Law, disrupted

Kimberly Carson, Partner in Quinn Emanuel’s New York Office, discusses the FTC's nationwide ban on non-compete agreements, exceptions to the rule, legal challenges, and alternative measures for employers to protect their interests, including trade secret litigation and fixed-duration contracts.

 John is joined by Michael K. Young, Professor of Law and Former President of Texas A&M University, the University of Washington and the University of Utah.  They discuss Michael’s career in higher education, starting with his years at Columbia Law School, including the two and a half years that he was a visiting Professor at the University of Tokyo, his establishment of the East Asian Legal Studies Center at Columbia and continuing through his service at the State Department where he negotiated treaties involving trade, international environmental law, human rights, and the terms under which Germany was unified.  They then discuss Michael’s tenure as Dean of George Washington Law School and the University of Utah and, later, President of the University of Utah, the University of Washington, and Texas A&M University. Michael describes his current role at a research center that is preparing the entire educational system, from primary school through university, for the futuristic megacity project in Saudi Arabia called NEOM.  Michael explains how his training as a lawyer helped him perform in these leadership positions by always maintaining his focus on the ends he is trying to achieve, the purpose of the institution and  seeing both sides of each issue.  Michael also explains several leadership lessons he has learned including that leaders need to genuinely listen and convey that they have listened, keep everyone focused on the institution’s mission, spread credit generously and take blame when thing go wrong.  Finally, John and Michael discuss the current controversies over free speech at American campuses.  Michael shares his approach to handling volatile situations with controversial speakers.Podcast Link: Law-disrupted.fmHost: John B. Quinn Producer: Alexis HydeMusic and Editing by: Alexander Rossi

John is joined by Christine Lehman, Managing Partner of the Washington, D.C. office of Reichman Jorgensen Lehman & Feldberg LLP and an accomplished trial attorney focusing on patent litigation.  They discuss the $525 million verdict Christine and her team recently won against Amazon Web Services (AWS) for infringing tech company Kove’s patent rights in data-storage technology.  Christine describes how she presented to the jury the journey of the inventor, John Overton, from his troubled youth in Kentucky, to majoring in religion in college, to developing a method to efficiently organize and index all the photographs he took on a yearlong bicycle trip across the country.  He and co-inventor Stephen Bailey ultimately implemented this method in a way that allowed users to search millions of data items quickly and formed the basis for Kove’s patented technology.  Christine also describes the extensive pretrial proceedings that occurred over the six years that the lawsuit against AWS was pending.  John and Christine then discuss the ten-day trial itself, including the defendant’s last-minute decision to abandon its invalidity defense, the judge’s procedure for allowing jurors to submit questions to each witness, and how those questions informed her team about how well the jury understood the technical issues in the case.  Finally, they discuss the different approaches taken by the two sides in presenting their experts and how Christine presented her client’s damages case leading to the $525 million verdict.Podcast Link: Law-disrupted.fmHost: John B. Quinn Producer: Alexis HydeMusic and Editing by: Alexander Rossi

C. Dabney O'Riordan, former leader of SEC's Asset Management Unit, discusses minimizing SEC risk for asset managers by taking proactive steps like self-identification, updating policies, providing training, hiring compliance consultants, and making remedial payments if needed.

Jesse Bernstein discusses securities law, including recent Supreme Court rulings and a victorious case involving Elon Musk's tweet. They explore the history of securities laws, the challenges of securities litigation, and upcoming issues in the field.

John is joined by Dr. Hamed Merah, Chief Executive Officer of the Saudi Center for Commercial Arbitration (SCCA) and Nasser Alrubayyi, Managing Partner (KSA), Co-Chair Middle East & North Africa Practice .  They discuss commercial arbitration in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the recent impact of the Saudi Center for Commercial Arbitration. Dr. Hamed explains SCCA’s mission to establish a world class center with full case management services where foreign parties will feel comfortable submitting their disputes to a diverse roster of accomplished, impartial independent arbitrators. Although almost half of the SCCA’s caseload is construction related, it also adjudicates cases involving banking, capital markets, intellectual property, media, and the pharmaceutical industry.  They discuss how legislation in the last five years has removed restrictions on Saudi governmental entities submitting disputes to arbitration to the point that arbitration with the SCCA is now the default option in contracts between governmental entities and foreign parties. Nasser explains that parties are increasingly moving from ad hoc stand-alone arbitration procedures to institutional arbitration through the SCCA because the SCCA is the quicker and more cost efficient option. Dr Hamed also describes a recent study concluding that more than 90% of the SCCA’s awards have been upheld when challenged in annulment proceedings.  Finally, they discuss how arbitration with the SCCA is becoming more popular in technical cases, IP cases and construction disputes.Podcast Link: Law-disrupted.fmHost: John B. Quinn Producer: Alexis HydeMusic and Editing by: Alexander Rossi

John is joined by Professor Song Sang-Hyun, retired Professor of Law at Seoul National University and former President of the International Criminal Court.  Professor Song explains the origins of the Korean civil justice system which is based upon the German system by way of Japan.  He discusses  how after World War II, American Army officers drafted many of Korea’s statutes and, in the past two decades, American law in fields such as corporate law, shipping and aviation law, antitrust law, securities regulations, intellectual property, and class action lawsuits have increasingly influenced Korean law.  They then discuss Korean pretrial practice which does not involve voluminous document discovery or any depositions and often involves the trial judge also acting as a mediator.  Professor Song explains some of the unique aspects of Korean trial practice including Korea’s recent adoption of juries that render advisory decisions on disputed facts and that cases average less than a year from filing through trial.  They also discuss that the loser must pay the winner’s attorneys’ fees, although, in practice, courts tend to award less than all the fees incurred.  Finally, they discuss some of the emerging issues in Korean law including labor, environmental and privacy law as well as the protection of personal information.Podcast Link: Law-disrupted.fmHost: John B. Quinn Producer: Alexis HydeMusic and Editing by: Alexander Rossi

John is joined by Eytan Liraz, the Principal of Eytan Liraz & Co. Law Offices, one of the foremost business litigation firms in Israel.  Eytan explains some of the unique aspects of business litigation in Israel, including that Israel has more lawyers per capita than any other country on earth, that aggressive litigation is a common and accepted business strategy, and that Israel has far more class action lawsuits than other countries, including lawsuits where the complaints are literally copies of class action complaints that have been filed in the U.S.  He also explains the three phases that each lawsuit goes through: (1) the initial phase in which the claimant files a statement of claim raising its main arguments and elements of proof and the defendant files a statement of defense containing its arguments and proof, (2) the pretrial phase in which limited discovery and any preliminary motions take place and all evidence and expert opinions are filed with the court, and (3) the interrogation phase in which the parties are allowed to conduct cross-examinations of the adversary’s witnesses.  Cases are usually decided within one year and four months of the first filing.  Finally, they discuss the impact the events of October 7 have had on litigation in Israel including the number of lawyers who are not available due to military service, the entire court system shutting down for two months and the general effect, now dissipating, of people being unusually reluctant to litigate.Podcast Link: Law-disrupted.fmHost: John B. Quinn Producer: Alexis HydeMusic and Editing by: Alexander Rossi

Courtney Bowman, Global Director of Privacy at Palantir, joins to discuss emerging AI regulation trends. Topics include the EU AI Act, federal regulatory developments in the U.S., state-level legislative initiatives, and upcoming challenges in AI legislation.

John is joined by Christopher Bogart, CEO, Director and Co-Founder of Burford Capital, the largest litigation funding firm in the world.  They discuss the use of AI and data science in litigation funding decisions. Chris explains that while AI is currently not advanced enough to make decisions on whether to fund a case, advances in data science now allow litigation funders to improve their decisions by examining enormous amounts of public data to find meaningful facts such as accurate damage ranges that are often buried deep in individual case dockets. Chris also identifies the key data points used to evaluate whether to fund a case, including the legal theory of the case, the counsel representing the parties, the judge or arbitrator presiding over the case, and the likely time to reach an outcome.  Finally, John and Chris also discuss other ways that AI is impacting the legal profession including the use of AI to provide real time assistance in cross examination, the use of AI by courts in Singapore and Connecticut to adjudicate low value routine matters and traffic violations, and how AI has enabled smaller firms to expand into areas of litigation they previously could not handle such as large antitrust cases by automating the review and processing of millions of pages of documents. Podcast Link: Law-disrupted.fmHost: John B. Quinn Producer: Alexis HydeMusic and Editing by: Alexander Rossi