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Last week’s blog examined whether pretrial discovery methods — and depositions in particular — have been responsible for the dramatic decline in civil trials. While the available evidence suggests that liberal discovery rules clearly contribute to pretrial resolutions, nobody has measured exactly how much. Meanwhile, two powerful forces are quietly reshaping how civil claims are…

It’s not exactly news that civil trials in America are disappearing. The numbers are dramatic: When the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure took effect in 1938, roughly 20% of federal civil cases reached trial. By 1962, the trial rate had dropped to about 12%. In 2016, according to the article “Going, Going, But Not Quite…

No one can reliably predict the future – not even Harvey, Claude, Paxton, or any of those other fast-talking, self-assured helperbots. Except if the prediction concerns the state of the legal profession in 2026. On that topic, everyone agrees. Artificial intelligence will radically reshape the practice of law in 2026. Most attorneys now believe that…

The New Jersey Supreme Court is being very specific about the educational courses that will qualify as “technology-related subjects” under recently revised continuing legal education requirements for New Jersey licensed attorneys. In a notice to the bar published Dec. 30, 2025, the court singled out several technology hot topics, including the use of artificial intelligence during…

Navigating laws protecting patient medical records is a time-consuming task, even for the experienced, privacy-savvy litigators. Laws vary from state to state, and the laws themselves, being relatively new, are challenging to interpret even for dedicated health privacy experts. Records Drive Pretrial Discovery Efforts This state of affairs creates a not-insignificant operational headache for litigators.…

Most lawyers regard Mata v. Avianca, Inc., 678 F. Supp. 3d 443, 448 (S.D.N.Y. 2023), as the leading case on the consequences of misuse of generative artificial intelligence in legal pleadings. It was from Mata v. Avianca that the legal community first became widely aware of the distinct possibility that publicly available generative AI tools…