No one objects to Grammarly, spellcheck, word count, calculators and other AI tools. Legal hallucinations are a solved problem that need only coding and access to Westlaw/Juris/FLITE (and maybe Google Scholar)—more on this below. A telltale sign of AI is the use of the em dash…You can get the same effect by pretending to be Céline and using ellipses…While I clutch my pearls worrying about AI it’s on everyone’s phone and everyone is using it…
In a way, the real threat to the legal profession isn’t AI. AI is Toto barking and pulling back the curtain while the legal profession shouts, “pay no attention to that lawyer behind the curtain.”
The Purpose of LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a place to look for a job. Keep your political opinions to yourself. LinkedIn is no place to vent your views on Palestine, to gripe about Gaza, or to blame everything on Bill Gates, Epstein or vaccines. No one cares. Post your screed on Facebook, Instagram or get a blog.
I don’t follow this advice.
College Dorms
College dorms can be repurposed as ICE detention facilities. Just a thought.
What Lawyers want from a Jury
Lawyers don’t want a jury to be fair. They want a jury to take their side. In civil cases, they want the jury to give them money. If you don’t believe this, you are naǐve.
Hallucinated AI Legal Cases
Hallucinated cases is a solved problem, at least in the US. There is a limited universe of defined cases, starting with 1 Dall. If the cited case is not on the list, it’s hallucinated. Cases with the same name can be disambiguated as is done on Wikipedia.
Joyce, AI and You
Fighting syphilis-related vision problems, James Joyce wasted seventeen years to write a collection of drivel he called 𝙁𝙞𝙣𝙣𝙚𝙜𝙖𝙣𝙨 𝙒𝙖𝙠𝙚. After the Germans invaded France, he refused to accept Irish citizenship and as an enemy alien was lucky to escape to neutral Switzerland. Shortly thereafter, he died.
But let’s say you’re a Joyce fan. You feed Stephen Hero, Pomes Penyeach, Tne Dead, Portrait and Ulysses into AI. Should you be permitted to prompt the tool to generate a novella about, say, 1916, in the style of Seamus? Or let’s get more down to earth: you’re a fan of Star Wars but lack the talent to write a tale of wookie love set in a universe that’s long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away. Should you not satisfy your urges with tales written by AI? Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller wrote custom-written fluff for a dollar a page, back in the day.
Japanese light novels, web novels, fan fiction: all these will be enriched by AI.
Uncle John’s Band
When life looks like easy street
There is danger at your door.
THIS IS AI:
A group of friends, talking. Commenting about how there remains a fascination with what the Germans politely call the NS-Zeit and that anyone who was involved in those days has been investigated thoroughly. But then…what if Hitler secretly played golf? What if he had a caddy? What secrets might that caddy have held?
The prompt contained “facts” like, “he never signed his scorecard.” I thought of Mel Brooks or Larry David for the lead.
A Previous AI-Generated Image
Hitler’s Caddy
HITLER’S CADDY
A Novella, by AI
Part I: The Assignment
No one remembers precisely when the Führer first took up golf, though among those of us who were required to remember everything, it was generally agreed that the impulse came to him in a dream sometime between the reoccupation of the Rhineland and the first snowfall of a winter that refused to commit itself fully to the century. He described the dream only once, in a voice so distracted that it seemed he was recounting the memory of someone else’s sleep: a green expanse without end, flags trembling in a wind that did not touch his face, and a white ball that refused to obey either gravity or destiny.
I was not yet his caddy then. I was merely a man whose chief qualification was discretion so complete that even my own thoughts had learned to pass unnoticed. Himmler chose me, though he never said so directly. In those days, assignments arrived like illnesses—first a suggestion, then an inevitability, and finally a condition one could not remember having lived without.
“You understand,” he told me in a room that smelled faintly of polished leather and old rain, “that proximity to the Führer requires a particular kind of invisibility.”
I said I understood, though I did not. No one understands invisibility until he is required to practice it.
“You will carry the bag,” he continued. “You will observe nothing, record nothing, and remember only what is necessary.”
Is there any Reason to Assume Trump will act Legally?
As it turns out, I’m a registered voter in Fulton County, Georgia. I was there when Trump was indicted by the local prosecutor, Fani Willis. The city shut down. There was a presidential motorcade, black limos, black SUV’s; they shut down two Interstates, police were posted at overpasses to discourage snipers.
All of this was to facilitate Trump’s appearance at his own arraignment, to formally enter a plea of guilty or not guilty to criminal charges preferred, as they say, by Willis. The case was mostly about a phone call where Trump told a Georgia official “I need 13,000 more votes.” The press mumbled about whether Trump would be fingerprinted (he was) and if a mug shot would be released to the Press. It was too.
Trump left immediately afterwards on his private jet, a black 757, the image of which filled television screens along with the mug shot taken at the jail.
At the same time Fani Willis’ office was involved in a high-publicity case not involving Trump. The conclusion of that case suggests, at the very least, her penchant for secrecy and irregular dealings. Despite having a league of experienced prosecutors at her disposal, Willis contracted with a local Atlanta attorney to prosecute a rapper and his cohorts who were supposedly in a street gang. This lawyer was paid in the six figures.
Then it turned out that Willis was having an affair with this married lawyer. Money from the contract was used, it was alleged, to fund a Vegas vacations, maybe one to the Bahamas. The Georgia Supreme Court got involved, the Georgia legislature got involved; they eventually appointed another prosecutor and the street gang case quietly went away.
This was not the only prosecution: special prosecutor Jack Smith brought a case in DC for conspiracy and insurrection arising out of Trump’s statements surrounding the 2020 election and January 6th. Most who looked at that case thought Trump’s comments urging the protestors on were protected 1st Amendment speech. Smith’s theory was that Trump knew what he was saying was a lie and the 1st Amendment did not apply. The plan was to drag 12 random drivers into a courtroom, call them a jury and ask them what they thought about this situation.
There’s more—a separate federal case in Palm Beach county concerning mishandling of classified documents. In that case, Trump was saved by the bell in the form of a federal judge who slowed proceedings to a crawl and failed to give Smith the deference our judges usually show prosecutors.
And then…
And then Trump was re-elected and all of these cases, except a state tax case in New York, melted away:
The Georgia case.
The DC case.
The Florida case.
There was a word they came up with to describe this: lawfare. The idea was the weaponization of the criminal justice system against Trump.
Trump has two years left. Given all that has gone on, this may seem like an eternity. The future always does.
To get rid of a tyrant, there must be an out. Idi Amin had Saudi Arabia. Baby Doc had France. Mexico’s Salinas de Gotari had Ireland. Peru’s Fujimori had Japan. Take away their out and they stay in power. They know what will happen. Qaddafi had no place to go to. Was Noriega offered a refuge? I don’t recall. Somoza fled to Paraguay. Pinochet thought he was free to travel. He discovered he was wrong when England tried to execute an arrest warrant. Nixon, flush with Ford’s pardon, had California. I am sure he knew the pardon was coming before he boarded the helicopter.
I am absolutely sure that Trump is worried that once he is out of office, lawfare will be employed against him.
Is there any way that he could stay in power?
Conservative pundit Steve Bannon claims that Trump’s team is already working on it and they may have a solution. Among the Trump cheerleaders, Bannon is a smart guy.
How could Trump remain in office?
One idea that has been mooted is that Trump could run for the office of vice-president. JD Vance could run for president, be elected and then resign. In that way, Trump would advance then to the office of President, but he would not have been elected to the office, so he could remain in power without violating the constraints of the 22nd Amendment.
Or, and I think this is the more likely scenario, instead of resigning President Vance would simply delegate to Trump all his powers. A similar situation obtained when Bush II was in the White House. Cheney even had an office fitted out for himself as President of the Senate, an act no vice-president had ever required before.
I don’t see any other legal way. But then:
Trump declares martial law and suspends elections. This brings us back to The Tavern, where everybody said I don’t know what I’m talking about because the military would not back Trump.
I wonder.
If I were to argue, “the United States cannot suffer a military coup” History would argue that I am a fool.
Let’s take away legality. Trump simply says, “we are in a crisis, war in Iran, (probably Cuba), look at this shiny new crisis. I’m staying.” Who would throw him out? There would be some papering over this brazen step; a Congressionally-passed Enabling Act, some odd artifact buried in 250 years of federal statutes. Perhaps a law suspending the 22nd Amendment because of the imagined crisis.
Trump will do anything to prevent having to get into a motorcade post-presidency to answer to charges. He won’t assume that it won’t happen, he will assume that it will happen and so will take defensive measures.
Even Augustus, whom Heloïse called “the emperor of the whole world” paid lip service to a republic that no longer existed.
After his presidency, Trump cannot quietly return to Mar al Lago because of the threat of lawfare.
Just because it can’t happen legally doesn’t mean it can’t happen.
The Missing Piece
(I wrote this some time ago…)
I have been thinking a lot about “what if”' scenarios. I also have been thinking about how precarious things are at the moment. The last time I felt this way was August, 2001. I had just started a new job in Riyadh. All my financial problems were over. I knew something was going to happen. I didn’t know what. I thought that maybe Saudi Arabia might reset or even break off diplomatic relations. Something was in the air, but no one expected 9/11. I didn’t either.
There will be no peace in Gaza. Netanyahu is not a peacemaker. His father was a historian who hadn’t gotten over the treatment of Sephardim in Spain in 1492. Netanyahu lost a brother to the PLO in Uganda. October 7, comparatively, was yesterday. There will be peace only after an unconditional surrender and he does not understand why the global community pressures him but doesn’t pressure Putin, who started a war.
There will be no peace in Ukraine, either. Zelensky sees the support of Europe and believes there is no reason to give in. Putin will wait. There will be minor shifts on the battlefield, but he gains nothing by making peace. He has already recognized that his initial objectives were not met. Territorial concessions were only half of what the war was about. If Trump pressures Ukraine, so much the better. Putin is in no rush.
There has been a lot of talk about America’s vigorous president, who has his 80th birthday this year. Biology cannot be ignored. Trump has never had a healthy diet. Even assuming he has the best physicians America has to offer, there is a long history of good doctors being afraid to treat their leader patients.
His doctors will be overly cautious, afraid that aggressive treatments will fail leaving the patient in a worse state than before. If Trump’s physical condition is as bad as some suspect, the country my find itself with a caretaker president.
Trump is incapacitated and Vance takes over. Or Vance hangs back because Trump’s inner circle keeps him at arm’s length. It happened with Biden. China and Russia will feel out the new leader. Israel will hit Gaza harder than ever before.
Vance then serves out the rest of Trump’s term and wins a new term easily. But there’s a missing piece. I don’t know exactly what it is or what it will mean. All I know is that there is a missing piece.
AI and Pookie
Remember when lawyers in law firms didn’t have typewriters? If you needed to write anything you wrote on a legal pad, lined yellow paper, sometimes with wide margins. Typewriters were for secretaries. Female lawyers wouldn’t be caught near a Selectric lest someone think they were a secretary.
Then poof secretaries were gone and a TV with a keyboard were on everyone’s desk. Male lawyers had to pretend they didn’t know how to type and loudly complained that their personal secretary was gone, but they could use the pool.
If the network was down, everyone stopped working. There was one computer in the office located near the fax machine, connected to this thing called the Internet. The fax machine was big, bulky and had cost the firm a lot of money.
There was always one lawyer who fussed with the machine and who repeated the same story about running out of ink in the middle of a 200 page fax and having to ask that it be sent again. The paper wss oily and smeared. Plain paper faxes now sold for less than fifty dollars at Office
Depot—if you could find them—but the law office machine had cost nearly a thousand when first acquired and was still treated with respect.
Most everyone remembered when the office operated without the Internet at all. Now, if the Internet went down, everyone stopped working. The office had a library and even a librarian with a degree in library science. When the Internet came there was less and less for the librarian to do. Eventually the firm converted the job to a part-time position. Today, AI is on everyone’s desk and they are using it whether they admit it or not.
The firm has asked the librarian to come back full-time to figure out how to best check AI-generated work because the paralegals are gone and the young associates and new grads are so invested in AI they haven’t written a paragraph of their own since passing the Bar. The AI prompts they write are elegant works of art and they help other lawyers draft prompts for AI.
After having sold most of its law books to a broker, the firm has contacted the broker to buy sets so citations in AI-generated briefs can be checked. The three-man appellate section has been reduced to one lawyer and firm management is considering reducing this position to part-time, now that the librarian has committed to checking brief citations.
There is one Selectric in the storage room in case anyone needs to type an envelope. Ribbons are in a dusty box. The new lawyers who call their partner “pookie” increasingly are seen hovering around the Selectric and asking management to source another one. They’ve discovered that it’s not se easy to deal with paper as it is to delete an email and when their emails are ignored, find that their paper letters get attention.
And in the case of a firm-wide subpoena, their private missives to their pookie are not discoverable or found on firm servers. They know emails never disappear. Despite denials, they are afraid that such notes are read by the IT guy, a type who hasn’t realized yet that his job is no sinecure. He wasn’t around when the IBM salesman came by to demonstrate the magic of error correction with lift-off correction tape; he wasn’t there when everyone stood around the Selectric and oohed and aahed.
At least once a month, IBM sent a maintenance guy around who flipped up the tops on the Selectrics, oiled them and took them apart. It looked like he was tuning a piano. He now maintains the portable ovens running on food trucks and is thinking of retiring soon.
Now everyone wants a typewriter for their desks.
Even the female lawyers who carry their laptops in stylish replica Louis Vuitton bags because you don’t want to risk losing a real Louis to a thief. No one who doesn’t get the paper can read what comes out of the typewriter. Intelligence officrs know this isn’t really true; that’s why they flip the tops up, remove the ribbon cartridges and secure them in a safe before leaving. T\
Firm management has noticed the growing number of users standing around the expensive old fax machine and are considering paying for a new number to connect the machine again. The person who receives the fax won’t copy it to the firm servers and if exposed to heat the oily paper starts to fade. A former paralegal who kept her job by accepting a demotion to staff is trying to source 9x14 “legal” pads and fountain pens because not a few lawyers have asked for the tv sets to be removed.
Their laptops have been confiscated by their middle-school children who are using AI to write papers. Their teachers run the papers through their own AI to make sure AI wasn’t used. At least, they did this for a while, just like they tried to ban calculators in math class. They failed. Now they focus on teaching the children to write good AI prompts. The children get suggestions from AI to write AI prompts to be checked by AI by their teachers.
Florida, Oh Florida
