AI