On The Merits

Generative AI has promised to reshape the practice of law ever since ChatGPT emerged. However, it's been unclear just how large law firms are using AI. Has it changed how practitioners do their jobs on a daily basis? Are we witnessing the emergence of a revolution in how lawyers do their work?

Uncommon Law's Matthew Schwartz sits in as guest host on this episode of On the Merits. He talks with John Quinn, founder and chair of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. They discuss Quinns' firm's stance on artificial intelligence and the future of the billable hour.

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President-elect Donald Trump is poised to further shape a federal judiciary he remade during his first term.

Building on his historic number of appointments, including Supreme Court justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, Trump will likely choose nominees that are even more reliably conservative this time around. And, because of his success moving the judiciary to the right, Democrats seeking to challenge future Trump policies have fewer options for finding a receptive forum.

On this episode of our podcast, On The Merits, Bloomberg Law reporters Tiana Headley and Suzanne Monyak, along with Bloomberg Law columnist and Above the Law founder David Lat, discuss how the Trump team will select judges, who those nominees could be, and what this means for litigators.

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Associates at Big Law firms are accustomed to a tradition: Whenever one law firm raises associate salaries or doles out a bonus, other firms scramble to match. But this year, something strange happened: A Wall Street law firm, Milbank LLP, in August gave out a special bonus, and none of its law firm competitors followed suit.

Bloomberg Law’s Roy Strom spoke with his colleague Meghan Tribe about what might happen next for associates' bonuses on this episode of our podcast, On The Merits, and how law firms' revenue this year compares to 2021, the last time associates reaped a windfall from a boom in work.

We also discuss whether associates across Big Law might still benefit from the special bonuses, which ranged from $6,000 to $25,000.

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A group of antitrust lawsuits blames the nationwide affordable housing crisis in part on a conspiracy among some of the country's top landlords to drive up rent using artificial intelligence tools.

The scheme allegedly works through property management software that crunches data provided by its customers—the landlords—to maximize rent. Another group of lawsuits also targeted the top hotel-casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, saying they operated a parallel cartel using similar software.

Two federal judges recently threw out the casino cases, rejecting the idea that relying on the same software is the type of collusion covered by antitrust law. The rulings cast doubt on the broader legal effort to rein in AI pricing algorithms.

On this episode of our podcast, On The Merits, reporters Katie Arcieri and Justin Wise discuss the antitrust cases confronting the residential housing sector and a related push by the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission.

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At the New Jersey state supreme court, all of the justices seem to get along–even though they maintain a 4-3 partisan split in their ranks.

The unique system, based on an unwritten rule that the governor will select justices and maintain a 4-3 balance politically, leads to an extraordinary amount of agreement among the justices. And attorneys like it, too.

On this episode of our podcast, On The Merits, senior correspondent Alex Ebert talks about how the New Jersey Supreme Court maintains its system when so many state supreme courts have become partisan battlegrounds, and how attorneys prepare to argue in this unusual environment.

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Fighting over the meaning of contracts is expensive and time-consuming. But a University of Pennsylvania professor sees the potential of generative artificial intelligence to give judges a tool to clarify a contract.

Bloomberg Law senior correspondent Roy Strom spoke with professor David Hoffman, an expert on contracts law who co-wrote a paper on what he calls “generative interpretation.” It’s a pretty simple concept: using large language models to determine what a contract really means.

On this episode of our podcast, On The Merits, Hoffman discusses how the untested method could save time and money. He talks about what it might take to convince lawyers and clients to let AI solve major contract disputes. And he dives into the impact that could have on the business of large law firms.

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It's been almost four months since the Supreme Court's landmark ruling decision in Loper Bright that overruled the oft-cited Chevron doctrine. And now we're starting to see what administrative law is going to look like with judges more empowered to pick apart federal agencies' justifications for their actions.

However, there could also be another case on the Supreme Court's docket for this term that upends the field of administrative law once again, and this one involves an arcane principle called the nondelegation doctrine.

To break all this down, Bloomberg Law reporters Robert Iafolla and Kimberly Strawbridge Robinson join our podcast, On The Merits, and explain the present and future of federal agency power in a post-Chevron world.

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Fortress Investment Group has powered its way to the top of the litigation funding industry. It has committed $6.6 billion to legal assets, and another $2.9 billion to intellectual property. But beyond the money, the secret to the firm's success may be its intensity and attention to detail.

Bloomberg Law litigation finance reporter Emily Siegel sat down for almost three hours with two Fortress executives: Jack Neumark, managing partner and co-CIO, and Eran Zur, head of intellectual property. They discussed the firm's litigation finance activities in depth for the first time. Siegel also sifted through UCC filings to uncover where some of that money goes.

On this episode of our podcast, On The Merits, Siegel details what she learned about this secretive company, who they work with, and how Zur's article nearly ten years ago about patent trolls keeps coming back to haunt him.

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Disney recently backtracked on its attempts to force arbitration on a widower who who filed a wrongful death lawsuit but, it said, had agreed to not take the company to court when he signed up for a free trial of its streaming service. This about-face, which followed a wave of bad publicity for Disney, may be the exception, not the rule, according to a law professor who specializes in arbitration.

David Horton calls these agreements "infinite arbitration" clauses because they force consumers to arbitrate all claims against a company—even claims that have no connection to the original agreement. And the University of California, Davis, professor says infinite arbitration claims are everywhere now, especially tucked into the online terms-of-service agreements that consumers rarely, actually read.

On this episode of our podcast, On The Merits, Horton talks about how the Supreme Court opened the door for these types of broad arbitration clauses, and why he thinks the issue could be heading back there in the future.

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Vice President Kamala Harris enjoyed a huge cash infusion to her campaign shortly after it launched this summer, and one of the groups behind this influx were attorneys donating to the Democratic candidate.

Attorneys gave more than $8 million to the Harris campaign in just the first 10 days of its existence, according to data analyzed by Bloomberg Law reporters Tatyana Monnay and K. Sophie Will. This is the latest example of the legal profession moving more toward the Democratic column with every passing election cycle.

However, despite this fundraising advantage, the Democrats are still waging an uphill fight for control of the House and the Senate in this year's congressional elections. On this episode of our podcast, On The Merits, Bloomberg Government's Greg Giroux explains why an unfavorable Senate map for Democrats may be more than robust fundraising can overcome. Also, Monnay talks about why lawyers are fans of the vice president and why attorneys who back former President Donald Trump are staying low-key.

Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.