Expert Analysis

• 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.

• How Power Grid Delays Are Reshaping Data Center Deals

  

  Texas' pause on permits while it studies data centers' effect on its electrical grid highlights the nationwide problem of yearslong interconnection delays, where the ways developers, investors and customers bridge that gap — and decide who bears the risk when it widens — increasingly determine whether a deal works, say attorneys at King & Spalding.

• Calif. Sex Harassment Cases Clarify Limits On EFAA Waivers

  

  Two recent rulings in California confirm that the plaintiff's knowledge drives waiver analysis under the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act, underscoring that employers should build a strong evidentiary record and pick their battles, says Ellen Connelly Cohen at Call & Jensen.

• 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.

• Justices' Intel Ruling Could Aid 401(k) Alternative Asset Push

  

  Following the U.S. Supreme Court's recent oral arguments in Anderson v. Intel, a decision favoring Intel over a prudence claim against fiduciaries based on underperformance by comparing two funds that aren't meaningfully similar would undercut the most common litigation theory against including alternative investments in 401(k) plans, say attorneys at Simpson Thacher.

• 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.

• 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.

• Full Policy Payment May Not Bar Insurer Bad Faith In 9th Circ.

  

  Establishing that an insurer acted within its contractual rights likely disposes of a breach-of-contract claim, however, following the Ninth Circuit's recent ruling in Quilbillies v. First American Title Insurance, the same showing may not dispose of bad faith, says Tracy Garcia at Cozen O'Connor.

• Courts Signal Higher FCRA Bar For Identity Theft Claims

  

  Recent rulings adopting a heightened, "objectively and readily verifiable" inaccuracy standard may give credit furnishers stronger defenses to identity theft-related Fair Credit Reporting Act claims in the Ninth Circuit, while requiring them to continue documenting thorough dispute investigations, says Brian Kiolbasa at Ballard Spahr.

• 9th Circ. Waters Ruling Shows Sackett's Ripple Effects

  

  The Ninth Circuit's recent decision in Inland Empire Waterkeeper v. Corona Clay demonstrates that the U.S. Supreme Court's "waters of the U.S." ruling in Sackett v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency can reopen cases already tried to verdict, thus changing expectations around citizen suits and stormwater enforcement in California, says Jacob Lubarsky at Rogers Joseph.

• 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.