Knowledge Is Still Power: Using AI to Amplify Legal Expertise

Legal Tech + Practice Innovation | MastersAI x TechnoCat Conference, Chicago, April 16, 2026.

Attorney and podcaster Matthew Kerbis made a counterintuitive argument at the MastersAI x TechnoCat Conference: the real threat AI poses to legal professionals is not that it is too powerful. It is that it is making everyone sound the same.

“AI raises all boats,” he told the audience. Spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, passive voice: gone. But when every professional is running their communications through the same tools, the output converges. “Everyone has B-minus writing now. If you’re just using Copilot and ChatGPT, you’re going to sound like everybody else.” In a profession where credibility and distinctiveness matter, that uniformity is a problem.

His answer: curation and taste are the new competitive differentiators. Subject matter expertise is what separates a lawyer from someone who downloaded a legal AI tool. “I could download Adobe Photoshop. It doesn’t make me a graphic designer.”

Kerbis introduced his tool of choice: NotebookLM, Google’s source-grounded AI platform. Unlike general-purpose chatbots, NotebookLM answers only from sources the user provides. “I know the sources. I’m not doing research with this tool. I’m curating my own knowledge.” He uses Perplexity’s deep research mode to gather sources at scale, turning hours of manual work into minutes.

Key Takeaways

• AI is creating content uniformity. Professionals who don’t think intentionally about inputs and outputs will sound like everyone else.
• Curation and taste are the competitive differentiators AI cannot replicate.
• NotebookLM grounds AI outputs in verified, self-selected sources with inline citations.
• Shareable notebooks can function as client-facing knowledge tools.
• Tools like Perplexity can build a source library at scale.

Conference Coverage: Chicago, April 16, 2026