Appreciated the chance to take the research and writing lead on this white paper just published by the National Center for State Courts about how to reconsider court form notarization requirements. To require a notarized signature or not: A simplified workflow for reviewing court form signature requirements
Category: Uncategorized
Plain-language friendly Michigan Rules of Evidence go into effect on January 1
After a great deal of collaboration, study, and public hearing, Michigan’s revamped Rules of Evidence went into effect on January 1. (Here is a clean version.) The new version is impressively shorter by more than 1,200 words. The administrative order’s staff comment explains: The amendments of the Michigan Rules of Evidence (MRE) reflect the work…
Asking Google to remove PII or doxxing content from Google Search
Good information to know. Google has a form where you can request Google to take down certain results or information, including info that could be used for doxxing you (like ID numbers, financial information, medical records, your physical address, and other contact information). Here is the link where you can learn more and start a removal…
Contributing to improving A2J and preventing downstream problems—one of the best parts of court administration work
Starting January 1, 2024, indigent individuals will no longer have to pay the cost for any ordered newspaper publication in Michigan name change matters. Thanks to today’s amendment of MCR 3.613 by the Michigan Supreme Court, the local court will have to pay any newspaper publication cost if the court has otherwise waived fees under…
Putting Claude.ai to work creating outlines of filed court briefs
Given Anthropic’s Claude.ai’s impressive ability to handle .pdf uploads and complex prompts, it seemed only right to upload public efiled court briefing, put the AI-created output in comparative table form, and see how things would go. Overall? Pretty darn good! Check out how well (with a couple of misses) Claude followed my instructions on how to…
Putting Claude.ai to work drafting an opinion outline
Anthropic’s Claude.ai is the new [AI] kid on the block. Yes, I did link to one of “those” videos. One of Claude’s unique features is that users can upload file(s) (.pdf, .csv, .txt, and the like) and then ask questions about them. You can’t do this with the free versions of ChatGPT, Bard, or Bing…
Make Microsoft Word “macros” your power hack for plain-language editing
Why it matters Readers know why they prefer writers who use short, simple, and familiar words and phrases: before > antecedent to | so > accordingly | matches > comports with. Unnecessary words should be struck (like pulling weeds from your garden and flower beds): enough > a sufficient number of | [omit] > as…
Lawyers need to “up” their pleading game when describing generative AI exchanges
A Gwinnett County, Georgia court will handle what’s thought to be the first defamation lawsuit about a ChatGPT response (h/t Bloomberg Law and Professor Eugene Volokh). The June 5, 2023 complaint is thin on important details about the non-party user’s ChatGPT exchanges (or any damages suffered by the named plaintiff who has a fairly common…
ChatGPT was never designed for legal research (and here is why it should NOT be used that way)
Even though ChatGPT has some pretty clear disclaimers about factual accuracy, two New York City attorneys and their law firm gained a lot of public attention for claiming that the bogus cases cited in their federal court filing were the result of (wrongly) using ChatGPT as a legal-research database. Federal District Court Judge P. Kevin…
When judges add descriptive footnotes (and an itemized appendix) as they “write” about “inserted images,” they preserve the judicial-decision tapestry.
Why? Because many third-party-online publishers leave images out from the original decision. Imagine footnotes like these being dropped into a judicial decision: [Proposed new footnote:] To help future readers who may read this decision in a third-party, text-only format that left out the image, Figure 1 is a black-and-white portrait photograph of Prince taken in…