No kidding! I didn't realize that. Thanks!

They do not, they just go to the top of the decision.

That's right. Tennessee's courts exclusively cite to the Westlaw universe, though, so it's not a problem for me personally.

I undid those intentionally because I think it looks weird for them all to be hyperlinked together in the TOC. But that was a style choice; everything in the body of the brief is hyperlinked and it will hyperlink your TOC as well.

Here's an example if it's useful in some way: tf3.truefiling.com/openfiling/7...

It's called "Drafting Assistant Essential."

In non-AI news, my favorite new technology is a Westlaw product that hyperlinks all the citations in your brief to the cases that you cited. It’s a credibility builder (it gives the reader confidence that there are no hallucinations and makes it easy to verify with a click) and it also looks great.

I think for bad and/or lazy lawyers especially, the allure of “I don’t have to think anymore” is much greater than “I still have to do all the hard work, but this will save me some time on administrative tasks and help me polish.”

I have approached the technology with skepticism but I am not wholesale opposed to it, so I’ve tested it. It is not capable of analysis (at least, not yet). Even Co-Counsel, the Westlaw product, is totally deficient on the score (it avoids hallucinations but attributes inaccurate holdings to cases).

I have not. I didn’t realize there was such a thing.

Almost none. I uploaded several of my past briefs (which we had obviously tabled manually) and asked it to learn from them. It had some questions about style and formatting, etc. But it basically just studied what we’d done before and then applied the skill to a new brief.

If it ever figures out how to bluebook, I will be all in on this thing.*

*Substantive drafting excluded.

Are we just saying words? Spellcheck will not catch that you wrote Plaintiff when you meant Defendant, or that you said the date was July 2nd on page 12 but July 3rd on page 63. I do not imagine you are attempting to be useful to anyone, though, so carry on.

4. It can generate a decent first draft of a set of discovery after you upload the complaint and answer. I wouldn’t ever rely on that draft—it will include things that don’t matter—but it is surprisingly good at identifying the real issues in dispute and putting together a decent first draft.

3. It can verify that your brief’s pincites to documents are correct. There have been some (very expensive) legal products that claimed to be able to do that for a couple of years now, but don’t do it well. Claude can, much to my surprise.

2. Claude can competently generate and paginate a Table of Authorities, which is not something that any legal product I’ve ever used (I’ve paid for them all, and they are very expensive) has ever been able to do well. It’s pretty impressive.

If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you will know I am an AI skeptic. But for the lawyers, much to my surprise, I have discovered some genuinely helpful use cases that I will share here:

1. Upload your brief and ask it to find typos. It’s incredibly good at that.

Also, no, journalists do not generally have to give up their sources if they get sued.

Why is it always the Harvard grads who have no fucking idea what they are talking about?

I know, it really needs to be “Saruman on a metric ton of Ketamine,” you don’t need to point it out.

It actually works well if you read it in the voice of Saruman

There is an entire category of property law surrounding “spite fences.” This helps explain why it exists.

We are like a month removed from him being absent from duty *on video,* while he was supposed to be on duty, because he was chugging beer in a locker room as part of a team celebration for a team that he wasn’t on? What are we doing here?

Relatedly, if the blog post was Josh Blackman's, I am going to quit.

It’s not entirely clear from the article whether these sources were cited by the litigants (the strong implication is no), but if not, seeking out facts about a pending case through independent investigation and then relying on them would be judicial misconduct under many state ethics rules.

Good thing we can avoid the conflict of interest thanks to the moral probity and apolitical independence of the acting attorney general, the president's personal criminal defense lawyer.

Screenshot of an email from Olivia Anderson to daniel@horwitz.law with the subject ‘RE: Refer Litigation Funding for a Ten Percent Thank-You,’ offering a referral fee arrangement for pre-settlement funding matters.”

This seems like a very serious company that is detail-oriented and won’t get me into trouble at all, can’t wait to work with them

It is good for society that people finally see these complete hacks for who they really are. Randy Barnett is not a serious person, or scholar, or advocate for liberty, and it took until now for people to realize it.

She gets $300,000 while I get “asked to depart at this port” and “arraigned.” Life is not fair