What do GLP-1s and AI have in common?
The Quiet Phase Is Ending and the judiciary has to get it right.
You remember when everyone started showing up a little lighter, and we all politely pretended it was better habits and a few longer walks.
Then the truth leaked out. A lot of people were on GLP-1s. At first, almost nobody admitted it. The use was widespread before the honesty was. People kept it quiet because they did not want the judgment, or the suggestion that the result somehow counted less because they used something to help them get there. Then something shifted. Ask someone now and you might get a smile and a “you know it.” What used to be private is now part of a casual conversation, and sometimes even a point of pride.
AI is following the same path. Lawyers are further down it. They used AI quietly, then started admitting it, and now many talk about it openly, with some even treating it as a sign that they are efficient, sophisticated, or keeping up with the future.
Judges are not there yet, and that hesitation makes sense. The judiciary is not built to move first. It is built to get it right. But the hesitation is lifting. Judges are starting to name specific use cases out loud, and once that starts happening, the signal changes. What once felt risky starts to feel ordinary. That is the phase we are entering now, and it is the wrong moment to relax.
The reason it is the wrong moment is that the next shift is already here. Firms and lawyers are quietly experimenting with agentic AI, which means the arc is likely to repeat itself, only this time the stakes are different. First quiet use, then careful admission, then open normalization. But agentic AI is not just a stronger version of the same tool. Generative AI helps you think, draft, and organize. Agentic AI acts. It carries out tasks with less human friction in the loop.
So while the arc may look familiar, the stakes are not. This is a shift from assistance toward delegation, and the habits we set now, while GenAI is starting to become normal inside chambers, will carry directly into the agentic phase whether we realize it or not.
That is why this moment matters. It is not our job to be first. It is our job to get it right. The quiet phase is ending, and the next one is already starting.
