Department of Justice

* George RR Martin among the authors suing OpenAI for allowing the algorithm to train on their work. Did the AI learn to sit on an anticipated project for over a decade? Because otherwise it’s not clear what it’s learning from Martin. [Reuters]

* Former DHS Secretary turned security consultant Michael Chernoff warns that AI needs proactive guardrails. Great point… now go back to collecting millions of dollars from the Supreme Court to tell them they did a great job investigating the Dobbs leak without bothering to interview the most likely suspects. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Attorney attempted to attend two CLEs at once. Most would call this blatantly unethical, but it’s also impressive multitasking. [ABA Journal]

* The Feds closed up the investigation into Los Angeles water and power billing violations — involving allegations of attorney misconduct — without charging anyone. [LA Times]

* SEC issues new rules to bar funds from touting ESG work when they aren’t really investing in ESG work. A sound policy that won’t matter when Republicans ban private enterprise from spending money on causes they don’t like. [Law360]

* DISCO hit with a securities class action over financial disclosures. [Legaltech News]

* Which seems to be the least of the problems over there. [Daily Mail]

* Clarence Thomas brings on Elliot Berke to represent him in his ethical quagmire, marking the first sign Thomas is starting to take his scandals seriously. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Mitch McConnell froze again. Cornell Law professor Michael Dorf examines the constitutional gaps for dealing with the issue. [Dorf on Law]

* DOJ moves to stop upcoming Titanic expedition because… obviously. [CNN]

* Lawyer tried to sub in a fake client during an arraignment. Gotta admit, that’s a new one! [ABA Journal]

* Judge in Sam Bankman-Fried case wants all postponement requests filed immediately because he’s tired of vague claims about what might happen in the future based on nothing, which if you think about it is how this case got here in the first place. [Fortune]

* Not a great week for the Proud Boys. [Reuters]

* Does the First Amendment protect criticizing a public school softball coach? Yes. Of course it does. How is this case still going? [Law.com]

* A study of law students using AI on exams found that low performing students did better, high performing students did worse. [Reuters]

* UK judge receives “formal advice” after falling asleep during trial. Presumably the advice was to blame the English accents for lulling him to sleep. I mean… has anyone ever actually finished that Stephen Fry story? [LegalCheek]

* There’s chutzpah and then there’s a company that declared bankruptcy in a dubious bid to avoid liability asking permission to pay its leader a $1.5 million salary. [Bloomberg Law News]

* What’s the appropriate alternative term for “nonlawyer” that we’re supposed to use? Because there’s some pretty important ethical reasons to make that distinction clear to firm outsiders. [ABA Journal]

* When the Obama DOJ walked away from probing right-wing terror groups, it set the stage for racially motivated attacks like the one in Jacksonville. [Revolving Door Project]

* LeClair Ryan founder inching closer to a deal in bankruptcy fight. [Law360]