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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

SUPPORTING CASTE - Last week in this space, we told you about how some large law firms are forcing attorneys back to the office for more days each week, having regained leverage over their talent. With that in mind, you can imagine how much flexibility firms are affording folks who never had any leverage to begin with. As Law.com's Justin Henry reports, in this new paradigm of hybrid work, not all office attendance expectations are equal. Expectations that secretarial and support staff spend the bulk of their time in the office contrast with those for their attorney colleagues, who tend to have more flexibility to determine their workplace habits for themselves. As New Jersey-based legal staff recruiter Peggy Kruza put it: "In a law firm, you either make money or you cost money. Staff are overhead; they don't have the same rights."

WHAT A.I. ATE - Until now, a significant burden in most copyright infringement cases against generative AI tools—largely from artists—has been the task of proving the model, also known as a large language model (LLM), was trained on a specific work. By ChatGPT's own admission, that challenge is somewhat overcome in the latest class action against OpenAI, brought by three authors, including comedian Sarah Silverman. If suits like this one are successful, they might create new guidelines for how LLMs are dealt with in the discovery process, e-discovery experts and attorneys told Law.com's Isha Marathe. "Coming out of [a class action] like this, I could see requirement that could offer rules of the road around [cataloging] what you are ingesting into your AI tool," said Mary Mack, CEO and chief legal technologist at the Electronic Discovery Reference Model. "Is it appropriate? Do [you] have the right to do it? Is the material you are ingesting good material? Where did come from?"

ON THE RADAR - Becton Dickinson, a medical device maker, and other defendants were slapped with a product liability lawsuit Friday in Missouri Western District Court. The suit, brought by Holman Schiavone LLC on behalf of Tyler Zumalt, centers on the defendants' PowerPort implant used to deliver drugs directly into patients' bloodstreams. According to the complaint, the defendants do not properly inform implant recipients about the risks of infection and sepsis. Counsel have not yet appeared for the defendants. The case is 4:23-cv-00513, Zumalt v. Becton, Dickinson and Company et al. Stay up on the latest state and federal litigation, as well as the latest corporate deals, with Law.com Radar.   

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