Expert Analysis

• Opinion

  NY Must Limit Interlocutory Appeals

  

  The New York Legislature should act to reduce the Appellate Division's outsize caseload of interlocutory civil appeals in order to develop a faster, less expensive, fairer and more coherent civil justice system, says Judge Gerald Lebovits.

• Planning Personal Phone Collections Before Discovery Begins

  

  For counsel planning a personal phone collection as part of the litigation discovery process, it's important to take early steps to ensure that necessary information will be obtained without exposing unrelated information or running into access issues, says Jeremy Horowitz at MARA Forensics.

• Conn. Financial Cos. Must Make AI Plans Exam-Ready

  

  Connecticut's new artificial intelligence guidance for covered financial institutions is notable for its specificity and its broad inclusion of any AI system that materially influences business operations or risk management, detailing the need for written plans covering risk tiering, human oversight and vendor controls, says James Williams at Venable.

• Opinion

  Judges Must Turn To Merits Earlier To Fix Civil Justice System

  

  The U.S. justice system is long overdue for a cultural shift that encourages judges to engage with the merits of a case from the outset, which would help to cut through procedural complexities and deliver high-quality justice efficiently and at lower cost, says Steven Kayman at Rottenberg Lipman.

• Series

  Open-Water Swimming Makes Me A Better Lawyer

  

  Swimming long distances in open waters is not necessarily an escape from my intellectual property practice, but a complementary discipline that similarly rewards sustained attention, intellectual curiosity, resilience and the ability to pursue a distant objective without losing command of the immediate task, says Christina MacDougall at Morgan Lewis.

• Opinion

  The Invisible AI Danger That May Undermine Legal Profession

  

  A public database tracking cases involving hallucinations generated by artificial intelligence recently surpassed 2,200 entries, but the bigger risk underlying attorneys’ use of such tools is that they will slowly surrender their judgment to AI and lose analytical skills, says Massachusetts District Court Associate Justice Brian Palmucci.

• How AI Could Help Judges Spot Their Own Biases

  

  In close cases where there’s room for discretion, artificial intelligence could challenge judges’ implicit biases by running counterfactual tests at scale — but any judicial use of such tools would need guardrails, say Arnold Peter at Peter Law and Nancy Rapoport at University of Nevada.

• Right-To-Repair Laws Create Manufacturer Compliance Maze

  

  Without existing precedent to help interpret new right-to-repair laws, original equipment manufacturers must make careful judgments about how best to comply with conflicting state statutes — but several principles related to documentation, replacement products and more emerge from the patchwork, say attorneys at Faegre Drinker.

• 3 Strategies To Reduce AI Sycophancy In Legal Work

  

  The tendency of generative artificial intelligence models to tell users what they want to hear can reinforce attorneys’ confirmation bias when testing the strength of arguments, and it can’t simply be prompted away — but a few practices can help mitigate it, says Michael Ott at Ice Miller.

• Open Issues After 2nd Circ.'s Airport Phone Search Ruling

  

  While the Second Circuit’s recent U.S. v. Alisigwe decision confirms border agents' broad authority to conduct routine manual cellphone searches at ports of entry, significant questions remain about more wide-ranging forensic searches at the border, say attorneys at Baker Botts.

• 2nd Circ. EFAA Ruling Shifts Employer Litigation Strategy

  

  In Diaz-Roa v. Hermes Law, the Second Circuit recently held that, under the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act, employers can't carve out nonharassment claims and send them to arbitration, which has implications for discovery, litigation costs and resolution strategy in EFAA-covered disputes, say attorneys at Krevolin Horst.

• Series

  Being In The Peace Corps Made Me A Better Lawyer

  

  When I served in the Peace Corps, the people of the West African village where I was stationed helped me acclimate to my new surroundings and enabled me to develop problem-solving, teamwork and empathy skills that have bolstered my legal practice far beyond the ability to offer technical advice, says Brian Bewley at McGuireWoods.

• AGs' Paramount Settlement Reflects States' Growing Influence

  

  The recent California federal court approval of the California v. Paramount Skydance settlement illustrates how state attorneys general are gaining new independence and influence, and companies must account for state enforcement when assessing merger risks ahead of a deal's closing, say attorneys at Norton Rose.

• 2nd Circ. Eases Employer Defense Of Dress Code Rules

  

  The Second Circuit recently sided with Starbucks in a ruling that makes it easier for companies to defend dress code policies against unfair labor practice challenges, but employers shouldn't read it as a license to ban union insignia, say attorneys at Shipman & Goodwin.

• Transfer Pricing Analyses May Apply To Tariff Refunds Claims

  

  Both plaintiffs and defendants in consumer class actions over tariff refunds should examine transfer pricing analyses, which can offer contemporaneous evidence as to how much of a tariff was borne in the U.S. by the importer or consumers rather than absorbed earlier in the supply chain, say economists at The Brattle Group.