Expert Analysis

• Large Meta Penalties Shouldn't Shape State AG Playbook

  

  Meta Platforms' $17.1 billion settlement in California federal court and two New Mexico verdicts against the company resulting in large penalties are drawing renewed attention to the question of how state attorneys general should calculate civil penalties, but regulators and companies should treat the decisions as outliers, not a template, say attorneys at Troutman.

• 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.

• Character.AI Ch. 11 Tests New Model For Preserving AI Value

  

  Character.AI's bankruptcy is charting a path for preserving value in an artificial intelligence business that depends on retaining unfinished technology and the employees who know how to develop it, while accounting for the firm's failure and its consequences for creditors, says Diane Dick at University of Iowa College of Law.

• Meta, TikTok Cases Show How AGs May Redefine Governance

  The Meta Platforms settlement and TikTok lawsuit addressing social media harms to minors highlight that state attorneys general are not merely extracting payments, but are also using litigation and settlements to impose durable product, institutional and policy change, say attorneys at Snell & Wilmer.

• What FTC Publicis Deal Means For Data Infrastructure M&A

  

  The Federal Trade Commission's recent proposed resolution to its concerns over Publicis' $2.2 billion acquisition of LiveRamp shows how the FTC may treat deals involving important data infrastructure layers, even when the parties operate at different levels of the technology stack, say attorneys at Wilson Sonsini.

• How Cos. Can Reassess Ad Tech After Wash. Pixel Use Ruling

  

  The Washington Supreme Court's decision in Baker v. Seattle Children's Hospital, holding that the hospital website's use of Meta Pixel didn't violate the state’s privacy act, may provide a powerful defense against privacy claims, but shouldn’t be read as a blanket approval of advertising technologies, say attorneys at Duane Morris.

• 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.

• 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.

• How Cos. Using AI Agents Can Avoid Protected Data Incidents

  

  For businesses whose deployed artificial intelligence agents could enter other companies' systems and steal protected data, deployers can take several steps before an incident to test the configured agent, such as limiting it to approved systems and destinations and requiring human escalation when tasks stall, says Steven Carlson at von Briesen & Roper.

• The Patent Circuit: Minding Patents' Family Histories

  

  The Federal Circuit's recent decision in Epic Tech v. Pen-Tech highlights the relevance of patent families in determining whether to maintain an ongoing patent infringement litigation, and the sanctions risk that may stem from failing to account for patent relatives, say attorneys at Knobbe Martens.

• 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.

• Washington Email Law Still Puts Marketers At Litigation Risk

  

  Despite legislative efforts to curtail abusive litigation after the 2025 Brown v. Old Navy decision extending Washington's Commercial Electronic Mail Act to misleading email subject lines, CEMA can still trigger class actions with statutory damages, even for national campaigns run by companies with no physical presence in Washington, say attorneys at Wilson Elser.

• 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.