My latest column, “The Story of Stuff,” is out in the latest Wisconsin Lawyer magazine. It’s a little less snarky than usual, but I still got to reference George Carlin, mainframe punch cards, and the entropy-in-action that is my desk. (My own office rarely gets to the level of the free stock photo illustrating this blog entry, and we can be thankful for small favors ..read more

 Last week, CNN reported that Wisconsin native and fake elector lawyer Ken Chesebro not only had an anonymous Twitter/X account, “@BadgerPundit,” but denied its existence to Michigan investigators. The account was actually created back when then-Governor Scott Walker dropped the Act 10 bomb, incidentally right around the same time I created my own, very much not anonymous Twitter account (it’s @EthickingStacie now, naturally, but was something else then). We may have interacted at some point, but we were never mutuals. This Blog Is Not About Politics so I am not weighing in on the elector ..read more

My high school alumni association’s social media page alerted me to an online auction and raffle supporting “under-resourced students and families n our community.” I decided to check out the auction items—most of them are the usual restaurant and attraction gift certificates. The raffle included a prime parking spot for a rising senior and several Stanley tumblers. Shockingly, nothing appeared to involve multilevel marketing. (Where I live now and where I grew up are very different places, apparently.) Anyway, the item that caught my attention was “Legal Advice for Your Grad.” (I am not namin ..read more

There was much buzz today about an article in the Cut (a lifestyle website from Vox Media/New York Magazine) – “The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It To A Stranger.” Charlotte Cowles, the Cut’s financial advice columnist, discussed in embarrassing detail how she fell victim to what she termed a “cruel and violating [scam] but one painfully obvious in retrospect.” Cowles did not believe she could ever be a victim—she did not fit any stereotype; her mom called her “maddeningly rational.” Reaction on social media was about as you would expect so I am not linking to it, but many poster ..read more

Hi, folks, It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? Sorry to say, it’s going to be awhile yet, as things are busy here. In the meantime, my January column for the Wisconsin Lawyer is out; this time, I discuss all those little conflicts life deals ..read more

A quick update on New York’s Second AI Hallucination case, which I originally covered a couple of weeks ago—today we learned that Michael Cohen, the client, and not David Schwartz, the lawyer, used artificial intelligence (this time, Google Bard) to generate cases that did not exist. In a declaration he submitted to the court (available starting on page 9 of this packet from the CourtListener docket), Cohen stated that (having been disbarred several years ago) he had not kept up with legal technology trends and did not understand the limitations of AI. Cohen, while praising Schwartz as a frien ..read more

It’s an ethics twofer out of New York, New York (specifically the Southern District of New York) this week. First, Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s lawyer David M. Schwartz filed a motion to end his client’s supervised release early. In the motion paperwork, Schwartz cited three District Court decisions. Routine, right? Regular readers of this blog and/or people who understand human nature know where this is going. These cases don’t exist at all, the court couldn’t find them, successor counsel for Cohen couldn’t find them,. and Schwartz has been ordered to show cause why he shouldn’t be sanctioned ..read more

I’ve told this story before but it makes for a good setup here: Years ago, I represented a client in a reinstatement matter. The Office of Lawyer Regulation retained outside counsel for the referee hearing. Outside counsel sent me an email, and copied his contact within the OLR (also a lawyer). I “replied all.” The retained lawyer half-jokingly admonished me for emailing his client, a represented party, in violation of SCR 20:4.2. Wisconsin does not have a formal opinion on the matter, but an Inside Track Dilemma article favorably cited a New Jersey opinion for the proposition that a lawyer, b ..read more

Another day, another misuse of ChatGPT. A Colorado attorney was fired from his job after using, and suspended last month for one year and one day (with all but 90 days stayed, subject to probation) because he used, ChatGPT to prepare a motion. As with other lawyers who’ve gotten into trouble for misusing AI, Zachariah Crabill filed the motion without verifying that case citations were accurate. Lo and behold,  they were not.  According to the Colorado Supreme Court decision, Crabill discovered the cases were fictitious (the decision does not elaborate), and did not do what he should ..read more

(I do not recommend saying ‘Ain’t No Party Like An Ex Parte” in a brief, but you do you, I guess.) I know I owe this blog some actual content (and heaven knows there hasn’t been a shortage of source material, just a shortage of time), but in the meantime: My latest column for the Wisconsin Lawyer magazine is out. This month, I discuss what do do when people are wrong on the Internet. And people are wrong a lot. So very wrong ..read more