Above the Law’s latest legal roundup is a reminder that in the law, the most damaging leaks are often self-inflicted. From a global managing partner accidentally forwarding a sensitive thread to a federal brief packed with fictitious citations, this week’s edition of “See Generally” collects the profession’s most eye-catching missteps — and a few moments of candour from the bench.
Legal news roundup (Credits: Above the Law)
The headline item is a forwarding fail: Freshfields’ global managing partner accidentally forwarded a thread about spinning off the firm’s AI unit. As Above the Law puts it, AI keeps exposing cyber vulnerabilities — even when they are between the keyboard and the chair. It is the kind of internal message that was never meant to travel, and now it has.
Weil Merger Talks and the HHS Brief With Fictitious Citations
Elsewhere, the roundup revisits Weil Gotshal, which insisted about a month ago that it was “not engaged in merger discussions with any firm” — only for reports to emerge that it was hammering out a memorandum of understanding with a merger partner. That deal, with Willkie Farr, later collapsed, leaving the firm’s earlier denial looking awkward at best.
Then there is the Department of Health and Human Services brief that drew a striking finding from the Federal Labor Relations Authority: 35 of the 42 legal and record citations in the brief were fictitious, erroneous or irrelevant. In a profession built on precedent, that is not a typo problem — it is a credibility problem, and it lands at a moment when courts are increasingly alert to AI-assisted drafting gone wrong.
Justice Kagan, Judge Reyes and the Week in Legal News
The roundup also notes Justice Elena Kagan telling Catholic University’s law school that the Supreme Court “has kind of blinded itself to the very deleterious effect of their rulings” on the political system, from partisan gerrymandering to campaign finance. And it flags Associate Attorney General Stan Woodward’s move to disqualify Judge Ana Reyes after she pointed out the government violating the law — followed by the DC Preservation League alerting the judge that the president had called her “a crazed lunatic” hours before the hearing.
Rounding out the edition are lighter notes, from readers’ nominations for the four words most likely to terrify an attorney (“Your draft didn’t save” and “Per my prior correspondence” among them) to a law student juggling game-day pressure and law school. Taken together, it is a week that shows the legal world at its most human: brilliant, busy, and occasionally its own worst enemy.
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Source: Above the Law — read the full story there.
