Everyone is watching Family Violence Appellate Project v. Superior Court (S288176) to see if the California Supreme Court is going to strike down the ban on electronic recording of court proceedings. There is a steady drumbeat in favor, including the Los Angeles County Superior Court and other courts. But are we missing a perspective? Stephanie...
The Honorable Tani Cantil-Sakauye led the state judiciary through the Great Recession's budget crisis, bail reform advocacy, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Now she has three new roles: President and CEO of the Public Policy Institute of California, a neutral at ADR Services, and a founding voice of the Alliance of Former Chief Justices. CJ Cantil-Sakauye...
In addition to having more than 100 published opinions and close to 100 oral arguments to his name, Jeremy B. Rosen is the managing partner of the Horvitz & Levy LLP San Francisco office. Jeremy is also nationally recognized for his First Amendment and anti-SLAPP work. Jeremy joins Jeff and Tim on the California Appellate...
Justice Ming Chin wrote more majority opinions in his first decade on the California Supreme Court than any colleague—then retired to discover that mediation feels a lot like his first judicial assignment in family law, where the goal was bringing people together rather than telling them what to do. Justice Ming’s biggest pet peeve as...
Legal writing authority Ross Guberman has been busy absorbing AI tools into his popular BriefCatch and now-related suite of writing tools. Ross returns to discuss how BriefCatch cousin app RealityCheck uses a traditional authority base plus AI power to ruthlessly search and destroy hallucinations in your briefs. Who else is using RealityCheck? Courts. So let...
The law is riddled with things "everybody knows" that aren't actually true. In this April Fool's-themed episode, Tim Kowal and Jeff Lewis discuss several legal myths, half-truths, and courtroom fictions—from rules of evidence to constitutional assumptions to a Scopes Monkey Trial mythology that is more Hollywood script than record. Key points: Miranda warnings aren't in...
Last month I had the pleasure of presenting to the Orange County Bar Association on a topic I return to often: how good cases die on appeal, not because the appellant was wrong on the merits, but because avoidable procedural mistakes made reversal impossible before the briefing even began. The talk was titled the "Appeals...
David Lat—founder of Above the Law and author and host of Original Jurisdiction blog and podcast—explains what these stories reveal about a legal profession navigating ideological warfare, economic disruption, and the enduring craft of persuasion. Paul Clement delivered what SCOTUSblog called "a master class in oral argument" in Trump v. Cook. Lat dissects what made...
wo explosive First Amendment cases from the Ninth Circuit—culture-war flashpoints are reshaping speech & religious-freedom doctrine… and judicial decorum. In B.B. v. Capistrano Unified, the court held that elementary students have enforceable free speech rights under *Tinker*, vacating summary judgment after a first grader was disciplined for giving a classmate a sweet drawing that ran...
Justice Kagan has more words about the emergency docket aka shadow docket. This one is about the 9th Circuit panel injunction of California's law requiring school officials not to share with parents when their children present as trans. The Supreme Court keeps the injunction in effect. And on the fee award front, big firms don't...
Three paradoxes feature in this episode: Paradox 1: You must disclose a bankruptcy stay to the Court of Appeal. What about a bankruptcy that does not create a stay? Answer: Yes, the disclose-bk-stay rule also means disclose a bk non-stay. Paradox 2: Deadbeat dad owes $500k. He settles and agrees to pay $250k. How much...
In Part 2 of our conversation with Michael Shipley, Tim and Jeff dig into the real-world fallout of California's no-horizontal-stare-decisis rule — and the structural fix Shipley has been developing to address it.Shipley walks Tim and Jeff through his proposed "mini-en banc" transfer mechanism — a way for the California Supreme Court to empower a...
California is the largest common-law jurisdiction where appellate courts don't follow each other—and it happened by accident. In Part 1 of this two-part episode, Michael Shipley explains how Bernard Witkin’s treatise reflections on case dicta became binding law, why the federal circuit model works differently, and what the rule costs practitioners and trial judges every...
Is your AI training data biased? And is using AI-generated reasoning plagiarism? James Mixon, Managing Attorney at California's Second District Court of Appeal, covers troubling topics on how lawyers should, and should not, use AI. In this second part of Tim and Jeff’s conversation, James discusses how we can detect and counteract bias baked into...
In the first half of their conversation with James Mixon, Managing Attorney at California's Second District Court of Appeal, Tim Kowal and Jeff Lewis ask what is healthy AI use, and unhealthy use? To help organize—yes! To replace judgment—no! Tip: When an attorney does not read AI output before filing a brief, expect sanctions. Disclaimer:...
Lemon Law lawyer Michelle Fonseca-Kamana discusses the seismic shifts in California lemon law—from the Supreme Court's decision in Rodriguez v. FCA US LLC (October 31, 2024) 17 Cal.5th 189 that effectively eliminated most used car claims, to the explosion in case filings (from 4,500 in 2015 to over 22,000 in 2023), to new legislative reforms under...
Here are a few cases I did not have time to write up but seemed either important or irritating enough to mention: Administering vaccines without disclosing contraindications can get your license pulled. If you're a veterinarian, that is. (There are far lighter penalties, I'm afraid, for lackadaisical administration of human vaccines.) Deol v. California Veterinary...
Even if the client “earnestly believes” something to be true—and even if you, the attorney, “earnestly believe” it—without evidence, you can’t say it in court. Publishing its opinion in N.D. v. E.F. (D4d3 Jan. 20, 2026) case no. G066061 (nonpub. opn.) as a “cautionary tale,” attorney T. Matthew Phillips gets sanctioned $25,000 for violating this...
Prevail at arbitration? Make sure your arbitrator rules on your fees and costs, or they may be waived. And no, voluntarily paying a judgment does not automatically forfeit your appeal. Usually. Those two potential pitfalls arose in Garrett & Tully, P.C., v. Aliso Properties, LLC, et al., (D2d3, Dec. 9, 2025, No. B332463) (non-pub. opn.)....
You have to literally disobey an order in California to be held in contempt. But federal courts are a little more touchy-feely: they will find a contempt for violating the “spirit” of their orders. Tim and Jeff compare the Ninth Circuit's contempt finding against Apple in the *Epic Games* dispute, and a state litigant who...
California’s New Legal Rules for 2026: AI, Photo Proof of Service, and Simpler Statements of Decision New statutes and court rules taking effect in 2026 and 2027 will change how California lawyers serve papers, preserve appellate issues, and disclose their use of artificial intelligence. Appellate attorneys Tim Kowal and Jeff Lewis focus on what actually...
AI-sanctions might get eyeballs, but the bigger sanctions are still for plain old bad lawyering. Jeff also raises this ethical and pragmatic question: who defends the lawyer when sanctions threaten the client? Should counsel facing an OSC retain separate counsel for the sanctions component to avoid divided attention and better protect client interests? What if...
A scandalous Netflix documentary called an unconventional sex-based therapy business an “orgasm cult,” all based on a sole source whose account has several flaws. But the Court of Appeal dismissed the defamation case on anti-SLAPP grounds. Tim and Jeff discuss whether any California defamation case against a media company could survive the one-two punch of...
Want to know why bad AI cites really bother the courts? Jeff and Tim discuss two recent fake-AI-cites cases imposing sanctions and State Bar referrals, and draw this conclusion: It’s not that AI is bad at law—in one of these cases, the court noted that none of the AI mistakes even went in the direction...
The California Supreme Court’s long-awaited "Taking Offense" decision on gender pronouns in elder care facilities introduces a new “captive audience” exception to the First Amendment. Tim worries this new judicial carve out may creep to other forums; Jeff is unperturbed. Tim also shares insights from the Federalist Society National Conference, before examining a significant appellate-fee...
Jimmy Azadian is often in the room when federal judges get together to share their personal concerns about the job. When judges are asked to come speak to a group, Jimmy reports that top of mind are the recent threats to judges and the courts—whether from armed vigilantes, protesters, students, or senators. Jimmy, Tim, and...
AI Reshapes Legal Practice: ClioCon 2025 Delivers a Wake-Up Call Jeff Lewis reports from the 2025 Clio Cloud Conference in Boston. Day 1 was encouraging, but Jeff reports feeling Day 2 as a “gut punch”: within about 5-10 years, many fundamentals of legal practice will be unrecognizable. Here are a few ways legal industry leaders...
Few lawyers and LRW instructors write and think more about AI than Professor Jane Woods of Mizzou Law, who offers this most important AI advice: If you haven’t read the case, don’t cite the case. Jeff thinks our business and even this podcast will be aped by robots by this time next year. Until then,...
As an attorney, you might not be surprised to learn that—if you file serial meritless lawsuits in pro per—you, too, may be deemed a vexatious litigant. File five unsuccessful lawsuits within seven years, and that’s what happens. But you might not realize that appeals count toward your five-lawsuit limit. That was the outcome in the...
The Law360 article on the Ninth Circuit’s en banc decision in Gopher Media LLC v. Melone features quotes California Appellate Law Podcast co-hosts Jeff Lewis and me on the significant shift in how anti-SLAPP motions are handled in federal courts, overturning more than two decades of Ninth Circuit precedent. The Ninth Circuit held that denials...
