Putting the “AI” in “Legal” (and “Health Care”)

Health Tech Nov 3, 2026• By KIM BELLARD I once again have to thank The New York Times for introducing me to a new concept. Sarah Kessler wrote about the rise of “legal engineering” – for which, it turns out, one doesn’t have to be either a lawyer or an engineer. Their role is to help integrate A.I. into the practice of law, whether at law firms or companies. That sure sounds like a prudent, if possibly belated, idea – and one suspects we’re going to see such “engineers” in other fields. I certainly hope that healthcare is one of them, sooner rather than later. Irene Liu, the executive director of the A.I. initiative at Stanford Law School, explained the job to Ms. Kessler thusly: “If you were to just put it into an equation, it’s law plus technology plus business process.” That Venn diagram gets pretty small very quickly. Mary O’Carroll, the C.E.O. of LegalEng Consulting Group, also explained the role to Ms. Kessler: “You don’t necessarily need a giant pyramid of lawyers anymore. People who have this kind of skill set don’t have to have a J.D., and they don’t have to be software engineers, but there’s business process re-engineering, or this M.B.A. type skill, that I think is reall...