Legal Blogs and Articles
Legal Blogs and Articles
The CFTC announced it is modernizing its rulebook to accommodate decentralized finance, working hand‑in‑hand with the SEC to clarify jurisdiction over on‑chain software. Chairman Michael Selig said regulated perpetual futures could launch in the United States within weeks, and that a joint taxonomy will distinguish securities from other crypto assets. The agencies also pledged clearer standards for prediction‑market platforms, signaling a coordinated federal approach after years of regulatory uncertainty.
Elan Hersh, Akerman’s e‑discovery services chair, spoke at Legalweek about the hidden costs of miscommunication in complex litigation. He emphasized that fragmented communication between counsel, clients, and technology teams fuels delays, escalates expenses, and jeopardizes data security. Hersh advocated for...
California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) has issued a proposed rule that defines who may accompany inspectors during workplace safety walk‑arounds. The rule mirrors the 2024 federal OSHA “walkaround” standard but expands the definition of employee‑authorized representatives to...
The Macdonald‑Laurier Institute argues that Canada’s internal trade barriers remain a costly, under‑addressed obstacle to growth. While the EU enjoys seamless cross‑border commerce, Canadian provinces still regulate goods, services and professional credentials independently, creating inefficiencies. The report proposes a joint...
The Supreme Court’s per curiam decision in Mirabelli v. Bonta marks a pivotal moment for emergency‑docket jurisprudence, with Justices Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Roberts joining a majority that clarifies when swift relief is appropriate. Justice Barrett’s four‑page concurrence and the Court’s detailed opinion...
Emily Bremer’s forthcoming Yale Law Journal article reinterprets vacatur under the Administrative Procedure Act as an appellate determination rather than an equitable remedy. She argues that the APA’s “set aside” language was intended to fit within the statute’s broader appellate...
A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration lacks authority to terminate New York’s congestion pricing program, affirming that only the MTA can set and collect the tolls under the Biden‑era agreement. The 149‑page decision blocks Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s...
An SDNY federal judge in the Hepper case ruled that chats with publicly available generative AI tools are not covered by attorney‑client or work‑product privilege. The decision emphasizes that the lack of confidentiality in open‑access platforms makes such communications discoverable....
Assemblymember Cottie Petrie‑Norris introduced AB 2385 to amend the 1986 Disaster Recovery Reconstruction Act, giving California local governments explicit authority to create disaster‑recovery agencies. The bill replaces references to defunct community redevelopment agencies with a clear list of powers drawn from...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, ACLU, and Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy & Technology filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to declare geofence warrants unconstitutional. Geofence warrants force companies to hand over location data for every device within...
Newly‑elected Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger declined to aid ICE in detaining undocumented immigrants, invoking the anti‑commandeering doctrine. The principle, rooted in Supreme Court decisions such as New York v. United States and Printz v. United States, bars the federal government...
In 2025 U.S. courts dismissed two high‑profile enforcement actions against African sovereigns, reinforcing the narrow scope of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). The D.C. District Court ruled in Global Voice Group SA v. Republic of Guinea that Guinea was...
Quinn Emanuel’s lead innovation counsel, Jennifer Reeves, highlighted that AI training must be tailored to the distinct learning styles of different lawyer generations. She emphasized prioritizing user psychology over mere feature sets to drive adoption. Reeves, a Monica Bay Women...
The Canadian Bar Association (CBA) has entered a partnership with Spellbook, a Toronto‑based AI‑driven contract‑drafting platform. This marks Spellbook's first collaboration with a national bar association, giving it a formal endorsement within Canada’s legal community. The agreement will provide CBA...
DeepIP announced the close of a $25 million Series B financing round. The capital will accelerate development of its generative AI assistant designed for patent work. Existing investors participated alongside new venture partners. The funding underscores growing investor confidence in...
Sidley Austin’s Director of Client Intelligence, Rachel Shields Williams, argues that innovation thrives when a firm’s culture is prepared for change and its operational processes are clearly defined. She highlights data fragmentation and resistance to cultural shift as major barriers...
A federal jury in Idaho awarded Professor Rebecca Scofield $10 million after finding former student Ashley Guillard liable for defamation. Guillard’s TikTok and YouTube videos falsely claimed Scofield had a same‑sex affair with a murder victim and that she orchestrated the...
Harvey announced its second acquihire, bringing Lume co‑founders Robert Ross and Nebyou Zewde into its product and engineering teams. Lume, a Y Combinator‑backed AI integration startup founded in 2023, will cease operations as only the two founders transition to Harvey. The...
Legalweek and a packed calendar of eDiscovery and legal‑tech events underscore the enduring value of in‑person gatherings. The article argues that merely attending is insufficient; professionals must attend with clear intent aligned to their current challenges. Role‑specific guidance—from managers to...
A superseding indictment in Texas adds material‑support‑to‑terrorism charges under 18 U.S.C. § 2339A to nine defendants accused of shooting a police officer during a July 4, 2025 protest at an ICE detention center. The statute, originally crafted to disrupt terrorist logistics, does not require proof...
The Supreme Court recently struck down a set of tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, obligating the White House to refund importers the duties collected. Instead of issuing prompt refunds, the administration has adopted a slow‑walk strategy, arguing fiscal constraints...
The Justice Department abruptly reversed its decision to drop appeals defending executive orders that sanction law firms, reinstating its defense within 24 hours. At the same time, the Supreme Court signaled willingness to broaden appeal‑waiver exceptions, while declining to hear...
The article argues that court case management systems (CMS) are the bottleneck preventing courts from leveraging their massive data streams, citing an Oklahoma pilot where a simple middleware layer cut jail time for low‑level defendants. It explains that most CMS...
A UK High Court has declared the government’s proscription of Palestine Action unlawful, prompting human‑rights groups to demand immediate guidance from Ofcom on how platforms should handle related content. The government’s appeal leaves uncertainty over whether online material supporting the...
The Delaware Court of Chancery held that the LLC’s Protection Provision did not fully eliminate fiduciary duties, allowing Calumet’s breach claim against manager Luke Darkow to survive. The court adopted the fiduciary‑exception view, treating the claim under tort law rather...
Eversheds Sutherland announced that Ellen Connell has joined its Litigation Practice Group as a partner, bolstering the firm’s securities enforcement capabilities. Based in Washington, DC, Connell will focus on complex, high‑stakes regulatory investigations. The hire expands the firm’s global investigations...
A Texas broker‑dealer, Apex Clearing Corp., told a Fifth Circuit appeals court that the SEC imposed harsher settlement terms on it than on other firms targeted in the agency’s Biden‑era crackdown on off‑channel communications. The SEC denied Apex’s request to...
The U.S. Senate advanced the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act with an 84‑to‑6 vote. The 303‑page legislation includes a provision that prohibits the Federal Reserve from creating a central bank digital currency (CBDC) until Dec. 31, 2030. The bill carves...
The Justice Department announced it will drop the lawsuits it filed against nine major law firms that had been pressured by President Trump to cease representing his political opponents. The move signals the administration’s acknowledgment that the executive orders targeting...
Patent term extension (PTE) offers up to five extra years of exclusivity for FDA‑approved drugs, but biologics present a unique hurdle because the law hinges on defining the “active ingredient.” Unlike small molecules, biologics are large, variable structures, making it...
Law firms and in‑house teams are now using generative AI daily, yet most AI interactions still occur on laptops. A Harvey‑commissioned study of 200 lawyers shows 86% rely on smartphones or tablets away from the desk, while 75% access AI...
On March 1, 2026, an unidentified projectile struck an AWS data center in the UAE, igniting a fire that knocked out more than 60 services across the Middle East and forced customers to shift workloads to Europe. The physical attack coincided...
The article provides a step‑by‑step guide for law firms on call recording disclosure, outlining the legal landscape across U.S. states and the need for clear consent protocols. It highlights that over 40 states require two‑party or all‑party consent, making compliance...
On Monday night the U.S. Supreme Court issued two emergency orders, one reinstating a lower‑court injunction that blocks California policies allowing schools to keep transgender students’ gender identity private from disapproving parents, and another staying a New York state court...
Lexum, a pioneer in online legal publishing, argues that the era of merely posting statutes and judgments online is over. The firm now focuses on turning raw legal texts into structured, searchable, and AI‑enhanced resources that let users quickly gauge...
The U.S. Supreme Court reinstated a district‑court injunction that bars California’s policy prohibiting schools from informing parents about a child’s gender‑transition activities unless the child consents. The Court granted parents’ request to lift the Ninth Circuit’s stay, while leaving the...
On Monday the Supreme Court declined to hear several petitions, including Johnson v. High Desert State Prison, which asked whether indigent inmates can split a $350 filing fee when filing joint lawsuits. The Court added no new cases to its...
Australia’s construction industry is being hamstrung by an expanding maze of planning regulations, creating a disproportionate presence of lawyers and planners versus skilled tradespeople. Ross Elliott’s piece highlights that even legal experts can’t tally the thousands of pages governing development...
Columbia Law professor Thomas W. Merrill will deliver the Hallows Lecture at Marquette, examining three largely implicit legal ideas that have reshaped the constitutional balance. He argues these unstated doctrines have amplified presidential authority through orders and regulations and expanded...
The Ninth Circuit affirmed San Diego Mayor Gloria’s decision to veto correctional officer‑pastor Dennis Hodges’s reappointment to the Police Advisory Board, finding the mayor’s action permissible under the "commonality of political purpose" exception. The court held that volunteer board members may...
Seattle Stem Cell Center was ordered to pay $24 million after a jury found the clinic liable for the 2019 death of Michael Trujillo, who suffered catastrophic bleeding following an undocumented epidural injection while on blood‑thinning medication. Evidence showed the procedure...
Industry watchers are focused on the pending merger between Hapag‑Lloyd and ZIM Integrated Shipping Services. Readers of Container News flag regulatory approval and Israel’s “golden share” as the most likely obstacles, while labor unrest is viewed as a secondary concern....
Three recent rulings sharpen the legal battle over social‑media addiction. The Nevada Supreme Court affirmed personal jurisdiction over Snap, critiqued its age‑verification design, and sidestepped a feature‑by‑feature Section 230 analysis. In Delaware, a court denied Meta’s insurers a duty to defend,...
The Supreme Court will hear Hunter v. United States on March 3, examining how far a federal defendant can waive appellate rights in a plea agreement. Munson Hunter pleaded guilty to wire fraud, received a 51‑month sentence and a broad waiver...
The article argues that generative AI tools often hand users a polished draft that masks deeper errors, forcing professionals to spend more time correcting than they would have created the content themselves. This inversion turns the user into an administrative...
LexBlog launched two features aimed at making its legal commentary more discoverable and citable. The first adds automatic anchor links to every subheading and an optional table of contents, enabling deep‑linking to specific sections. The second upgrades JSON‑LD structured data,...
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has reinstated Forward Thinking Systems’ Field Warrior ELD to its official registered device list as of February 25 2026, after the model was removed in December. The device (model FW‑BYOD, identifier FTSFW1) can again be...
2025 saw a stark divergence between EU and non‑EU jurisdictions on intra‑EU investment arbitration. The German Constitutional Court and the Amsterdam Court of Appeal effectively nullified arbitration clauses and ordered termination of pending arbitrations, while the Swedish Supreme Court required...
On February 25, 2026 the CFTC’s Division of Enforcement issued Advisory No. 9185-26 after two enforcement actions against KalshiEX for misuse of nonpublic information and fraud in event contracts. The advisory clarifies that insider‑trading principles rooted in misappropriation theory apply...
The FBI’s Operation Perfect Hedge used hedge‑fund manager Tom Hardin, known as “Tipper X,” as a covert informant to infiltrate a sophisticated insider‑trading network. Hardin was instructed to abort meetings if suspects altered plans, but he persisted, even attending a...
