On The Merits

On the Merits is on hiatus for a bit while we create some great new episodes for you. Until then, we're pleased to offer a special presentation of our ABA Silver Gavel award-winning series, UnCommon Law.Generative AI tools are already promising to change the world. Systems like OpenAI's ChatGPT can answer complex questions, write poems and code, and even mimic famous authors with uncanny accuracy. But in using copyrighted materials to train these powerful AI products, are AI companies infringing the rights of untold creators?This season on UnCommon Law, we'll explore the intersection between artificial intelligence and the law. Episode one examines how large language models actually ingest and learn from billions of online data points, including copyrighted works. And we explore the lawsuits filed by creators who claim their copyrights were exploited without permission to feed the data-hungry algorithms powering tools like ChatGPT.If you like this episode and want to hear part 2, visit news.bloomberglaw.com/podcasts, or search for UnCommon Law in your podcast app.Guests: Matthew Butterick, founder at Butterick Law, and co-counsel with the Joseph Saveri Law Firm on class-action lawsuits against OpenAI and others Isaiah Poritz, technology reporter for Bloomberg Law James Grimmelmann, professor of digital and information law at Cornell Tech and Cornell Law School

When California's new mental health courts were getting started, the debate centered on whether they had too much power–or too little.Now, roughly six months in, the state is discovering a new flaw: too few people are using them.On this episode of our podcast, On The Merits, Bloomberg Law reporter Maia Spoto talks about why California's Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment, or CARE, Courts, have had such an underwhelming start. Also, what this means for the state's governor, Gavin Newsom (D), who invested a large amount of political capital into them. We also hear from one of the judges helping to set up a CARE Court in Orange County, who talks about the large amount of manpower needed to adjudicate these special types of cases.Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

Marijuana is now legal in about half of the states, but still maintains its illegal status at the federal level. What does this mean for an employer who wants to, or has to, administer drug tests for its employees?We tackle that question on our podcast, On The Merits, with Sean Mack, a partner and co-chair of the cannabis and hemp law practice at the New Jersey firm Pashman Stein. Mack says testing employees for marijuana–or even firing them for testing positive–is now so fraught with employment law issues that it may no longer be worth the hassle.Mack also talks about a case out of Ohio, Fisher v. Airgas, in which an employee who was fired for a false positive marijuana test result won at the federal appellate level. Mack says it's a sign that, in employment law cases, even federal judges are able to look beyond pot's controlled substance status.Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

Hetal Doshi, the top antitrust litigator at the Department of Justice, says she tries to make the cases her team pursues easy for the average person to understand."If we are litigating cases inside an echo chamber, or like in a very narrow, technocratic way that only other lawyers can understand, then we're failing to do our jobs," Doshi says on this episode of our podcast, On The Merits.Doshi spoke to reporters Leah Nylen and Danielle Kaye about how this philosophy played into recent cases that blocked mergers in the airline and publishing industries. Doshi also talks about the idea that antitrust laws are meant to protect not only consumers from higher prices, but also to protect workers from lower wages.Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

The Commerce Department's disastrous rollout of a new payment system left some National Weather Service employees on the hook for their own business expenses, and even led utility companies to shut off power to some critical weather systems due to unpaid bills.Bloomberg Government reporter Jack Fitzpatrick found that even now, months after this system went online, the Department is still working through a backlog of unpaid invoices. And despite a report from its Inspector General, it's still not clear what exactly went wrong and who at the Department is to blame.On this episode of our podcast, On The Merits, Fitzpatrick explains what happens when a federal agency can't pay its bills on time and what might happen when the Department expands this troubled payment system in the years to come.Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

Harvard, NYU, and several other elite universities have been hit with civil rights lawsuits from students who say the schools allow, or at least don't counter, campus antisemitism.Though these suits largely stem from an increase in antisemitic incidents since Oct. 7, attorneys say the groundwork for them was laid with an executive order back in 2019. That's when the Trump administration adopted a broad definition of antisemitism for civil rights claims under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.On today's episode of On The Merits, Bloomberg News reporter David Voreacos talks about the litigation and why the policy change could pose challenges for the universities facing the suits. We also hear from attorneys representing Jewish students in two of the suits. They explain why they believe universities should be held accountable for the actions of their students and faculty.Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

It's becoming more common for investors to chip in money for a lawsuit in exchange for a share of any payout a party wins, a practice known as litigation finance. But, as a recent Bloomberg Law investigation found, the identities of these litigation funders is often shrouded in mystery—and can have national security implications.Bloomberg Law reporters Emily R. Siegel and John Holland learned about a Russian company with close ties to Vladimir Putin that financed the creditors in US and UK bankruptcy proceedings—even after several of its founders were sanctioned due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Holland and Siegel join our podcast, On The Merits, to explain why attorneys say this was an attempt to use litigation finance to evade international sanctions, and whether it will lead to new rules on this practice. They also talk about how the Russian company came within hours of receiving a more than $6 million payout before a bankruptcy judge put a stop to it.Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

Insurance companies like The Allstate Corp. and State Farm have experienced one too many devastating wildfire seasons in California. Many are looking to exit the market in impacted communities, but a powerful state lawmaker is trying to keep them.Mike McGuire is a Democrat representing a Northern California district directly affected by wildfires, and he just became the top ranking member of the California State Senate. Many of his constituents say they've gotten non-renewal notices or steep rate hikes. He wants to require insurers to issue policies to property owners who take wildfire mitigation measures.On this episode of On The Merits, our California correspondent Andrew Oxford tells us why insurers no longer want to cover climate-vulnerable areas and what politicians like McGuire can do about it.Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

Former federal judge and law firm partner Katherine Forrest discusses the risks of using AI tools in legal settings, citing cases of fake citations and manipulated fees. She emphasizes the importance of human expertise alongside AI technology while exploring the potential benefits of using AI for legal research and analysis.

A quarter of law students surveyed by Bloomberg Law late last year said they self-identify as neurodivergent, an umbrella term for people with ADHD, autism, or another condition that causes their brains to function differently than that of the average person.But the same survey found that more than three times fewer working attorneys identify as neurodivergent. Which means, as more of this upcoming cohort of lawyers enters the workforce, firms may need to change their policies to accommodate them—or, at the very least, to avoid being hit with disability discrimination complaints.Bloomberg Law analyst Jessica Blaemire analyzed the survey data, and also looked at federal data on discrimination complaints specifically related to neurodivergence. She joins our podcast, On The Merits, to talk about what these numbers mean and about what firms can do to make their workplaces more welcoming.Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.