A judge just compared AI tricks to jury tampering

Old rules are colliding with new realities. Florida's ban on law firm ads that rely on celebrity endorsements predates influencer marketing.

Now, it’s facing a First Amendment challenge from Morgan & Morgan. Court procedure never anticipated litigants hiding instructions for AI in their filings; now we are wrestling with what to do when it happens and why it matters far beyond that case. And in the office, the exit interview is getting an update and being supplemented by the stay interview as firms focus on retention.

Coming soon, would a career ladder for paralegals keep your best people in place?

But first, meet the dog who appealed his death sentence to SCOTUS. Sadly, all the legal maneuvering on his behalf did not succeed.

Please, tell me more about what you would do if you were their lawyer.
Everyone you know is about to become an expert on slayer statutes and double jeopardy. Which, to be honest, is a nice break from hearing their hot takes on the Lindsay Clancy trial.

Apparently he did more than get stuck in a White House bathtub.
Chief Justice John Roberts pays homage to William Howard Taft.

Call off the search; we think Reba won this meme. 
Or do you know someone else doing the “Netflix documentary” bit better? (And so you don’t have to look it up yourself, here’s “The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia.”)

Road Trip: “Springfield, Springfield! It's a helluva town!”
If you find yourself in the real Springfield, take time to visit the newly restored building used as a law office by President Abraham Lincoln. If you aren’t headed to Illinois any time soon, here’s a virtual tour of sites he visited during his legal career.

Most firms treat exit interviews as a formality (if they do them at all). Just another box to check on someone’s way out the door. The Legal Resource Group’s exit interview handbook explains why that’s a waste. When done right, an exit interview can be the cheapest retention research you'll ever run, because a lawyer who's already decided to leave has nothing left to lose by telling you the truth. And firms that extract information about client relationships, open matters and institutional history before someone walks out the door consistently outperform firms that scramble to reconstruct that knowledge after the fact.

Don’t know what to ask in an exit interview? NALP has you covered. The org’s got a list of questions that can help you collect substantive feedback on career expectations, professional development, evaluation quality, mentoring and firm culture as well as demographic and departure data. The way the questions are structured can help you identify trends over time.

NALP’s question sheet also covers “stay interviews.” As the Association of Legal Administrators explains, the object of these interviews is gathering the same sort of information exit interviews give you so you can keep your best people from leaving.

Why this matters: You don't need a formal HR department to do this well. You need a short, consistent question set, a habit of actually running it (for both leavers and stayers) and enough discipline to act on what you hear instead of filing it away. (Legal Resource Group / NALP / Association of Legal Administrators)

A Connecticut court just called out a pro se litigant for what is known as prompt injection. The litigant filed documents with the court that included instructions in three-point white font telling any AI system that processed the document to rule in his favor. Court staff caught it only because the filings had an unusual white space (the court does not use AI to process documents).

Judge Walter Spader Jr. drew a sharp line between using AI honestly to draft filings and using it to smuggle a second, hidden message past opposing counsel and the court. He compared the injection to arranging for covert contact with a juror, and sanctioned the litigant by revoking his e-filing privileges.

Why this matters: Over at Above the Law, Joe Patrice has a thoughtful piece on how prompt injections like this can have compounding effects that skew results far beyond the case they originate in. (404 Media / Above the Law)

Whether this newsletter is the first place you’re hearing about “stay interviews” or you’re already doing them at your firm, this week’s podcast recs can help you squeeze the most value out of them. 

On the Introvert Ally podcast, host Jennifer Kahnweiler, PhD, interviews the guy who wrote the book on stay interviews, Richard “Dick” Finnegan. Finnegan walks through where the idea came from and how leaders run one without it turning into a performance review in disguise.

For a law-firm-specific rundown, pair it with Ep. 30 of The Successful Barrister podcast. Hosts Marc Whitehead and Diana Berry apply Finnegan’s framework directly to a plaintiff-side firm. They cover the five questions Finnegan built the method around, why poor leadership drives the majority of turnover he's studied, and the quarterly check-ins their firm runs.

Why this matters: If you want the theory, start with Finnegan’s interview. If you want to see what it looks like inside a law firm, The Successful Barrister is helpful. (Introvert Ally / The Successful Barrister)

Morgan & Morgan is suing the Florida Bar after the organization blocked the personal injury firm from running ads featuring celebrities like Kyle Busch and John Daly, as well as a billboard about a youth football camp. 

The firm alleges that the bar’s rule against using celebrity images or voices in advertising violates the First Amendment, and separately argues the rule is unconstitutionally vague under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Why this matters: Whatever the outcome, this case will reverberate across the country as advertising rules built for a pre-influencer era are increasingly running up against modern practices. (Florida Phoenix)

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Raise the Bar is written and curated by Emily Kelchen, edited by Bianca Prieto.