Expert Analysis

• Class Actions At The Circuit Courts: September Lessons

  

  In this month's review of class action appeals, Mitchell Engel at Shook Hardy discusses six recent rulings involving pecuniary loss in false price comparison advertising, privity in an insurance fee class, antitrust standing, immigration class representatives, retirement beneficiary class commonality, and Rule 23(f) appeals in Fair Labor Standards Act claims.

• HPE-Juniper Settlement Teaches Key Tunney Act Lessons

  

  A California federal court's recent approval of the U.S. Department of Justice's settlement with Hewlett Packard over its Juniper Networks acquisition offers legal practitioners some crucial lessons, including on unique tech-sector remedies for mergers and acquisitions and the continued viability of the Tunney Act, says Shubha Ghosh at Syracuse University College of Law.

• An Economic Approach Could Curb Broad Antitrust Classes

  

  A Minnesota federal court's recent certification decision reflects a familiar antitrust pattern of inefficiently broad class certification even when the alleged conspiracy's effect is likely to vary significantly across buyers, but utilizing an economic interpretation of predominance would enhance efficiency by leading to narrower classes, says Sean Durkin at Charles River.

• Series

  Playing Bid Whist Makes Me A Better Lawyer

  

  As a child, I viewed bid whist as a family tradition and a source of friendly card game competition, but as a lawyer, I see it as a tool that has helped me cultivate skills like communication, teamwork, risk assessment and composure, says Keyonn Pope at Riley Safer.

• Tracking Trends In State-Level Regulatory Enforcement

  

  State-level enforcement now increasingly involves antitrust, artificial intelligence and data privacy issues, and the key for organizations to reducing risk is having the ability to respond across governance, public affairs, discovery and remediation in multiple states simultaneously, say consultants at FTI Consulting.

• And Now A Word From The Panel: Accessing Key MDL Data

  

  As the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation convenes for its September hearing session, it is useful to examine the treasure trove of historical and statistical information about MDLs past and present that the panel makes available to the public on its own website, says Alan Rothman at Sidley Austin.

• Opinion

  Calif. Bill Goes Too Far In Trying To Regulate Attorney AI Use

  

  California’s first-in-the-nation act regulating how attorneys and arbitrators use generative artificial intelligence will likely soon become law, but read broadly, the provisions may dissuade lawyers from employing AI at all, thereby depriving them of key work tools, says Joshua Wurtzel at Schlam Stone.

• 4 Paths To AI Safety Coordination Amid Antitrust Debate

  

  Frontier artificial intelligence companies have more room for collective safety work than the debate over an antitrust waiver suggests, with several existing avenues providing different degrees of protection and oversight, says Evan Miller at V&E.

• Time Is On Payment Processors' Side As Deal Dynamics Shift

  

  As payment processors increasingly use timing and volume to gain leverage, merchants should negotiate payment processing agreements well before renewal or migration deadlines, ensuring proper benchmarking, reserve, data, termination and transition terms are in place, says James Alexander at Reed Smith.

• How FTC's $20B Amazon Suit May Shake Up Ad Enforcement

  

  Gonzalo Mon at Kelley Drye discusses the significance of the Federal Trade Commission's recent suit against Amazon for allegedly overcharging advertising customers more than $20 billion, the company's potential defenses, and the context of rapidly evolving digital advertising technology.

• Series

  Law School's Missed Lessons: Cultivating Good Judgment

  

  Law schools generally overlook the role that solid judgment skills play in real-world practice, but attorneys can bridge the gap by strengthening their abilities to assess a case’s strengths and weaknesses, develop and execute effective strategies, and provide clear recommendations to clients, says Manny Caixeiro at Venable.

• DOJ Letter Rescission Portends Proxy Firm Antitrust Risk

  

  The U.S. Justice Department's recent withdrawal of its 1987 business review letter issued to Institutional Shareholder Services, which shielded certain proxy advisory activities from anticompetitive enforcement, likely foreshadows renewed antitrust scrutiny of proxy advisory firms, say attorneys at Paul Weiss.

• What Meta Damages Ruling Means For Data Abuse Claims

  

  The recent Court of Appeal ruling in Meta v. Gormsen found that user damages might be awarded for abuse of a dominant market position, raising the possibility of a novel type of competition claim against U.K. companies accused of misusing personal data, say lawyers at Macfarlanes.

• FTC Focus: A Shift In The Pricing Disclosure Terrain

  

  Recent state and Federal Trade Commission developments spotlight materially different ways in which personalized pricing might be addressed, which could result in an increasingly fragmented regulatory landscape in which businesses face differing disclosure obligations and substantive restrictions depending upon the jurisdiction, say attorneys at Proskauer.

• Attorneys Using AI May Have Ethical Duty To Redact Docs

  

  The trajectory of legal ethics guidance in recent years strongly suggests that as redaction technology becomes more accessible, the failure to use it when uploading highly confidential materials into artificial intelligence tools will become increasingly difficult to defend as reasonable, say attorneys at Lewis Brisbois.