Expert Analysis

• What To Watch As Florida Stablecoin Framework Takes Shape

  

  As Florida's new payment stablecoin licensing framework enters its second month, requiring issuers to map applicable state and federal obligations and account for certification and rulemaking uncertainty, businesses should build core controls while keeping launch plans and contracts flexible, says Rob Brighton at Becker.

• 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.

• DOE Energy Efficiency Rollbacks Portend Clashes With States

  

  With the U.S. Department of Energy proposing rollbacks of energy efficiency regulations for numerous appliance types, backstop provisions in many states could come into play to preserve existing standards — but disputes over antibacksliding provisions in federal law and the limits of preemption mean court battles are likely, say attorneys at HWG.

• 6 Ways RE Projects Can Balance Campus, Commercial Needs

  

  Recent mixed-use campus developments show that housing, research, hospitality, retail and recreation can share infrastructure and institutional identity while operating under diverse requirements, as long as the underlying agreement structures are carefully thought out and drafted, says Bob Burton at Winstead.

• 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.

• What Axing ERISA Exhaustion Rule Means For Plan Sponsors

  

  The Eleventh Circuit’s recent reversal of a 40-year precedent requiring plaintiffs to exhaust administrative remedies before filing statutory Employee Retirement Income Security Act claims eliminates a common threshold defense in fiduciary breach suits, making it important for plan sponsors to reassess their internal review and litigation strategies, say attorneys at Nelson Mullins.

• Lessons For Cannabis Dispensaries From Web Tracking Suits

  

  The trajectory of health-tracking litigation in Florida and elsewhere suggests that patient privacy claims will not disappear quickly, so dispensaries should audit their sites, tighten consent and align their disclosures with their actual practices, say attorneys at Buchanan Ingersoll.

• FINRA Disputes Highlight Timeliness In Arbitrator Bias Claims

  

  Recent Financial Industry Regulatory Authority litigation over arbitrator neutrality shows that the strength of challenges depends not only on what counsel discovers, but also on how early it is uncovered and how concretely it can be demonstrated, says Dax White at White Law.

• 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.

• NHTSA Vehicle Recorder Rule Highlights Crash Data Protocols

  

  An amended rule from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will soon require vehicle event data recorders to capture more information about crashes — but to turn that data into evidence, attorneys, claims professionals and fleet managers must properly obtain and preserve it after an incident occurs, says Andrew Haling at Pathway Law.

• How Spirit's 1st Bankruptcy Sowed The Seeds Of Its Collapse

  

  Though Spirit Airlines' first Chapter 11 plan was broadly supported and moved swiftly through confirmation, it avoided using many of the Bankruptcy Code's most powerful operational tools in favor of a "business as usual" approach, which may have led to the airline's second bankruptcy and ultimate wind-down, say attorneys at Cleary.

• 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.