Drained wallets
A small newsletter on legaltech and techlaw
AI
Anthropic announced this week a new set of legal ‘artifacts’ to allow attorneys to choose pre-set tools, see demos of how they work, and then populate those tools with their own data and resources [Anthropic announcement | Metacounsel - Tiktok video | Artificial Lawyer]
Researchers from MIT’s Media Lab, Carnegie Mellon University, Harvard, USC and more have publicized a series of benchmarks that attempt to measure the effect of AI on humans on their ImpactBench website
A district court judge in Nevada has ruled that “an expert’s questions and prompts to a Gen AI platform are protected from disclosure, but that AI-generated case summaries the expert considered must be produced“ [Mayer Brown blog post | Reason | Docket | Order]
From the International Monetary Fund: “Global Financial Markets Face Rising Risks From AI, Bond Yields, and Cyberattacks”
Care to see how the current copyright lawsuits involving AI are spread out by jurisdiction? ChatGPT Is Eating the World has them illustrated on a map
Five new copyright suits against Meta have been filed in federal court in California by over 200 authors:
Winspear et al. v. Meta Platforms, Inc. [Complaint]
Older et al. v. Meta Platforms, Inc. [Complaint]
Sheard et al. v. Meta Platforms, Inc. [Complaint]
Reno et al. v. Meta Platforms, Inc. [Complaint]
Levine et al. v. Meta Platforms, Inc. [Complaint]
From The Washington Post [$]: AI chatbots are relying on AI-compiled, obscure websites to answer election questions
The Swedish government is blocking/banning the use of non-government-approved AI tools, including ChatGPT and Claude, by government workers for their work
An employee of the University of Kentucky has been granted a workplace accommodation to exempt him from mandatory use of AI, based on his humanist beliefs [American Humanist Association press release | Religious News Service | Tom’s Hardware]
Fabrication Follies
Aguilar v. The Crawford Group [Docket | Memorandum and Order on Motion for Sanctions]
U.S. Dep’t. of Health & Human Services and Nat’l. Treas. Employees Union [FLRA Decision]
Privacy
From NPR: “Flock is catching flak. Experts say other police surveillance tools are more worrisome”
Related: “Owned by Axon, the company behind Tasers and body-worn cameras, Fusus enables police to link security cameras, automated license plate readers, doorbell cameras, police dash cameras, drones, and body-worn cameras to a central hub that can use AI … [t]he software’s distinction is its ability to integrate privately owned cameras from individuals, organizations, and businesses …” [Prism Reports]
The city councils of Los Angeles, CA and Reno, NV have approved to multi-million dollar contracts for their police forces to use automated license plate readers and other surveillance technology from Axon [LA Times ($) | Fox 5 Vegas]
Miscellaneous
Cryptocurrency firm Binance has also been hacked, apparently by North Korean hackers, with losses estimated to be up to $6.3 billion [AP News | BBC News | NY Times ($) | Yahoo! Finance]
From NBC News: “Prediction markets platform Polymarket was forced to halt trading on its international platform Thursday for nearly an hour because of what it said was a compromise of third-party software” [Wall St. Journal ($)| CNBC | Yahoo! Finance]
The Tennessee Supreme Court has rejected a proposed change to its professional responsibility rules for lawyers that would potentially allow private equity firms to have direct stakes/ownership of law firms in the state [Bloomberg Law News ($) | Insurance Journal | The Nashville Post |
From Reuters [$]: “Private equity firm Charlesbank Capital Partners has invested in the back-office operations of US insurance defense firm Wood Smith Henning & Berman, the law firm said on Monday, marking the latest influx of outside capital into the traditional legal market” [Law360 ($) | WSHB news release]
The Free Law Project, which runs CourtListener and the RECAP suite of tools for federal court data, has a resource guide on its many, many projects, tools and collections of U.S. case material
Long Read(ish)s
Catherine Martin Christopher, Chandler Davis & Loryn McFall, How to Cite Artificial Intelligence in Court Filings (May 15, 2026), https://ssrn.com/abstract=7410698
Orin S. Kerr, Data Scanning and the Fourth Amendment (March 12, 2025), 67 Boston College Law Review 431 (2026), https://ssrn.com/abstract=5175686
Michael L. Smith, Generative AI and the Purpose of Legal Scholarship, 21 U. Mass. L. Rev. 29 (2026) https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5081325
David Shulman, Ninety Skills: How I Run My Law Practice with AI (David's Corner Ep. 4) [video] (Sep. 26, 2026), youtube.com/watch?v=0HMvSaMTEDg
