What do cupcakes, massage chairs, and hotel irons have in common? Each one led an attorney to @Experts_Com looking for an expert witness. This is the fun part of my job. I get to jump from geotechnical engineering to machine learning to cupcake allergies, often in the same day. Within the world of expertise, I've had to develop a level of expertise in talent acquisition, because lawyers and law firms do not always understand the application of expertise to their case. Do they need a real estate appraiser or a real estate economist? Here's a mix! 🧁 Grocery cupcake allergen case, Texas 👔 Defective hotel iron injury, Nevada ❄️ Knee burn from gym cryotherapy, Florida 🔋 Overheating tablet battery injury, New York 🏍️ Motorcycle boot failure in an off-road injury, California ⛳ Golf cart accident, Pennsylvania 📡 Commercial microwave exposure and brain injury, California Is your case unusual? The right expert exists. We'll find them for you without brokering the engagement. No markup to billable hours. Just a flat fee search. Submit your request here: experts.com/requestexpert

⚖️ Has anyone been following California Senate Bill 574? This bill proposes AI regulations for attorneys and arbitrators. Why only them? The bill has passed the CA Senate and is being considered by the Assembly. Essentially, it would create guardrails for the use of generative AI for lawyers and arbitrators. The bill mandates client data confidentiality, personal verification of AI outputs, anti-discrimination standards, and strict prohibitions against arbitrators delegating decision-making processes to AI. Evidently, the bill would codify recommendations from the State Bar of California regarding the ethical use of AI. If you ask me, it codifies what those of us in the legal tech/legal AI space already know AND most practitioners should know by now as a result of all the cases and sanctions related to hallucinations: - Review the AI output; - Don't put confidential client info into the LLM; - Don't let the AI make decisions for you. I have questions about the usefulness or value of this proposed law: 1️⃣ CCP § 128.7 already exists, and signing a court filing (by a lawyer or pro se litigant) already certifies you've made a reasonable inquiry and that the legal contentions and claims are accurate. So what more does SB 574 offer? 2️⃣ Rules of professional conduct cover most of this as well. There are already RPCs for competence (including tech competence), candor (including truth of statements submitted to the court), confidentiality, and supervision. Lawyers are already required to do most of what SB 574 is requiring. So, do we need a new law codifying what is already covered by the RPCs? 3️⃣ If they feel the need to pass a law, and CA always feels the need, why does it only apply to lawyers and arbitrators? Why not to police officers? Expert witnesses? Social workers? Guardians? Conservators? Mediators? Probation and parole officers? Court reporters? Psychologists and psychiatrists? Independent medical evaluators? And many more... For a more lawyerly analysis, please see the article from Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP lawyers D. Andrew Quigley and Alexis Z. Romero. Special thanks to Don Swanson a fellow executive committee member for the @CLA_LPMT. hunton.com/insights/publicat…

🦹 Are you an unwitting participant in an online conspiracy that’s destroying your content and brand? According to Wikipedia, the "Dead Internet Theory is a conspiracy theory that asserts, due to a coordinated and intentional effort, the Internet now consists mainly of bot activity and automatically generated content manipulated by algorithmic curation to control the population and minimize organic human activity. Proponents of the theory believe these social bots were created intentionally to help manipulate algorithms and boost search results in order to manipulate consumers…” The theory expands into darker aspects. For this post, I want to focus your mind on organic content. @FurqanR, co-founder of @AppLovin & more recently @thirdweb highlighted the Dead Internet Theory and "infinite content creation" in a recent video where he was discussing Blockchain as the solution for confirming authenticity of content. He refocuses attention on the need for authenticity and distinguishes between "LLM Furqan" or "real Furqan." (Link below) I suspect most of us can tell by our own Internet experience there is some accuracy to the Dead Internet Theory. We've all experienced automatically generated content and bot accounts across platforms. Millions of anonymous or generic accounts posting and engaging. Add GenAI content and we've exploded the amount of content available on the Internet. Or, as Furqan calls it, “infinite content generation.” My feeds are filled with AI-generated written, audio, and visual content. It's not only coming from the major advertisers, but from people I know and respect. GenAI has allowed us to create content so much faster, we didn't stop to think, “how does this effect my brand?” Weekly and monthly content calendars became daily calendars. We got this exceptional boost of productivity from GenAI. I love it! With that productivity came more content than anyone can ever consume. I mean, I’m even discovering “famous” 2010s musical artists I never knew existed! Anecdotally, I'm tuning out more content than I'm consuming. Why? I want to hear from people. Not the LLM-version of the person. Social networks were intended to be social. In marketing, we used to espouse the value of authenticity. We yelled from the rooftops, “help your audience get to know, like and trust you." That's how they'll decide if they want to work with you. Lili Zumout, MS, our @Experts_Com social media associate, reminded me about the “visibility paradox” in digital marketing. The visibility paradox essentially means the more content that is generated, the harder it is to stand out. She explained, authenticity is the differentiator. If your authenticity suffers, is your massive increase in output making you less visible? I encourage a return to organic content. I don't want to read book-length posts every day and you’re not capable of writing them every day. Only Stephen King seems to be capable of such output. Let’s get back to authenticity! Furqan Rydhan: xitter.cf/thirdweb/status/194295… Dead Internet Theory: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_I…

What do we think about VC conferences that lack in diversity these days❓ Are people following the narrative that DEI doesn't matter? Or, do we still think panels, boards, and conferences are better with diversity of thought, opinion, and experience? #legaltech