Expert Analysis

• 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.

• How Cos. Should Prepare For Democratic Oversight

  

  Companies should begin preparing now for a new, Democratic-majority Congress — understanding how the oversight landscape has changed in recent years and monitoring leadership elections, new rules and potential select committees, say attorneys at Wiley.

• Opinion

  Justices Must Protect Enforcement In DOL Fine Power Case

  

  In deciding whether the U.S. Department of Labor’s in-house court has the power to decide monetary penalties arising from H-2A violations, the U.S. Supreme Court must preserve a practical route to relief for workers and a constitutional forum for employers to contest liability, say Michelle Dromgold-Sermen, Jessica Vasquez-Luna and Julissa Barrera at George Mason University.

• 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.

• New Asylum Rules Demand A Business Immigration Approach

  

  Asylum counsel may consider adopting approaches used to prepare nonimmigrant visa petitions in light of recently implemented rules and Board of Immigration Appeals decisions eliminating asylum interviews and court hearings as a means of clarifying or supplementing applications, says Victoria Slatton at Slatton & Hass.

• 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.

• How To ID And Respond To 5 Types Of Misleading Witnesses

  

  Witnesses can mislead fact-finders using a variety of tactics — from strategic amnesia to manufactured ignorance — but lawyers can learn how to identify and expose this testimony to come out on top, says Allison Rocker at Baker McKenzie.

• 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.

• DOJ Directive Gives Contractors A Fraud Risk Road Map

  

  For government contractors, the 10 factors described in the U.S. Department of Justice's recent corporate fraud enforcement directive function as a de facto scoring rubric for internal audits that mirrors what prosecutors will prioritize, say attorneys at Spencer Fane.

• 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.

• Digging Into Dems' Letter On Subpoena Secrecy Demands

  

  Lawmakers’ recent letter arguing that federal agencies’ use of boilerplate nondisclosure language in subpoenas pressures recipients into silence may lead to a significant overhaul of the current framework, but in the meantime, companies should review their rights and options, say attorneys at Crowell & Moring.

• 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.

• Where DOJ's Fraud Directive May Actually Affect Enforcement

  

  The U.S. Department of Justice’s recent directive outlining corporate fraud enforcement priorities is mostly a management document instead of a policy, but one part may actually undermine the directive's goals by leading to worse outcomes for organizational defendants and less corporate self-disclosure, says Zachary Warren at Williams & Connolly.