Hard to believe, but my first Ride the Lightning post was on July 31, 2007. It’s been a long run, but it feels like the right moment to stop blogging. My partner/husband John Simek and I are still the President and Vice President of Sensei Enterprises but looking to wind down a bit . . . As all bloggers know, maintaining a blog is hard work! I sure can’t leave without thanking my readers. You have been remarkably kind and generous in your praise for RTL. I was delighted, many years ago, when the ABA named RTL in its “Top 100 Blawgs.” Thanks to all of you who have passed stories my way or writt ..read more

The Guardian reported on July 21 that Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI have committed to implementing new guardrails for AI. Among the guidelines brokered by the Biden administration are watermarks for AI content to make it easier to identify and third-party testing of the technology that will attempt to identify dangerous flaws. Biden said the companies’ commitments were “real and concrete” and will help “develop safe, secure and trustworthy” technologies that benefit society and uphold values. “Americans are seeing how advanced artificial intelligence and the pace of innovation hav ..read more

As Ars Technica reported on July 18th, Microsoft 365”s Copilot is coming. While we don’t know when yet, the price tag is $30 per user per month. That may deter a good many lawyers from using it. Months ago, Microsoft previewed Microsoft 365 Copilot, a new service to integrate generative AI into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams and other productivity apps. Copilot will automate the creation of emails and documents, summarize meeting notes and help analyze Excel data – and much more. The “airwaves” were immediately on overdrive protesting the pricing of Copilot, which will cost $30 per us ..read more

Law.com (sub.req.) reported on July 12 that there has been a 154% increase in the last year in federal data breach class actions. Previously, the lawsuit average was 13 per month. No more.  Now there are 33 class action lawsuits per month. In June alone, plaintiffs’ attorneys filed more than 60 federal data breach class actions. “A year from now, we will be looking back at this data and thinking about the good ol’ days when only 33 cases per month were considered low,’” said Franklin Zemel, a Saul Ewing partner in Fort Lauderdale. Zemel co-chairs the first U.S. standing committee on cyber ..read more

It sure made me laugh to read the Ars Technica article from July 14 announcing that AI has determined that a section of the U.S. Constitution was almost certainly written by AI. Really a hoot – and accompanied by an AI-generated image of James Madison writing the U.S. Constitution using AI. Honestly, it was fun to read this article over the weekend! Today, professors believe that students are using AI when they are not and flunking them. Time to slow that train down. So far, due to false positives, AI detectors like GPTZero, ZeroGPT and OpenAI’s Text Classifier cannot be trusted to accurately ..read more

SC Media reported on July 10 that the pro bono law firm Law Foundation of Silicon Valley has confirmed that over 42,000 individuals had their personal data, including Social Security numbers, compromised following an ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware attack against its offices in February. Attackers infiltrated one of the Law Foundation’s servers during the President’s Day weekend (cybercriminals do love holiday weekends), which resulted in unauthorized access and exfiltration of tax identification numbers, financial information, immigration numbers, medical records, birthdates, financial account/paym ..read more

Bloomberg Law reported on July 7 that law firms are increasingly the target of cyberattacks. Thus far in 2023, five class actions have been filed alleging that law firms failed to adequately protect the confidential information of clients. It is logical that they should be targets – far beyond their own valuable data, they hold the valuable data of many other entities. It’s a gold mine for cybercriminals. Five class action cases have been filed this year against Bryan Cave; Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft; Smith, Gambrell & Russell, and two smaller firms—Cohen Cleary and Spear Wilderman ..read more

Dark Reading reported on June 26 that “it’s open season on law firms for ransomware and cyberattacks.” I agree – and while I’ve been focused largely on the increase of successful U.S. law firm cyberattacks during 2023, our friends across the pond have their hands full too. In fact, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) released a threat report last week. Basically, the report underscored the increasing number of ransomware and other cyberattacks, endangering the security of law firm data. It also advised law firms to shore up their defenses. Thus far, the NCSC’s advice has fallen larg ..read more

Law.com reported on June 26 that Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner has been sued in a class action lawsuit filed in the Northern District of Illinois following a data breach reported by a client of the law firm. Plaintiff Augustyn Wiacek, a former employee of snack-food maker Mondelez, brought the suit on behalf of himself and other current and former employees whose personal data were accessed by hackers in late February. According to a data breach report by Mondelez on June 15, more than 51,000 current and former employees’ data were acquired by cybercriminals who successfully attacked Bryan Cave ..read more

The New York Times reported on June 22 that Federal District Court Judge P. Kevin Castel imposed a fine of $5,000 on the two lawyers (who made national headlines) when they filed with the court a brief which contained some non-existent cases made up by ChatGPT. Judge Castel did issue some stern criticism and ordered lawyers Steven A. Schwartz and Peter LoDuca to apologize to the real-life judges who were named in the made up cases. It made me laugh that Judge Castel said he would not mandate that the lawyers apologize to those judges, “because a compelled apology is not a sincere apology.” I’m ..read more