Bradley Heppner likely could have afforded to retain any lawyer of his choosing, having allegedly defrauded investors out of $150 million. But he chose a somewhat different path. Whether it was because he believed himself to be better, or more motivated, than a lawyer, or was just a hands-on kinda guy, who knows. but he took to Anthropic’s AI bot, Claude, to research and develop his defense, producing about 31 documents on the subject.

When the government executed a search warrant, guess who ended up with the 31 docs? SDNY  Judge Jed Rakoff held that they were not privileged.

It is well established that the attorney-client privilege attaches to, and protects from disclosure, “communications (1) between a client and his or her attorney (2) that are intended to be, and in fact were, kept confidential (3) for the purpose of obtaining or providing legal advice.” Courts construe the attorney-client privilege narrowly because it operates as an exception to the rule that “all relevant proof is essential” for a complete record and for “confidence in the fair administration of justice.” Continue reading →

Google Glass was a bust. It didn’t help that people wearing them were being beat up by people who didn’t want to be recorded by people wearing those butt-ugly things, even if they were going to Reinvent Law. How, exactly, they were going to be transformative was never clear, but the legal tech fans were sure they would because reasons. And then they unceremoniously disappeared because nobody wanted them.

A new miracle has found its way onto the scene with one distinct difference from the dreaded Google Glass.

Last summer, Tom Wong was working at the Chubby Crab, his family’s seafood boil restaurant in Manhattan’s Chinatown, when a regular approached the counter. She ordered a combo — steamed clams instead of sausage, please — and ate it at a table near the door, muttering to herself in between bites. Continue reading →

It’s impossible not to have Artificial Intelligence, AI, touch your world anymore. How much so may be up in the air, but like it or not, tech’s fear of missing out has caused it to embrace AI, wanted or not. To a large extent, it’s background noise for many of us, with Google AI offering insipid, often irrelevant, replies to queries. Maybe it’s right. Maybe it’s having hallulus. Either way, it’s not a life or death matter, and so relying on it isn’t the end of the world.

Unless, of course, you’re a lawyer using AI to do your research or write your papers, in which case you’ve cheated your client out of competent representation in favor of easy money. Or a newspaper editor who wants quick, inexpensive, easily digestible stories, without regard to substance or accuracy. So what if the result is mediocre at best. Mediocrity is close enough for some, and better than many can produce by themselves. Continue reading →

Judge Kopf once told me about how he trusted the representations of the government. It wasn’t that they were right all the time, but that he believed that the government was due the presumption of regularity, that it would not lie to a judge or refuse to abide the court’s order. We argued about this, my position being that AUSAs and federal agents were no more prone to truthfulness than defense lawyers.

While the judge wouldn’t go so far as to say that defense lawyers weren’t truthful (though defendants were another story), he still believed that AUSAs and federal agents were entitled to inherent belief unless and until proven otherwise. Continue reading →

There’s times when those in the legal profession have to make the best out of what can charitably be called a shit sandwich. Doesn’t matter if it’s a bad fact pattern, abhorrent precedent or whatever bad mood a client might be in, lawyers regularly get called to take stinky nuggets of coal and attempt to turn them into diamonds.

One could say this was doubly true during COVID and the era of Zoom court. All of us, from legal professionals to the layperson were busy trying to figure out the time of social distancing, Zoom and Microsoft Teams calls, and how to effectively quarantine. And in that messed up time we were treated to a true gem of the Internet: Lawyer Cat. Continue reading →

On February 13, 2007, the first post appeared on Simple Justice. I’ve told the story of how it came to be before, so I won’t burden you with it again. Back then, blawgs were in fashion, and the legal blogosphere was a thriving community. Not so much today, even though a few of us remain, writing daily (or at least regularly) about things that interest us.

Sadly, the synergies of yore no longer exist. Back then, we would regularly riff off each other’s posts and agree or dispute each others views on the issues of the day. I miss those days, but times change and I’m left with no choice but to change with them. At the moment, the pressing and interesting issues mostly revolve around Trump’s bastardization of government. The overwhelming majority of legal issues revolve around Trump, and so he’s become the primary focus of posts here. I’m bored with him, as I would expect most of you are, but that doesn’t change the reality we’re living in. Continue reading →

Watching Attorney General Pam Bondi respond to questions by Democratic (and one Republican) members of the House Judiciary Committee by deflecting, pivoting, attacking and name calling was a shocking experience. The committee, chaired by Republican Jim Jordan, has the responsibility of overseeing the Department of Justice.

While Bondi was praised by most Republican members, she was attacked by every Democratic member, mostly for her handling of the Epstein matter and the killings in Minneapolis by federal agents of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Bondi responded well to praise. Bondi refused to answer any question that failed to praise her or Trump. Continue reading →

The Hon. Brett R. Alldredge (Ret.) is a retired California Superior Court judge. The opinions expressed herein are his alone, although he wishes to acknowledge the significant lifetime body of work of Tim Schnake.

The United States produces the finest, most highly skilled medical professionals in the world. The best and brightest travel to America to be educated and trained at its exceptional academic and medical institutions. No one, however, including those very same esteemed professionals,
pretends that America’s health care system comes even close to being universally admired.

What was allowed in just over a generation or two to stand between the world’s best physicians and those in their direct care that now prevents millions from benefitting from such presumptive good fortune? The health insurance industry, a multi-billion dollar for-profit industry so lucrative and influential that while living in a land of unparalleled wealth and resources, millions are simply unable to afford the care that their doctors are so well
trained to provide. It was never by intentional design of the expert professionals. We just sat by while the moneychangers determined how health care is delivered without it having to even masquerade as an improvement. And no honest and trusted physician pretends that we’re the
better for it. Continue reading →

Since leaving the bench, Paul Cassell has dedicated his energies toward the plight of crime victims, attempting to fundamentally alter the calculus of the criminal legal process so that the constitutional rights afforded the accused are tempered by the “third table in the well” for the victims. The state creates crimes to deter people from engaging in conduct the state determines to be wrong or seeks to prohibit. Criminal prosecution is not about giving the victims “justice,” no matter how hard it tugs at your heartstrings.

While the legitimacy of criminal law is based upon the fundamental notion that it is a matter between the defendant and the state, Cassell has long sought to reinvent criminal law by making it a conflict between the accused, the state and the victim. Continue reading →

I’ve always been somewhat ambivalent about marijuana legalization. It’s not that I don’t abhor the impact of criminalization, but that there are perils to having altered states of consciousness. That goes for alcohol as well. Get high if you want, but do it responsibly. The problem is that getting high and being responsible do not easily go hand in hand.

The New York Times has an editorial addressing the experience of recreational pot legalization that begins by recognizing that predictions that it wouldn’t result in widespread use didn’t bear out.

It is now clear that many of these predictions were wrong. Legalization has led to much more use. Surveys suggest that about 18 million people in the United States have used marijuana almost daily (or about five times a week) in recent years. That was up from around 6 million in 2012 and less than 1 million in 1992. More Americans now use marijuana daily than alcohol.

Continue reading →