Search results for: Trials

It’s well known that there are fewer and fewer civil jury trials. Which means less opportunity for younger lawyers to gain trial experience. Given the importance of jury trials to our system, Pennsylvania has decided to do something about it.

I recently listened to a Legal Speak Podcast in which Aleeza Furman interviewed Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Christine Donohue. Justice Donohue talked about a new program she recently helped institute called Project Litigate. The program will create more opportunities for junior lawyers to get trial and courtroom experience and hone their skills. It stems from the sad fact that there are fewer and fewer trials.

I have written before about the dangers of the reduced number of trials. Justice Donohue cited some alarming statistics in Pennsylvania. In 1997 in Pennsylvania some 2116 civil cases were tried to a jury verdict. In 2019, the last year before the pandemic, only 706 cases were tried by juries. I suspect that post-pandemic, there will be even less. Pennsylvania is not unique in this regard. Says Donohue, “Younger attorneys need the opportunity to stand up on their feet and present their cause to the judge and jury.”

Continue Reading Pennsylvania Tackles The Dearth of Jury Trials

I recently attended LexSummit2024, the Filevine user conference. Filevine is a case management software provider. I also got a demo of vLex’s enhancement of its AI tool, Vincent from its Chief Strategy Officer, Ed Walters. VLex has historically been thought of as a legal research provider although now we its expansion, Walters describes vLex as a “legal intelligence company.” Lots of cool stuff, most of which is already out there in the marketplace. What struck me the most about these and other tools? Litigation is about to be completely disrupted across the board.

Continue Reading A New Day For Litigation: AI Tools Are Redefining the Future

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange

David Bowie

I recently read Jordan Furlong’s excellent piece entitled Forget Everything You Think You Know About Law Firms. Jordan, one of the most insightful thinkers in the legal space, believes that law firm leaders need to better understand and react to changes, changes that are already altering the legal landscape. The challenge leaders face, says Furlong, is recognizing and accepting these changes. Says Furlong, “The future has arrived without you noticing.”

Continue Reading What If? Forget Everything You Think You Know About Litigation

It goes without saying that one of the most critical functions of a law firm is to train its associates adequately. But time constraints and a lack of consistency, as I have previously discussed, make good, sound training of associates problematic in many firms. However, large language models and GenAI, even open models, may offer potential solutions. Provided, of course, that the firm and its partners understand the risks and benefits of these models and how to use them.

Continue Reading Revolutionizing Law Firm Training with AI: The Power of Large Language Models

A recent Bloomberg Law story by Jacqueline Thomson reminded me of the question posed by Richard Susskind a few years ago: Is a court a service or a place?” The pandemic and other factors suggest the answer is that fundamental fairness demands our courts be less of a place and more of a service.

The Bloomberg Law article highlights a unique case in which a senior federal district court judge sitting in a Boston courtroom was conducting a bench trial occurring in an Asheville, North Carolina, courtroom. The plaintiff, a former assistant federal public defender, sued the entire U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. This resulted in all the judges in the Circuit recusing themselves. Senior Judge William Young, who is among a group of federal judges who volunteer to preside over cases remotely, was assigned the case.

Continue Reading Courts as a Service: The Rise of Remote Judges

I have been amazed at the knee-jerk and head in the sand reaction of many courts to the use of Gen AI by lawyers appearing before them and the use by judges. Several judges have demanded that lawyers disclose the use of Gen AI and, if so, verify the accuracy of the citations that have been used. One judge even went so far as to demand disclosure of any AI tool, generative or not. And the 5th Circuit is considering not only requiring lawyers to disclose and verify but also requiring non-represented parties to do the same. (Like how are they going to do that?)

Of late, though, there have been more studied reactions to Gen AI in law. There is a welcome recognition of its potential benefit in judicial proceedings by both lawyers and judges.

Continue Reading Navigating the New Legal Landscape: Courts, Lawyers, and the Rising Influence of Generative AI in Judicial Proceedings

It was a cold, dark 2nd of January. Back to school day for my kids, back to work for me, all after a wonderful holiday season. Of course, the kids were out of their routine and not anxious to return. Which meant they were late. Which meant I would be late getting to the office and the mountains of work piled up over the holidays. I had to hurry home after dropping them off to get ready. As I headed down the hill for home, I saw him too late. A cop. Happy New Year, blessed by a speeding ticket. 

For most of us, January is just that way. We know it’s coming, but we can’t stop it. It’s a cold, hard slap of reality. It’s the first day back in the office for many partners and associates. It was a day I dreaded and feared. Dreaded because it meant Christmas was truly over. Feared because who knew what awaited me for the coming year. And it always seemed that I had a trial set in early January for which work was not done as well as it could have been over the holidays.

Continue Reading January Blues: Post-Holiday Reality for Lawyers and Litigators

Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash

With all the hype over GenAI, the metaverse, the digital world where people/avatars can mingle, has been largely forgotten. After all, the notion of working in teams of cartoonish avatars seemed unlikely at best. And silly at worst, particularly for any business purposes. No one seemed interested in dealing face to face with an avatar that looked like, say, Donald Duck. So, most of us dismissed the metaverse, putting it in the same class as blockchain. Much ado about nothing. Solutions in search of problems.

But then I happened to come across some groundbreaking work that Meta (formerly known as Facebook) is doing. The program is called Codec Avatars. It focuses on making the avatars closely resemble what we really look like and less abstract. They call these things Codec avatars. The goal is to make the avatars what they call “photo realistic” as opposed to expressive. Ok, you say, big deal, they are still unrealistic avatars with no arms and legs, etc. Why not just keep using Zoom?

Continue Reading The Metaverse and Blockchain for Legal: We’re Back

Earlier this month, I wrote about an innovative program in Pennsylvania. The program is designed to get younger lawyers more trial and courtroom experience. As part of that program, called Project Litigate, a related Judicial Task Force also is looking at ways to do the same thing. These recommendations include such things as making room for younger lawyers to argue motions in court. Pennsylvania judges have committed to have oral hearings on motions that might otherwise be decided on briefs–if a younger lawyer is involved is one way to do this.

Continue Reading More Judges Recognize the Need for Younger Lawyers to Get Courtroom Experience

NOTE: Last week, I posted on the culture at Casepoint and about its legal hold product. After posting that article, I discovered there were a couple of inaccuracies that needed correcting. The inaccuracies didn’t change my fundamental conclusions about the culture at Casepoint—it’s still alive and well, just like always. I have corrected the inaccuracies in the post below.

Casepoint today announced yet another new product called ChatViewer which I think further reinforces my conclusions. According to Casepoint, ChatViewer, is product upgrade that significantly eases the review process for chat messages, including those from cell phone conversation apps and enterprise collection tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams. Using ChatViewer, legal professionals can view, search, sort, and manage chat data more easily than ever — allowing them to reduce review time and discovery-related costs.

Mobile data poses lots of headaches and challenges for eDiscovery and legal professionals and is exploding in volume and complexity. Once again, Casepoint saw a pain point of its clients and came up with a tool to make their work better. I will offer more info on ChatViewer in the near future. But for now Kudos once again to Casepoint.

I recently had a chance to catch up with Matt Hamilton, Senior Director of Sales Engineering, and Amit Dungarani, VP Partnerships & Strategic Initiatives at Casepoint. Casepoint is an e-discovery cloud based provider that claims to offer data-based intelligence and full-spectrum eDiscovery. It includes cloud collection, data processing, advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence tools. The platform enables review and customizable productions.

Continue Reading Casepoint Culture Seems Alive and Well