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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

EARLY(-ISH) ADOPTERS - Law firms are not known for being tech trailblazers, but if there's a segment of them that could be considered at the forefront of AI adoption, it's personal injury firms. As Law.com's Cassandre Coyer reports, legal practice management software provider Smokeball released its 2024 State of Law Report this week and 40% of personal injury firm respondents said they're already using AI. "Personal injury firms are adopting AI at a much faster rate than other practice areas. And I think that the factors of a firm being willing and ready to adopt AI come down to, one, level of comfort with technology…but also the volume," Lambert said. "So what is the type of task and what is the volume of tasks? And personal injury firms are known for being high volume practice areas."

GOTTA DO WHAT YOU GOTTA DO - Elite litigation boutiques are beginning to match or exceed the new market salary and bonus scales for associates, following dozens of Am Law 100 firms that have announced they will follow the new salary and bonus scales set by Cravath Swaine & Moore. While Big Law on the whole has appeared a bit more hesitant than usual to engage in the salary wars this year, many trial boutiques don't feel they have much of a choice if they want to stay competitive. As John Zavitsanos, managing partner of Houston's Ahmad, Zavitsanos & Mensing, told Law.com's Brenda Sapino Jeffreys, once large homegrown Texas firms matched the new Cravath scales, his firm needed to also make a move. "We are chasing the same law students," he said.

ON THE RADAR - Greenberg Traurig shareholder Daniel J. Tyukody and associate Alex Linhardt have stepped in to defend Binance, a Malta-based cryptocurrency exchange platform, and its CEO Changpeng Zhao in a pending securities class action. The suit, filed Oct. 2 in California Northern District Court by the Devlin Law Firm and Corexlegal, accuse Zhao of issuing statements that hastened the demise of FTX in order to remove a competitor and strengthen Binance's hold on the crypto market. The suit alleges that Zhao's actions violated federal securities laws and California's Unfair Competition Law. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Trina L. Thompson, is 3:23-cv-05038, Lahav v. Binance Holdings Limited 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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