(Subscription required) A proposed DOJ rule would pause state bar investigations of federal lawyers while the department reviews complaints first, reviving a decades-old fight over ethics enforcement, federal power and accountability questions.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held yesterday that a District Court judge erred in finding that a clause in an arbitration agreement giving authority to “a court or other body of competent jurisdiction” to sever any unconscionable provisions undermines the otherwise clear intent to delegate the right to determine the question of the contract’s validity to an arbitrator.

Div. Four of the First District Court of Appeal has held that a Code of Civil Procedure section dictating that court-ordered relief is limited to the demands of the pleading may provide a basis for setting aside a default judgment as to the division of assets in divorce proceedings initiated by a petition which listed the property at stake as “[t]o be determined.”

(Subscription required) The majority of California's 58 superior courts - together making up the country's largest trial court system - have decided to greenlight the use of generative artificial intelligence in their work this year, a Law360 investigation found.