Author: TSA Press

Judicial
law
clerks
have
all
sorts
of
special
conditions
attached
to
their
continuing
employment
in
chambers,
and
it
seems
that
accepting
the
honorary
title
of
“Lawyer
of
the
Year”
falls
outside
of
those
eligibility
requirements.
We
were
recently
made
aware
that
Ryan
Protter,
the
clerk
who

took
home
the
most
votes
in
our
2024
contest,
will
be
declining
the
award.

That
said,
it
is
now
time
to
announce
the


brand
new
winner
of
Above
the
Law’s
annual

Lawyer
of
the
Year competition.

We
are
bestowing
that
honor
upon

Aliza
Shatzman,
founder
and
president
of
the Legal
Accountability
Project.
Shatzman
can
add
our
Lawyer
of
the
Year
title
to
her
collection
of
awards
from
various
legal
organizations
for
bringing
meaningful
change
to
chambers
for
law
clerks.

In
what
seemed
like
a
Hurculean
task,
she
made
a
great
deal
of
progress
for
federal
law
clerks
this
year.
After
what
required
a
lot
of
blood,
sweat,
and
tears,
Shatzman
launched
the

Centralized
Clerkships
Database,
essentially
a
“Glassdoor
for
Judges,”
a
tool
meant
to
empower
clerkship
applicants
with
much-needed
transparency
and
inside
information
from
former
clerks
about
judicial
work
environments.
“I
strongly
endorse
Aliza,
as
her
work
on
the
Legal
Accountability
Project
has
been
immensely
valuable
and
she
is
more
than
deserving,”
Protter
told
Above
the
Law.
Click here
to
read
some
of
her
excellent
columns
on
this
topic.

Congratulations
to
Aliza
Shatzman
—
Above
the
Law’s


official
2024
Lawyer
of
the
Year
—
on
achieving
what
many
once
considered
to
be
nigh
impossible
for
federal
law
clerks
in
the
United
States.

Staci
Zaretsky is
a
senior
editor
at
Above
the
Law,
where
she’s
worked
since
2011.
She’d
love
to
hear
from
you,
so
please
feel
free
to

email
her
with
any
tips,
questions,
comments,
or
critiques.
You
can
follow
her
on Bluesky, X/Twitter,
and Threads, or
connect
with
her
on LinkedIn.

Apparently,
Clarence
Thomas
just
didn’t
understand
how
to
read
the
nearly
50-year-old
statute
requiring
him
to
report
massively
expensive
gifts.
That’s
the
Judicial
Conference’s

official
take
in
a
new
letter
to
the
Senate
panel
looking
into
the
ethical
cesspool.
The
letter
becomes
public
just
as
Chief
Justice
Roberts
releases
his
annual
report
asserting
that
most
criticism
of
the
Court
should
be
seen
as

improper
intimidation
and
even
violence.
Before
the
holidays,
we
discussed
Biglaw
firms
bucking
the
trend
and
not
paying
out
special
bonuses.
Happy
to
report
that

they’ve
reversed
course.

Whether
they’re
responding
to
basic
questions,
keeping
track
of
contract
deadlines,
or
simply
searching
their
own
email
archives,
in-house
lawyers
face
numerous
distractions
from
their
most
valuable
tasks.

Which
got
us
asking:
How
are
legal
departments
performing
when
it
comes
to
getting
high-level
legal
and
business
guidance
from
their
in-house
attorneys? 

Are
your
lawyers
buried
in
administrative
chaos,
or
are
they
operating
at
peak
efficiency? 

Please
share
your
thoughts
in
this
(always)
brief
and
anonymous
survey.
Respondents
will
receive
a
chance
to
win
a
$250
gift
card. 

The
ABA
has
been
struggling
with
diversity
on
several
fronts.
On
one
hand,

they’re
struggling
to
articulate
the
importance
of
diversity
in
a
post

SFFA
v.
Harvard
world,
and
trying
not
to
set
requirements
that
will
put
law
schools
in
legal
trouble
on
the
other.
Since
the
decision,
they’ve
been
drafting
alternative
calls
to
action
that
range
from
schools
showing
that
they’re
actively
not
discriminating
against
applicants
to
no
call
at
all.
Whatever
wording
they
use
is
suspect
to
a
lot
of
prodding.

Reuters
has
coverage:

Attorneys
general
from
21
Republican-controlled
states
have
warned
the
American
Bar
Association
that
its
law
school
diversity
rule
is
unlawful.
The
coalition
of
state
lawyers
on
Monday
sent
a
letter
to
the
arm
of
the
ABA
that
accredits
law
schools
opposing
both
its
current
diversity
standard
and
a
proposed
revision
of
that
rule
under
consideration.

The
anti-racial-diversity
brigade
takes
issue
with
the
notion
that
schools
would
be
required
to
demonstrate
a
commitment
to
including
groups
that
have
been
systemically
excluded
from
the
profession
with
“concrete
action.”
Now
that
scrubbing
any
attempt
at
equity
toward
the
disenfranchised
is
on
the
table,
we
get
to
see
what
moving
“with
all
deliberate
speed”
actually
looks
like.

Given
the
Court’s
14th
Amendment
jurisprudence,
the
law
looks
to
be
on
the
AGs’
side.
They
argue
that
removing
any
reference
to
race
would
actually
benefit
the
schools
by
making
it
less
likely
that
they’d
be
sued
over
their
admissions
practices.
Nice
claim,
but
is
that
actually
true?
Non-racial
commitments
to
“diversity”
will
still
piss
them
off.
For
example,
one
of
the
lesser
discussed
avenues
of
being
a
diverse
candidate
is
having
served
in
the
military.
Facially,
admitting
a
student
because
of
their
military
service
doesn’t
seem
to
run
against
the
14th
Amendment.
But
once
you
factor
in
that

Black
Americans
are
over-represented
in
the
military
or
that

the
Army
is
seeing
a
sharp
decline
in
White
recruits,
will
the
changing
demographics
of
the
people
serving
the
country
open
up
law
schools
to
accusations
of

privileging
race
by
proxy?

Republican
State
AGs
Oppose
American
Bar
Association’s
Revised
Diversity
Rule
[ABA
Journal]

Earlier:

ABA
Committee
Decides
To
Diversify
Diversity.
It
Should
Come
With
A
Clear
Reason
For
Why
That’s
Important.

13
State
AGs
Band
Together
To
Focus
On
What
Really
Matters
—
Preventing
Affirmative
Action

The
Slippery
Slope
Of
Ending
Affirmative
Action
Has
Moved
On
To
Its
Next
Target:
Women
And
‘Proxies
For
Diversity’

Chris
Williams
became
a
social
media
manager
and
assistant
editor
for
Above
the
Law
in
June
2021.
Prior
to
joining
the
staff,
he
moonlighted
as
a
minor
Memelord™
in
the
Facebook
group Law
School
Memes
for
Edgy
T14s.
 He
endured
Missouri
long
enough
to
graduate
from
Washington
University
in
St.
Louis
School
of
Law.
He
is
a
former
boatbuilder
who
cannot
swim, a
published
author
on
critical
race
theory,
philosophy,
and
humor,
and
has
a
love
for
cycling
that
occasionally
annoys
his
peers.
You
can
reach
him
by
email
at [email protected] and
by
tweet
at @WritesForRent.

I
see
trees
of
green,
red
roses
too.
I
see
them
bloom
for
me
and
you.
And
I
think
to
myself,
what
a
wonderful
world.


—
Louis
Armstrong

There
is
a


school
of
thought

that
AI
and
its
use
has
gone
about
as
far
as
it
can
go
for
now.
The
theory
is
that
future
applications,
especially
in
the
workplace,
will
basically
be
minor
iterations
of
what
we
have
now. 

In
the
legal
world,
this
thinking
morphs
into
the
idea
that
AI
won’t
significantly
impact
what
lawyers
do
because
it
can’t
do
the
work
that
really
matters
to
clients.
Or
AI
is
nowhere
near
matching
the
intuition
and
gut
instincts
of
experienced
lawyers 
and
won’t
any
time.

Of
course,
not
everyone
agrees.
Just
yesterday,
January
6,


Sam
Altman,
the


OpenAI

CEO,
stated
in
a


blog
post

that
OpenAI
knows
“how
to
build
AGI
(artificial
general
intelligence)
as
we
have
traditionally
understood
it.”
Altman
also
predicts
that
AI
agents
capable
of
autonomously
performing
certain
tasks
may
start
to
“materially
change
the
output
of
companies”
this
year.

Jensen
Huang
Keynote

That
same
school
of
possibility
thinking
was
expressed
last
night
in
the
opening
CES


Keynote

by


Jensen
Huang,
CEO
of


Nvidia.
Nvidia
is
the
world’s
largest
semiconductor
company
and
a
dominant
AI
hardware
and
software
supplier.

Huang
is
a
popular
speaker
mainly
because
he
has
mastered
the
ability
to
talk
to
a
massive
audience
just
like
he
is
speaking
to
you
across
the
kitchen
table.
(All
the
public
speaking
instructions
tell
you
to
do
that,
but
it’s
easier
said
than
done.)
Huang
did
it
for
over
an
hour
last
night,
captivating
the
audience
even
though
he
sometimes
talked
in
technical
terms
that
were
over
my
head.

Huang
traced
the
evolution
of
AI
and
Gen
AI,
which
now
understands,
translates,
and
generates
images
and
text.
Huang
explained
how
neural
networks
and
machine
learning
are
advancing.
He
showed
an
AI
computer
generated
video
that
was
completely
realistic
and
indistinguishable
from
a
real
life
video
taken
in
real
life
with
real
people.
Huang
told
us
the
AI
video
was
made
by
inputting
a
limited
number
of
pixels
from
which
the
AI
program
inferred
and
deduced
the
pixels
that
needed
to
be
added
to
generate
the
finished
content. 

Huang
explained
how
the
amount
of
data
available
to
AI
programs
will
increase
exponentially
over
the
next
few
years.
This
increased
data
can
then
be
used
to
better
train
the
AI
models,
enabling
them
to
do
more
and
more.
Humans
can
also
reinforce
this
increased
learning,
leading
to
even
more
exponential
AI
growth.
And,
Huang
theorized,
the
AI
program
itself
would
learn
how
to
improve
itself.
“In
the
future
[AI}
is
going
to
be
thinking.
It’s
going
to
be
internally
reflecting,
processing.
…
And
it’s
interacting;
it’s
taking
the
problem
you
gave
it,
breaking
it
down
step
by
step.”

Huang
believes
we
are
just
beginning
to
see
what
sophisticated
AI
can
do.
We
are
moving,
he
said,
from
Gen
AI,
where
computers
create
content,
to
agentic
AI,
where
AI
agents
can
actually
do
things
without
being
given
detailed
instructions.
These
agentic
agents
will
become
invaluable
digital
employees
who
will
do
things
on
our
behalf
with
little
prompting.
They
will
become
research
assistants,
create
and
act
on
sophisticated
weather
forecasts,
analyze
and
make
traffic
decisions,
and
monitor
manufacturing
processes,
for
example.
Huang
did
not
say
what
the
humans
would
be
doing,
by
the
way.
In
the
legal
world,
AI
agents
could
do
such
things
as
better
automate
legal
research,
undertake
drafting,
or
even
formulate
litigation
strategy.

The
next
step,
according
to
Huang,
will
be
physical
AI,
where
AI
understands
the
physical
world
and
how
objects
interact.
He
gave
an
example
of
a
ball
rolling
off
the
table,
and
opined
that
physical
AI
would
understand
that
the
ball
didn’t
disappear
but
simply
fell
to
the
ground.
Developing
this
kind
of
AI
requires
massive
video
input
and
investment
in
training.
But
it
will
lead
to
considerable
advances
in
robotics
as
machines
understand
the
physical
world
much
like
we
humans
do
now.

What
Does
All
This
Mean?

I’ve
learned
over
the
years
to
take
much
of
what’s
said
at
CES
with
a
grain
of
salt.
All
too
often,
its
wishful
thinking
designed
to
get
attention
more
than
reflect
reality.
But
Huang
and
Nvidia
have
an
imposing
track
record
that
cannot
be
taken
lightly.

If
they
are
right,
where
does
it
leave
us?
In
particular,
where
does
it
leave
the
legal
profession,
which
for
years,
has
touted
and
relied
upon
human
communication,
persuasion,
and
interaction?
Our
business
is
believed
to
be
a
particularly
human
one,
for
better
or
worse. 

A
Wonderful
World?

I
worry
what
will
happen
as
the
distinction
between
what
is
real
and
what
is
computer
created
blurs.
What
happens
when
it
really
no
longer
matters
whether
something
is
real
or
not?
What
does
that
do
to
evidence?
What
does
that
do
to
fact-finding? 

Are
we
prepared
for
a
world
where
a
computer
can
come
up
with
a
better
solution
than
a
human?
Where
an
algorithm
can
reach
a
faster
and
better
result
than
a
human
judge
or
jury?
When
an
AI
program
can
construct
a
more
compelling
argument
than
a
real
life
lawyer? 

What
will
happen
if
legal
AI
agents
can
do
much
of
the
work
that
keeps
law
firms’
personnel
busy?
What
will
lawyers
be
doing
in
five
years?
Ten?

As
I
sit
at
CES
this
year
and
listen
to
AI’s
possibilities,
I
can’t
help
but
think
that
legal
is
a
bit
like
the
proverbial
ostrich
sticking
its
head
in
the
sand.
We
stew
about
AI.
We
try
to
demonstrate
why
it
can’t
and
won’t
work
in
legal.
We
try
to
convince
ourselves
that
AI
has
gone
as
far
as
it
can
go
so
we
don’t
have
to
worry
that
our
law
cocoon
might
soon
burst. 

Maybe
the
naysayers
are
right.
Perhaps
change
won’t
happen.
But
if
there
is
even
the
slightest
chance
Huang
and
the
other
AI
evangelists
are
right,
the
changes
AI
brings
and
brings
quickly
could
upend
our
profession
from
top
to
bottom.
And
other
than
folks
like


Cat
Moon

at
Vanderbilt
University,


Andrew
Perlman,
dean
of
Suffolk
University
Law
School
and


David
Wilkins

at
Harvard
Law,
there
seems
to
be
precious
few
thinking
about
what
those
changes
might
mean.

To
paraphrase
Steve
Jobs,
AI
has
no
respect
for
the
status
quo.
You
can
quote
it,
disagree
with
it,
glorify
or
vilify
it.
But
the
only
thing
you
can’t
do
is
ignore
it,
because
AI
will
change
things. 

Stephen
Embry
is
a
lawyer,
speaker,
blogger
and
writer.
He
publishes TechLaw
Crossroads,
a
blog
devoted
to
the
examination
of
the
tension
between
technology,
the
law,
and
the
practice
of
law.

*
North
Carolina
Supreme
Court
threatens
to
overturn
election
result
by
tossing
60,000
votes
to
protect
the
losing
Republican
candidate.
Maybe

this
is
why

the
judiciary
lacks
credibility,
Mr.
Chief
Justice?
[AP
News]

*
Filing
says
Rudy
has
to
forfeit
Yankees
championship
rings.
[Yahoo]

*
Rest
of
Arkansas
Supreme
Court
steps
in
to
overrule
chief
justice
decision
to
fire
staff.
[ABA
Journal]

*
Interesting
theory
on
saving
diversity
initiatives:
cite
the
Supreme
Court’s
stance
that
the
Boy
Scouts
can
discriminate.
[Bloomberg
Law
News]

*
But
Republican
AGs
—
having
solved
all
the
problems
in
their
states
—
are
looking
to
sue
the
American
Bar
Association
for
having
a
diversity
rule.
[Reuters]

*
Landlords
added
to
DOJ’s
antitrust
case
against
the
algorithm
setting
rent
increases.
[Law360]

*
Shuttering
Biglaw
outposts
spark
reshuffling
as
lawyers
head
to
remaining
firms.
[American
Lawyer]