Bench & Bar: August 13

Stories in this week's episode:

Fixing our broken civil discovery culture: The problem of 'any and all writings evidencing or related to'

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lawrence P. Riff argues that boilerplate "any and all" document requests do more harm than good -- and lays out how narrower, business-language requests get lawyers the discovery they actually need, faster.

The safety valves are failing as ordinary cases produce extraordinary verdicts

Two verdicts three days apart this summer -- including a reinstated $13.1 million FEHA award -- are upending long-held assumptions about venue, plaintiff sympathy and damages caps, Leonid M. Zilberman, a partner at Wilson Turner Kosmo, writes.

Four steps for lawyers to harness AI without the risks

Wisner Baum partner Crawford Appleby offers a four-step framework for adopting generative AI under the duty of competence, without ending up as the next hallucinated-citation headline.