A new study from LexisNexis confirms what many have suspected: in-house counsel are increasingly relying on GenAI tools and large language models (LLMs). And that use?  It’s probably the lowest it will ever be. That’s something outside counsel need to be thinking long and hard about. The study, titled The Total Economic Impact™ of Lexis+ AI for Corporate Legal Departments, was conducted for LexisNexis by Forrester Consulting. Forrester interviewed four decision-makers who had used LexisNexis GenAI tools and then constructed a composite organization to illustrate the potential savings in-house legal teams might achieve with the tools, which I guess it did. What Caught My Eye But that’s not what caught my eye. Here is what did: ·      Organizations are still struggling to identify GenAI solutions that meet both their business objectives and security/governance requirements. …

Robert “Bob” C. Josefsberg, a revered trial attorney, mentor, and pillar of the South Florida legal community, passed away in Coral Gables, Florida, while doing what he loved. He was a devoted and loving husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Bob lived a life grounded in purpose, compassion, and justice. He was described as a “true litigation hero” by his peers. “Bob was my very close friend for over 60 years. I practiced law with him for 40 years. He was loved by everybody, he was a great friend, and he can never be replaced,” said Aaron Podhurst, Founding Partner of Podhurst Orseck. A proud graduate of Dartmouth College and Yale Law School, he went on to shape the legal landscape of South Florida and beyond. He was admitted to the Florida Bar in 1962 and to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1970. Bob devoted more than four decades of his life to Podhurst Orseck, where he served as a senior partner and…

Since we first wrote about the emergence of generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) tools back in February 2023, their capabilities have increased in leaps and bounds. A report from KPMG indicates that generative AI reached the point of “mass adoption” in Canadian workplaces by November 2024. At that time, KPMG found nearly half (46%) of all workers were using AI tools as part of their jobs. These adoption rates have surely only increased in 2025.Lawyers, paralegals, courts, and tribunals have been somewhat late adopters when it comes to generative AI. Part of this is simply reflective of the conservative and risk-adverse nature of the legal industry. But very real concerns with respect to data protection, intellectual property rights, client confidentiality, and the reliability of AI tools have also warranted a valid degree of caution. The Risks of Using Generative AI for Legal WorkI have made a practice of periodically exploring different AI tools…

The Court of Appeals rarely vacates a federal criminal conviction. Many of the judges worked for the U.S. Attorney's Office before ascending to the bench, and they know the feds are meticulous and rarely lose their cases. This prosecution is different, and the Court vacates the conviction, which said the defendant had conspired to prevent people from voting in the 2016 election by tweeting false advice to Hillary Clinton voters about voting by text message, a tactic intended to suppress voter turnout so the defendant's preferring candidate, Donald Trump, could win the election.The case is United States v. Mackey, issued on July 9. You know that you can't vote by text message, right? Some people don't know that. The decision illustrates defendant's tactics, portraying this guy, a 24-year-old whose avatar draws from Charlie Sheen's character in the movie Major League, as a self-described Internet troll and "shitposter" who tweeted hundreds…

That's a new one on me, from a UK trademark appeal; the plaintiff, who was self-represented, admitted to using generative AI, and the defendant's lawyer was strongly suspected of so doing: 8. At the start of the hearing, I asked Dr Soufian if he had drafted the documents and he said he had drafted it with the assistance of Chat GPT. I pointed out the numerous errors in the citations and problems with the skeleton and he politely apologised and did so unreservedly. Before moving on, it is worth noting that most of the skeleton produced by Chat GPT was made up of arguments purportedly relating to the evidence in the case. However, the factual issues highlighted were largely not relevant to the issues before me and the proposed arguments were not very helpful. In other words, even aside from the fabricated citations, the output of Chat GPT was in fact unhelpful to him. 9. In the case of Mr Caddy, who is a trade mark attorney, his skeleton argument dated 6 June 2025…

Getting arrested for drug possession can turn your life upside down in an instant, especially in Louisiana, which has some of the strictest drug laws in the country. What you do, or don’t do, in that moment can have a major impact on your future.  Penalties can range from heavy […] The post Top 5 Mistakes to Avoid if Arrested for Drug Possession in Louisiana appeared first on Bloom Legal Network.

For the Balkinization Symposium on Richard Primus, The Oldest Constitutional Question: Enumeration and Federal Power (Harvard University Press, 2025).Abbe GluckRichard Primus is, as they say, not your father’s federalism. His meticulous historical inquiry into enumeration yields just enough ambiguity to throw into doubt whether the Constitution’s internal limits are what actually safeguard federalism, or whether it’s something else entirely—assuming of course that the concept of state autonomy still has meaning in an era of national power. Primus emphatically thinks it does, just not that the constitutional provisions that courts typically cite in service of it actually do much work.Others have already lauded the way in which Primus’s modest goal has the potential to accomplish something revolutionary. His evenhanded treatment of a voluminous record from the founding period and shortly thereafter aims to convince the reader not that…

Texas recently became the third state in two years, following Louisiana and Arkansas, to pass a law requiring Ten Commandments displays in public school classrooms. Soon after — like the other states that had passed such a law — it was sued over this policy. Like the complaints filed already in Louisiana and Arkansas, the lawsuit against Texas’ Ten Commandments statute was brought by a group of families from multiple religious backgrounds who believe that the law violates the First Amendment. According to the families, students in classrooms with the Ten Commandments posters “will be forcibly subjected to scriptural dictates, day in and day out,” a situation that violates “the fundamental religious-freedom principles that animated the Founding of our nation.” The Texas challengers, as well as the families in Arkansas and Louisiana, drew on a case from 1980, Stone v. Graham, in which the Supreme Court ruled, in an unsigned…

Today’s Ad Law Reading Room entry is “The Gray Area: Finding Implicit Delegation to Agencies after Loper Bright,” by Matthew Stephenson. Here is the abstract: In Loper Bright v. Raimondo, the Supreme Court overruled Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council and repudiated Chevron’s the across-the-board presumption that statutory ambiguities should be treated as implied delegations of discretion to agencies. But Loper Bright did not repudiate the possibility that a court might properly find implied delegation in some cases. How should a court identify such cases? Loper Bright did not offer much guidance, and in the coming years, a central project of administrative law will be articulating, elaborating, and refining the doctrine that is to govern this inquiry. This Article argues that the canonical pre-Chevron cases Gray v. Powell and NLRB v. Hearst Publications, together with their antecedents and progeny, provide a useful framework for…

W. Nicholson Price Ii (U Michigan Law) and Janet Freilich (Boston U Law) have posted “Data as Policy” (66 Boston College Law Review (forthcoming 2025)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: A large literature on regulation highlights the many different methods of policy-making: command-and-control rulemaking, informational disclosures, tort liability, taxes, and more. But the literature overlooks a powerful method to achieve policy objectives: data. The state can provide (or suppress) data as a regulatory tool to solve policy problems. For administrations with expansive views of government’s purpose, government-provided data can serve as infrastructure for innovation and push innovation in socially desirable directions; for administrations with deregulatory ambitions, suppressing or choosing not to collect data can reduce regulatory power or serve as a back-door mechanism to subvert statutory or common law rules. Government-provided data is particularly powerful for…

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has traditionally maintained that freedom of expression safeguards speech that may "offend, shock or disturb." However, its stance on hate speech is not in line with this core principle. My book, "Hate Speech and the European Court of Human Rights" (Routledge, 2025), argues that the ECtHR's current trajectory, anchored in what I term the "low-threshold hatred paradigm" jeopardizes free speech by permitting restrictions on expression that is merely insulting or prejudicial, without any requirement of incitement to violence or hostility. Drawing on doctrinal analysis and normative critique, the book contends that the ECtHR's hate speech jurisprudence suffers from conceptual ambiguity, internal inconsistencies, and a lack of empirical grounding. The book examines hate speech jurisprudence of the now defunct European Commission on Human Rights and the ECtHR to allow for an inclusive analysis from the…

Michael Goodyear (New York U Law) has posted “Dignity and Deepfakes” (Arizona State Law Journal, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Today, we face a dangerous technosocial combination: AI-generated deepfakes and the Internet. Believable and accessible, these deepfakes have already spread sex, lies, and false advertisements across the Internet and targeted everyone from Taylor Swift to middle school students. Dissemination of deepfakes inflicts multifarious dignitary harms against their victims—especially women and LGBTQ+ persons—stripping them of control over their own identities, harming their reputations, and ostracizing them from society through shame. Yet this is not the first time a new technology for capturing one’s likeness and a method for disseminating images threatened individuals’ dignity. In the late nineteenth century, the right of publicity emerged in response to a similar troubling technosocial combination: the…

By Ana Jacques  The Law Students on Workers’ Rights series publishes essays from current and incoming students from top law schools across the country. These essays, submitted for the Charles E. Joseph Employment Law Scholarship, address the question “What is the most significant challenge facing workers’ rights, and what role should employment attorneys play in addressing that challenge?” Protecting workers’ right to speak up without fear of retaliation is labor law’s greatest challenge today. Over the last few years as a law clerk and paralegal in plaintiff-side labor and employment cases, I have seen employees lose hours, receive negative performance reviews, or be shifted to less favorable assignments after reporting discrimination, unsafe conditions, and unpaid wages. These punishments teach employees that speaking out carries too high a price. When raising a concern risks financial hardship or job loss, legal protections on paper…

[The Supreme Court may not have to intervene for "run-of-the mill cases" but will intervene for "major new federal statutes or executive actions."] Justice Kavanaugh's concurrence in Trump v. CASA is one of his most significant opinions to date. It ranks up there with his concurrence in Labrador v. Poe and his dissent in Calvary Chapel. In CASA, Justice Kavanaugh sketches how he views the role of the Court with regard to the "interim before the interim." Here, Kavanaugh develops ideas that were not present in the briefing, but instead seem novel enough. That's not to say I agree with everything Kavanaugh wrote. I don't, as I'll note before. But this opinion reflects significant original thought. Indeed, I thought Kavanaugh was the most prepared justice during the CASA oral argument. At a high level, Justice Kavanaugh wants us to move beyond the abstraction of TROs and the the emergency docket. The…

From the Motion to Dismiss in State v. Katzgrau, written by Bruce Rosen (Pashman Stein Walder Hayden, P.C.); the analysis seems to me quite correct, and the G.D. v. Kenny decision from the New Jersey Supreme Court strikes me as dispositive: This case involves a media entity's alleged violation of N.J.S.A. 2C:52-30, which makes it a disorderly persons offense to knowingly reveal the existence of an expunged arrest. The arrest in question was published in the Red Bank Police Department's monthly police blotter report and then republished on the Red Bank Green local news website. Several months after the publication, the arrest was expunged. The U.S. Supreme Court has stated numerous times that publication of truthful information on matters of public significance cannot be punished unless it involves a state interest of the highest order. But even more significantly, the New Jersey Supreme Court has specifically explained that the media and private citizens…

As we get ready for baseball's All-Star game tonight, here's an article of mine that appeared in the May 25, 2010 edition of the Pennsylvania Law Weekly. Take Me Out to the BallgameLittle League tips for big league lawyersByDaniel E. CumminsPennsylvania Law Weekly/The Legal IntelligencerMay 25, 2010It's that time of year again — Little League baseball is starting up for boys and girls.The smell of hotdogs and Cracker Jacks permeates the air, while spent sunflower seed shells crunch underfoot on the dusty floor of the dugout.For kids, it's a time for new uniforms, cleats and friends. For parents, on the other hand, it can be a time for more laundry, over-the-top coaches hellbent on winning and some equally overbearing fellow parents. As Yogi Berra said, "Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets."In any event, it's a time for great memories.During one "quick"…

I am happy to pass along two job opportunities for new and recent law school graduates. First, the Institute for Free Speech is hiring First Amendment fellows. The Institute for Free Speech's First Amendment Fellowship allows recent law school graduates, judicial clerks, and mid-career attorneys the chance to gain practical experience litigating constitutional challenges. Fellows will work alongside the Institute's attorneys to tackle all aspects of trial and appellate practice in cases challenging restrictions on Americans' rights to freely speak, publish, assemble, and petition. Fellowships are for one year, typically beginning each August or September, and are intended to prepare attorneys for careers in constitutional advocacy. The fellowship is excellent preparation for a judicial clerkship, a career change, a public interest litigation career, academia, or private practice. It can also lead to a permanent position at the Institute for Free Speech. Fellows…

UN human rights experts expressed grave concern over the increased deterioration of the condition of lawyers in Tunisia over the past year. The experts highlighted situations of increased harassment, arbitrary arrests, and violations of the right to a fair trial in calling the situation a serious deterioration in the last year. Over 60 lawyers have been under criminal investigation since June 2024, with many facing severe charges ranging from spreading fake news to offending public officials, based on broad legal definitions. High-profile arrests of lawyers have included Ahmed Souab, Sonia Dahmani, Dalila Msaddak, Islem Hamza, Ayachi Hamami, Ghazi Chaouachi, Mehdi Zagrouba, and Lazhar Akremi. Further, it has been noted that the harassment and intimidation of lawyers manifests in forms such as criminal prosecution, physical aggression, and legal restrictions, and if convicted, the lawyers usually face severe penalties such as lengthy prison sentences and heavy fines. The experts…

Signup to receive the Early Edition in your inbox here. A curated weekday guide to major news and developments over the past 24 hours. Here’s today’s news: RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR — U.S. AND INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE  President Trump yesterday announced the United States would dramatically increase weapons supplies to Ukraine and impose 100% tariffs on Russia and countries that buy Russian oil if Moscow does not agree to a ceasefire in the next 50 days. A source said that under the plan, the United States will sell around $10 billion in weapons to NATO allies in the first wave, who will then send the weapons on to Ukraine. Speaking to BBC News, Trump also said that he is “disappointed but not done” with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Dave Lawler and Barak Ravid report for Axios; Kevin Liptak reports for CNN; Gary O’Donoghue reports. In a social media post, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy yesterday said that he is…

Divorce is challenging enough, and a lack of financial support can make it a difficult battle. Alimony is not guaranteed in Texas, and the spousal maintenance laws in the state are strict and specific. If you are requesting financial support or defending against an alimony claim, it is vital that you work with an experienced alimony lawyer to protect your financial future. This guide is designed to help you understand the basics, avoid common pitfalls, and have a stronger case for alimony in Dallas. Common Alimony Mistakes and How to Avoid Them It can be easy to derail even the best divorce by making mistakes you could have avoided. Here are the key mistakes to avoid: 1. Failing to Prove Eligibility for Alimony Mistake: Thinking that having a long marriage or being in financial need causes an automatic entitlement to alimony. Why It Matters: As per the Texas law, you will only receive alimony if you have insufficient property to meet your minimum reasonable needs, and you fit…