For years, decades really, I’ve explained and argued why most “new big things” in legal tech are either not going to work or fill a need that doesn’t exist. Legal tech guys really hated me for calling bullshit on their baby. Some who paid me to “consult” thought their money would buy my endorsement of their mutt. They learned. I was regularly accused of being a tech hater, but as Keith Lee succinctly explained, “It’s not that lawyers are anti-technology, it’s that they are anti-bullshit.

AI is all the rage at the moment. Remember blockchain? Remember NFTs? Remember self-driving cars? Remember Google Glasses? The newest billion dollar baby is ChatGPT. How’s that working out for lawyers? Continue reading →

Taylor Jefferson, a second grade teacher at Bear Bryant Elementary, sat at his desk grading end-of-year papers for his students’ final report cards of the term. As he finished the stack, his desk phone’s intercom crackled.

“Jefferson to the principal’s office. Mr. Jefferson, please come to the principal’s office.”

As Taylor made his way to the front of the school he tried to suss out what this could be. It was three days until school broke for the summer, so there was no way it could be something concerning an issue with a student. Most of the kids running around the school were focused on their impending vacation time so they were pretty well behaved. Continue reading →

Some issues just seem so obvious as to defy imagination that it would even be in issue, requiring any court, no less the Supreme Court, to rule. Yet it did in Tyler v. Hennepin County.

Geraldine Tyler owned a condominium in Hennepin County, Minnesota, that accumulated about $15,000 in unpaid real estate taxes along with interest and penalties. The County seized the condo and sold it for $40,000, keeping the $25,000 excess over Tyler’s tax debt for itself. Minn. Stat. §§281.18, 282.07, 282.08. Tyler filed suit, alleging that the County had unconstitutionally retained the excess value of her home above her tax debt in violation of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment and the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment. The District Court dismissed the suit for failure to state a claim, and the Eighth Circuit affirmed.

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It’s one thing to argue against the compelled speech of being forced to put your pronouns on display. But it’s another to fire employees who choose to do so. While Houghton University may have the legal authority to do so, it was the wrong thing to do.

When Raegan Zelaya and Shua Wilmot decided to include their pronouns at the end of their work emails, they thought they were doing a good thing: following what they viewed as an emerging professional standard, and also sending a message of inclusivity at the Christian university where they worked.

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One of the most damning arguments against school districts removing books from their libraries is that they include classic books by brilliant authors to which no rational person could object or find any “explanation” other than racial or sexual discrimination. But what if the book in question was removed from a school library because it had legitimate questionable sexual content?

Sure, some, like the publisher of Teen Vogue, would argue that no such thing exists, but some parents, teachers and school board members might have a legitimate basis to argue that such content was not appropriate or a school library. That was the scenario in Forsyth County, Georgia, where eight books were taken off the shelves. Continue reading →

Scott Shapiro teaches at Yale Law School, which is bad enough, but what he teaches is even more concerning.

For the past four years, I have taught a cybersecurity class at Yale Law School in which I show my students how to break into computers. Having grown up with a user-friendly web, my students generally have no real idea how the internet or computers work. They are surprised to find how easily they learn to hack and how much they enjoy it. (I do, too, and I didn’t hack a computer until I was 52.) By the end of the semester, they are cracking passwords, cloning websites and crashing servers.

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That she was elected Suffolk County district attorney was surprising enough, but then President Biden appointed her United States Attorney for Massachusetts. Rachael Rollins checked the Biden boxes and enjoyed a swift rise to the top of the prosecutorial mountain. Who would have expected that of a progressive prosecutor? Yet, there was she.

And then she fell. Continue reading →

Calvin Duncan was exonerated after serving 28 years in prison. He could have been bitter after his wrongful conviction, but instead he put his energies toward something better. He is now Calvin Duncan, J.D.

For 28 years, Calvin Duncan was incarcerated at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. While there, he taught himself the law. Today he graduated from Lewis and Clark Law School. He is now Calvin Duncan, Juris Doctor. pic.twitter.com/ss68ShJXHt

— David Menschel (@davidminpdx) May 20, 2023

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Technically, the question is whether Andy Warhol’s changes to Lynn Goldsmith’s photograph of Prince was fair use, or a violation of copyright. To the consternation of dissenting justice Elena Kagan, the 7-2 majority went with the opinion written by Sonia Sotomayor that it was not fair use. It was not art.

And it was pure Warhol.

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In a curiously blind assertion, Michelle Goldberg offers the right condemnation.

What I find most fascinating about the lawsuit, though, is the glimpse it offers into how national and state-level political dynamics empower the most fanatical members of a community to impose their will on everyone else.

True words, though the truth runs the gamut from deciding that “Gender Queer” is an appropriate book for a junior high library to demanding the removal of Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five.” Continue reading →