Expert Analysis

• Religious Accommodation Lessons From Recent EEOC Focus

  

  With several recent U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission enforcement actions focusing on religious accommodations, employers should identify the actual burden an accommodation imposes, distinguish operational hardship from co-workers' objections, and pay attention to how the accommodation is implemented, says Crystal Banse at Spencer West.

• Testing AI's Promise For Large-Scale Document Review

  

  Our document-review comparison of attorneys' responsiveness and issue coding decisions versus predictions generated by artificial intelligence across 1,600 documents suggests that these tools can offer a reasonable and reliable basis for improved discovery workflows, provided lawyers understand where guardrails are needed, say attorneys at Redgrave.

• What's Next For Prediction Markets If States Win At High Court

  

  While the Supreme Court hasn't taken up a prediction market case yet, a high court win for the states in their quest to regulate the exchanges would likely mean a wave of state legislature bills and regulatory guidance arriving on different timelines, rather than a single uniform transition, says Howard Herndon at Bradley Arant.

• AI Meeting Recaps Pose New Discovery And Privilege Risks

  

  The New York City Bar Association’s recent ethics opinion, cautioning attorneys not to record nonclient conversations with artificial intelligence tools, reflects an emerging view that AI meeting recaps are now a distinct business record category, meaning counsel should set meeting-level controls and apply framework-level updates, says William Wright at Faegre Drinker.

• What Comes Next For Digital Asset Regs After Clarity Act Flop

  

  After the U.S. Senate recently blocked the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, agency rulemaking could still offer a near-term remedy, and companies meanwhile should monitor the existing framework assembled from enforcement precedent and case law in the absence of a purpose-built statute, say attorneys at Ropes & Gray.

• Series

  Playing Bid Whist Makes Me A Better Lawyer

  

  As a child, I viewed bid whist as a family tradition and a source of friendly card game competition, but as a lawyer, I see it as a tool that has helped me cultivate skills like communication, teamwork, risk assessment and composure, says Keyonn Pope at Riley Safer.

• Opinion

  Calif. Bill Goes Too Far In Trying To Regulate Attorney AI Use

  

  California’s first-in-the-nation act regulating how attorneys and arbitrators use generative artificial intelligence will likely soon become law, but read broadly, the provisions may dissuade lawyers from employing AI at all, thereby depriving them of key work tools, says Joshua Wurtzel at Schlam Stone.

• The Preemption Gap In Prediction Market High Court Petitions

  

  The Supreme Court is considering three certiorari petitions following a split in prediction market litigation between the Third and Ninth circuits, but one of the petitions would not allow the court to reach the express preemption question, which would leave the dispute half-resolved, says Jordan Garman at Withers.

• 4 Opinions Showcase Hurdles To Trademarking Names

  

  Four opinions issued by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board this year show that names are only registrable as trademarks when they point to the applicant and to nobody else, says Anton Hopen at Trenam Law.

• How Prediction Markets Could Be Used In Securities Litigation

  

  Assuming there is enough liquidity, and insider trading concerns are properly addressed, prediction market prices could provide a valuable assessment of market consensus that adjusts faster than existing analysts' forecasts, which could be useful evidence to support securities class action claims, say analysts at Compass Lexecon.

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  Law School's Missed Lessons: Cultivating Good Judgment

  

  Law schools generally overlook the role that solid judgment skills play in real-world practice, but attorneys can bridge the gap by strengthening their abilities to assess a case’s strengths and weaknesses, develop and execute effective strategies, and provide clear recommendations to clients, says Manny Caixeiro at Venable.

• Money Transmission Issue Looms For Prediction Markets

  

  The circuit split recently created by the Ninth Circuit's ruling in Kalshi v. Assad has implications reaching beyond gaming regulation as, depending on the ultimate characterization of prediction market event contracts, platforms may face differing obligations under federal and state money transmission laws, say attorneys at Manatt.

• Attorneys Using AI May Have Ethical Duty To Redact Docs

  

  The trajectory of legal ethics guidance in recent years strongly suggests that as redaction technology becomes more accessible, the failure to use it when uploading highly confidential materials into artificial intelligence tools will become increasingly difficult to defend as reasonable, say attorneys at Lewis Brisbois.

• Series

  Juggling And Unicycling Make Me A Better Lawyer

  

  Because I juggle (sometimes with fire) and ride the unicycle, friends and family used to joke that I should join the circus, but I pursued the practice of law instead and learned that my hobbies benefit my profession in several important ways, says Morgan Eddy at Smith Currie.

• How 'Swap' Fight Underpins Prediction Market Enforcement

  

  As courts around the country grapple with whether, and under what circumstances, event contracts qualify as swaps, federal enforcement authority hangs in the balance, with implications for companies that need to manage compliance risks during this period of legal uncertainty, say attorneys at Debevoise.