Fast-Tracked Podcast Episode 1: Explore the intersection of generative AI and access to justice with two trailblazers in the legal profession, The Hon. Bridget Mary McCormack, President and CEO of the American Arbitration Association-International Centre for Dispute Resolution, and Andrew Perlman, Dean of Suffolk University Law School. With their perspectives from the helm of a law school leading in innovative approaches to legal education and the top role of the world's largest provider of alternative dispute resolution, these experts discuss how both traditional AI and generative AI have the potential to combat the U.S. civil justice crisis.
PLI’s Fast-Tracked: Emergent Issues in the Legal Profession podcast, brings you conversations with thought leaders, delving into the most dynamic trends shaping the legal world, from AI to DEI – and everything in between. PLI is proud to keep you ever current with timely programs, publications, and podcasts. Visit pli.edu/ftpod for more episodes.
Please note: CLE is not offered for listening to this podcast, and the views and opinions expressed within represent those of the speakers and host, and not necessarily those of PLI.
Featured in this Episode
Bridget Mary McCormack
Bridget Mary McCormack is President and CEO of the American Arbitration Association-International Centre for Dispute Resolution. She is also a Strategic Advisor to the Future of the Profession Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. Until the end of 2022, McCormack was Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, a position her peers selected her for in January 2019 after she served for six years as a Justice. While on the Court, she championed innovation and the use of technology to improve access to justice.
A graduate of New York University Law School, McCormack started her legal career in New York City. In 1996, she joined the Yale Law School faculty. She then joined the University of Michigan Law School faculty in 1998, where she taught criminal law, legal ethics, and numerous clinics. She was Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs from 2002 until 2012.
McCormack was elected to The American Law Institute in 2013. The Attorney General of the United States appointed her to the National Commission on Forensic Science in 2014. In 2019, the Governor of Michigan named her Co-Chair of the Michigan Joint Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration. In 2020, she joined the American Bar Association’s Council on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar and currently serves as Vice Chair. In 2021, the Governor of Michigan asked her to co-chair the Michigan Task Force on Forensic Science and to chair the Michigan Jail Reform Advisory Council. She also chaired the Michigan Judicial Council, the strategic planning body for the judicial branch. In 2021, McCormack was also appointed to serve nationally on The Council of State Governments Healthy States National Task Force and the ABA Center for Innovation’s Governing Council. She was also named Chair of the ABA Board of Elections.
McCormack is an Editor of the ABA’s preeminent publication, Litigation Journal. She speaks and writes frequently about access to justice, innovation in the legal profession, and legal education.
McCormack is married to Steven Croley, General Counsel and Chief Policy Officer at Ford Motor Company. They have four adult children.
Featured in this Episode
Andrew Perlman
Andrew Perlman is a nationally recognized voice on the future of legal education and law practice. He has served as an Advisory Council member of the American Bar Association Task Force on the Law and Artificial Intelligence; as the inaugural chair of the governing council of the ABA’s Center for Innovation; as the vice chair of the ABA Commission on the Future of Legal Services; and as the chief reporter of the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20, which was responsible for updating the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct to reflect changes in technology and increased globalization.
Perlman’s service also has focused on national and local reform efforts ranging from police practices and access to justice to developing alternate paths to law school and bar admission. For example, he has served as a founding dean for the ABA-Legal Education Police Practices Consortium; as a member of the Law School Admission Council’s Legal Education Program Advisory Committee, which is developing an alternate pathway to law school admission; as a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Access to Justice Advisory Committee; as a co-chair of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Subcommittee on Alternative Paths to Licensure; and as a member of the Content Scope Committee of the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE), which helped to identify content for the next generation of the bar exam.
Perlman’s scholarship has included numerous articles on professional responsibility and legal innovation that have appeared in some of the nation’s leading law reviews. He also co-authored a civil procedure casebook, Civil Procedure: A Coursebook (with Professors Joseph W. Glannon and Peter Raven-Hansen) that has been adopted at more than 80 law schools.
Perlman has served as a presenter or panelist at more than 100 academic, judicial, and other professional programs in more than 20 U.S. jurisdictions, three continents, and six countries.
Prior to entering academia,he clerked for a federal district court judge in Chicago and practiced as a litigator there. He is an honors graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School, and he received his LL.M from Columbia Law School.
