To help trial attorneys, I am always looking for new legal trends, war stories, tips, and trap doors to share with you, my colleagues. If you have reactions to these tips, or tips of your own, drop me a line at [email protected].
And I am always happy to talk about these kinds of issues in your cases.
–Tim
As an attorney, you might not be surprised to learn that—if you file serial meritless lawsuits in pro per—you, too, may be deemed a vexatious litigant. File five unsuccessful lawsuits within seven years, and that's what happens. But you might not realize that appeals count toward your five-lawsuit limit.
The vexatious litigant here graduated from U.C. Berkeley Law School, previously worked in Big Law at Wilson Sonsini, and is a current staff attorney at none other than the Commission on Judicial Performance. So the vexatious-litigant statute is definitely not a respecter of persons.
Of course, this only applies if you are in pro per. But even appellate challenges that have merit are often denied—and five of those and you're a vexatious litigant. So you should always consider hiring an appellate attorney.
This is a summary. Read the full article here.
Few lawyers and LRW instructors write and think more about AI than Professor Jane Woods of Mizzou Law, who offers this most important AI advice: If you haven't read the case, don't cite the case.
That would have saved Boies Schiller's bacon. We discuss the high-profile Scientology/Masterson appeal, and whether the Court of Appeal is going to strike plaintiff's respondent's brief because of the Boies Schiller attorneys hallucinated cases and otherwise wrong legal citations.
Some firms have reportedly banned em dashes in legal writing because they're seen as indicators of AI-generated text, highlighting how AI's stylistic preferences may be reshaping legal writing conventions.
This is a summary. Read the full article here.