Bench & Bar

The Daily Journal Network
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Every week, the Daily Journal's columnists weigh in on the issues shaping California law. Bench & Bar picks the three you can't afford to miss — and gives you the takeaways in minutes. Brought to by The Daily Journal Network.

  1. 21h ago

    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.

    Bench & Bar: August 13

  2. Aug 6

    Bench & Bar: August 6

    Stories in this week's episode: Why? Retired Second District Court of Appeal Justice Arthur Gilbert spends this week's column asking why — from bicyclists riding without helmets to judicial opinions that run past 50 pages, largely ghostwritten by staff attorneys and rarely trimmed. The public defender crisis Clara Foltz tried to prevent As Los Angeles marks 25 years since renaming its courthouse for Clara Shortridge Foltz, William M. Paparian argues the public defender system she invented still hasn't caught up to the balance she demanded between prosecution and defense. Are AI-generated briefs persuasive? Appellate lawyer Myron Moskovitz set ChatGPT and Claude loose on a case he'd already won, and found the AI-written briefs logical and well-researched — but blind to the strategic instinct that may have decided the appeal.

    Bench & Bar: August 6

  3. Jul 29

    Bench & Bar: July 30

    Stories in this week's episode: California's new jury selection law changes the rules of the voir dire game Felahy Trial Lawyers principal Allen Felahy breaks down Code of Civil Procedure section 231.7, which replaces the Batson/Wheeler test with a "substantial likelihood" standard and makes a wrongly denied objection automatically reversible. The Inland Empire's court congestion crisis With judicial vacancies continuing to strain Riverside and San Bernardino county courts, Justin H. King examines the growing backlog, the dismissed criminal cases that have followed, and practical strategies for litigators navigating crowded calendars. Defending the judiciary's core function: J.O. v. Superior Court and our court's response J.O. v. Superior Court marks a significant shift in the use of blanket judicial challenges. Presiding Judge Sergio C. Tapia II explains how the decision—and Los Angeles County's new general order—promote transparency while preserving the legitimate use of Code of Civil Procedure section 170.6.

    Bench & Bar: July 30

  4. Jul 22

    Bench & Bar: July 23

    Stories in this week's episode: Patchwork Resentencing Michael J. Raphael, Associate Justice, California Court of AppealImagine a law that granted resentencing only to defendants whose last names fell in the first half of the alphabet. Justice Michael J. Raphael argues that's effectively what California has done under Penal Code section 1172.75 — bestowing sweeping sentencing benefits on some prisoners based on an unrelated technicality, while others are left out entirely. How One Vowel Beat a $6.5 Million Judgment Appellate specialist Timothy M. Kowal, founder of Kowal Law Group, dissects the ruling that erased a $6.5 million default judgment over a single missing vowel in a defendant's legally changed name — and the strict rules of service by publication that made it happen. 10 Steps to Prepare a Witness for Deposition He couldn't remember his own birthdate. After three days of mock depositions, a witness had been coached into blankness. Michael S. Kun opens with that cautionary tale in a ten-step guide to preparing witnesses who are neither under- nor over-rehearsed.

    Bench & Bar: July 23

  5. Jul 15

    Bench & Bar: July 16

    Stories in this week's episode: The troubling implications of the Supreme Court's transgender athlete decision Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley School of Law, argues the Supreme Court's ruling in West Virginia v. B.P.J. weakens intermediate scrutiny by accepting broad generalizations rather than requiring an individualized showing of harm. Chemerinsky ties the 6-3 decision to a broader pattern in which the Court has repeatedly declined to protect transgender individuals from discrimination. The limits of inadvertent disclosure Sanford Jay Rosen and Ernest Galvan, of Rosen Bien Galvan and Grunfeld LLP, break down the Fourth District's ruling in Popa v. Simpson, arguing that stretching Rico v. Mitsubishi Motors Corp. to disqualify counsel over discoverable material undermines a trial's basic function as a search for the truth. They also lay out guidance on responding to inadvertent disclosures. Remote workers, noncompetes and the new choice-of-law battlefield David S. Cunningham III, a retired judge and neutral at JAMS, examines how remote work has turned noncompete enforcement into a choice-of-law problem, since an employee's residence, work location and customer base can each point to a different state's rules. Cunningham proposes early mediation and arbitration to resolve these disputes — without a multi-jurisdictional legal battle.

    Bench & Bar: July 16

  6. Jul 8

    Bench & Bar: July 8

    Cite Out at the Big Nerd Corral Benjamin G. Shatz stages The Bluebook and the California Style Manual as gunslingers fighting for supremacy under Rule 1.200, with practitioner survey data giving the Yellowbook a real edge. Licensed in Illinois, untouchable in California: The extraordinary career of Sidney Korshak William M. Paparian traces how an unlicensed Chicago lawyer ran labor deals and Hollywood contracts from a Beverly Hills corner table without ever facing indictment, and asks what that model would face today. I lied Arthur Gilbert confesses to letting ChatGPT soften his headline, then questions whether AI can ever capture the irony of good legal writing as California's courts move to regulate its use.

    Bench & Bar: July 8

  7. Jul 3

    Bench & Bar: July 2

    Columns in this episode: After J.O., when should attorneys expect a CCP 170.6 challenge? J.O. v. Superior Court stripped blanket CCP 170.6 challenges of their immunity from attack. Trial and litigation attorney James G. Perry asks the harder question: when unrelated attorneys all paper the same judge, how does anyone prove the coordinated "policy" Batson burden-shifting demands? An extraordinary right, narrowed by an extraordinary abuse The CCP 170.6 affidavit that once ended all inquiry can now begin one. Okorie Okorocha of Toxicolawgy.com argues J.O. narrowed the right for every litigant — hitting hardest the lawyer who challenges a judge he genuinely believes is biased. Capital punishment's forgotten Barbara Graham Likely guilty, almost certainly denied a fair trial. Los Angeles lawyer John S. Caragozian revisits Barbara Graham's 1955 execution — a buried witness statement, a staged alibi, a hanging judge — and the death-penalty debate it briefly forced open.

    Bench & Bar: July 2

  8. Jun 25

    Bench & Bar: June 24

    Stories in this episode of Bench & Bar: Inconceivable! Judges mangling famous lines from literature Glendale Courthouse Judge Ashfaq G. Chowdhury traces the misused phrase "more honored in the breach than the observance" from Hamlet to its loose courtroom life, crediting Justice Van Dyke's precise 1899 use in Wright v. Eastlick. We Came to Be Plaintiff Lawyers Litigation law clerk Imdad Rahman argues the June 18 Uber–Consumer Attorneys deal that scrapped both rideshare ballot initiatives quietly traded away the medical liens that get uninsured clients treated. The People v. The Bench and Bar Stalwart Law Group's Edwin Hong examines eroding public trust in the profession — 17% of Americans rate lawyers' honesty highly — and argues it's rebuilt not in galas but in thousands of small, unseen courtroom decisions.

    Bench & Bar: June 24
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About

Every week, the Daily Journal's columnists weigh in on the issues shaping California law. Bench & Bar picks the three you can't afford to miss — and gives you the takeaways in minutes. Brought to by The Daily Journal Network.

Information

  • Creator
    The Daily Journal Network
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    13
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    Bench & Bar

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