California Pulse

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    Fieldfisher Adds Employment Law To Silicon Valley Office

    Fieldfisher LLP has added employment law services to the offerings of its Silicon Valley office, the firm announced this week.

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    Spellbook CEO Aims For AI To Cut Junior Associate Drudgery

    A legal technology company known for its artificial intelligence contract drafting and review software is releasing a new AI copilot on Thursday to help legal teams become more efficient.

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    Commercial Contracts Cases Spike After COVID-Era Decline

    Commercial contracts litigation increased in 2023 after hitting its lowest point in a decade in 2022 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report out Thursday.

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    Girardi Faked Dementia Symptoms, Neurologist Testifies

    A neurologist with Vanderbilt University testified Wednesday in Tom Girardi's criminal fraud trial in California federal court that the disbarred attorney was likely exaggerating his cognitive problems in late 2020 just as his law firm imploded into bankruptcy and his legal problems mounted because he believed it would be "beneficial."

  • 9th Circ. Lets Atty Fight Against $8M Malicious Prosecution

    A Nevada attorney may take to the federal court to challenge an Arizona state court's civil judgment finding him liable for malicious prosecution, the Ninth Circuit determined Wednesday, finding the federal district court was wrong to toss his claims on the grounds they were barred by jurisdictional precedent established in the Rooker-Feldman doctrine.

  • How AI Could Shake Up Federal Evidence Rules

    Judges, lawyers and academics say it's only a matter of time before the breakneck development of artificial intelligence collides with a cautious, slow-moving judicial system and gives rise to a thorny array of evidentiary issues. They're just not sure what to do about it.

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    Kirkland Corporate Ace Jumps To Benesch In San Francisco

    Benesch Friedlander Coplan & Aronoff LLP has expanded its San Francisco office with a transactional attorney who moved her practice to the firm after more than seven years with Kirkland & Ellis LLP.

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    Procopio Adds Davis Wright Employment Atty in Palo Alto

    Procopio Cory Hargreaves & Savitch LLP is expanding its California team by adding a Davis Wright Tremaine LLP employment litigator as a partner in its Silicon Valley office, the firm said Wednesday.

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    Lathrop GPM, Silicon Valley's Hopkins Carley To Combine

    Lathrop GPM LLP and Silicon Valley firm Hopkins Carley are set to combine this fall, bolstering Lathrop GPM's capabilities in California, the firms announced Wednesday.

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    L&F Brown Launches Practice Dedicated To Legal Tech

    L&F Brown PC announced Wednesday that it is launching what it calls "the first dedicated legal tech practice group at any law firm in the United States," with a California-based team of two firm founders and two new hires, most of whom previously worked in the C-suite of online legal services giant LegalZoom.

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    Dorsey & Whitney Employment Atty Rejoins Jackson Lewis

    Employment firm Jackson Lewis PC is welcoming back a longtime attorney who went to Dorsey & Whitney LLP for a year and is now returning to the firm's Orange County office as a principal.

  • Girardi Jury Hears Of Ex-CFO's Alleged Bahama Hideout Plan

    The former fiancee of ex-Girardi Keese executive Chris Kamon told a California federal jury in Tom Girardi's criminal trial Tuesday about a dramatic call she received from Kamon, during which he told her he was about to be "pinned" for the firm's crimes and wanted her to flee to the Bahamas with him.

  • Trustee Wins TRO Vs. Disbarred Lawyer's Former Partner

    The bankruptcy trustee handling the estate of failed California debt relief law firm Litigation Practice Group has won temporary control over key properties of a businessman formerly involved in the firm, including millions of dollars in bank and brokerage accounts as well as a multimillion-dollar house in Orange County.

  • Ex-SEC Senior Counsel, AUSA Joins Tech Co. As CCO

    A former assistant U.S. attorney with senior counsel experience at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has joined technology company Tools For Humanity, a startup co-founded and chaired by OpenAI head Sam Altman, as deputy general counsel and chief compliance officer.

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    Pierson Ferdinand Furthers Growth With FisherBroyles IP Ace

    The rapidly growing Pierson Ferdinand LLP announced Tuesday that it picked up an intellectual property partner from FisherBroyles LLP with a long resume of trademark law work to serve clients out of Boston, Washington, D.C., and California.

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    Allen Matkins Tax Group Leader Jumps To Covington In LA

    Covington & Burling LLP has added to its Los Angeles office a partner with more than 20 years of experience who most recently led Allen Matkins Leck Gamble Mallory & Natsis LLP's tax group, describing the new hire as "one of the country's leading authorities on partnership tax."

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    Stanford-LA County Court Judicial Access Project Gets Grant

    Stanford Law School announced it has received a grant to bolster an ongoing partnership with the Superior Court of Los Angeles County that aims to implement new approaches to lower the barrier to participate in the judicial process across the county.

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    Ex-Kirkland PE Partner Joins Freshfields In Silicon Valley

    Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP announced Tuesday that a longtime Kirkland & Ellis LLP private equity attorney has joined the firm's Silicon Valley office as a partner in what's been one of its fastest growing practice groups over the last few years.

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    A Deep Dive Into Law360 Pulse's 2024 Women In Law Report

    The legal industry continues to see incremental gains for female lawyers in private practice in the U.S., according to a Law360 Pulse analysis, with women now representing 40.6% of all attorneys and 51% of all associates.

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    Representation In The Ranks: How Firms Are Faring

    The Law360 Pulse Women in Law Report provides a data-driven view of U.S. law firms at the end of 2023. Here, we look at the representation of women at all levels of a typical law firm, from associates to equity partners.

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    These Firms Have The Most Women In Equity Partnerships

    The legal industry still has a long way to go before it can achieve gender parity at its upper levels. But these law firms are performing better than others in breaking the proverbial glass ceiling that prevents women from attaining leadership roles.

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    The 2024 Women in Law Report: How Firms Stack Up

    Female attorneys have reached a new high in their share of law firm equity partnerships, but firms' progress simply hasn't been significant enough to shatter the longstanding glass ceiling in the industry.

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    Clyde & Co. COO Takes Same Role At Frost Brown

    Frost Brown Todd LLP has brought on a new chief operating officer who previously served in the same position at Clyde & Co. LLP.

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    All Signs Point Up For Law Firm Financials In First Half

    After a couple of years of sluggish growth in work flowing into law firms, U.S. firms saw meaningful increases in demand, revenue and lawyer productivity during the first six months of 2024, according to the results of a midyear survey by Citi Global Wealth at Work.

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    4 Ex-Girardi Keese Attys Are Federal Targets, Agent Testifies

    At least four former attorneys with the defunct Girardi Keese law firm are under active investigation related to the federal government's California wire fraud case and have received letters informing them they are targets, an IRS criminal investigator disclosed Monday under cross-examination by Tom Girardi's attorney at his criminal trial.

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Expert Analysis

  • Ask A Mentor: How Do I Juggle Billables And Other Activities? Author Photo

    While involvement in internal firm initiatives can be rewarding both personally and professionally, associates' billable time requirements don’t leave much room for other work, meaning they must develop strategies to ensure they’re meeting all of their commitments while remaining balanced, says Melanie Webber at Fisher Phillips.

  • Making Legal Cents: How To Adapt As Clients Tighten Budgets Author Photo

    Amid a dip in corporate legal spending and client pushback on bills, Shireen Hilal at Maior Consultants highlights specific in-house counsel frustrations and explains how firms can provide customized legal advice with costs that are supported by undeniable value.

  • Spartan Arbitration Tactics Against Well-Funded Opponents Author Photo

    Like the ancient Spartans who held off a numerically superior Persian army at the Battle of Thermopylae, trial attorneys and clients faced with arbitration against an opponent with a bigger war chest can take a strategic approach to create a pass to victory, say Kostas Katsiris and Benjamin Argyle at Venable.

  • General Counsel And Legal Ops Must Work Together Author Photo

    It is critical for general counsel to ensure that a legal operations leader is viewed not only as a peer, but as a strategic leader for the organization, and there are several actionable ways general counsel can not only become more involved, but help champion legal operations teams and set them up for success, says Mary O'Carroll at Ironclad.

  • How Generative AI's Growing Memory Affects Lawyers Author Photo

    A new ChatGPT feature that can remember user information across different conversations has broad implications for attorneys, whose most pressing questions for the AI tool are usually based on specific, and large, datasets, says legal tech adviser Eric Wall.

  • A Model For Optimal Legal Tech Investment Strategy Author Photo

    Legal organizations struggling to work out the right technology investment strategy may benefit from using a matrix for legal department efficiency that is based on an understanding of where workloads belong, according to the basic functions and priorities of a corporate legal team, says Sylvain Magdinier at Integreon.

  • Series

    My Nonpracticing Law Job: Recruiter Author Photo

    Self-proclaimed "Lawyer Doula" Danielle Thompson at Major Lindsey shares how she went from Columbia Law School graduate and BigLaw employment associate to a career in legal recruiting — and discovered a passion for advocacy along the way.

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    Ask A Mentor: How Do I Balance Social Activism With My Job? Author Photo

    Corporate attorneys pursuing social justice causes outside of work should consider eight guidelines for finding equilibrium between their beliefs and their professional duties and reputation, say Diedrick Graham, Debra Friedman and Simeon Brier at Cozen O'Connor.

  • Personality Tests And Machine Learning Applications In Law Author Photo

    Mateusz Kulesza at McDonnell Boehnen looks at potential applications of personality testing based on machine learning techniques for law firms, and the implications this shift could have for lawyers, firms and judges, including how it could make the work of judges and other legal decision-makers much more difficult.

  • AI Is Reshaping Lawyering: What To Expect In 2024 Author Photo

    The future of lawyering is not about the wholesale replacement of attorneys by artificial intelligence, but as AI handles more of the routine legal work, the role of lawyers will evolve to be more strategic, requiring the development of competencies beyond traditional legal skills, says Colin Levy at Malbek.

  • Embrace Active Voice In Legal Writing — In Most Cases Author Photo

    Legal writers should strive to craft sentences in the active voice to promote brevity and avoid ambiguities that can spark litigation, but writing in the passive voice is sometimes appropriate — when it's a moral choice and not a grammatical failure, says Diana Simon at the University of Arizona's James E. Rogers College of Law.

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    Ask A Mentor: How Can I Help Associates Turn Down Work? Author Photo

    Marina Portnova at Lowenstein Sandler discusses what partners can do to aid their associates in setting work-life boundaries, especially around after-hours assignment availability.

  • How AI Legal Research Tools Are Shifting Law Firm Processes Author Photo

    Although artificial intelligence-powered legal research is ushering in a new era of legal practice that augments human expertise with data-driven insights, it is not without challenges involving privacy, ethics and more, so legal professionals should take steps to ensure AI becomes a reliable partner rather than a source of disruption, says Marly Broudie at SocialEyes Communications.

  • Data Source Proliferation Is A Growing E-Discovery Challenge Author Photo

    With the increased usage of collaboration apps and generative artificial intelligence solutions, it's not only important for e-discovery teams to be able to account for hundreds of existing data types today, but they should also be able to add support for new data types quickly — even on the fly if needed, says Oliver Silva at Casepoint.

  • Bracing For A Generative AI Revolution In Law Author Photo

    With many legal professionals starting to explore practical uses of generative artificial intelligence in areas such as research, discovery and legal document development, the fundamental principle of human oversight cannot be underscored enough for it to be successful, say Ty Dedmon at Bradley Arant and Paige Hunt at Lighthouse.

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