Why Is Legal Still Riding Horses in the Age of GenAI ft. Umair Muhajir

Law firms have, historically, struggled with change. In this episode of Between the Briefs, hosts Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens welcome Umair Muhajir, Vice President and Global Head of Managed Review at DISCO, for a sharp, honest conversation about what GenAI is really doing to litigation workflows.

His view is clear: GenAI is not simply making old workflows faster. At its best, it is forcing the industry to ask whether those workflows still make any sense.

What You’ll Learn:

Why GenAI replaces first-level document review work, not lawyers themselves
How AI-powered review can deliver high precision and recall while creating stronger audit trails
How legal teams can separate case learning from document review using AI-powered Q&A tools
Why law firms struggle to adopt AI when their billing systems are still built for hourly work
Why many “AI ethics” horror stories are actually old-fashioned lawyering failures in a shinier outfit
Why legal education may need more statistics, validation and practical technology literacy

Tune in to hear why the future of legal work will only be won by lawyers who know how to use AI without lowering their standards.

Highlights:
00:00 Introduction & Meeting Umair Muhajir

01:07 From Paul Weiss to the Early Days of eDiscovery

04:48 What DISCO Does and Umair’s Role in Managed Review

06:45 Is AI Replacing Associates or Replacing Document Review?

08:52 How DISCO Builds Client Confidence Around GenAI Review

09:32 Why Precision and Recall Matter in AI-Powered Discovery

13:18 The Biggest Barriers to Law Firm AI Adoption

15:48 How Junior Associates Learn Cases When AI Handles Review

20:00 Why AI Should Reimagine Workflows, Not Just Speed Them Up

21:17 What Comes Next for AI in Discovery and Legal Data

24:21 What Big Law Actually Wants From Legal Tech Vendors

27:10 Why Legal Has Multiple Historical Periods Inside One Firm

29:03 How GenAI Challenges Hourly Billing and Pricing Models

32:56 What Law Schools Need to Teach in an AI-Native Legal World

38:02 How Global Review Strategy Works Across Jurisdictions

40:44 Why Many AI Ethics Failures Are Really Lawyering Failures

45:05 Umair’s Hot Take: Legal’s Overinvestment Problem

46:47 Closing Thoughts

Quotes:

"The issue isn't associates learning the case, it's how they are learning the case. Technological developments have meant that you can actually bifurcate learning about the case from document review. We have a Q and A chatbot that works with lawyers and associates on the case team to learn the case, and it'll give you a supporting citation and highlights."
"The technology ought not to be an invitation to recreate the exact same workflows we've always done, but maybe should also be an invitation to reimagine what those workflows can be in the future."
"The reality is not that AI is replacing people. It's that people who use AI are going to replace people who don't. Law students will need to expect certain different things from their legal education, including introductions to statistical thinking, which might not be natural to us in law school."
"A lot of the cases and horror stories that get press are really examples of legal malpractice, not a Gen AI problem. If you don't think it's a great idea to discuss your case with someone at the bar, it's probably not a good idea to feed confidential stuff into a public instance of Gemini."
"An hourly model will never adequately capture what needs to be done at either the provider or the client side. Law firms have billing systems that might only be set up to process hourly rates, and it is very difficult for them to fit a tech-driven solution into their existing internal billing systems."

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