While generative artificial intelligence will transform legal work, there are key differences in how legal professionals and clients are thinking about AI, with clients more optimistic about the tech, according to Clio’s eighth annual Legal Trends Report, which Clio founder and CEO Jack Newton introduced Monday.
It’s rare to meet a 100-year-old lawyer. It’s perhaps even rarer to sit with that lawyer and listen as they reflect on their life and career. Alexander Forger, who joined the centenarian club in February, recently gave the ABA Journal that opportunity.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide whether Texas landowners can sue the state under the takings clause for flooding caused by highway reconstruction. “If there is one basic principle in property law, it’s the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you buy it,” said Robert McNamara of the Institute for Justice, which is representing the plaintiff.
Dress code expectations for lawyers are evoked in the name of professionalism and steeped in tradition. But advocates say that centuries-old grooming dictates have negatively impacted people of color, women, those with disabilities and LGBTQ folks and need to evolve. Many question their necessity.
Forensic veterinary investigations are a growing force in animal law, with vets working at the intersection of law and veterinary medicine. On any given case, the scope of the vet’s work runs from crime scene investigations, lab work, animal autopsies and report writing to serving as an expert witness in court.
“The tide is definitely changing on the perception of the importance of investigating animal cruelty,” says Martha Smith-Blackmore, president of Forensic Veterinary Investigations in Boston. “Crimes against animals do not exist in a vacuum.”
Implementing DEI-related goals can be challenging, as institutions—including law firms across the country—attempt to change their cultures from within. The move is also not without potential legal risks, as several U.S. corporations have learned.
As Big Tech companies like Amazon and Google have come under scrutiny in recent years for their economic power, antitrust challenges are no longer being driven just by players in the federal government. As in California, the states are now coming for the companies too.
Media law experts say they are seeing several developing trends in libel and defamation cases. Those trends include forum shopping, having an increasingly political component, adding allegations unrelated to the defamation claim, increasingly naming individual reporters as defendants and demanding huge damage awards.
A federal appeals court has refused to revive a lawsuit claiming that Polsinelli breached a flat-fee agreement to provide “legal counsel” by sending work covered by the agreement to another law firm that billed Polsinelli’s client for its trial work.
