New York City Bar Association Podcast

Presented by the City Bar's African Affairs Committee, host Justin Loveland, a commercial litigator who previously served as a legal consultant to Seychelles' Truth, Reconciliation and National Unity Commission, is joined by four leading voices in transitional justice who have worked on or alongside truth commissions across the continent: Professor Ron Slye (Kenya and South Africa), the Honorable Bernard Georges (Seychelles), and Didier Gbery and Dr. Baba Jallow (The Gambia).

The panel discusses the legal standards truth commissions rely on and how formal findings differ from narrative truth. Panelists then compare what worked and what didn't in their own countries, from the Gambia's live-broadcast hearings and Kenya's women-only hearings to Seychelles' stalled follow-through, along with challenges like witness protection and cultural silence around sexual violence. The conversation closes on reparations: who should pay, whether perpetrators can be required to compensate victims, how The Gambia delivered interim relief while its commission was still hearing testimony, and why repair may extend well beyond money.

03:29 What Is Transitional Justice?

06:42 Legal Standards for Truth Commissions

13:41 The Gambia: Successes and Challenges

17:42 Building a National Conversation in the Gambia

21:07 Seychelles: A Unanimous Start, a Stalled Finish

24:23 Kenya: Women-Only Hearings and a Hidden Archive

32:12 Creating a Constituency for Reform

36:01 The Question of Reparations

41:00 Who Should Pay? Comparing Approaches

44:21 The Gambia's Reparations Act and Interim Relief

53:15 Reparations Beyond Money

56:21 Closing Thoughts

Our episode today features Mindfulness and Well-Being in Law Committee members Robye Margolius (director of wellbeing at Arnold & Porter) and Jordana Confino (founder and CEO of JC Coaching and Consulting). They discuss social wellbeing as a powerful but overlooked dimension of lawyer wellbeing, defined as having meaningful, supportive relationships and a sense of connection and contribution.

Robye and Jordana outline research linking social support to happiness, life satisfaction, reduced depression and anxiety, and improved physical health, and cite workplace findings that belonging boosts performance and retention. The conversation explores barriers in legal culture such as time pressure, transactional interactions, invulnerability norms, autonomy needs, and perfectionism, plus the effects of billable-hour incentives, hybrid work, phones, and AI on connection and mentorship.

Robye and Jordana offer practical individual strategies (micro-connections, recurring touchpoints, presence, boundaries) and organizational actions (leadership modeling, rituals, mentorship, monitoring workload, recognition), and highlight City Bar committees, events, and the Lawyers Assistance Program as connection resources.

Want to take a first step to improving your sense of social well-being? Join the Mindfulness and Well-Being in Law Committee on October 1 for a Japanese Tea Gathering. Go to nycbar.org/events to learn more and to register.

02:02 Defining Connection

04:30 Science of Flourishing

08:45 Why Connection Feels Hard

09:14 Sandcastle Trust Building

14:29 Billable Hour Reality

19:10 Culture and Perfectionism

25:30 Support Changes Perception

28:46 AI and Human Skills

32:47 Practical Connection Habits

35:27 Micro Moments and Weak Ties

38:14 Match Your Social Battery

39:10 Small Discomfort Wins

43:00 Low Hanging Outreach

44:25 Phone Free Presence

51:27 Boundaries and Capacity

54:06 Culture Change Levers

01:02:02 Managers Shape Safety

01:06:09 Bar Associations as Third Places

01:10:43 One Small Action

Lorraine McGowen brings us today’s podcast from the City Bar’s Presidential Task Force on Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technologies. The discussion covers expanding legal use cases (research, drafting, due diligence, e-discovery, deposition and hearing prep, judicial chambers), ROI concerns due to verification burdens, and persistent hallucination risks. Panelists emphasize “trust nothing and verify everything,” including checking citations, quotations, and whether law remains good. We review ethics and court-rule developments (New York Part 161; proposed California SB 574), sanctions trends, confidentiality and privilege risks from public AI tools, client restrictions and protocol controls, record retention and supervision frameworks, international implications such as the EU AI Act’s risk categories and penalties, and the need for AI literacy and ongoing training.

Lorraine McGowen is Co-Chair of City Bar’s Task Force and a Partner at Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe. She is joined by these experts in the field:

Maura Grossman – Research Professor, School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo

David Keyko – Partner, Pillsbury, Winthrop, Shaw, Pittman

Sabina Ahmed Liconte – Head of Legal and Chief Compliance Officer, the Americas, ICBC Standard Bank Group

Adele Hogan – Partner, Hogan Law Associates

Ann Heo – Co-Chief of Discovery Compliance and Litigation Unit and Chief of the Prescription Drug Investigations Unit, Officer of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor for the City of New York

Kristin Baylis – Senior Technology Counsel, Orrick

00:00 Why AI Matters Now

03:08 Meet the Expert Panel

05:56 AI Use Cases Explosion

08:36 ROI and Productivity Wins

10:23 Hallucinations and Prompting

12:16 Will Hallucinations Disappear

13:38 Training and Trial Sim Tools

15:07 Ethics Rules and Sanctions

23:03 Court Orders and Disclosures

25:34 International Impact EU AI Act

34:59 Client Disclosure and Engagements

37:43 Firm Protocols and Controls

43:08 Technical Guardrails for Clients

45:45 AI Disclosure Duties

46:47 Joint Defense Protocols

47:49 Public Tools Pitfalls

51:23 Enterprise Versus Public

53:44 Transactional Verification

01:03:39 Litigation AI Sensitivities

01:08:18 Confidentiality Guardrails

01:14:58 Agentic AI Vendor Risks

01:20:09 In House Versus Firms

01:27:24 Key Takeaways Closing

The horrific attacks on September 11, 2001, left New York City in dire need of help. Families were searching for missing loved ones, and those who lost loved ones could not access support without a death certificate. Small businesses and street vendors in Lower Manhattan lost their livelihoods overnight. Immigrants were targeted and detained.

The legal needs were tremendous, varied, and urgent, and the legal community stepped up.

On this inaugural episode of the 44th Street Podcast, marking the 25th anniversary of 9/11, host and City Bar President Matthew Diller reflects on the unprecedented volume of pro bono legal service that followed the attacks. He is joined by three lawyers — Anthony Crowell, Maria Imperial, and Janet Sabel — who helped lead the response. They share stories from that work, about the City Bar's role as a coordinating hub for volunteers and legal service providers across the city, the family assistance center at Pier 94, the triage system built at the Metropolitan Detention Center, and the innovative use of the internet to expand outreach.

They also reflect on the emotional cost of the work and what it taught them about the profession's capacity to show up when needed.

Pema Sherpa is a mindfulness researcher and keynote speaker who helps organizations boost employee well-being and performance. Born and raised in Nepal, she studied the mind-body relationship at Harvard University and teaches mindfulness in a way that's both philosophically grounded and useful for people in demanding careers. She co-authored The Daily Buddhist with her husband, pairing short, daily teachings with practical, modern application.

Presented by the City Bar's Mindfulness & Well-Being in Law Committee, Pema talks with committee members Katiuska Moure and Nancy Batterman about her upbringing, her path into mindfulness research, and some practical keys lawyers and law students can use to build healthier daily habits even before they're ready to meditate.

Selected Links from the Episode:

The Daily Buddhist (book): https://thedailybuddhist.net/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/daily.buddhist/

00:00 Introduction

02:02 Pema's Journey

06:28 Harvard and Career Pivot

08:54 Immigrant Law Student Challenges

12:38 Tools for Students

16:44 Bringing Resilience into Legal Practice

20:09 Body Basics and the Nervous System

24:30 "Work With What You Have"

30:21 Meditation Isn't the Entry Point

33:28 Daily Buddhist Resources

39:44 Closing Thoughts and Committee Resources

Katherine Hughes hosts the latest podcast from the City Bar’s Presidential Task Force on Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technologies. She is joined by WashU Law Dean Stefanie Lindquist and AI Collaborative Co-Director Oliver Roberts to discuss how generative AI is reshaping law school teaching, assessment, and professional preparation.

Dean Lindquist describes her wake-up call about student AI use, making AI a central dean priority, forming an AI task force, partnering with Roberts, and hiring an LLM engineer to support experimentation and tool-building. Roberts traces early experiences with hallucinated citations and argues AI education must go beyond AI regulation to hands-on tool use across legal workflows, core terminology, tool selection, and explicit ethics (competence, confidentiality, supervision, and overreliance).

They discuss institutional guardrails such as eliminating take-home exams, using simulations, workflow-based pedagogy, and new assessment ideas like oral exams and quizzing students on submitted work. They also note scholarship and journal pressures and conclude that lawyers who can’t use AI will be replaced by those who can.

02:13 Why AI Became Institutional

03:50 Oliver’s AI Origin Story

05:34 Faculty Misconceptions

07:26 JD Learning Outcomes

09:58 Core AI Competencies

13:04 Schoolwide Guardrails

16:56 Teaching Ethics through Scenarios

21:19 Hidden Ethics Pitfalls

23:56 Rethinking Assessment

27:10 Drafting and Disclosure

32:05 Workflows In Practice

35:41 Handling Faculty Skepticism

38:08 AI In Clinics

40:10 Scholarship And Journals

43:05 Closing Advice

Environmental lawyer and Animal Law Committee member Robin Happel hosts a discussion on noise pollution and noise law with Jamie Banks of Quiet Communities and ocean noise researcher Vanessa ZoBell. Jamie explains how chronic leaf-blower and land-care noise led her to found Quiet Communities. She describes gaps in federal, state, and local noise regulation, focusing on the 1972 Noise Control Act, the rise and 1982 defunding of EPA’s Office of Noise Abatement and Control, and Quiet Communities’ lawsuit to reactivate the program. Vanessa outlines major ocean noise sources (commercial shipping and seismic air-gun surveys) and impacts on marine life, including stress, masking, behavioral changes, and examples such as post-9/11 stress hormone reductions in right whales and sonar-linked beaked whale strandings. They discuss challenges of relying on A-weighted averages, low-frequency noise, communication barriers, voluntary and incentive-based programs, electrification of equipment, vessel speed reduction benefits, and long-term California soundscape findings tied to economic events and marine heatwaves, plus vulnerable human populations and environmental justice concerns.

00:42 Jamie on Quiet Communities

04:17 Vanessa on Ocean Acoustics

06:19 Major Ocean Noise Sources

08:34 Noise Control Act History

13:30 How Noise Harms Marine Life

18:23 Ecological Impacts on Land

20:34 Rethinking Noise Metrics

27:14 Shipping Slowdown Success

33:48 Incentives and Federal Tools

40:31 Decadal Soundscape Study

46:29 Vulnerable Groups and Justice

In this episode, a panel of legal experts discusses the different approaches taken by the Second and Ninth Circuits on two key areas of copyright law: substantial similarity and the Server Test.

Presented by the New York City Bar Association’s Copyright & Literary Property and Entertainment Law Committees, the panel explores recent and emerging case law and the Second and Ninth Circuits’ divergent approaches to analyzing substantial similarity, a key element of copyright infringement, as well as the ongoing debate surrounding the Server Test, which addresses whether the posting of online content constitutes a “display” within the meaning of the Copyright Act.

Moderated by Dwayne Amos, Associate at Kasowitz LLP, the episode features a panel of leading copyright litigators and experts, including:

• Barry Werbin, Counsel, Herrick Feinstein LLP

• Aaron Moss, Partner, Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP and author of the Copyright Lately blog

• Marc Lebowitz, Principal, Lebowitz Law Office

• James Bartolomei, Of Counsel, Duncan Firm

The wide-ranging discussion covers the practical implications of these divergent approaches for copyright owners, litigators, content creators, online platforms, forum selection, free speech, and the application of copyright law nationwide.

This episode was produced by Jose Landivar, Senior Associate at Coates IP LLP, with contributions from Philippa Loengard, Executive Director, Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts and Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School, and support from the New York City Bar Association Communications Team.

Copyright Lately: Creative Law for Curious People – www.copyrightlately.com

Tiffany Smith (WilmerHale) speaks with Beth Haddock (Warburton Advisers) and Boaz Goldwater (Davis Polk) about Treasury’s notice of proposed rulemaking implementing the Genius Act’s framework for regulating payment stablecoins, focusing on guidance for state regimes to qualify as “substantially similar” to the federal approach.

This podcast episode from the City Bar’s Presidential Task Force on AI and Digital Technologies compares the dual federal/state structure to banking and securities regulation, and describes “uniform” requirements versus areas with limited state calibration (e.g., capital, liquidity, supervisory procedures). We discuss the inter-agency stablecoin certification review committee’s discretion, challenges from evolving OCC standards, and the ten billion outstanding issuance threshold that triggers transition to OCC supervision while retaining state oversight, with possible waivers for certain pre-existing state regimes. We highlight key ambiguities for issuers, including moving federal benchmarks, supervisory capacity, and unresolved capital/liquidity measurement issues.

01:38 Genius Act Rulemaking Overview

03:08 Dual Federal State Framework

04:17 Why a State Pathway

09:31 State Discretion in Practice

11:31 Managing Moving Goalposts

13:34 Certification Review Committee

15:56 Reserve Capital Liquidity Rules

19:05 Crossing the 10 Billion Threshold

23:42 Supervision and Enforcement Capacity

25:33 Choosing State vs Federal Oversight

28:20 Open Questions and Comment Priorities

In this episode, beloved City Bar figure Richard Tuske reflects on his remarkable 50-year journey with the City Bar Law Library, from starting as a page in 1972 to serving today as Senior Director of Library Operations on the eve of retirement.

Along the way, he shares vivid stories with Legal History Committee Chair Abigail Nitka on the library’s transformation into one of the most prominent legal libraries in the world—from towering stacks to the dawn of digital research and early Westlaw and Lexis—along with behind-the-scenes anecdotes on the history of City Bar membership, unusual research requests, the auction of a remarkable rare-books collection, a failed merger attempt, and the library’s technological evolution.

00:00 Podcast Welcome 

01:03 Early Page Years 

07:30 From Stacks To Screens 

14:53 Computer Revolution Begins 

19:05 Unusual Research Request 

25:24 Famous City Bar Members Spotlight 

30:18 Salt Mines Preservation 

33:36 What Remains Today 

36:59 Computers Transform Research 

41:08 Library Merger Attempt 

43:52 Rare Books Collection & Auction 

51:30 Future Library After Retirement 

58:29 Legacy and Farewell