Artificial Intelligence and the Practice of Law: Mastering Generative and Agentic AI (Michael D. Murray - Artificial Intelligence Series)

Stop reacting to AI. Start mastering it.The legal landscape is shifting. Attorneys who simply "dabble" in AI chatbots are being left behind by those who master Agentic AI, Deep Research, and Deep Reasoning workflows. Artificial Intelligence and the Practice of Law is not a theoretical overview. It is a rigorous, pedagogical guide for the 2026 practitioner.As one reviewer, Robert Millard, stated: "Most books about AI and legal services fall into one of two categories. One evangelises about transformation without providing enough practical detail. The other peddles fear by cataloguing risks without engaging properly with how to mitigate these. Michael Murray's book is different. It is a careful, technically fluent practitioner guide that provides a realistic view of generative and agentic AI’s capabilities and also serious guidance on associated professional duties. It comes across as having been written by someone who both actually uses the tools, and who has deep interest in them from both practice and theoretical perspectives. Over >300 pages and nine chapters, Murray walks the reader from the data-science foundations of contemporary generative AI through prompt and context engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, agentic workflows, and the present and future structure of the legal-AI vendor landscape. The book closes with a detailed chapter on ethics and professional responsibility under the American Bar Association (ABA) Model Rules. . . . On operating architecture, the chapter on multi-agent orchestration is the practical centre of the book. The architecture he describes, with a main orchestration agent calling specialised child agents and external connected agents, is the working model that firms will build towards over the next few years. He explains how this shift has deep implications for knowledge management, document infrastructure, and vendor selection. New governance needs induced by AI are also thoroughly addressed. Logging and audit trails, access control by role, restriction of "write to systems" actions, vendor vetting as a non-delegable supervisory duty, human-in-the-loop review gates, and a preference for explainable "white box" systems over black-box products are all treated as constitutive of the operating model rather than as compliance afterthoughts." See https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/book-review-michael-d-murray-artificial-intelligence-practice-robert-4lh7e (May 29, 2026).In this definitive guide, you will learn to:Implement RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation): Securely anchor AI outputs in "ground truth" sources to eliminate "hallucinations."Master Context Engineering: Design high-precision prompts and employ priming techniques that will generate client- and court-ready legal work product.Design and deploy Agentic Workflows: Move beyond simple prompts to autonomous AI agents capable of planning and executing multi-step research and document creation tasks.Whether you are a practitioner dealing with the implementation and use of AI at your firm or a law student preparing for the future of practice, this book provides the clarity needed to thrive.The author, Michael D. Murray, is a law professor on the front lines of the AI revolution. As a University Research Professor and Spears Gilbert Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky, he leads the Artificial Intelligence and the Law Project, a forward-looking initiative exploring the collision of emerging tech and the law. Professor Murray is a prolific scholar with 29 books and 40 law review articles to his name. He writes at the crossroads of law, innovation, and visual communication.Take control of your practice. Order your copy today. Read more