New York City Bar Association Podcast

Our episode today features Mindfulness and Well-Being in Law Committee members Robye Margolius (director of wellbeing at Arnold & Porter) and Jordana Confino (founder and CEO of JC Coaching and Consulting). They discuss social wellbeing as a powerful but overlooked dimension of lawyer wellbeing, defined as having meaningful, supportive relationships and a sense of connection and contribution.
Robye and Jordana outline research linking social support to happiness, life satisfaction, reduced depression and anxiety, and improved physical health, and cite workplace findings that belonging boosts performance and retention. The conversation explores barriers in legal culture such as time pressure, transactional interactions, invulnerability norms, autonomy needs, and perfectionism, plus the effects of billable-hour incentives, hybrid work, phones, and AI on connection and mentorship.

Robye and Jordana offer practical individual strategies (micro-connections, recurring touchpoints, presence, boundaries) and organizational actions (leadership modeling, rituals, mentorship, monitoring workload, recognition), and highlight City Bar committees, events, and the Lawyers Assistance Program as connection resources.

Want to take a first step to improving your sense of social well-being? Join the Mindfulness and Well-Being in Law Committee on October 1 for a Japanese Tea Gathering. Go to nycbar.org/events to learn more and to register.

02:02 Defining Connection
04:30 Science of Flourishing
08:45 Why Connection Feels Hard
09:14 Sandcastle Trust Building
14:29 Billable Hour Reality
19:10 Culture and Perfectionism
25:30 Support Changes Perception
28:46 AI and Human Skills
32:47 Practical Connection Habits
35:27 Micro Moments and Weak Ties
38:14 Match Your Social Battery
39:10 Small Discomfort Wins
43:00 Low Hanging Outreach
44:25 Phone Free Presence
51:27 Boundaries and Capacity
54:06 Culture Change Levers
01:02:02 Managers Shape Safety
01:06:09 Bar Associations as Third Places
01:10:43 One Small Action

Lorraine McGowen brings us today’s podcast from the City Bar’s Presidential Task Force on Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technologies. The discussion covers expanding legal use cases (research, drafting, due diligence, e-discovery, deposition and hearing prep, judicial chambers), ROI concerns due to verification burdens, and persistent hallucination risks. Panelists emphasize “trust nothing and verify everything,” including checking citations, quotations, and whether law remains good. We review ethics and court-rule developments (New York Part 161; proposed California SB 574), sanctions trends, confidentiality and privilege risks from public AI tools, client restrictions and protocol controls, record retention and supervision frameworks, international implications such as the EU AI Act’s risk categories and penalties, and the need for AI literacy and ongoing training.
Lorraine McGowen is Co-Chair of City Bar’s Task Force and a Partner at Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe. She is joined by these experts in the field:
Maura Grossman – Research Professor, School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo
David Keyko – Partner, Pillsbury, Winthrop, Shaw, Pittman
Sabina Ahmed Liconte – Head of Legal and Chief Compliance Officer, the Americas, ICBC Standard Bank Group
Adele Hogan – Partner, Hogan Law Associates
Ann Heo – Co-Chief of Discovery Compliance and Litigation Unit and Chief of the Prescription Drug Investigations Unit, Officer of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor for the City of New York
Kristin Baylis – Senior Technology Counsel, Orrick

00:00 Why AI Matters Now
03:08 Meet the Expert Panel
05:56 AI Use Cases Explosion
08:36 ROI and Productivity Wins
10:23 Hallucinations and Prompting
12:16 Will Hallucinations Disappear
13:38 Training and Trial Sim Tools
15:07 Ethics Rules and Sanctions
23:03 Court Orders and Disclosures
25:34 International Impact EU AI Act
34:59 Client Disclosure and Engagements
37:43 Firm Protocols and Controls
43:08 Technical Guardrails for Clients
45:45 AI Disclosure Duties
46:47 Joint Defense Protocols
47:49 Public Tools Pitfalls
51:23 Enterprise Versus Public
53:44 Transactional Verification
01:03:39 Litigation AI Sensitivities
01:08:18 Confidentiality Guardrails
01:14:58 Agentic AI Vendor Risks
01:20:09 In House Versus Firms
01:27:24 Key Takeaways Closing

The horrific attacks on September 11, 2001, left New York City in dire need of help. Families were searching for missing loved ones, and those who lost loved ones could not access support without a death certificate. Small businesses and street vendors in Lower Manhattan lost their livelihoods overnight. Immigrants were targeted and detained.

The legal needs were tremendous, varied, and urgent, and the legal community stepped up.

On this inaugural episode of the 44th Street Podcast, marking the 25th anniversary of 9/11, host and City Bar President Matthew Diller reflects on the unprecedented volume of pro bono legal service that followed the attacks. He is joined by three lawyers — Anthony Crowell, Maria Imperial, and Janet Sabel — who helped lead the response. They share stories from that work, about the City Bar's role as a coordinating hub for volunteers and legal service providers across the city, the family assistance center at Pier 94, the triage system built at the Metropolitan Detention Center, and the innovative use of the internet to expand outreach.

They also reflect on the emotional cost of the work and what it taught them about the profession's capacity to show up when needed.

Pema Sherpa is a mindfulness researcher and keynote speaker who helps organizations boost employee well-being and performance. Born and raised in Nepal, she studied the mind-body relationship at Harvard University and teaches mindfulness in a way that's both philosophically grounded and useful for people in demanding careers. She co-authored The Daily Buddhist with her husband, pairing short, daily teachings with practical, modern application.

Presented by the City Bar's Mindfulness & Well-Being in Law Committee, Pema talks with committee members Katiuska Moure and Nancy Batterman about her upbringing, her path into mindfulness research, and some practical keys lawyers and law students can use to build healthier daily habits even before they're ready to meditate.

Selected Links from the Episode:
The Daily Buddhist (book): https://thedailybuddhist.net/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/daily.buddhist/

00:00 Introduction
02:02 Pema's Journey
06:28 Harvard and Career Pivot
08:54 Immigrant Law Student Challenges
12:38 Tools for Students
16:44 Bringing Resilience into Legal Practice
20:09 Body Basics and the Nervous System
24:30 "Work With What You Have"
30:21 Meditation Isn't the Entry Point
33:28 Daily Buddhist Resources
39:44 Closing Thoughts and Committee Resources

Katherine Hughes hosts the latest podcast from the City Bar’s Presidential Task Force on Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technologies. She is joined by WashU Law Dean Stefanie Lindquist and AI Collaborative Co-Director Oliver Roberts to discuss how generative AI is reshaping law school teaching, assessment, and professional preparation.

Dean Lindquist describes her wake-up call about student AI use, making AI a central dean priority, forming an AI task force, partnering with Roberts, and hiring an LLM engineer to support experimentation and tool-building. Roberts traces early experiences with hallucinated citations and argues AI education must go beyond AI regulation to hands-on tool use across legal workflows, core terminology, tool selection, and explicit ethics (competence, confidentiality, supervision, and overreliance).

They discuss institutional guardrails such as eliminating take-home exams, using simulations, workflow-based pedagogy, and new assessment ideas like oral exams and quizzing students on submitted work. They also note scholarship and journal pressures and conclude that lawyers who can’t use AI will be replaced by those who can.

02:13 Why AI Became Institutional
03:50 Oliver’s AI Origin Story
05:34 Faculty Misconceptions
07:26 JD Learning Outcomes
09:58 Core AI Competencies
13:04 Schoolwide Guardrails
16:56 Teaching Ethics through Scenarios
21:19 Hidden Ethics Pitfalls
23:56 Rethinking Assessment
27:10 Drafting and Disclosure
32:05 Workflows In Practice
35:41 Handling Faculty Skepticism
38:08 AI In Clinics
40:10 Scholarship And Journals
43:05 Closing Advice