The California State Bar has opened an investigation into a prominent Los Angeles law firm that represents thousands of sex abuse victims in a record $4 billion settlement, according to court filings made public Wednesday. The investigation into Downtown LA Law Group, which is also the subject of a criminal probe into allegations plaintiffs were paid to sue, was detailed in a Jan. 20 court motion filed by attorneys for L.A. County.
Introduced by California Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Tom Umberg, a Democratic state senator from Santa Ana, California, the new bill codifies many guidelines for the use of AI in the practice of law that were published by the State Bar of California's Standing Committee on Professional Responsibility and Conduct in 2023, according to Law.com. Among its provisions, it requires attorneys to remove confidential personal identifying information from AI systems and to verify the accuracy of AI-produced material.
Labour has criticised Conservative shadow attorney general Lord Wolfson for acting as a lawyer for sanctioned Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. Justice Minister Jack Richards said it was "indefensible" for him to retain his position on the Tory frontbench while also representing Mr Abramovich, arguing it risked a conflict of interest. The Conservatives said the comments were "pure politics" and a "baseless smear", adding that "barristers act for clients, not causes".
Once upon a time, Marc Kasowitz and Eric Herschmann were partners at Kasowitz's eponymous firm. Now Herschmann is suing Kasowitz seeking "millions" in unpaid compensation and alleging a pattern of financial mismanagement. Then Donald Trump decided to enter politics and everything fell apart as these two decided to hitch their wagons to his sundowning star. Back in 2017, Trump sauntered into office convinced that his longtime real estate litigator could serve as his White House consigliere. It did not go well.
Singa Bui's licence to practise law was revoked following a three-hour-long hearing in which the Law Society of Ontario presented more than 2,000 pages of evidence, which she did not contest, that Bui repeatedly dipped into her firm's trust account to steal millions of dollars of client money and even forged bank records in a way that hid the theft.
In 1985, President Ronald Reagan appointed me as a federal judge. I was 38 years old. At the time, I looked forward to serving for the rest of my life. However, I resigned Friday, relinquishing that lifetime appointment and giving up the opportunity for public service that I have loved. My reason is simple: I no longer can bear to be restrained by what judges can say publicly or do outside the courtroom.
Today, I'm talking with Sean Fitzpatrick, the CEO of LexisNexis, one of the most important companies in the entire legal system. For years - including when I was in law school - LexisNexis was basically the library. It's where you went to look up case law, do legal research, and find the laws and precedents you would need to be an effective lawyer for your clients.
* Federal lawyers admit they falsely stated the number of agents sent to Portland - a key claim in the government's claim that protests met the statutory threshold for deploying troops. You see, they told the court that conditions required 115 agents when the most they ever had was 31. Oops! [ Oregon Live] * Anthropic settlement puts four Supreme Court justices in line for checks. [ Bloomberg Law News]
One day in the future, I hope they gather all the lawyers employed by the two Trump administrations and administer that Scientology test where you hold the two metal things while someone sizes you up for a donation. This is because administering a bar exam to the endless parade of fools and dolts marching out of the Department of Justice in order to do battle with the Constitution, the rule of law, English syntax, and common sense would be like teaching opera to a goat.
But state bar officials linked White to 40 counts of misconduct, involving 10 clients, over a six-year period, including acts of moral turpitude (misappropriation and conversion), misrepresentations to clients and the court, unauthorized practice of law, co-mingling client and personal funds, failing to perform diligently, failing to deposit advanced fees into a client trust account, failing to return client files, failing to respond to client inquiries, and failing to provide an accounting to her clients upon reasonable request.
An immigration barrister was found by a judge to be using AI to do his work for a tribunal hearing after citing cases that were entirely fictitious or wholly irrelevant. Chowdhury Rahman was discovered using ChatGPT-like software to prepare his legal research, a tribunal heard. Rahman was found not only to have used AI to prepare his work, but failed thereafter to undertake any proper checks on the accuracy.
It's been a little over six months since Donald Trump fired off a retaliatory executive order threatening to shut down Paul Weiss's ability to do business as a global law firm, which the firm immediately followed with sycophantic groveling. Paul Weiss offered the administration $40 million in free legal services - ostensibly for conservative-friendly charities - but we've since learned that they've taken on a role papering up work for the Commerce Department in a questionably legal arrangement.
The negative review, posted on the Facebook page for Gonzales' law firm, said Gonzales is a "horrible lawyer" who "doesn't do her job and is a nasty rude person." Gonzales replied in the comments section. "Be careful of this woman and her family," Gonzales wrote. "She is a terrible mother. She allows her kids to damage other people's property and then blames everyone else. She does not like hearing the truth about her lack of parenting nor the worthless child she raised.
Cooley Law Has Real Trouble Getting Its Graduates To Pass The Bar Exam: And the ABA has a real issue with that. Everyone Knows Biglaw Associates Work A Lot Of Hours: But where do the work the *most*? Biglaw Firm Files Lawsuit Against A Former Associate: After they say she made false allegations of sexual assault against a partner. Paul Weiss And Kirkland Got Some 'Splainin To Do (Again): Because how they're paying off their pro bono payola sure seems like it violates the law.
* Judge considering sanctioning DOJ lawyers over repeated statements compromising fairness of Mangione trial. [ NY Times] * Roberta Kaplan representing Disney shareholders seeking discovery to determine if Kimmel suspension demonstrates a breach of fiduciary duties. [ Semafor] * Group challenging SEC gag rule, which prevents parties who voluntarily settle enforcement cases from turning around and telling the market they did nothing wrong, seeks en banc review from the Ninth Circuit. But, you know, you don't have to settle. [ Law.com]
If I were a federal prosecutor in Utah bringing murder charges against Tyler Robinson in the killing of Charlie Kirk, this would strike me as more than a little ominous. The future of their case would likely rely in large part on the president and the crew of his big ship of fools. They've already mucked around with the case of Luigi Mangione in New York, who is charged with the murder of healthcare executive Brian Thompson.
He's one of scores of lawyers the Trump administration has named in executive actions, joining a list that includes big law firms and attorneys who worked for people Trump considers his opponents. There's no shortage of reasons why Donald Trump would hate Elias and want to shut him down: Elias has for decades represented high-profile Democrats, including the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, and prominent liberal groups, including the Democratic National Committee.
After announcing the publication of my new article Ethics Accountability: The Next Era for Lawyers and Judges last week I have another to share hot off the press, this one co-authored with Hannah Johnson (Southern Illinois) and published in the U.C. Davis Law Review. You can download Dirty Laundry: A Book Review of Supreme Bias: Gender and Race in U.S. Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings by Christina L. Boyd, Paul M. Collins, Jr., and Lori A. Ringhand (Stanford University Press) for free at this . Here's a teaser.
As we progress through our series on the strategic value of presenting CLEs, we've explored how these presentations can enhance your professional reputation and serve as powerful tools for networking and client development. Now, we turn our attention to another critical advantage: the long-term benefits of using CLEs to stay current in your field and sharing that knowledge with others.
Hello from California! This week I'm in the Bay Area participating in a leadership conference organized by Women Execs on Boards, an off-shoot of Harvard Business School's Women on Boards, after spending the weekend at the Omega Institute in upstate New York. (I'm gathering lots of ideas for the next edition of my book Law, Leadership, and Pipelines to Power, co-authored with Hannah Johnson, the new dean of Southern Illinois University Simmons Law School.)
It should go without saying that when you are looking for an attorney to set up your estate plan, especially if you have children you want to pass along money or possessions to, you need to feel absolutely comfortable that whatever documents are set up are done with your best interest in mind. There is no question that what this original lawyer did to this Redditor is both morally and ethically wrong.
Lawyers often need to represent clients that do not have too many defenses for the crimes charged or the civil wrongs alleged. However, our adversarial system of justice requires that people get solid representation since justice is easier to attain when the best arguments are presented by all sides. As attorneys, it can sometimes be easy to give up and throw in the towel on certain aspects of a representation. However, in most situations, lawyers should not go down without a fight.
Here at Kaleidoscope, the newly minted 8am's inaugural conference, lawyers gathered to hear about the dangers lurking in their pockets. Rather than being happy to see us, the phones they lug around carry a ticking ethical timebomb poised to erupt as their terminally Millennial clients demand to talk about their cases over SMS. It's not an outlier scenario anymore. Mark Palmer, Chief Counsel of the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism, explained that 59 percent of clients want to communicate with their lawyers by text.
