Establishing Legal Authority in the Age of AI May Require Publishing

I’ve been doing research lately on which publishing by lawyers carries the greatest authority with large language models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.

I’ve found where a lawyer publishes matters as much as what they publish.

In doing my research, I came across an article by Dave Maney that makes an important point: in the age of AI, lawyers will need to publish to establish authority.

He explained:

“Humans seek an expert who is highly capable and deeply deserving of their complete trust. They want that expert to have:

• Deep, experience-based insight
• A reservoir of credibility among their true peers — not just on Google
• The ability to think originally, anchored by domain mastery
• Sound judgment when presented with new learning or evidence.

But AI can’t evaluate any of those. It’s computer code, digital storage, and web connectivity.”

So AI looks to publishing. And from what I’ve seen, where a lawyer’s work is published has a significant impact on how it’s read, referenced, and surfaced by AI systems.

Perhaps just as important, maybe even more, are the researchers studying AI itself. They’re looking at which lawyers are being cited inside these AI models and their reports. That visibility defines who is recognized as authoritative in our profession.