May 2026 eBulletin Available Now

Dear Fellows:

I do not have a golf cart. If you know me, that probably doesn’t surprise you – since I do not play golf.

Joy and I do have a cabin on a Middle Tennessee lake near the Alabama state line. I bought it almost 23 years ago, right before we were married, and it has been a place of refuge for our family ever since.

My lake neighbors all have golf carts. In the morning and late afternoon, they fire them up and survey the neighborhood. Before golf carts invaded our neighborhood, people walked. Today, people ride.

I refuse to buy a golf cart because I know that as soon as I get one, Joy and I will stop our early-morning, three-mile walk through the neighborhood. We would drive our golf cart instead — they are fun — and abandon walking altogether. Walking improves our state of mind, not just our physical health. The time may come when one of us needs a golf cart, but in the meantime, we will walk. It is slower, and in the summer, it can be a little warm — but we believe it is worth the effort.

Every one of us carries a cellphone with more computing power than the desktop computer we had fifteen years ago. We have, at our fingertips, the ability to order books, book flights, and trade municipal bonds. We can stream videos, listen to music from around the world or find an answer to almost any question with a few taps of our fingers, whether we are sitting in a favorite chair on our screened-in porch, at our desk, or on a chair lift in Switzerland.

And yet research tells us that this six-ounce device — always in hand or within arm’s reach — reduces concentration and shortens attention spans. It diminishes the quality of face-to-face interactions. For young people especially, and for some adults, constant connectivity fuels anxiety, depression, and lowers self-esteem. And, if used while driving, cell phones increase the risk of an accident by a factor of three.

I know this, which means I rarely look at my phone, including text messages, during the workday. It drives Joy crazy that I miss her texts, but I simply refuse to be tethered to my phone while doing client work — I find it too distracting.

The cellphone was just the beginning.

Artificial intelligence can draft emails, letters, and contracts. Although AI-generated legal research and brief writing are not yet ready for prime time, that day is coming. These tools have the potential to save a great deal of time and money for our clients.

But research from MIT warns that repeated reliance on AI to perform complex cognitive tasks — structuring, brainstorming, writing — leads to what researchers call a “cognitive debt.” A 2024 MIT study found that the brain stops investing effort when AI handles complex thinking, and the neural pathways responsible for deep thinking, critical analysis, and creativity can grow weaker from disuse. Writers who relied on AI also showed an impaired ability to recall what they had nominally “written” – a finding suggesting that outsourcing writing to AI bypasses the active processing necessary to move information from short-term to long-term memory.

This should give every trial lawyer pause. Our stock in trade is precisely the cognitive capacity that AI threatens to erode — the ability to read carefully, reason rigorously, craft a persuasive argument, and remember what matters. A surgeon who stops operating loses dexterity. A musician who stops practicing loses her edge. A lawyer who stops thinking loses judgment. No client deserves to be represented by someone whose most essential skills have quietly atrophied.

Some will say: I use a calculator and I have not forgotten how to do arithmetic. First, I bet you have – my reliance on a calculator has impaired my ability to do math in my head. Second, the calculator handles computation, a mechanical task. AI, by contrast, handles reasoning — the very activity that defines our profession. Delegating computation is convenience. Delegating reasoning is surrender.

Humans have always sought ways to increase efficiency and convenience. Over the centuries, tools and then machines have been developed to produce goods while reducing or eliminating the need for physical labor. Artificial intelligence brings that same logic to the service sector, along with many other aspects of our lives.

The challenge we face is to take advantage of AI without sacrificing a part of ourselves. We need to understand what AI can do for us while not permitting it to diminish us. That will require knowledge, judgment, and discipline — and a willingness to do things for ourselves even when, in the short run, AI could do them faster. It will mean writing our own first draft before asking AI to improve it and doing our own initial research before turning to AI tools. The shortcut is tempting. The cost is invisible — until it is not.

So, consider investing time into understanding what AI can do for you and to you. And, as you walk – not ride – through your neighborhood, think about how you can use AI to help you become a better version of yourself.

John A. Day
President

To read the full eBulletin, click here.