+ Will it upend legal practice?

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The Daily Docket

The Daily Docket

A newsletter by Reuters and Westlaw

By Caitlin Tremblay

Good morning. Are lawyer AI “twins” set to upend legal practice? Plus, the 2nd Circuit will hear arguments over terminated humanities grants; Twenty states will challenge President Trump's $100,000 H-1B visa fee; and the fallout is growing for a former law partner sanctioned over an AI “hallucination.” We made it to Friday. Here’s a look at the “T.rex of the sea” to inspire you to power through to EOD. Have a great weekend!

Law firm partners: meet your AI "twin"

 

REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

What if you could get feedback from your firm's best litigator at 2 a.m., without waking them up? Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease is trying to do just that. The 375-attorney Ohio firm has partnered with a Stanford Law School research lab to build "AI personas" of 19 of its partners, tools that can pressure-test legal arguments and redline documents in the style of a specific attorney. In Power of Attorney, columnist Sara Randazzo sees the AI personas in action and explains how the Stanford lab is working to upend legal practice.

 

Coming up today

  • Government: The 2nd Circuit will hear arguments in a lawsuit seeking to block the National Endowment for the Humanities and federal officials from terminating awarded humanities grants and the dismantling of the agency.
  • Immigration: U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston will hear arguments in a lawsuit by 20 Democratic-led states challenging President Trump's $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers.

Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.

 

More top news

  • U.S. judge tosses Trump administration's challenge to Boston's 'sanctuary' immigration law
  • U.S. probes Reid Hoffman group over funding lawsuits against Trump, source says
  • District court denies California parks department bid to stop Sable Offshore pipeline
  • California sues 23andMe over 2023 data breach
  • U.S. HHS finalizes rule to streamline dispute resolution under No Surprises Act
  • Austrian who planned attack on Taylor Swift concert gets 15-year sentence
 
 

Industry insight

  • A former law firm partner who was sanctioned by an Alabama federal judge last year over AI-generated errors in court filings has been reprimanded again by the Oklahoma Supreme Court, marking the fourth time he has faced formal consequences over the same incident.
  • U.S. District Judge Stephen Bough in Kansas City is questioning the bills charged by settlement administrator JND Legal in a high-profile nationwide real estate class action that has garnered the company more than $36 million for its services. Read more in this week’s Billable Hours.
  • Kirkland & Ellis said it is devoting $500 million of its revenue to developing a custom AI platform, accelerating a spending race on the technology in the legal industry.
 

72%

That’s the percentage of U.S. law students that say AI literacy is an essential skill set. Yet 32% report that their schools aren’t giving them the AI skills they need for their careers. Read more here.

 

"In this case, whether due to confusion, oversight, an overly hurried jury selection process or some other cause, things broke down."

—U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the court in an opinion siding with a death row inmate who claimed racial bias during jury selection. Read the opinion here.