As part of my software expert witness slavery, I’ve been working with some young attorneys. Billing rate for first year associates is now nearly $1,000 per hour, which they admit “is a lot of money for someone who doesn’t know anything.” Those fresh out of law school generally conform to orthodox ruling party political points of view. Abortion care should be provided at taxpayer expense at any stage of a pregnant person’s pregnancy (as in Maskachusetts!). If a respiratory virus emerges, Science requires that residents of the U.S. be locked down and making it illegal for healthy Americans to assemble does not violate what those without legal training might have understood as a Constitutional right to assemble. When schools are churches are ordered shut, it makes good epidemiological sense to keep alcohol and marijuana stores open and allow people to meet up via Tinder and then share a bed.
A senior associate got into the mix and he turned out to be a self-described libertarian. He pronounced “Kamala” the way that seemingly most people did through June 2024. It’s unclear how it should be pronounced, actually. Maybe “comma-la” (from Harris herself?). An Indian friend (not Elizabeth Warren) says the initial K should be pronounced more like a G. Maybe the pronunciation actually is different depending on which accent Kamala Harris is using that day or that hour?
What I found interesting was that a non-Deplorable took personal offense at “Kamala” being pronounced, from his point of view, incorrectly. His plan to vote for Kamala Harris gave him a stake in ensuring that everyone who failed to conform with the pronunciation of the moment was disciplined.
I’ve directly observed similar exchanges a couple of other times. The Democrat explicitly says that he/she/ze/they is being “disrespected” if the Deplorable doesn’t speak Sanskrit properly.
Separately, what if one were to send the following drinking glass to a Kamala Harris supporter?
What level of disrespect would that be?
Point out that disparaging people’s pronunciations of difficult words and names has long been a tool of racist, classist, and ableist oppression. Not everyone has the privilege of access to a cosmopolitan education where they might become familiar with the pronunciations of Indian words and names.
“Are you making fun of my accent? I grew up working-class in rural Massachusetts”
Separately, what if one were to send the following drinking glass to a Kamala Harris supporter? Would be a nice gesture.
What level of disrespect would that be? No level of disrespect!
“As part of my software expert witness slavery” going forward we shall now call you the new expert witness formally known as Phillip Greenspun.
I have heard COM-uh-luh, CAM-uh-luh, cuh-MOL-uh. Tucker Carlson got blamed for mispronouncing her name, so he found clips of she herself pronouncing it in different ways.
Anyone coming to America should expect an Americanized pronunciation.
Did you mean $1,000 and hour?
Fixed. Thanks!
> Billing rates for first year associates is now nearly $1,000 per hour,
How much of that work (and @PhilG’s related work too?) could be done by ChatGPT? Surely 80%, maybe 90%?
This seems like an obvious and trivial idea, so I’m guessing the USPTO has been flood with “obvious method and process for using AI to do trivial stuff” applications related to it.
AIWT: It occurred to me that an LLM, having been fed the massive corpus of documents that had been produced in the case, should have been of us, e.g., finding the best counterarguments. But no use was made of LLMs.
Beware of ChatGPT’s legal expertise:
“A New York lawyer cited fake cases generated by ChatGPT in a legal brief filed in federal court and may face sanctions as a result, according to news reports.”
“Judge P. Kevin Castel wrote in an early May order regarding the plaintiff’s filing that “six of the submitted cases appear to be bogus judicial decisions with bogus quotes and bogus internal citations.” He called it “an unprecedented circumstance.”
https://www.legaldive.com/news/chatgpt-fake-legal-cases-generative-ai-hallucinations/651557/