California Pulse


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    BakerHostetler Adds Davis Wright Privacy Pro In LA

    BakerHostetler announced Tuesday it has welcomed data privacy litigator Spencer Persson from Davis Wright Tremaine to its digital assets and data management practice group as partner, bringing in years of experience handling high-stakes privacy matters that will beef up the firm's privacy and digital risk class action and litigation team. 

  • Calif. Atty Apologizes, Blames OpenCase For False Citations

    A California attorney has filed a response to an order for potential sanctions over his alleged use of artificial intelligence, which resulted in false citations, saying the hallucinations appeared in a later draft after using OpenCase to perform a cite check.

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    Calif. Lawmakers Advance Bill To Curtail PE Role In Litigation

    A California bill to ban corporate investors from influencing litigation strategy is heading to the state Senate, backed by bipartisan support from the Assembly.

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    Latham Adds DLA Piper Real Estate, Data Center Pro In LA

    Latham & Watkins LLP is adding to its West Coast team, bringing in a DLA Piper real estate pro with experience in data center transactions as a partner in its Los Angeles office.

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    Clyde & Co. Adds Kennedys Insurance Expert To LA Office

    Clyde & Co. LLP has announced the continued upscaling of its U.S. operations with the addition of insurance litigation expert Shain Wasser from Kennedys as partner in its Los Angeles office, helping the firm strengthen its North American insurance and complex litigation capabilities. 

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    McGuireWoods Adds Seyfarth Shaw Labor Litigator In LA

    McGuireWoods LLP continues its West Coast expansion, announcing Monday it is bringing in a Seyfarth Shaw LLP labor and employment litigator as a partner in its Los Angeles office.

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    Lowenstein Sandler Hires CFO Formerly With Paul Weiss

    Lowenstein Sandler LLP announced Monday that it has hired a new chief financial officer with over 20 years of experience in the field from Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison LLP.

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    Mid-Law Led The Way On 1st Quarter Law Firm Mergers

    U.S. law firms announced 25 combinations during the first quarter of 2026, according to the Law360 Pulse Merger Tracker. Of those, the vast majority involved a midsize law firm acquiring a smaller firm.

  • Can State Courts Tame The 'Wild West' Of Judicial Security?

    As threats against local judges continue to ramp up, protection and incident tracking varies not only from state to state but county to county, making it difficult to draw the national judicial security landscape. Now, lawmakers are looking to use federal resources to even out disparities.

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    Law Firms Weigh ChatGPT As New Advertising Platform

    New advertising options on the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT have piqued the interest of some law firms, but most are still in a wait-and-see mode as a pilot ad program remains in testing.

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    Barnes & Thornburg Snags PFAS Expert From Venable

    Barnes & Thornburg LLP is beefing up its product liability and mass torts practice with the addition of a Venable LLP partner known for representing and counseling companies in environmental and toxic tort-related matters, including issues involving so-called forever chemicals, the firm announced Thursday.

  • Schneider Wallace Loses Bid For Bigger Piece Of $75M Fee

    A California federal magistrate judge on Friday rejected Schneider Wallace Cottrell Kim LLP's bid to increase its cut of a $75.4 million fee award for representing plaintiffs in a $228.5 million Sutter Health antitrust deal, saying lead counsel Constantine Cannon LLP's allocation of $1.4 million to Schneider Wallace was fair.

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    From IP To IMDB: This Atty Plays A Lawyer On TV Too

    While Tremayne Norris was in Hollywood with a recurring role playing a lawyer on Netflix’s "The Lincoln Lawyer," he was also making partner at a real litigation boutique in New York City.

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    Carlton Fields' CEO On How Firm Has Lasted 125 Years

    Earlier this year, Florida-based Carlton Fields LLP announced that the firm is celebrating its 125th anniversary, an occasion Gary Sasso, longtime president and chief executive officer, said is especially notable considering all the different historical and industry challenges that have presented themselves during that time.

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    Manning Kass Names Orange County Co-Managing Partners

    National litigation firm Manning & Kass Ellrod Ramirez Trester LLP has announced new leadership in its Orange County, California, office with a trial attorney with more than a decade at the firm and the office's founder teaming up to serve as co-managing partners.

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    Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

    Alliance Defending Freedom, Pearman Law Firm PC and attorney Barry Arrington lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Colorado ban on therapy intended to change a minor's sexual orientation or gender identity amounts to viewpoint discrimination against a Christian therapist.

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    Legal Sector Lost 700 Jobs In March, Ending Hiring Streak

    The legal sector began to slow down in March after a year and a half straight of gains, with 700 fewer people employed in lawyer, paralegal and other law-related professional roles last month than in February, according to seasonally adjusted data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

  • Law360 Announces The Members Of Its 2026 Editorial Boards

    Law360 is pleased to announce the formation of its 2026 Editorial Advisory Boards.

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    Senior Lawyers Survey: Tell Us About Your Career

    How are senior lawyers adapting to evolving career paths and emerging technologies? Share your perspective in this five-minute survey.

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    Why These Senior Attorneys Can't Quit Being Lawyers

    Slightly more than 1 out of 8 lawyers in the United States were age 65 or older in 2025. Law360 Pulse spoke with several senior attorneys who said they plan to continue working full time, finding the job to still be professionally and personally rewarding.

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    The Gray Exit: Senior Attorneys Confront A New Legal Reality

    BigLaw's upper ranks were long anchored by partners who extended their careers deep into older age. But in a post-pandemic market shaped by tighter economics and stricter succession planning, federal labor data suggest that late-career longevity has stalled.

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    Which GCs Sold Stock In March? Venture Global, Alphabet

    Several general counsel welcomed spring by harvesting some fresh stock sales in March. Keith Larson of Venture Global led the way with sales valued at $76.8 million. United Therapeutics' Paul Mahon sold $8.4 million in stocks, while Alphabet's Kent Walker unloaded $2.5 million worth.

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    Intel Lands Zoom's COO As Its New Legal Chief

    Intel Corp. has hired Zoom Communications Inc.'s chief operating officer to serve as its new top attorney, replacing the technology company's outgoing legal chief following a four-year stint in the role.

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    AI Demand Pro Hires Ex-Oculus Publishing Director As CEO

    AI Demand Pro, which develops an artificial intelligence platform for personal injury law firms, announced the appointment of Aaron Davies, who was a lead at Meta's virtual reality subsidiary Oculus, as its chief executive officer.

  • Voir Dire: Law360 Pulse's Weekly Quiz

    The legal industry kicked off April with another busy week of BigLaw hires and insights about how attorneys use artificial intelligence. Test your legal news savvy here with Law360 Pulse's weekly quiz.

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Expert Analysis

  • Embrace Active Voice In Legal Writing — In Most Cases Author Photo

    Legal writers should strive to craft sentences in the active voice to promote brevity and avoid ambiguities that can spark litigation, but writing in the passive voice is sometimes appropriate — when it's a moral choice and not a grammatical failure, says Diana Simon at the University of Arizona's James E. Rogers College of Law.

  • Series

    Ask A Mentor: How Can I Help Associates Turn Down Work? Author Photo

    Marina Portnova at Lowenstein Sandler discusses what partners can do to aid their associates in setting work-life boundaries, especially around after-hours assignment availability.

  • How AI Legal Research Tools Are Shifting Law Firm Processes Author Photo

    Although artificial intelligence-powered legal research is ushering in a new era of legal practice that augments human expertise with data-driven insights, it is not without challenges involving privacy, ethics and more, so legal professionals should take steps to ensure AI becomes a reliable partner rather than a source of disruption, says Marly Broudie at SocialEyes Communications.

  • Data Source Proliferation Is A Growing E-Discovery Challenge Author Photo

    With the increased usage of collaboration apps and generative artificial intelligence solutions, it's not only important for e-discovery teams to be able to account for hundreds of existing data types today, but they should also be able to add support for new data types quickly — even on the fly if needed, says Oliver Silva at Casepoint.

  • Bracing For A Generative AI Revolution In Law Author Photo

    With many legal professionals starting to explore practical uses of generative artificial intelligence in areas such as research, discovery and legal document development, the fundamental principle of human oversight cannot be underscored enough for it to be successful, say Ty Dedmon at Bradley Arant and Paige Hunt at Lighthouse.

  • Why I Use ChatGPT To Tell Me Things I Already Know Author Photo

    The legal profession is among the most hesitant to adopt ChatGPT because of its proclivity to provide false information as if it were true, but in a wide variety of situations, lawyers can still be aided by information that is only in the right ballpark, says Robert Plotkin at Blueshift IP.

  • Series

    Ask A Mentor: How Can I Use Social Media Responsibly? Author Photo

    Leah Kelman at Herrick Feinstein discusses the importance of reasoned judgment and thoughtful process when it comes to newly admitted attorneys' social media use.

  • Yada, Yada, Yada: The Magic Of 3 In Legal Writing Author Photo

    Attorneys should take a cue from U.S. Supreme Court justices and boil their arguments down to three points in their legal briefs and oral advocacy, as the number three is significant in the way we process information, says Diana Simon at University of Arizona.

  • How Firms Can Stop Playing Whack-A-Mole With Data Security Author Photo

    In order to achieve a robust client data protection posture, law firms should focus on adopting a risk-based approach to security, which can be done by assessing gaps, using that data to gain leadership buy-in for the needed changes, and adopting a dynamic and layered approach, says John Smith at Conversant Group.

  • 5 Life Lessons From Making Partner As A Solo Parent Author Photo

    Laranda Walker at Susman Godfrey, who was raising two small children and working her way to partner when she suddenly lost her husband, shares what fighting to keep her career on track taught her about accepting help, balancing work and family, and discovering new reserves of inner strength.

  • Series

    Ask A Mentor: How Can I Turn Deferral To My Advantage? Author Photo

    Diana Leiden at Winston & Strawn discusses how first-year associates whose law firm start dates have been deferred can use the downtime to hone their skills, help their communities, and focus on returning to BigLaw with valuable contacts and out-of-the-box insights.

  • Resume Gaps Are No Longer Kryptonite To Your Legal Career Author Photo

    Female attorneys and others who pause their careers for a few years will find that gaps in work history are increasingly acceptable among legal employers, meaning with some networking, retraining and a few other strategies, lawyers can successfully reenter the workforce, says Jill Backer at Ave Maria School of Law.

  • Law Firm Guardrails For Responsible Generative AI Use Author Photo

    ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence tools pose significant risks to the integrity of legal work, but the key for law firms is not to ban these tools, but to implement them responsibly and with appropriate safeguards, say Natalie Pierce and Stephanie Goutos at Gunderson Dettmer.

  • Opinion

    We Must Continue DEI Efforts Despite High Court Headwinds Author Photo

    Though the U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down affirmative action in higher education, law firms and their clients must keep up the legal industry’s recent momentum advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the profession in order to help achieve a just and prosperous society for all, says Angela Winfield at the Law School Admission Council.

  • Law Firms Cannot Ignore Attorneys' Personal Cybersecurity Author Photo

    Law firms that fail to consider their attorneys' online habits away from work are not using their best efforts to protect client information and are simplifying the job of plaintiffs attorneys in the case of a breach, say Mark Hurley and Carmine Cicalese at Digital Privacy and Protection.

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