California Pulse


  • Voir Dire: Law360 Pulse's Weekly Quiz

    In its coverage this week, Law360 Pulse explored the problem of legal deserts in the U.S., detailed the news of a new AI-native law firm, and focused in on a change-up in Weil Gotshal LLP's corporate department leadership. Test your legal news savvy here with Law360 Pulse's weekly quiz.

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    Firms Seek To Help 'Most Vulnerable' In Rural America

    Major law firms across the country regularly deploy pro bono resources to help people in areas with few lawyers, and they rely on nonprofit and corporate partners with close community ties to direct those resources to where they are needed most.

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    Strict Rules Limit Paraprofessional Ranks In Legal Deserts

    Legal paraprofessionals can offer much-needed legal aid to those who can't find attorneys, but difficulties scaling up nascent state licensing programs and getting paraprofessionals to rural areas is limiting their impact.

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    Crowell & Moring Hires Employment Atty From Ballard Spahr

    Crowell & Moring announced Thursday that it has hired a former Ballard Spahr lawyer to join its labor and employment group, bringing years of experience handling wage-and-hour class actions and other complex employment-related issues on behalf of some of the biggest companies in the country.

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    Patchwork Efforts Grow Lawyer Pipeline To Reach Legal Deserts

    A patchwork of local pipeline programs aims to educate and bring the next generation of attorneys to rural communities and legal deserts across the country.

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    Greenberg Traurig Lands Jones Day Life Science Pro In Calif.

    A longtime Jones Day patent attorney and former medicinal chemist has brought his practice to Greenberg Traurig LLP in San Diego.

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    Husch Blackwell Launches Complex Torts Litigation Unit

    Husch Blackwell LLP has launched a platform committed to providing tools to defendant companies facing complex torts litigation, dedicating more than 165 attorneys in over 30 states to the effort, the firm has announced.

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    Aligned Data Centers Atty Joins Montera As CLO

    Data center company Montera Infrastructure has named a former Aligned Data Centers in-house attorney as its chief legal officer to build its legal department.

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    OpenAI Adds ChatGPT Configuration Tuned To Legal Work

    Artificial intelligence company OpenAI, following the release of the latest model of its ChatGPT software earlier this month, announced on Thursday a legal-specific configuration to perform legal research, analysis and writing.

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    Seyfarth Shaw Adds Veteran Employment Atty In Century City

    Seyfarth Shaw announced on Wednesday it has hired the general counsel of The Mancini Foundation, a nonprofit focused on mental health awareness and advocacy, to join the firm's labor & employment practice in Los Angeles.

  • Ford Says Quill & Arrow Can't Escape Lemon Law Fee Fight

    Ford Motor Co. has told a California federal judge that Quill & Arrow LLP must face claims that it saddled Ford with high-priced legal bills for work purportedly handled by virtual assistants overseas or nonlawyers, saying the personal injury firm's "fraud factory" tactics cannot continue unchecked.

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    Brownstein Hyatt Grows In LA With Litigation Hire

    Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP announced it has hired a California litigation attorney who most recently served as of counsel at Salisian LLP in Los Angeles.

  • Apple Backs Its $132K Fee Ask Over 'Bad Faith' Subpoenas

    Apple has urged a California federal magistrate judge to grant its $132,700 attorney fee request as a sanction against plaintiff consumers' lead lawyer in antitrust litigation claiming Google muscles out rival search engines, but said Apple's counsel doesn't want to disclose their "highly and competitively sensitive" negotiated legal rates.

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    Weil Names New Corporate Leaders After Dept. Chair's Exit

    Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP has named two longtime private equity and mergers and acquisitions partners as the next corporate department co-chairs, promising to expand the headcount and breadth of the practice group after the former head left for Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP last week. 

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    AI Could Help State Courts Run More Efficiently, Panelists Say

    Artificial intelligence can help state courts operate more efficiently and ease workload strains by automating repetitive tasks, according to participants in a Wednesday panel discussion organized by the National Center for State Courts.

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    Getting To Court Can Pose Barrier To Justice In Rural America

    In rural areas of the U.S., many people live great distances from courthouses and other legal services, creating major barriers to accessing justice and taking a toll on residents, lawyers and legal personnel.

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    Ogletree Continues West Coast Hires With Jackson Lewis Atty

    Labor and employment law firm Ogletree Deakins Nash Smoak & Stewart PC has landed a seasoned litigator from Jackson Lewis P.C. with extensive experience in ERISA and employment law matters, the firm announced Monday.

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    How States' 'Perry Mason Moment' Led To $17B Meta Deal

    A recent landmark $17.1 billion settlement with Meta Platforms Inc. may have never happened if it weren't for a quick-thinking trial attorney and his close-knit team of lawyers representing 29 states, who worked together to swiftly shift strategies midtrial.

  • Calif. Judge Charged Over Fatal Crash With Bicyclist

    California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Tuesday that his office charged Kings County Superior Court Judge Kendra Weber with a misdemeanor count of vehicular manslaughter, alleging she struck and killed a bicyclist.

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    Orrick Hires CFO From Paul Hastings, Tech Leader From KKR

    Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP announced Tuesday that the firm has two new C-suite executives, both of whom will be based in New York.

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    Legal Ops Pay Stagnates As Big Company GCs See Increases

    A company's size has always influenced pay for in-house lawyers, but a new study shows a significant difference for general counsel and chief legal officers, with their median base salaries running 90% higher than their counterparts at smaller organizations. Meanwhile, compensation for directors of legal operations was flat.

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    Legal Deserts: Millions Across America Struggle To Access Lawyers

    Tens of millions of Americans live in towns and counties across the nation with limited or no access to legal services. By one estimate, at least a third of the nation's counties qualify as a "legal desert," having only one or no attorney per 1,000 residents. Roughly 24 million Americans reside in these counties.

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    California Wildfire Litigator Joins Sterlington From Buchalter

    Sterlington PLLC announced Monday that an experienced litigation attorney with a niche practice focusing on matters related to wildfires has joined the New York-based firm from Buchalter PC and will work remotely from Sacramento, California.

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    What Happens When The Only Lawyer In Town Retires?

    Many rural attorneys, often the only lawyer in town, work until they die or simply close their practices when they retire. But small to mid-sized firms looking to expand into rural markets could help to make succession planning a real possibility for these solo practitioners.

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    First-Gen Students Pressured By Earlier BigLaw Recruiting

    Students who are the first in their families to attend law school have been thrown a new challenge at the beginning of their legal journeys, as BigLaw accelerates their recruitment timelines.

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Expert Analysis

  • Making Legal Cents: Create Marketing Clients Find Useful Author Photo

    The law firm marketing efforts with the best return on investment are things that actively provide value to potential clients: practical business guidance, uncluttered proposals that anticipate their questions and opportunities to participate in curated industry conversations, says Shireen Hilal at Maior Strategic Consulting.

  • Law Firm Leaders Should Adopt Founding Fathers' Bold Ideas Author Photo

    To ensure continued success, law firm leaders helming their firms through the legal industry revolution should take inspiration from the Founding Fathers' bold decisions, such as James Madison's abandonment of the Articles of Confederation and George Washington's trust in junior officers', says Samuel Pond at Pond Lehocky.

  • The AI Ownership Question Firms Can't Afford To Skip Author Photo

    The artificial intelligence conversation among law firm leaders has advanced from adoption to governance and business impact, but it hasn’t resolved who maintains ownership and operational responsibility, which should be determined by the range of functions that AI touches, says Jennifer Johnson at Calibrate.

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    Biz Development Tip Of The Month: Practice Authenticity

    Attorneys who demonstrate who they truly are and what they stand for by sharing the human impact of their results, earning the media's trust by providing accessible analysis, and providing hands-on aid to their communities can build stronger reputations than any advertising budget can buy, says Ray DeLorenzi at RebuttalPR.

  • Legal AI Adoption Tips And Takeaways From Dot-Com Bubble Author Photo

    Legal artificial intelligence is on a similar trajectory as the internet in the dot-com era, where several internet companies failed after the initial market frenzy, but even if AI company valuations take a hit and the industry goes through a major reordering, legal leaders should note that the technology itself remains genuinely transformational for the delivery of legal services, says Gabriel Buigas at Integreon.

  • Opinion

    Keeping PE Out Of Law Is Job For Courts, Not Capitols Author Photo

    Efforts by lawmakers in California, Colorado and Illinois seeking to bar private equity firms, hedge funds and other nonattorney investors from owning or financing law firms risk intruding on authority that state constitutions and the inherent powers doctrine have traditionally assigned to the judiciary, says attorney Felix Shipkevich.

  • Legal Tech Talks: WordSmith AI's CEO On Shifting Mindsets Author Photo

    Ross McNairn, founder and CEO of Wordsmith AI, discusses how the lawyers who treat legal work like an engineering problem and can deploy legal intelligence at scale will define the next decade.

  • Avoiding The Changing Pitfalls Of Firm Website Redesigns Author Photo

    BigLaw firms about to tackle a website redesign need to understand the fundamental changes to costs, timelines, vendors and technology since their last big update so their leadership teams can steer resource management decisions away from costly potential mistakes, says Stephan Roussan at Vertical Minds.

  • Public AI Disclosures Raise Stakes For AI Agent Oversight Author Photo

    Two recent reports shift the legal posture of every organization deploying artificial intelligence agents because they establish the foreseeability, for negligence liability purposes, of an AI agent becoming weaponized for data exfiltration, says Camilo Artiga-Purcell at Kiteworks.

  • How Firms Can Win Market For Unified Legal Client Services Author Photo

    Firms willing to develop a new operating model, where AI-powered legal tech is paired with deep industry expertise and a different incentive structure, can win over companies looking to consolidate their legal needs with a single provider, says Lana Manganiello at Practice Growth Partner.

  • 7 AI Training Tips For Law Firm Summer Associate Programs Author Photo

    Law firms trying to weave artificial intelligence into summer associate programs should build a program that isn't really about AI but teaches students how to think about using AI, with the goal of building judgment, understanding implications and leveling up in a way that's repeatable, says Zeynep Ersin at Seyfarth.

  • Series

    Biz Development Tip Of The Month: Don't Obstruct Knowledge Author Photo

    Lawyers and firms should treat knowledge transfer as a business development function, using the sharing of context and institutional know-how to preserve continuity through change, strengthen relationships and create long-term competitive advantage, says Mark Wraight at Stinson.

  • How Private Equity Priorities Will Test The Law Firm Model Author Photo

    The biggest question about private equity moving into the legal sector is no longer whether it can financially succeed, but how law firms can contend with the unavoidable economic, institutional and ethical tensions introduced by external ownership without compromising their core professional commitments, say Kirsten Vasquez and Allison Rosner at Major Lindsey.

  • AI-Powered Search Demands New Legal Marketing Playbook Author Photo

    As potential clients use artificial intelligence tools instead of search engines when looking for counsel, it is a democratizing moment for specialized midsize firms and a compression threat for generalist big-firm brand positioning, says Ronn Torossian at 5WPR.

  • What Law Firm MSOs Can Learn From Accounting Co. Model Author Photo

    Private equity capital has been flowing into accounting firms for years, with investors developing creative structures to work within that field's specific ownership restrictions, and the framework developed by these transactions offers valuable insights for law firms looking for outside investment, says Russell Shapiro at Levenfeld Pearlstein.

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