Wake Up Call: Vigilante Lawyers Track Global AI Legal Errors

Welcome to Bloomberg Law’s Wake Up Call, a daily rundown of the top news for lawyers, law firms, and in-house counsel.

• Robert Freund, a Los Angeles-based lawyer tracks legal A.I. misuse globally by feeding examples to an online database. Freund is part of a growing network of lawyers who track down A.I. abuses committed by their peers, collecting the most egregious examples and posting them online. The group hopes that by tracking down the A.I. slop, it can help draw attention to the problem and put an end to it. (New York Times)
• New Hampshire’s attorney general is conducting a preliminary review into whether Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald improperly helped a longtime aide, Dianne Martin, secure a nearly $50,000 payout when she switched jobs within the state judiciary earlier this year. The inquiry follows reporting that MacDonald orchestrated Martin’s brief layoff and swift rehiring so she could collect accrued benefits, despite warnings from a human resources manager that the plan was unethical. (The Boston Globe)
• The Michigan Court of Appeals upheld a criminal contempt ruling against attorney Marshall Tauber, who was fined $7,500 for calling Oakland County Judge Yasmine Poles a sexist slur during a Zoom hearing. Tauber claimed he thought the session had ended and that his remark was aimed at himself, not the judge. The appeals court rejected his argument, ruling that contempt can occur over video when a judge directly witnesses the behavior. (Detroit Free Press)
• Human rights attorney Peter Weiss, a longtime leader at the Center for Constitutional Rights, died at age 99. Over a nearly five-decade career, Weiss championed global justice causes—from opposing South African apartheid and the Vietnam War to advocating for nuclear disarmament and accountability for US-backed violence in Nicaragua. He helped establish the use of the 1789 Alien Tort Statute to pursue human rights cases in US courts and represented the family of journalist Charles Horman, who was killed after Chile’s 1973 coup. (Democracy Now!)

Laterals, Moves, In-House

• Gerald Jennings joined Greenberg Traurig as a shareholder in its government law and policy practice in Albany. He joins from Citi.
• Joza Al Rasheed and Alexander Currie joined Baker Botts as partners in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. They join from Herbert Smith Freehills.