Sharing Our Memories: Vivian Wesson
3.20.2026
In honor of our 150th anniversary, we asked longtime, involved members for their recollections of the New York State Bar Association.
Vivian Wesson, the chair of the New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies, is proud of how the association is preparing attorneys for the impact of AI.
“The biggest challenge I see facing our profession is how are we training that next level of lawyers to think like lawyers, to do that type of analysis. If all they can do is query ChatGPT – well, we’ve seen spectacularly how that does not work. We still have to do the job of being lawyers. There is no concept of going to an actual library, with books, and pulling one off, and having to Shepardize a case, and actually having to go through that process. But it’s still that mental training that less experienced attorneys still need. So how do we couple that with the capability of augmenting legal practice, without eviscerating the fact that I still need you to sit and think and be creative and ponder – whether or not this case actually speaks to these facts, or how do you analogize it and draw inferences and implications?
“All of those things require some legal skill that the bot is not going to give you.”
Do you have a special memory you want to share in honor of our 150th anniversary? Email rmelnitsky@nysba.org and your memory may be featured on our website.
