Law, disrupted

John Quinn is joined by Mohammed Rashik, Founder and CEO of Rain Intelligence, a legal technology company that helps lawyers identify emerging legal needs and find potential clients—to make rain. Rain Intelligence provides AI-powered analysis of data from social media, government filings, e-commerce platforms, and other sources to detect patterns and events that could signal potential class action cases, regulatory issues, or other complex litigation opportunities. The goal is to make business development for lawyers more systematic and data-driven than more traditional, reactive methods.The idea for Rain Intelligence was born from Mohammed’s frustration with the lack of tools to help generate clients when starting a solo practice. He began identifying legal issues proactively—such as discovering that a warehouse fire had likely been caused by a neighboring property’s code violations—and found this approach led naturally to client engagement. The core insight was that legal needs often follow predictable patterns triggered by real-world events, and those patterns can be identified and scaled using data science.Rain Intelligence delivers daily personalized reports tailored to each attorney’s practice areas, clients, and litigation history. These updates synthesize signals from a wide range of data pipelines—such as product labels, product recalls, consumer complaints, Substack articles, government announcements, and class action advertising—to identify high-potential legal opportunities. The opportunities are analyzed to assess the prospects for proving liability, the amount of damages, and the collectability of judgments. The service is subscription-based and is currently used by roughly half of the Am Law Top 10 firms and 20% of the top 200.Mohammed explains how Rain Intelligence pieces together disparate data sets to uncover legal risks that may not be obvious in isolation. For example, labeling a food item “preservative free” while including citric acid, which regulators consider a preservative, could be the basis for a lawsuit when combined with regulatory guidance and recent litigation trends. The technology is built to integrate seamlessly into legal workflows, helping lawyers generate business by doing what they do best—spotting legal issues and advising clients.Podcast Link: Law-disrupted.fmHost: John B. Quinn Producer: Alexis HydeMusic and Editing by: Alexander Rossi

John is joined by Renny Hwang, Deputy General Counsel and Head of Litigation at OpenAI and former Head of Litigation at Google. They discuss the legal issues surrounding AI technology. Renny explains that he believes that existing law is well equipped to deal with copyright, fair use and product liability issues raised by AI, but the challenge the industry faces is that most people do not understand how AI works. He also explains that he believes other legal issues, such as corporate transparency and governance, might require new regulations. John and Renny discuss the likely impact of patent and trade secret law on the AI industry in light of the industry’s tendency to publish significant research and findings. They also discuss the effect of the absence of comprehensive federal AI regulation, including the difficulty companies have in to implementing different compliance regimes for different jurisdictions and the possibility that the European AI Act will become the de facto default standard for AI regulation globally. Finally, Renny explains that OpenAI is a mission-driven company focused on building safe and beneficial AI and that commitment is reflected in OpenAI’s Board-level Safety Committee.Podcast Link: Law-disrupted.fmHost: John B. Quinn Producer: Alexis HydeMusic and Editing by: Alexander Rossi

John is joined by Brad Karp, Chairman of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP.  Brad explains how he led Paul Weiss to diversify its business beginning in the financial crisis of 2008, when its core business of litigation was still highly profitable, to become a global leader in private equity transactions, mergers and acquisitions and financial restructuring as well.  He describes how he approached leading lawyers in these fields and convinced them to join the firm by emphasizing the firm’s profitability, reputation, culture, and client base and how each individual would fit into the firm’s existing business.  Brad also explains the firm’s dramatic expansion in London in the summer of 2023 and why he does not foresee further significant international expansion in the future.  John and Brad then discuss the recent trends in large law firms towards recruiting highly paid superstar lawyers and the growth of salaried or nonequity partners.  They also discuss the major trends they expect to see in the future, including the increasing use of AI within the legal industry, the dramatic rise of litigation and regulatory investigations over the use of AI and the influence of climate change on every area of law practice.  Finally, Brad describes his firm’s longtime commitment to actively taking on social justice and pro bono representations and the challenges of handling these engagements in today’s increasingly politicized environment.Podcast Link: Law-disrupted.fmHost: John B. Quinn Producer: Alexis HydeMusic and Editing by: Alexander Rossi

John is joined by Andrew Frank, Founder and President of KARV.  They discuss the evolving role of strategic communications in legal and other public relations “crisis” situations. KARV focuses on strategic advisory services, particularly in high-stakes litigation, crisis response, and public policy matters.  Roughly half of the firm's work involves law-related matters, including disputes, investigations, and regulatory issues.  KARV operates internationally, with offices in major U.S. cities and partnerships around the globe.Early engagement is crucial in crisis communication planning.  Ideally, engagement begins before a crisis breaks.  However, most companies fail to prepare for crises in advance, and communications professionals are typically brought in after legal action has begun.  Once engaged, the primary goal of KARV is to support the legal team while minimizing risk.  This support includes preparing official statements, crafting consistent messaging, and developing media strategies aligned with legal objectives.  The legal and communications teams must collaborate closely to avoid missteps and ensure a unified public-facing narrative.Clients need to understand the mechanics of media engagement, including the distinctions between on-the-record, off-the-record, and background communications.  In crisis situations, clients must also understand the expectations of different media outlets, along with the challenges of working with internal PR teams that may lack experience in crisis or litigation matters.  Common mistakes include saying too much, failing to coordinate messaging, and ignoring broader reputational concerns.Finally, Andrew explains how artificial intelligence is affecting the communications landscape.  On the one hand, AI offers useful tools for drafting and analysis.  However, AI also raises new challenges by accelerating the spread of misinformation.  For example, a news broadcast may be assembled by an AI aggregator and delivered to the audience through an AI generated avatar without any of the content being confirmed as true.  Social media posts now appear and receive more than a thousand comments in 15 minutes;  that many comments must be generated by AI and both the comments and the original post may be fake.  The need to correct such misinformation means that human judgment and experience in managing complex communications environments will remain central, especially in high-stakes legal disputes.Podcast Link: Law-disrupted.fmHost: John B. Quinn Producer: Alexis HydeMusic and Editing by: Alexander Rossi

John is joined by Cassandra “Sandi” Knight, Vice President of Litigation and Discovery at Google. Sandi oversees a global team of over 200 in house legal professionals and a host of law firms around the world. The case load she oversees varies from patent disputes to content moderation, to AI, and privacy issues, among many other types of disputes.Sandi’s department focuses on three functions: litigation, discovery, and support for investigations. Cases rise to the level of Sandi’s attention based on the legal issues involved, the amounts at stake, and the reputational risk and the potential for press attention. One challenge of managing such a wide variety of matters lies in balancing the daily influx of urgent unpredicted matters with the need to intentionally carve out time for deeper strategic reflection.Much of Google's litigation docket includes cutting-edge disputes in areas like AI and content moderation where there is often little clear legal precedent. In recent years, tech companies have experienced a shift in public perception—from celebrated innovators to targets of public skepticism. This shift has affected Google’s approach to jury trials and litigation in general.Sandi underscores the importance of building trust between the legal team and the business side of the company. This requires lawyers to take clear, actionable positions on legal matters, rather than simply explaining the competing legal risks and leaving the business team to weigh those risks and develop future plans on their own.Collaboration between outside counsel and internal product lawyers is critical to shaping legal strategy in the evolving tech landscape. Counsel who conduct careful mock argument sessions, particularly in Supreme Court litigation, have helped significantly shaped Google’s litigation strategy and contributed to positive outcomes. In general, Google values outside counsel who provide early engagement, strategic foresight, efficiency, and the ability to make legal recommendations rather than hedging every opinion.Podcast Link: Law-disrupted.fmHost: John B. Quinn Producer: Alexis HydeMusic and Editing by: Alexander Rossi

John Quinn is joined by Robert Loigman, partner in Quinn Emanuel’s New York office, and Eric Winston, partner in Quinn Emanuel’s Los Angeles office.  They discuss the extensive litigation that has followed the 2008 collapse of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.  The litigation stems from a liquidation by a court-appointed trustee under the Securities Investor Protection Act (SIPA).  The primary goal of the liquidation was to recover assets for Madoff’s victims.  The litigation has continued for 17 years, so far, because of the number of parties involved and the multitude of proceedings and appeals in both the U.S. and foreign courts.The trustee has pursued clawback claims against “feeder funds” under fraudulent transfer theories, targeting both “net winners” who withdrew more than they invested and “net losers” who withdrew less than they invested.  After the estate recovered $7 billion recovery from one feeder fund, investors began to anticipate higher recoveries than normally occur in SIPA proceedings.  Over time, a secondary market in Madoff claims developed, with distressed asset investors buying claims at steep discounts and profiting when recoveries exceeded expectations.  The Madoff litigation has led to several significant legal developments.  One key issue involved included the safe harbor under the Bankruptcy Code for good faith conduct.  Initially, a judge in the SDNY ruled that to show a lack of good faith, a trustee must show that an investor was willfully blind to the fraud at issue.  In 2021, the Second Circuit ruled that simple inquiry notice is enough, placing a greater burden on investors to investigate irregularities.Another significant legal development was the Second Circuit’s ruling that U.S. bankruptcy law could reach transfers between foreign debtors and foreign transferees, expanding the potential reach of clawback efforts.  Finally, the Second Circuit ruled that in a Chapter 15 bankruptcy case, certain U.S. standards would apply to transactions between foreign entities even though the foreign courts with jurisdiction over the entities would apply different standards.The uniquely large and visible fraud in the Madoff litigation case may have led courts to expand legal doctrines in ways that affect bankruptcy and investor litigation more generally.Podcast Link: Law-disrupted.fmHost: John B. Quinn Producer: Alexis HydeMusic and Editing by: Alexander Rossi

John is joined by Christopher D. Kercher, a partner in Quinn Emanuel’s New York office. They discuss the recent win Chris’s team achieved in a Delaware Chancery Court trial involving a high-stakes case involving Desktop Metal and Nano Dimension. The dispute centered around a merger agreement that included a "hell or high water" clause obligating Nano, the buyer, to do whatever was necessary to secure regulatory approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), with a narrow exception if required actions would result in a loss of 10% or more of the company’s revenue.After the agreement was signed, a hedge fund replaced Nano’s board and management with personnel opposed to the deal. The new board then sought ways to back out. Although CFIUS approval was near, Nano’s new leadership began stalling, making endless counterproposals, delaying communications, and attempting to trigger the revenue-loss exception by claiming that a requirement to maintain a German facility would exceed the 10% threshold.While the buyer tried to appear compliant with the contract, the evidence—particularly a 38-day gap in responding to CFIUS—revealed a pattern of bad faith and delay. Desktop Metal, struggling financially, was meticulous in adhering to operating covenants, collecting receivables and consulting Nano on business decisions, knowing any misstep could be weaponized to kill the deal. Despite pressure, the seller never received a renegotiation offer from Nano.At trial, the team presented the buyer’s conduct as a strategic “slow-walk.” The court ultimately agreed, affirming that a hell or high water clause must be honored in both letter and spirit. The case serves as a reminder that efforts to evade deal obligations—particularly those cloaked in delay or technicalities—will be exposed under judicial scrutiny, and that Delaware courts remain committed to upholding contractual integrity in complex M&A transactions.Podcast Link: Law-disrupted.fmHost: John B. Quinn Producer: Alexis HydeMusic and Editing by: Alexander Rossi

John is joined by Spencer Collins, Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer of Arm Holdings, the UK-based semiconductor design firm known for powering over 99% of smartphones globally with its energy-efficient CPU designs.  They discuss the legal challenges that arise from Arm’s unique position in the semiconductor industry. Arm has a unique business model, centered on licensing intellectual property rather than manufacturing processors. This model is evolving as Arm considers moving “up the stack,” potentially entering into processor production to compete more directly in the AI hardware space.  Since its $31 billion acquisition by SoftBank in 2016, Arm has seen tremendous growth, culminating in an IPO in 2023 at a $54 billion valuation and its market value nearly doubling since.AI is a major strategic focus for Arm, as its CPUs are increasingly central to AI processing in cloud and edge environments.  Arm’s high-profile AI projects include Nvidia’s Grace Hopper superchip and Microsoft’s new AI server chips, both of which rely heavily on Arm CPU cores.   Arm is positioned to be a key infrastructure player in AI’s future based on its broad customer base, the low power consumption of its semiconductors, and their extensive security features. Nvidia’s proposed $40 billion acquisition of ARM collapsed due to regulatory pushback in the U.S., Europe, and China.  This led SoftBank to pivot to taking 10% of Arm public.  Arm is now aggressively strengthening its intellectual property strategy, expanding patent filings, and upgrading legal operations to better protect its innovations in the AI space.Spencer describes his own career path—from law firm M&A work to a leadership role at SoftBank’s Vision Fund, where he worked on deals like the $7.7 billion Uber investment—culminating in his current post.   He suggests that general counsel for major tech firms must be intellectually agile, invest in best-in-class advisors, and maintain geopolitical awareness to navigate today’s rapidly changing legal and regulatory landscape.Podcast Link: Law-disrupted.fmHost: John B. Quinn Producer: Alexis HydeMusic and Editing by: Alexander Rossi

Caleb Harris, Co-Founder and CEO of &AI, discusses how his startup is revolutionizing patent litigation with artificial intelligence. They delve into AI's role in tasks like invalidity analysis and infringement assessment, significantly cutting down on time and costs. &AI harnesses publicly available data to rapidly generate legal documents, geared for accuracy while minimizing errors. The conversation also explores the challenges of courtroom dynamics and the ongoing need for human expertise in navigating this groundbreaking landscape.

John is joined by Maaren A. Shah and Luke Nikas, both partners in Quinn Emanuel’s New York office.  Maaren and Luke have the top art disputes practice in the world.   They discuss Maaren and Luke’s recent victory in the multi-front litigation concerning the legacy of American pop artist Robert Indiana, best known for his iconic LOVE sculpture. The case began when Indiana’s longtime advisor, who held exclusive rights to fabricate Indiana’s works, discovered that Michael McKenzie was creating and selling unauthorized artworks.  This led to a copyright and trademark infringement lawsuit.At the time, Indiana was elderly, isolated on an island off the coast of Maine, and physically deteriorating.  Indiana’s situation was worsened by a coordinated effort by several individuals to cut him off from his longtime supporters and assume control over his name, artwork, and brand. The day after the initial lawsuit was filed, Indiana passed away, causing further complications.  His estate sought to terminate contracts with the advisor and seize control of its intellectual property rights and valuable inventory of Robert Indiana artworks.  The legal fight quickly expanded into multiple jurisdictions with overlapping lawsuits involving McKenzie, the advisor, the estate, and the sole beneficiary of the estate, a charitable foundation called the Star of Hope.  Maaren and Luke formed an alliance with the Star of Hope and the Maine Attorney General’s office, which regulated the foundation.  They secured an agreement with the foundation ensuring the advisor would retain its rights, inventory, and business role regardless of the outcome of the litigation with the estate, rendering that litigation moot.  The Estate quickly buckled and ended its pursuit of the advisor.With the advisor’s rights and assets secured, the team turned back to McKenzie, who had previously misrepresented the number of Indiana works in his possession.  After the team uncovered numerous hidden artworks and secured devastating testimony from McKenzie’s former associate, among others, the court imposed terminating sanctions, including dismissing McKenzie’s claims and awarding the advisor its attorney’s fees.  The victory ultimately protects Indiana’s legacy and ensures stability in the market for his art.Podcast Link: Law-disrupted.fmHost: John B. Quinn Producer: Alexis HydeMusic and Editing by: Alexander Rossi