Drive Better Outcomes

At first glance, the number of ways that a litigator might be subjected to sanctions for misbehavior during a pretrial deposition seems limitless. And that may be true. Human beings are good at finding new ways to commit errors. However, broadly speaking, the reasons why deposition conduct is sanctionable are actually few in number. In…

Federal criminal rules experts may soon begin studying something the federal criminal system has resisted for more than 80 years: allow parties to take pretrial depositions in criminal cases. A proposal to do just that landed in front of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts’s criminal rules advisory committee last year, and now there…

What part of litigation matches the creativity of soccer legend Pelé with a soccer ball? Is it as reliable as Brazil in World Cup competition? Or as outcome-determinative as Lionel Messi’s left foot? Give up? Pretrial discovery, of course! So, it’s for good reason that federal courts rarely decide courtroom contests without giving both teams…

Effective June 1, New York lawyers will be required to navigate a new rule governing the use of artificial intelligence technology by attorneys and parties who submit papers to New York state courts. In local jurisdictions that adopt the rule, all litigators who rely – or plan to rely – on generative AI tools to…

Federal criminal rules experts may soon begin studying something the federal criminal system has resisted for more than 80 years: allow parties to take pretrial depositions in criminal cases. A proposal to do just that landed in front of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts’s criminal rules advisory committee last year, and now there…

Several weeks ago, this blog reported on Judge Jed Rakoff’s widely discussed “AI is not your lawyer” pronouncement in United States v. Heppner. The court’s conclusion that attorney-client privilege was waived with respect to information that a client divulged to a consumer-grade generative artificial intelligence tool – when coupled with other recent court rulings explaining…