Before artificial intelligence became a common legal tool, Jacqueline Schafer was hooked on it.

This was back in 2018, and Schafer, a litigator who had started her career in BigLaw at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and spent several years doing appellate work as an assistant attorney general in Washington and Alaska, was working as in-house counsel at a national nonprofit. She had taken on her first pro bono asylum case, representing a mother and her toddler at risk for deportation to Honduras.

“There were really terribly scary stakes, and at the final hearing, the judge was very biased,” Schafer recalls. So she pointed the judge toward one of her exhibits showcasing the medical evidence.

In an asylum hearing, Schafer says, you have one final chance to show the judge why your client deserves asylum. “I had written a long brief where I referenced factual evidence, like the medical declaration. But what truly appeared to make the difference was when the judge went directly to review the declaration himself,” says Schafer, 42.

The experience helped Schafer envision how technology could make this simple for every judge: With the click of a button, they could access hyperlinked pleadings.

“The case really had a huge impact on how I thought about change,” she says. “We could make it so much less stressful to prepare the documents.”

In 2020, Schafer raised capital for what would soon become Clearbrief, a system using AI to search through volumes of discovery to find relevant facts and related concepts. Once the data is extracted, Clearbrief provides a fact-checking link that displays every cited source and scores how well other evidence in the record supports it.

“Just the idea of Clearbrief was transformational,” says Mark Britton, a former lawyer, founding investor in Clearbrief and Expedia executive who founded the legal marketplace Avvo. “The idea that whatever you assert or would like to assert in a brief is rated by an AI assistant that tells you how supported the assertion is in both the facts and the law—I immediately had goosebumps.”

Clearbrief is used by hundreds of law firms, including large global firms, courts and government agencies, Schafer says. And it can help smaller law firms compete with larger ones, says Joseph McMullen, an attorney in San Diego who used the technology for a big immigration case last year, winning $1.5 million for his clients.

“Justice and accountability in the courts can feel elusive for people without pockets deep enough to afford expensive law firms with large document review teams to distill vast amounts of records and data down to their essential facts,” says McMullen, who relied on Clearbrief to help him with a case against Customs and Border Patrol after it kept two children in an underground holding area for 33 hours before being released.

Schafer says the process of building Clearbrief has been one gigantic lesson in learning. She did not have a tech background, so she reached out to many people prominent in the tech field, asking each if she could meet them for coffee to talk about AI.

“That’s how I learned,” she says. “I had to be humble: I sounded like an idiot at first, and lawyers are afraid of looking foolish.”

But it worked. She learned venture capital and AI lingo, and built her vision piece by piece with a goal that every pleading prepared globally will be written with Clearbrief.

“We’re at a tipping point that I dreamed about: When a certain number of the larger firms start using it, then others hear about it,” she says.

Legal Rebels Class of 2025

Rodrigo Camarena

Roy Ferguson

Joan Howarth and Deborah Jones Merritt

Oregon State Board of Bar Examiners

Swapna Reddy

Jacqueline Schafer

Noella Sudbury

In This Podcast:

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3. Dive into our favorite long reads of 2024

Year in Review

Dive into our favorite long reads of 2024

By Lee Rawles

December 23, 2024, 9:35 am CST

The end of the year will hopefully bring you some downtime for leisure reading. We’ve curated a list of some of our favorite web and print long reads from 2024. There’s a mix of popular features and some under-the-radar stories that you may have missed. In keeping with the theme, it’s a long list.

In 1991, personal injury lawyers Zachary Bravos and Todd Smith took on the strangest medical malpractice case of their careers—a case that led them to tales of satanic cults, child abuse and cannibalism.

As anyone who pays attention to current events knows all too well, Taylor Swift has become ubiquitous. And in at least two law schools, she’s the subject of a class available to students wanting to gain practical knowledge about the law by studying her various legal entanglements and how she emerged stronger.

There are law firms in which Carrie Garber Siegrist, a senior associate in the Washington, D.C., office of Goodwin Procter, might have had to be secretive about her diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, also known as ADHD. But at Goodwin Procter, Garber Siegrist says, she feels embraced and supported.

The Kentucky Derby has long been known as “the fastest two minutes in sports,” but the 150th Run for the Roses on Saturday will take place without Muth, a horse some say may have been the fastest in the field this year.

Pete Pontzer’s story is a reminder that lawyers can have meaningful and fulfilling lives after retirement. However, as Pontzer quickly admonishes, there are some important steps to take long before leaving a full-time legal career.

Serious injuries have occurred when exuberant football fans engaged in the time-honored revelry of making goal posts a trophy of a significant or improbable win. Some of those harmed have sought to lay blame and seek compensation. In several such cases, it took referees in black robes to sort it out.

Now in its 25th year, the esteemed literary magazine’s weekly competition features a wordless single panel cartoon. Contestants submit a caption for the image. The publication’s editors choose their three favorites from the 5,000 to 10,000 entries. Online public voting—with generally more than a half million votes cast—determines the winner. There is no cash prize for winning, but the bragging rights are priceless. Wood is the contest’s most successful participant—by a lot.

An increasing number of law schools around the country are offering cannabis law courses, but some professors think that even more are needed. “We’re still playing catch-up.”

Many public service attorneys had an overwhelming feeling that massive student loan debt would travel through life with them. But many of those attorneys got relief in the past year, thanks to recent changes to the federal government’s Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.

Critics argue that “excited delirium” has no medical foundation, and that its origins are plagued with racism. The term’s role in high-profile police misconduct cases has prompted major medical organizations to repudiate its use.

There has been an explosion of AI-generated music featuring the living or resurrecting the dead. But as artists push the limits of parody, fair use, right of publicity, infringement and authorship, there is one overarching question: Is any of this stuff legal?

Immigrants coming to the U.S. face legal uncertainties along with difficult living conditions and the pain of family separations. Yet a hope that opportunities will outweigh the travails is strong with many new arrivals. That’s something lawyers who help immigrants understand well—including those who are immigrants themselves.

Each state sets its own rules for formerly incarcerated people who want to practice law. In Kansas, Mississippi and Texas, for example, no one with a felony can practice law. But even for those who live in less restrictive states, there are other hurdles to overcome.

“People are like, ‘Why did you go to law school?’ I tell them, ‘I’m setting up a joke that I’m going to tell in 14 years. I’m a planner,’” Liz Glazer says.

While progress has been made in the past 25 years, members of the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities continue to be underrepresented at the highest levels of the legal profession.

Most dog moms and cat dads accept the hard truth that they will likely outlive their beloved animals. But what happens when pets outlive their humans?

Millennials are more willing than prior generations to switch jobs to achieve a work environment that fits their needs. However, they can “run up against a wall” with billable hours.

Innocence clinics usually don’t work with clients convicted of minor offenses. They focus on more serious crimes where the stakes are much higher: people on death row or those serving life sentences for murder or sexual assault.

Netflix’s Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare, released in December 2023, sounds like a cheesy 1980s slaughter-fest horror film. Sadly, the events relayed by the documentary are far from fiction.

It isn’t often that a bipartisan group of U.S. solicitors general gather in public to discuss their unique role in the legal system and even gripe a little about the U.S. Supreme Court. But that’s what happened recently in a packed hotel ballroom before the ABA 2024 Litigation Section Annual Conference in Washington, D.C.

PALMS SPRINGS, Calif. — The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is looking for a volunteer to serve as a campground host at Coon Hollow campground in Mule Mountain Long Term Visitor Area (LTVA).

Located in eastern Riverside County, the campground is nestled in the lower Colorado Desert adjacent to desert riparian wash habitat. As a camp host, you’ll play a vital role enhancing visitor experiences, while enjoying a remote camping location. This is a fantastic opportunity for those who enjoy the outdoors and interacting with people.

Volunteers will assist the BLM by making visitor contacts, restocking restrooms, recording LTVA permits and reporting incidents, among other tasks.

The area is known for its unique geology and offers ample opportunities for recreation. The historic Bradshaw Trail National Scenic Byway provides four-wheel access to a variety of hiking trails and historic mining areas.

Camp hosts must carry in all supplies, including drinking water, as well as provide their own self-contained trailer or camper. Services are located thirty miles northeast in Blythe. Camp hosts will receive a stipend of $10 for each day worked and the LTVA permit fee of $180 will be waived.

Volunteer hours are flexible, with preferred working hours between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. and on weekends. The camp host is not expected to work during this entire period.

Applicants must be at least 21 years of age. For those interested in the volunteer opportunity, please contact the Palm Springs – South Coast Field Office, 760-833-7100, or email Noel Mollinedo at nmollinedo@blm.gov or Caroline Gish at cgish@blm.gov.

Get more information or directions to the campground by visiting the website online. Learn more about other campgrounds in the area at blm.gov/visit.
 

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. –  The Bureau of Land Management Bakersfield Office is lifting the emergency closure of the Creek Campground, a portion of the Pacific Crest Trail, and Canebrake Road in Tulare County.  The closures were in place for public and firefighter safety in relation to the management of the SQF Lightning Complex Fire and are no longer necessary due to the lack of fire progression.  The closures are lifted as of Tues., Aug. 13.  Long Valley Campground and Long Valley Loop road remain closed. 

The SQF Lightning Complex Fire started Tuesday, July 13, and has burned more than 32,000 acres of short grass and brush near the Chimney Peak Recreation Area.  The Trout Fire is 70 percent contained; the Long Fire is 98 percent contained; resources remain on the ground and both fires are being monitored by air.

Public and wildland firefighter safety are the BLM’s highest priority.  Be aware firefighting crews and emergency vehicles remain in the area.  For the latest information on the SQF Lightning Complex Fire, visit InciWeb.

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3. Taking ‘legal long shot,’ Trump’s lawyers…

Constitutional Law

Taking ‘legal long shot,’ Trump’s lawyers point to impeachment judgment clause in immunity argument

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 2, 2024, 2:16 pm CST

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump are taking their immunity argument to a federal appeals court after the U.S. Supreme Court on Dec. 22 rejected a request by special counsel Jack Smith to grant certiorari before judgment to quickly decide the issue.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will hear arguments in the case next week, the New York Times reports. At issue is whether Trump is immune from Smith’s election-interference prosecution because it is based on actions that Trump took while in office.

Part of the lawyers’ argument focuses on the impeachment judgment clause, which says impeached parties who are convicted in the U.S. Senate can still be criminally prosecuted, according to the New York Times.

The impeachment judgment clause reads: “Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States. But the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law.”

Trump was acquitted in his Senate impeachment trial for allegedly inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot.

In a “legal long shot” argument, Trump’s lawyers contend that the clause “presupposes that a president who is not convicted may not be subject to criminal prosecution,” the New York Times says.

In a “slightly narrower but still audacious argument,” the lawyers argue that a president who is acquitted by the Senate can’t be prosecuted for the acquitted conduct, the New York Times reports.

Smith argued in his brief that the impeachment judgment clause constrains sanctions available to Congress but places no limits on post-impeachment criminal prosecution.

An acquittal in an impeachment trial isn’t necessarily based on a factual conclusion that the impeached party did not commit impeachment offenses, Smith said. He pointed to statements by at least 31 of the 43 senators who voted to acquit Trump that their vote was at least partly due to the fact that Trump was already out of office, and they didn’t think that there was jurisdiction for the trial.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan of Washington, D.C., had ruled against Trump on the immunity issue Dec. 1.

“Nothing in the impeachment judgment clause prevents criminal prosecution thereafter,” she wrote.

How Appealing linked to the brief for Trump and additional coverage, while the National Law Journal covered the Supreme Court’s rejection of Smith’s petition for certiorari before judgment.

See also:

“Federal appeals court narrows federal judge’s gag order in Trump election-interference case”

“As 1 judge temporarily lifts Trump gag order, another says he’s ‘way beyond’ warning stage”

“Trump’s election-subversion co-conspirators included DOJ official, 4 other lawyers, indictment says”

Four years ago, Damien Riehl, like many others, was quite bullish about the future of autonomous vehicles. The potential of the technology was obvious: No more worrying about someone trying to text and drive, no more need for drunken driving checkpoints, and no more danger of falling asleep at the wheel.

In other words, remove human error, negligence or recklessness from the equation, and cars would cease being an instrument of death and dismemberment. Plus, people could get from point A to point B and not have to look for parking because they could just send their cars home until they were ready to be picked up. Who couldn’t get behind that?

Since then, there hasn’t been much progress when it comes to driverless cars. According to CNBC, in October, Google’s driverless car program, Waymo, announced that it would roll out a taxi service in Los Angeles, although it wasn’t clear when or whether it would happen.

Most major car manufacturers have sunk hundreds of billions into developing and testing driverless cars; yet the finish line seems to be nowhere in sight. So what happened?

Riehl, currently the vice president of workflow and analytics content at Fastcase, joins the ABA Journal’s Victor Li to talk about why driverless cars haven’t caught on and what the future might hold for autonomous vehicles.

Riehl is a member of the Minnesota governor’s Council on Connected and Automated Vehicles, where he worked on updating the state’s rules, laws and policies relating to driverless cars.

See also:

ABAJournal.com: “Are driverless car searches constitutional?”