Judge VanDyke made a YouTube video to accompany his dissent in Duncan v. Bonta, the Second Amendment case in which a Ninth Circuit en banc panel upheld California’s ban on handgun magazines over 10 bullets. Judge VanDyke’s video shows ...

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration not to deport five plaintiffs, alleged MS-13 and Tren de Aragua Venezuelan gang members. The administration complied, but then the judge verbally ordered the administration to turn around a plane...

Even if you technically can’t use an electronic recording to create the appellate record, trial courts do provide them for us in your closing argument PowerPoint. Jeff shares his experience.And after spending most of a morning watching o...

Here’s a trap door to avoid: if you are trying to expedite an appeal by dismissing remaining claims, do not use the Judicial Council dismissal form. Instead, you need a judge-signed dismissal. While Jeff is still in trial, Tim covers

All eyes are on the electronic-recording original proceeding in the Supreme Court, Family Violence Appellate Panel v. Superior Court, and the Court’s recent order to show cause why, when a court reporter can’t be found, California’s tr...

Please AI responsibly: Attorneys at a major law firm are making use of ChatGPT. That's not a bad thing normally, but filling in legal cites is not what it's for. The unchecked ChatGPT cases were fake at a rate of 8 out of 9 total cases in a sin...

Your check for arbitration fees gets delayed in the mail. Under a particularly harsh pay-or-waive provision of the California Arbitration Act, if your fee is received on day 31, too bad—your arbitration rights go Poof! Or do they? Ther...

The San Bernardino Superior Court electronically records trial. Can Jeff use the recording as the appellate record? Short answer: no. But there’s an original writ pending in the Supreme Court on a similar issue, so watch this space.We al...

Jeff is in trial, so take in a few quick summaries of recent cases and get back to billing:Incivility cost attorney $340,000 in fee reduction. Clip-n-save the recent controlling case on this point,

There was a bit in an old radio show (Kevin-and-Bean KROQ old, not Little Orphan Annie old) had Ralph Garman review movies he’d never seen, based only on watching the trailers. In this episode, we review some cases we haven’t read. We discuss t...

This is why your teenagers are anxious: TikTok’s fate hangs in the balance at the Supreme Court. We discuss the recent oral arguments, and Donald Trump’s amicus brief asking the Court to sit tight and he’ll make a fantastic deal that will be fa...

Here is our 2024 roundup, and in exchange we have a request for suggestions for 2025 content. If you are an attorney, what content do you prefer?

Jackie Gardina shares dispatches from the Blue Ribbon Commission on reforming the Bar Exam, covering recent reforms, the ongoing debate about the exam’s effectiveness, and the rise of alternative pathways to legal licensure. Some takeaways:...

There is a 700-appellate case backlog in Los Angeles and only around 450 attorneys on the California Appellate Project—Los Angeles panel. CAP-LA attorneys Jennifer Hansen and Jennifer Peabody share how the rest of us can pitch in to assuage thi...

Attorneys still wrestling with Microsoft Word to finish a brief need to be acquainted with Chris Dralla’s product Typelaw, the groundbreaking tool that lets attorneys turn plain text into fully formatted, cited, hyperlinked, local rule-complian...

In this episode, Tim and Jeff dive into the recent heated exchange between Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Jones and Georgetown Professor Stephen Vladeck at the Federalist Society’s Lawyers National Lawyers Conference. The debate centered on the tens...

Responding to a decades-long lack of court reporters, the Los Angeles Superior Court in September 2024 ordered that electronic recordings may be made. This arguably violates a statute prohibiting the use of electronic recordings. But Erin Smith...

Erin Smith’s Family Violence Appellate Project has over 50 published cases under its belt—which is even more impressive considering how difficult it is to get a good record in these cases. In this first part of our conversation, we discuss the ...

Couldn’t make this year’s ClioCon? Don’t know why you would if you could? Jeff is on location in Austin, Texas, and reports in on the latest legal tech trends, like:The death of the billable hour? A review of attorney tasks suggests...

In a (non)definitive survey of writing instruments, big-law attorney turned solo employer counsel Michelle Strowhiro reveals her pick for the best pen for lawyers.Then we turn to the U.S. District Court of Texas ruling in Ryan LLC v. FTC...

The Supreme Court of California isn’t always interested in money disputes, but throw attorney misconduct into the mix and you get the City of LA v. Pricewaterhousecoopers reinstating a sanction for “egregious” city attorney’s office collusion t...

Los Angeles Superior Court will now offer electronic recordings where a court reporter is not available. But not all courts have the equipment. And even if they do, by statute these recordings may not be used to create an appellate record. So w...

After discussing SCOTUS voting blocs and public perception, in part two of our discussion Adam Feldman rounds up the 2023-2024 term. We cover:SEC v. Jarkesy, holding that 7th Amendment procedural rights apply in agency proceedings, ...

Adam Feldman watches Supreme Court trends: voting blocs both usual and unusual, numbers of concurring and dissenting opinions, and other analytical ways of predicting outcomes. In our discussion, we cover:Recent polls disapprove of ...

While the Supreme Court wrapped up its term, the Ninth Circuit had some interesting cases of its own. Carjacking is “nonviolent,” for-profit prisons are constitutional, and Covid vaccine religious exemptions are on the table. Practitioners migh...