Most attention of an appellate court’s heavy lifting is given to its written opinions and orders: requested relief is either granted or denied. But now and again a jurist includes a written statement signaling forward-looking interest in future arguments. Astute trial and appellate lawyers (and judges) make it a routine to review an appellate court’s…
Tag: Lori Shemka
Uniform emoji descriptions for legal writing
3,790 emojis are in the Unicode Standard as of September 2024. The next expected emoji release (Emoji 17.0) is slated for September 2025. Unicode and Emojipedia are the go-to resources for finding uniform text descriptions to pair with the emojis mentioned in legal writing. Unicode keeps a separate list of modifier sequences that takes into…
A new way to use audio files as an information resource using NotebookLM
Many probably know of NotebookLM as the AI collaborator where you can upload documents (“sources”) to a digital “notebook” and then ask questions about the information in your sources. NotebookLM responds with an answer and citations to the sources you’ve supplied. Since you control what NotebookLM focuses on, there’s less worry about made-up hallucinations. NotebookLM…
Michigan Civil Jury Instructions encourage respect of any expressed personal pronouns
Progress. As the Michigan Supreme Court considered its administrative file (in 2023) to amend a court rule that would allow parties and attorneys to include any preferred personal pronoun in the caption section of court filings and would require courts to use those pronouns (unless doing so would result in an unclear record), I submitted…
(Emojis omitted.)
Legal-decision readers are familiar with quotation parentheticals like (emphasis added/omitted/changed), (alteration in original), (quotation marks and citation omitted), or (cleaned up). A new kid shows up every once in a great while: (emojis omitted). I noticed (emojis omitted) in the August 29, 2024 memorandum decision from the Indiana Court of Appeals Shannon v Indiana, 23A-CR-2744…
Self-represented litigant receives warning (not sanctions) for submitting “false and nonexistent legal authority”
A federal district court judge in New York’s Southern District recently used her discretion to warn a self-represented litigant about submitting false and nonexistent legal authority to the Court. Sanctions may be imposed for submitting false and nonexistent legal authority to the Court. See, e.g., Park v. Kim, 91 F.4th 610, 613-16 (2d Cir. 2024)…
Seeing how judicial decision-making benefits when using a “focus order”
A “focus order” is an order from the court to the parties directing them to focus their upcoming briefing and argument on specified issues. The Michigan Supreme Court routinely includes “focus” instructions in its argument orders. For years, the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers has found the focus order tool to be positive and productive…
Four different prompts. Asking Claude.ai to help understand a divided appellate decision
Three justices wrote when the Michigan Supreme Court released Thursday’s 62-page decision in Shareef El-Jamaly v Kirco Manix Const (164902-4). Justice Welch penned the 32-page majority (joined by Justices Bernstein, Cavanagh, and Bolden). Chief Justice Clement filed a 3-page opinion that concurred and dissented in part. Justice Zahra authored a 27-page dissent (joined by Justice…
When 4 jurists write: Prompting Claude.ai to create tables of disagreement and agreement and asking follow-ups in the ex parte decision People v Loew (164133)
Four justices wrote when the Michigan Supreme Court released today’s 93-page decision in People v Loew (164133). Chief Justice Clement penned the 29-page lead majority (joined by Justices Zahra and Viviano). Justice Welch filed a 31-page opinion that concurred and dissented in part (joined by Justice Cavanagh). Justice Bolden wrote for herself in a 15-page…
Prompting Claude.ai to create tables of disagreement and agreement in the indigent/expert-witness decision People v Warner (163805)
A divided Michigan Supreme Court released its 39-page decision in People v Warner (163805) last Thursday. I deleted the Syllabus pages and put Claude.ai (a next-generation AI assistant) to work on the majority and dissenting opinions by creating tables showing the areas of disagreement and agreement. Here is the prompt: Create a three-column table that outlines the key…