What’s on my mind this week is the same basic issue from last week’s edition, the Soviet-like show trial of Donald Trump going on in Manhattan. To recap, DA Alvin Bragg has charged Trump with 34 felony counts for what he alleges are false business records, under a law that makes such violations unindictable misdemeanors, unless they are done to commit another crime. But there are several minor problems.
The indictment was returned in 2023. The statute of limitations on the misdemeanors expired in 2019, and the period of limitations on the felonies expired in 2022. And, oh yes, just what the second crime that was supposed to be the purpose of the false entries might be remains unclear. Bragg didn’t mention it in the indictment, and three weeks into the trial, he has, so far, failed to supply this detail. This is an important, dare I say crucial, part of the case, and its absence proves this trial to be a clown show designed to affect the upcoming election, rather than a real trial, for without that evidence, there’s no way the judge can tell the jury what must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Were this a real case, Bragg would have spelled out the second crime in the indictment, and on day one of the trial, the prosecutor would have told the jury in his opening statement exactly what he planned to prove. That didn’t happen, which has left media commentators to speculate.
It’s so bad that even commentators from far-Left lap dog media outlets are criticizing this farce. CNN’s Fareed Zakaria has said there would be no indictment or trial in New York City if the defendant’s name weren’t Donald Trump. Zakaria laid out the facts, noting the increasing number of Americans now see through the charade, and know the former president won’t be able to get a fair trial. Zakaria’s lucid interval even lasted long enough for him to admit that Trump’s immigration policies must be revisited and reauthorized to get the southern border under control. Liberal Democrat Eli Honig, a former assistant U.S. Attorney, said that there wouldn’t be a conviction if the trial venue were held in a region of the country that liberals didn’t dominate. Things have become so bad for Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden that even ardent liberals aren’t buying the bullshit anymore.
Professor Jonathan Turley, always an evenhanded legal analyst, was more blunt. He said that the calculus of Alvin Bragg is now obvious. He is counting on the jury convicting Trump regardless of the evidence. “Bragg has vaguely referred to the labeling of payments to Stormy Daniels as ‘legal expenses’ as a fraud committed to steal the election. However, the election was over when those denotations were made. Moreover, many believe that such a characterization for payments related to a nondisclosure agreement is accurate.” (Hillary Clinton’s campaign claimed in the same election that hiding the funding for the Steele dossier as legal expenses was perfectly accurate).
Professor Turley went on to note that Judge Juan Merchan has failed repeatedly to protect the rights of the accused in this case, but he held out hope. “If he wants to show he is truly neutral, Merchan should grant the [defendant’s] motion for a directed verdict.” That’s what any truly neutral jurist should do.” Indeed, any fair and impartial judge would have tossed this crap out as barred by the statute of limitations.
I’m afraid Professor Turley is expecting too much. He’s expecting justice to be done. That’s a vain hope. First, the judge isn’t fair and neutral. He’s a partisan. And secondly, too many Americans have become all too willing to accept the concept of “Lawfare” as a legitimate political tactic; or if not legitimate, at least a tactic that too many people are willing to tolerate. Lawfare is the concept that an acceptable method of attacking one’s political opponents is to use the courts to convict them, to bankrupt them, or to destroy their reputations.
Some friends of mine might say, “that’s just politics,” but it hasn’t been and must not be part of our political process. Lawfare is the hallmark of totalitarian dictatorships and banana republics. It’s unacceptable because it perverts justice and can lead to a breakdown of the rule of law. Prosecuting the former leader when he’s out of office is nothing new. It was a practice in ancient Rome. The Roman Senate’s threat to prosecute Julius Caesar when he ended his campaign in Gaul was one reason he crossed the Rubicon River with his army, returned to Rome as a Dictator, and turned the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire.
I can understand why the purposely ill-educated general public puts up with this perversion of justice. They are the victims of educational malpractice and don’t know any better. What’s incomprehensible to me is that highly educated commentators and public officials, many of whom are lawyers, and who understand all too well the perils of tolerating Lawfare, willingly accept the fact that criminal cases may be brought and jury verdicts may be based, not on the evidence presented, but on the political persuasion of the defendant, the prosecutor, the judge and the jurors.
Any American who values our system of justice, and who really cares about the “threats to our democracy” that Democrats are always crowing about, should be appalled by the travesties of justice ongoing in Manhattan, and elsewhere in this country. If a defendant can’t get a fair trial in New York City or in Washington, D.C. simply because of political affiliation, that’s the threat to our democracy we should be worried about. The sad fact is too many of us are willing to accept that truth, facts, and justice itself cease to matter when one Party controls the system.
It put me in mind of the British concept of Rotten Boroughs. In 19th century Great Britain, there were largely unpopulated constituencies maintained by the crown or by aristocratic patrons to control seats in the House of Commons. The King or the local Lord could control the small number of voters, and keep control of the legislature. Hardly the same process at work today, but largely the same result. Once deep Blue States have chased many of their conservative constituents to more friendly jurisdictions, the tyranny of one Party rule is able to taint the concept of justice itself. Manhattan and Washington, D.C. have become Rotten Boroughs where real justice has ceased to exist. And officers of the court who understand how dangerous and anti-American this is report it as just another political fact of life. Set your political persuasion aside. If you demand justice for yourself, then you must demand it for your worst enemy.
I’m old enough to have experienced the anti-war protests, a/k/a riots, of the 1960’s and 1970’s. As I’ve written on these pages, as disruptive as those protests were, at least the protesters were protesting real and perceived injustices that fundamentally affected every American. Those protests were about the Vietnam war, and U.S. intervention which steadily escalated from a few hundred advisors to more than 500,000 troops on the ground. The Vietnam protesters had some legitimate gripes. Some opposed what they considered the U.S. getting involved in a civil war. A few were dedicated Marxists, who were doing the bidding of the Communists, but only a few.
Most protesters had much more personal concerns. The protesters themselves, or their sons, brothers, or fathers, were being shipped to Vietnam, and more than 500 of them per month were being killed, and thousands more wounded. They protested a U.S. Draft system that tended to send the poor, minority men to Vietnam, while the more affluent remained home in colleges, and thus available to protest the system from which they had profited. Many college campuses were the sites of encampments and takeovers of school buildings. And the level of violence of the protests of old dwarfed that of the anti-Semitic, anti-Israel protests going on today.
The Vietnam protests got ugly. People were injured and killed. Colleges were occupied and disrupted. But the protests were put down because we had college administrators and elected officials who were willing to uphold the law. In today’s screwed up world, such people no longer exist, and even the concept of law enforcement is rejected by denizens of the Left.
The clear difference between the Vietnam protests and the current versions is that, in the 60’s and 70’s, the goal of the protesters was peace, while today’s headscarf wearing malcontents are in pursuit of a goal, which if achieved, would result in a 21st Century genocide of Jews. Now, they may not admit that, and in truth, many of them are so ignorant that they haven’t thought that far ahead. But whatever they have convinced themselves to believe, that’s what the result would be.
The sad fact is that today’s protesters simply don’t understand what they’re fighting for, or even who they’re supporting. When the NYPD finally was permitted to go onto the Columbia University campus, about two weeks too late, to break up the encampments, and expel the protesters who had occupied Hamilton Hall, several hundred arrests were made. I guess it was fitting that they took over Hamilton Hall, because it was Alexander Hamilton who famously said, “The people is a beast.” Anyhow, the police found that about 40% of the arrestees had no business even being on the campus.
Simply put, the protest sprung not from some grassroots uprising of young people in support of Palestinians, but instead from the indoctrination of shamefully ignorant Ivy Leaguers by professional agitators, some of whom are of advanced middle age, with records of scores of arrests. They led the ovine students in chants of “Genocide Joe Biden,” “Hey, hey, ho, ho, the occupation has to go,” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” They failed to grasp that none of these chants made any sense, and the chanters, by and large, had no idea what they were chanting for.
Much as I hate Joe Biden, and must admit that he’s killing Americans in pursuit of Il Duce Obama’s “fundamentally transformed United States,” Joe’s not killing anybody in Gaza. “The occupation has to go?” Israel’s not “occupying” Gaza. The IDF is going through it like shit through a goose in pursuit of Hamas leaders, which is totally justified by the October 7th Hamas attacks. Worse yet, the pampered, highly entitled, delicate snowflakes of the Ivy League might be singing “from the river to the sea” in tune, but many of them can’t tell you what river and what sea they’re singing about, for if they could, then they would understand that they’re lending aid and comfort to Islamic terrorists and to domestic Jew haters whose goal is to exterminate every Jew found between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
The point is that these protests really aren’t in favor of Palestinians, but instead are the work of rabid anti-Semites. The Ivy League losers are chanting for freedom and peace for Palestinians, who happen to be the least tolerant people on Earth, who happen to enjoy more freedom than the residents of nearly all other Arab nations, and who have leaders who have repeatedly rejected Israeli offers of a peaceful homeland. In point of fact, the Palestinians are outcasts who are unwelcome is the Mideast Muslim world, because everywhere they go they cause trouble.
When Israel counter-attacked, the nearest place of refuge for Gazans was Egypt, but Egypt wants nothing to do with them. Jordan is nearby, and the home to many Palestinians, but Jordan won’t let them in. The last time they tried that, the Palestinians tried to overthrow the Jordanian government. Yet the ignorant college students have, wittingly or unwittingly joined cause of Hamas, just as they mindlessly joined the BLM riots. And the same professional anarchists who brought you BLM, and Antifa, are now bringing us the Palestinian Pogrom.
And in another departure from the Vietnam era protesters, the delicate snowflakes expect to disrupt the school during final exam week, occupy buildings, damage property, and even criminally restrain university employees, and yet escape without any consequences. Columbia has threatened to expel protesters. I doubt they will follow through, but we’re told that’s too harsh.
Clearly, the law means nothing, because Columbia Law School students don’t even want to have to take exams, claiming, “the violence we witnessed last night (they mean by the police) has irrevocably shaken many of us on the [Law] Review.” I sincerely hope that none of these delicate beings go into the criminal law, cause brother, they ain’t seen violence yet.
As this is written, Columbia has cancelled it’s commencement ceremony, preferring to placate the mob rather than to ensure the security of its students, parents and benefactors whose money keeps its putrid system in operation. A number of prominent Jewish benefactors have withheld contributions, and a number of employers have announced that they won’t be hiring Columbia grads. Hopefully sanity will reign, and college administrations will begin to reverse the alarming trend of putting the inmates in charge of these asylums of higher education.
The outrageous Manhattan trial of Donald Trump, commonly known as “the Hush Money trial” has been dragging on for about three weeks. Outrageous because it condemns Trump for conduct which: 1) isn’t criminal; 2) should have been barred by the statute of limitations; and 3) is taking place in the jurisdiction least likely to provide the former president with a fair trial. Clearly I like nothing about this kangaroo court farce, and that includes the name. Every media outlet keeps reporting that Trump is being tried because of “hush money” payments. What’s being called “hush money” are non-disclosure agreements, which were negotiated between Donald Trump and two women and a Trump Tower doorman, all of whom either were threatening or were in a position to make allegations of marital infidelity against Trump as he was running for president in to 2016. All three executed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), in which they received money in return for promising not to disclose potentially damaging information. That’s not a crime. But don’t take it from me. The following is from Bloomberg Legal, a service that boasts it is used by 96% of law firms and 100% of U.S. Federal Circuit Courts –
“Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and confidentiality agreements are both legal contracts between two or more parties that specify the criteria for maintaining the confidentiality of certain information. Whereas NDAs are often used in business and legal settings to protect trade secrets, client lists, and financial data, confidentiality agreements are typically devised in employment or personal situations to protect sensitive information.”
So if paying the money ( including $150,000 to Karen McDougal and $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels) isn’t a crime, what’s Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg talking about? Try to follow the bouncing ball. Alvin, who was elected on a pledge to prosecute Trump, revived an investigation that had been abandoned by the federal U.S. Attorney and by the former Manhattan D.A. The indictment alleges that Trump’s payments to former attorney, and now convicted perjurer, Michael Cohen, reimbursing him for his making the payments to the two women and the doorman, are crimes because they were listed by Trump as “legal expenses.” Alvin says this is illegal because instead of legal expenses, they were campaign expenses, which should have been paid for with campaign money from donors. Although the other prosecutors investigated this and rejected prosecution, Alvin, with the help of a Biden Justice Dept. official, and in league with the Biden Administration, returned 34 felony counts. Now a false business record isn’t a felony in New York, it’s a misdemeanor. The payments to Cohen took place in 2017, and the misdemeanor statute of limitations is 2 years. But wait! Alvin claims that the false records were made to commit or hide another crime, making them felonies. Only, when the indictment was returned last year, it failed to mention what other crime. When the trial began last month we finally learned. Get this. Alvin says Trump listed the payments as legal expenses in an attempt to affect the outcome of the 2016 election. How could payments in 2017 affect an election that was over in 2016? You got me. And what about the pesky 5 year statute of limitations on the felony counts, which ran out before the indictment was returned? No problem. A provision of New York law allows the extension of the statute if a defendant was “continually out of the State.” Of course, Trump wasn’t continually out of New York, and the exception was designed for fugitives, and not to capture a President of the United States, who is sitting in the Oval Office and is openly and notoriously on TV every day, but no matter. The prick judge who’s trying the case brushed off his kangaroo skin robes and allowed this farce to continue. Along the way, the judge has held Trump in contempt 9 times, and threatened him with jail for violating an unconstitutional gag order, which prevents him from speaking, while permitting State witnesses Stormy Daniels and convicted liar, and disbarred attorney Cohen, to attack Trump to their hearts content. The trial has, so far, been pretty boring, probably because it’s hard to make exciting testimony which is designed to prove that things were done that every business does every day of the week, not to mention every politician. Remember Bill Clinton’s War Room employee Betsy Wright, who was in charge of hushing up Slick Willie’s former and current girlfriends? She did that by calling the incidents “bimbo eruptions,” and by threatening and slandering the women involved. Bill Clinton used defamation and got away with it. Trump used legal agreements based on consideration (money) paid, and they want him in prison for life. By the way, just yesterday, Daniels’ lawyer, testifying for the State, told Alvin that the money “was not hush money, but consideration” for a legal agreement. I think I just pointed that out. The Manhattan indictment smells, and the smell is coming from several directions. First, if you pay your lawyer to prepare and finance legal agreements (NDAs), how are the expenses not legal fees? Bragg claims they were really campaign expenses, should have been logged that way, and paid for with campaign funds. The Federal Election Commission, which is in charge of such things, disagrees, saying that payments which would have been made regardless of an election, are not campaign expenses. So, if Trump used campaign money, the Feds would charge him with a violation and fine him. Because he used personal funds, Alvin charged him with 34 felonies. I guess that’s Manhattan justice for you. Alvin says it was a conspiracy. A conspiracy to do what? To defraud the public, by not letting the bimbos reveal embarrassing information before the election, thus permitting Trump to win in 2016. As I have written before, if trying to bury embarrassing information was a crime, both Hillary and Bill Clinton would be walking the Green Mile. But Trump’s trial continues, and all media outlets continue to repeat “hush money, hush money” over and over again. Malcolm X had it right. “The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power, because they control the minds of the masses.” We keep being told, by Trump himself, among others, that he can never get a fair trial in Manhattan. I’m afraid that may be so, but Trump has two lawyers on his jury, and I keep hoping at least one juror will see this mockery of justice for what it is and at least hang the jury. Time will tell. Meanwhile Trump is locked up in the courtroom and forbidden to leave it, while Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden is free to stagger, limp, and wander about, spewing lies that he knows the media will thereupon swear to. I cling to the hope that this jury will say, “Hush, hush, sweet Alvin, your case is a load of shit – Not Guilty. Well, I can hope anyway.
As this is written we’ve seen a week of continual violent anti-Israel protests on college campuses. College protests are certainly no novelty, but these are alarmingly different. The most famous college protests were the 1960’s-1970’s anti-war protests. Then there have been the obligatory college protests to support every manner of leftist cause which happens to be the flavor of the month. Save the Whales. Save the Earth. Protect abortion rights. Black Lives Matter. You know the drill. The thing that separates these previous protests from the current anti-Israel demonstrations is that before, the students (and their wacky professors, a/k/a enablers) were protesting real or imagined injustices. Being against police brutality, even where the particular brutality they’re protesting never happened (e.g., Hands Up, Don’t Shoot), is at least a sentiment with which nearly all agree. That’s not the case this time. Instead of protesting injustice, this time, with the announced purpose of ending a genocide, the protesters are supporting the very people, Hamas, who are advocating genocide. Simply put, instead of injustice, these over-privileged, highly pampered, ill-educated punks are demonstrating in favor of a gross injustice; ant-Semitic, Palestinian threats to kill every Jew in Israel, or anyplace else one might turn up. On October 7, Palestinian terrorists swept out of their Gaza Strip hellhole, entered Israel, and perpetrated terrorist attacks that murdered more than 1,200 Israeli men, women, and children. Women were raped and killed. Babies were brutalized by unspeakable acts rivaling the most perverted atrocities that took place in Nazi Germany. More than a thousand hostages were taken. Not surprisingly, the Israeli government responded by seeking out and killing as many of the murdering Hamas terrorist bastards as they could pry from their hiding holes. Palestinians righteously condemned what they called an Israeli genocide of their people. In truth, Israel has gone and is going to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza, but this task is hampered by the fact that the Hamas bastards typically secret themselves in places like hospitals, using the innocent population as human shields. There have been continual calls for a cease fire, the only benefit of which would be to permit terrorists to either escape or reload. Naturally, our weak sister President, Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden, has joined the chorus condemning Israel for defending herself. There are calls for “a two State solution.” I suppose this means direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian authorities, but there’s a problem no one’s mentioning. They’re a State short. Israel is a sovereign State, created by a 1947 U.N. resolution, but there’s really no “State” of Palestine. Despite all the marching, protesting, and chanting being done by pro-Palestinian demonstrators today, the fact is that, every time a Palestinian State has been proposed, Arab countries have rejected the proposal. That same 1947 U.N. resolution would have created a State of Palestine. Arab nations voted against it. In 2000, after extensive negotiations, culminating with the Camp David Accords, Israel agreed to the establishment of a State of Palestine. Yasser Arafat, representing the Palestinians, rejected it, preferring continued warfare. He got the Nobel Peace Prize anyway, showing what that’s really worth. Then again, in 2008, Israel agreed to a Palestinian State. The Palestinians again walked away from the negotiations. In 2005, the Palestinians voted to permit Hamas to “govern” Gaza. The only problem is, Hamas isn’t a government, it’s a cabal of murdering scum. According to the 1933 Montevideo Convention, in order to be a “State” an entity must have a defined territory, a permanent population, and the capacity to enter into relations with other States. Some countries recognize a Palestinian State, and some don’t, including the U.S. The U.N. doesn’t recognize Palestine as a State either. And the Palestinian territory in Gaza has proven itself incapable of governing itself. The Israelis, whom the Palestinians hate and want to kill, are the ones who provide electricity and fresh water to Gaza. Biden’s interest in siding with the Palestinians and against our ally Israel is purely selfish. He wants to be reelected. For Biden, it’s not a two State solution he’s worried about, it’s really three States. In addition to Israel and Palestine, Biden is worried about Michigan, a swing State with 270,000 Muslim residents. In the February Primary, 17% of Democrats voted against Biden, and instead for “Uncommitted.” This is the land of Rashida Tlaib. If Muslim voters desert Biden in November, Michigan could go to Trump, and with it, the election. But Biden is caught between two solid Democrat voting blocs, Jews and Muslims, and since they’ve been at war for thousands of years, the dispute is unlikely to be resolved by this November. Add to this, Biden’s already daunting deficits due to his utter failures on the economy and foreign policy, and his obvious senility, and he’s got a real problem. In any case, Biden’s electoral problems, have put him in the position of having to appear to support Palestinian murderers. As a result, he’s unwilling to condemn the campus protesters, chanting “Death to America,” which have resulted in schools like Columbia sending Jewish students home, rather than taking action to protect them on campus. This is disgraceful. The colleges are permitting student protesters to advocate for the mass killing of Jews. The New York Police Department refuses to take action. The New York Governor could send the National Guard in to stop the insanity, but she’s missing in action. Meanwhile, our incompetent President is paralyzed for the reasons discussed above. When confronted with an Arkansas Governor who refused to protect black students on college campuses, President Eisenhower knew what to do. He sent in the 101st Airborne Division, and they escorted the students to class until the danger subsided. Biden won’t take any action, nor will he even comment on the anti-Semitic protests raging in his nation. Which brings us to the fourth State – Chaos. Only chaos is far from a solution. By refusing to try to stop protesters from calling for a new genocide of the Jews, which is precisely what, “From the River to the Sea” means, Biden is playing with fire. Encouraging people to advocate for the elimination of a minority group for political gain cannot end well, as Germans found out in the 1940’s. No matter what happens in November, Biden may not be around much longer, but the rest of us will have to clean up the mess. There’s no two, three, or four state solution to this problem. There’s simply the choice between good and evil. Biden can’t make up his mind.
FRANK ON FRIDAY – A.I., Ay, Ay, Ay
Last week I attended the New Jersey Bar Association’s Annual Meeting, which provides required continuing education training for lawyers. The main theme of this year’s meeting was all about Artificial Intelligence, A.I. And it was a thoroughly frightening experience. Now I don’t pretend to be any sort of a computer expert, much less an authority on A.I., but as a lawyer, I’m concerned. Most of the stories we’ve been hearing about A.I. involve the manipulation of images and the creation of what appear to be real events which never happened.
Then there was the advent of ChatGPT, which apparently can be asked to create works that ought to be the fruits of human labor, such as poems and term papers. That was bad enough, but the seminars I attended were about the use of A.I. technology in the field of legal services. The more I learned about this new technology’s intrusion into the practice of law, the less I liked it. From what I learned, A.I. has some relatively innocuous uses for legal practitioners. For instance, it’s apparently quite good at cataloging, organizing, and keeping track of documents. That’s useful in multi-defendant, or class action lawsuits where millions of documents may be relevant to the case. But even in those case, I foresee difficulties.
Once a computer search program decides which documents are relevant and which are not, that becomes the universe of evidence in the case. Whether human effort may uncover relevant documents that have evaded the search terms, or have been disguised in some way to prevent their discovery will never be known, to the detriment to the plaintiffs.
I suppose that it’s the inevitable extension of our computer run society. I’ve been worried about this for years. When no one bothers to read a book or to find out the truth for himself, then reality is whatever your phone or computer tells you it is. The facts no longer matter, and if history is altered, they’re none the wiser. It’s scary, and now it’s coming to my profession too.
We had an ethics lecture that featured a story about a personal injury lawsuit that bounced from State to federal court. The plaintiff’s attorneys filed a legal brief on behalf of their client. The lawyers used an A.I. program to write the brief. Only problem was that neither the opposing lawyers nor the judge could locate any of the cases cited by the plaintiff in his computer-generated brief. The court then directed the lawyers to certify that the cases they cited were genuine legal opinions. That’s the equivalent of a judge telling a lawyer, “Please prove to me that you’re not a lying shit.” So what the dumb bastard lawyers did was ask the A.I. company, “Are the cases you gave us real cases?” Of course, the A.I. company told them, “Sure they’re real.” So the stupid asses signed an affidavit swearing the cases were real. When it became apparent that they were fake, the shit hit the fan, and the lawyers wound up being sanctioned.
That’s an extreme example of A.I. generated idiocy, but there are less startling implications. The legal profession is unfortunately populated with a goodly number of, shall we say, fly by night, corner cutting, practitioners. Apart from a few true shysters and thieves, these are mostly well-meaning, but not too smart, practitioners who are flitting from court to court trying to make a living. The temptation to save time and money by having A.I. do your work may be one they are unable to resist. That will get them in trouble with clients and courts, and cheapen the quality of court filings.
As I understand the A.I. process, a lawyer can scan a brief into the system, and A.I. will “improve” it for him. The “improvement” process consists of comparing what was put in to thousands, or perhaps millions, of similar filings, and then changing it so that it looks more like what the computer has determined is “the norm.” In other words, it will make the brief look like thousands of other briefs. If you’re a layperson trying to engage in the unlicensed practice of law, maybe that’s a good thing. If you’re an authentic legal practitioner, it’s tantamount to malpractice, and it tells me the lawyer doesn’t know how to write.
I write appellate briefs on behalf of defendants who have been convicted of crimes. 96% of all appeals are rejected. If I want to among the 4% of appellants who are successful, then I don’t want the brief I file with the court to look like the thousands of others the court has seen before. I need my case to stand out. Filing some standardized, homogenized product sells my client short, and can serve only to move lawyers as a class closer to disrepute.
However, we were assured by the lecturers, A.I. is coming to the law and there’s no stopping it. The entire profession may change. A partner in a big law firm told us that the A.I. programs can be used to review legal documents, just about as well as the reviews are done by junior associate lawyers. The implication then becomes, why should we hire junior associates to do what the machine does just as well? The big firms pay these fledgling lawyers upwards of $200,000 a year. The clients may refuse to pay hundreds of dollars an hour for the work of the associates, and insist on A.I. That may save money in the short term, but fewer associates hired means fewer lawyers who learn their trade by working their way up the ladder.
Here’s the bottom line as I see it. A.I. can cover up for poorly educated new lawyers. But as more and more legal product becomes A.I. generated, the standard of legal practice diminishes. With less human effort, we’ll go from the unlicensed practice of law to the uninspired practice of law. Simply put, if you’re looking for standardized mediocrity, use A.I. If you prefer legal representation inspired by the professional judgment of a real lawyer, then avoid A.I. and retain an attorney who still knows how to think.