Three more federal prosecutors disqualified because they were appointed illegally by Trump administration

 Federal judges keep telling the Justice Department that President Trump's hand-picked U.S. attorneys are serving illegally.  NPR has the story here.

Ed Martin is facing disciplinary action

 U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin is facing disciplinary action after he sent a letter to Georgetown University threatening legal action.  Above the Law has the story here.  The Hill has more here.

Pam Bondi wants to have the right to prevent states from conducting investigations into unethical conduct of DOJ lawyers

 In what highly respected legal ethics scholar Stephen Gillers has called “a DOJ powergrab,” last week the Department of Justice proposed a new federal regulation to grant Attorney General Pam Bondi the right to unilaterally interfere with state bar ethics investigations into current and former government lawyers. The rule is contrary to established law and should not survive scrutiny, but, as Joe Patrice has eloquently stated, “like a lot of this Justice Department’s shenanigans, the rule wasn’t really intended to hold up under scrutiny, it just needed to assert a big, splashy threat that might silence anyone who doesn’t want to have a protracted fight with the Department of Justice.”  Go here for Patrice’s thoughtful analysis. 

Aside from the fact that the Justice Department has zero credibility when it says it would conduct a serious investigation regarding the conduct of any of its own lawyers, the proposed rule goes against the so-called “McDade Amendment” (28 U.S.C. § 530B), which states that government attorneys “shall be subject to State laws and rules… governing attorneys in each State where such attorney engages in that attorney’s duties, to the same extent and in the same manner as other attorneys in that State.” Congress passed this provision specifically because DOJ tried to exempt its lawyers from state ethics rules years ago. 

For more on this story, check out the ABA Journal and The Hill. For a video comment, check out the YouTube channel "Legal Eagle" here.

OpenAI "accused" of practicing law without a license in civil lawsuit

OpenAI (the makers of Chat GPT) has been accused of practicing law without a license in a lawsuit brought by Nippon Life Insurance Co. of America.  

The lawsuit alleges that, after agreeing to a settlement with Nippon, the defendant asked ChatGPT for a second opinion and used its response to fire her attorney and attempt to challenge the settlement herself. She asked ChatGPT to generate proposed legal arguments and documents, which she used in a motion seeking to reopen the case.  Nippon argues that urged by ChatGPT, the defendant filed dozens of motions that “serve no legitimate legal or procedural purpose."

The ABA Journal has the story here.

New report on Arizona program on alternative business structures does not paint a pretty picture

 Long time readers of this blog may remember that I have posted several comments on whether the regulatory changes in some jurisdictions allowing lawyers to share their practice with non-lawyers in so-called “alternative business structures” has resulted in their supposed goal: to provide better and more affordable access to legal representation. The data I have seen over the years has not been very supportive of this conclusion.  What I have read about the subject always suggested that allowing “innovative” ways to fund the practice of law has resulted in innovation in the practice of law (and with it, in more profits for those involved), but not necessarily in more, better or more affordable access to representation for those who need it.

This was the conclusion in a 2022 report about the effects of the 2020 changes in Arizona and Utah by the Stanford Center on the Legal Profession.  See here. The publication of a 2025 report by the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) has been delayed, but the most recent published study has reported even more troubling results.

This new study, published in Arizona just recently, has found that the Arizona program has attracted profit-focused investors whose firms have generated a trail of consumer complaints (claiming harm to clients, violation of consumer protection laws, etc), financial conflicts of interest and inadequate oversight – essentially the types of dangers that those who originally opposed proposals to open the practice of law to non-lawyer investors feared would result from the experiment.  See here.

These results clash with some of the conclusions in the Stanford study, which found low rates of consumer complaints and which concluded that concerns about non-lawyer ownership compromising legal quality or professional standards had not materialized in any systematic way.  

But, as Robert Ambrogi explains in a comment on both studies, the different conclusions may be explained by looking at the methodology used to reach them.  While the Stanford study focused primarily on formal complaints filed through official channels, while the newer study in Arizona used more traditional techniques of interviewing affected consumers, reviewing court records and examining business practices in detail.

You should read Ambrogi’s very informative article carefully for more detail and links to more information; and we should all look forward to the upcoming publication of the IAALS report to compare the results.

I Want to Withdraw from My Representation, But Can I Tell the Court Why?

 The Law For Lawyers Today provides a quick review (here).

More criticism about the decision on discovery of AI research by client

 In my most recent post I wrote about a recent decision holding that the result of a client's use of an AI platform was not protected from discovery.  See here.  I argued that the opinion makes perfect sense in terms of the applicable law and that, unlike other commentators, I did not think it was "groundbreaking."  But I also pointed out (and provided a link) to some thoughtful criticism of it.

I am writing today to give you another good short comment on the opinion which takes the position that  although the opinion is correct given the state of the law, it is bad decision, and an opportunity lost to be "groundbreaking."  As the author puts it "The ruling may be defensible under existing doctrine.  But it is a disaster for the 21st-century justice system" and that the ruling is "tone-deaf [...] to the high cost of legal services and to AI’s potential to reduce those costs."

The author concludes "Judge Rakoff’s ruling mechanically applied old rules to a new world.  Today, millions of Americans are turning to interactive AI to survive a legal system that has become too expensive and too complex for ordinary people to navigate. As a lawyer, I want my clients and my potential clients to keep using AI tools. The law should encourage them to do so, not punish them for it."

The article is short and worth reading.  It is called "AI Research Can Be Used Against Clients In Court. It Shouldn’t Be" and you can read it at Above the Law, here.