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Welcome to this week's edition of The Legal Wire!

Senators Marsha Blackburn and Ted Cruz have scaled their AI-regulation moratorium from ten years to five and tied it only to states seeking a slice of a $500 million federal AI-infrastructure fund. Child-safety, online-harms, and publicity-rights laws are now exempt, yet critics say the measure still pressures states to surrender oversight to secure broadband dollars. The Senate faces a July 4 vote on Trump’s package, setting up a last-minute fight over who polices AI.

Outside the Capitol, the creative world is drawing a line: more than 70 prominent authors, and 1,000-plus supporters, have urged publishers to reject AI-written books, warning that automation could hollow out writing, editing, and narration jobs.

Reddit illustrates the dueling instincts in tech. It’s suing Anthropic for scraping posts without a license even as it doubles down on its own chatbot, “Reddit Answers,” which mines the platform’s content for 1 million weekly users. The case underscores how platforms are defending data while racing to monetize it themselves.

And in the biggest legal-tech deal of the year, Clio is buying AI research platform vLex for $1 billion in cash and stock. By folding vLex’s Vincent assistant into Clio’s practice-management suite, CEO Jack Newton vows to deliver an end-to-end, AI-powered workspace, signaling that consolidation, not caution, is the name of the game in law-firm tech.

This week’s Highlights:

• Industry News and Updates

• Qanooni: A Homegrown Legal AI Platform with Global Ambitions

• AI Regulation Updates

• AI Tools to Supercharge your producivity

• Legal prompt of the week

• Latest AI Incidents & Legal Tech Map

➡️ Clio to Acquire vLex for $1B in Major Legal Tech Deal | Clio is acquiring AI legal research platform vLex for $1 billion in cash and stock, marking its biggest deal yet. The merger combines Clio’s practice management tools with vLex’s AI assistant, Vincent, to create a unified platform for managing and executing legal work. Clio CEO Jack Newton called it a “watershed moment” for legal tech. The deal expands Clio’s global reach and strengthens its push into AI-powered legal services. The acquisition is expected to close later this year.
^{June 30, 2025, Source: The Legal Wire}

➡️ GOP Senators Revise AI Regulation Ban in Trump Tax Bill | Sen. Marsha Blackburn and Sen. Ted Cruz have agreed on new terms for a controversial AI regulation ban tied to President Trump’s tax package. The revised provision reduces the state-level AI law freeze from 10 years to 5 and limits it to states seeking a share of $500 million in federal AI infrastructure funding.It now includes exemptions for laws protecting kids, online safety, and publicity rights. The move aims to ease concerns from lawmakers like Blackburn, who stressed preserving state protections. The Senate is set to vote on the bill ahead of Trump’s July 4 deadline.
^{June 29, 2025, Source: The Hill}

➡️ Authors Demand Publishers Reject AI-Written Books | Over 70 authors, including Dennis Lehane and Lauren Groff, signed an open letter urging major U.S. publishers to reject AI-generated books and protect human authors, editors, and narrators. The petition, hosted by Lit Hub, quickly gained over 1,100 signatures. Amid recent court rulings favoring AI firms like Meta, authors warn that without publisher safeguards, AI could displace creative workers. Only Simon & Schuster responded, saying it takes the concerns seriously and is committed to protecting authors’ rights.
^{June 28, 2025, Source: NPR}

➡️ Reddit Defends Its Data and Launches Its Own AI Tool | Reddit is suing AI firm Anthropic for scraping its user content without permission, accusing it of unfair business practices. The company argues its user-generated data is commercially valuable and protected. At the same time, Reddit is embracing AI with "Reddit Answers," a chatbot launched in December that responds using only Reddit content. Over 1 million users use it weekly, as Reddit tries to defend its platform and adapt to the AI era.
^{June 28, 2025, Source: CNBC}

Legal Technology

Qanooni: A Homegrown Legal AI Platform with Global Ambitions

As the legal profession worldwide adapts to the accelerating influence of generative AI, few legal tech stories stand out quite like Qanooni’s. Founded and developed in the UAE, Qanooni represents a rich blend of regional insight and global ambition, which has led to the formation of a legal AI platform built for automation and, more importantly, alignment with how lawyers actually work.

Created by lawyers for lawyers, Qanooni integrates directly into Microsoft Word and Outlook, meeting legal professionals where they are. It promises substantial efficiency gains, from cutting drafting time nearly in half to speeding up contract reviews by over 2.5 times, all while operating within a framework of strict data privacy and firm-level customization. And as the platform prepares to introduce new litigation-focused capabilities, Qanooni is beginning to carve out a meaningful presence not just in the Gulf, but across jurisdictions.

The Legal Wire recently had the opportunity to hear from Karim Shiyab, Anuscha Iqbal and Ziyaad Ahmed, the three Co-Founders of Qanooni, about their experience and views.

Click here to continue reading the full interview

The AI Regulation Tracker offers a clickable global map that gives you instant snapshots of how each country is handling AI laws, along with the most recent policy developments.

The most recent developments from the past week:

📋 29 June 2025 | Dutch Government unveils $82m AI Hub Plan in Groningen: The Dutch government has announced a €70 million (approximately $82 million) investment to build a national AI hub in the city of Groningen. The initiative, dubbed the “AI Factory”, is expected to integrate research, education, and enterprise applications into a single facility, aimed at advancing the Netherlands’ role in the European AI landscape. The facility will be built on the site of a former Niemeyer tobacco factory, symbolically repurposing an industrial relic into a hub for future technologies. It will house a supercomputer designed to train large-scale AI models and support a wide range of public and private AI initiatives. Construction is projected to start in 2026.

📋 25 June 2025 | "No Adversarial AI Act" introduced: A bipartisan group of US lawmakers have introduced a bill dubbed the "No Adversarial AI Act" in both houses of Congress that would bar US executive agencies from using AI models developed in China, including those from DeepSeek. The bill would (1) create a permanent framework for barring the use of all Chinese AI models from U.S. executive agencies, as well as those from Russia, Iran and North Korea; (2) require the Federal Acquisition Security Council to create a list of AI models developed in those countries and regularly update it; (3) restrict US federal agencies from buying or using those AI technologies without an exemption, such as for carrying out research, from the US Congress or the Office of Management and Budget; and (4) contain a provision that can be used to get technologies off the list with proof that they are not controlled or influenced by a foreign adversary of the US.

📋 25 June 2025 | EU AI Act’s first review of bans, high-risk uses expected in fall: It has reported that the European Commission has moved its first review of the EU AI Act’s prohibited and high-risk use cases to fall 2025, rather than early August, due to more urgent priorities tied to general-purpose AI rules taking effect in August. The initial review is expected to highlight trends rather than propose major changes, as high-risk provisions won’t apply until next year and enforcement of bans still has to get started. A public consultation running through 18 July 2025 will also inform the report.

🆕 Harvey - Unlock professional class AI for your firm.

🆕 Elefant - Where an elephant's memory meets effective legal search.

🆕 Contractbook - Control your contracts with confidence & ease.

Want more Legal AI Tools? Check out our
Top AI Tools for Legal Professionals

This prompt delivers a concise, organized snapshot of controlling authority, sparing hours of manual research and helping you avoid costly precedent missteps.

Instructions:
State the area of law you’re researching. Ask your LLM to:

- List the top landmark cases (name, citation, and year).
- Summarize each case’s key holding and legal argument in one or two sentences.
- Highlight how the precedents interact or diverge.
- Flag the practical consequences—and common pitfalls—of misinterpreting or stretching these rulings.

The Responsible AI Collaborative is a not‑for‑profit organization working to present real‑world AI harms through its Artificial Intelligence Incident Database.

View the latest reported incidents below:

⚠️ Incident 1121 | Alleged AI Deepfake Videos Used to Lure Simcoe County, Ontario Residents in Crypto Scam | View Incident

⚠️ Incident 1119 | Alleged Deepfake Videos Impersonate Lithuanian Politicians and Doctors in Purported Cross-Border Scam Network | View Incident

⚠️ Incident 1118 | Ongoing Purported AI-Assisted Identity Fraud Enables Unauthorized Access to Western Companies by North Korean IT Workers | View Incident

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