“Judges don’t need to recuse from cases with critical attorneys, MD panel says” —

• “Maryland judges don’t ‘necessarily’ have to recuse themselves from cases in which a lawyer actively opposed their appointment to the bench, the state’s judicial ethics panel said.”
• “Finding that the circumstances did ‘not implicate the constitutional grounds for disqualification,’ the Maryland Judicial Ethics Committee wrote in a Monday opinion that if the rules were interpreted otherwise, an attorney dissatisfied with a judge’s appointment or rulings ‘could judge shop simply by voicing that dissatisfaction on the record.'”
• “A judge, who was not named, had requested the ethics opinion after an attorney moved for the judge to recuse themselves from the proceedings ‘that day and from all future cases in which the attorney appears.’ The attorney said that they had previously contacted members of the judicial nominating commission and ‘anyone else who would listen’ about their opposition to the judge being appointed to the bench, according to the decision.”
• “The attorney also described a ‘contentious professional relationship’ with the judge, identifying criticisms the attorney had previously expressed concerning the judge’s ‘work ethic, ethics, honesty, candor, and professional conduct’ while they were an attorney.”
• “The judge said that they did not have personal knowledge of all of the matters the attorney had raised but believed they ‘could preside fairly and impartially over matters involving the attorney.’ The judge moved that day’s proceedings to another judge out of an ‘abundance of caution’ and said they would seek an ethics opinion.”
• “The panel found that the attorney’s opposition to the judge’s appointment — and the attorney’s personal criticism — don’t alone create ‘an objective basis for recusal.’ The exception would be if the judge themself didn’t believe they could ‘remain fair and impartial toward’ the attorney and their clients.”
• Opinion: here.

The latest from Bil Freivogel:

• Exotic Leasing, LLC v. 7th Gear Exotics LLC, No. 2:24-cv-3036 (S.D. Ohio Sept. 29, 2026).
  • “Plaintiff is suing several defendants for fraud. Two defendants moved to disqualify one of the lawyers for Plaintiff (‘Lawyer’) because Lawyer had at one point represented one of the defendants in an arguably related case. When Lawyer saw the issue, Lawyer withdrew from representing that defendant.”
  • “Nevertheless, in this opinion the court granted the motion to disqualify. The defendant claimed Lawyer violated the hot potato rule. Our take is the court believed even if Lawyer appropriately withdrew from representing the defendant, Lawyer then ran afoul of Rule 1.9 because he would now be opposing his former client in a matter substantially related to his representation of the defendant.”
• Peters v. Portsmouth Plumbing Servs., Inc., 2026 WL 2917599 (Va. App. Sept. 29, 2026).
  • “This opinion deals with the scope of a workers’ compensation settlement agreement, not a lawyer conflict. However, the court felt compelled to discuss, in Footnote 2, the extent to which a lawyer could represent both the injured employee and a medical provider in the same proceeding. The court said it is OK if both parties consent in writing and the the parties positions are not so adverse as to make the conflict unwaivable.”
• Grenier v. Drolet, 2026 QCCS 3282 (CanLII) (Super. Ct. Que. Sept. 10, 2026).
  • “Defendant Drolet moved to disqualify Plaintiff Grenier’s lawyer (‘P Lawyer’) and P Lawyer’s law firm. The problem was P Lawyer, while representing Grenier, spent eight months, in 2025 and 2026, in the law firm representing an impleaded party (‘IP’), not Drolet, in this case.”
  • “Nevertheless, the court, in this opinion, denied the motion to disqualify. While IP’s law firm did not do a rigorous conflicts check when P Lawyer arrived in 2025, and while it did not erect a formal screen between P Lawyer and the lawyers for IP, the circumstances, as a whole, were such a member of the public would not suspect P Lawyer would have obtained information about IP, P Lawyer could use against IP in this case. Further, the court noted other factors suggesting Drolet brought the motion to disqualify for strategic purposes.”
• Solos Tech. Ltd. v. Meta Platforms, Inc., No. 26-cv-10304-ADB (D. Mass. April 6, 2026).
  • Morgan Lewis (‘Morgan’) has appeared for Defendant Oakley, Inc. Oakley is an affiliate of Kopin Corp. In 2019 Morgan represented Kopin in transactions in which Solos purchased Kopin’s smart glasses business. Morgan dealt with Kopin’s CEO (‘CEO’) during those transactions. CEO then became CEO of Solos.”
  • “Solos moved to disqualify Morgan under Rule 1.9. In this Order the court denied the motion to disqualify. First, the court noted Morgan never represented Solos, and Kopin’s smart glasses business being transferred to Solos did not make Solos Morgan’s client. Nor, did Morgan ever represent CEO.”
  • “Also, Kopin’s retaining a minority ownership in Solos as a result of the 2019 transactions did not prevent Morgan from being adverse to Solos in this case. Last, the court held the transaction activity back in 2019 was not substantially related to the infringement claims in this case. Thus, no former client, and no substantial relationship.”

“Big Law’s Biggest Nightmare Isn’t Partner Poaching or Mergers. It’s AI” —

• “For all the attention Big Law is paying these days to partner poaching and merger mania, these are not the primary concerns that should be keeping law firm leaders up at night. That would be AI.”
• “We know AI threatens to undermine the economics of the traditional law-firm model. But there’s another risk: AI introduces unprecedented operational dangers into institutions, including law firms, that are built on confidentiality, privilege and trust.”
• “The immediate concern is not an ‘evil robot lawyer.’ It is that AI guardrails are not effectively guarding.”
  In the past few months we’ve seen evidence that systems can be monitored and placed in ‘sandboxes’ designed to restrict access to outside systems, but those protections are not perfect. In July, Anthropic disclosed evaluation incidents in which Claude models, operating without their normal cyber safeguards, gained unauthorized access to computer systems.”
• “This doesn’t mean an AI independently escaped a perfectly sealed prison. Human configuration and security failures were central to those incidents. But that is precisely the warning law firms should take seriously. And law firm efforts at governance won’t necessarily do the trick. AI moves faster than humans. By the time a flaw is detected, it could be too late.”
• “A system does not have to become superintelligent to cause a disaster. It only needs too much access, a badly configured environment and an objective it pursues in an unexpected way.”
• “Law firms are especially exposed because they live on information boundaries: privileged communications, litigation strategy, deal documents, trade secrets, discovery databases, personal information and confidential client files.”
• “Imagine an AI agent authorized to search, summarize, draft, send emails, access databases, execute code, or interact with external systems. The question is no longer merely whether it will produce a wrong answer. It is: what happens when the AI is wrong and has agency?”
• “For a law firm, the consequences of an AI failure can be severe. Mishandled privilege, exposed discovery material, an unauthorized communication, a fabricated authority in a filing, or a breach of a client information barrier could trigger malpractice claims, sanctions, regulatory scrutiny, loss of privilege and reputational damage. Unlike a junior associate, an autonomous agent can act at machine speed and potentially repeat an error across thousands of documents or matters.”
• “The profession has established ways to supervise people—ethics rules, conflicts systems, access controls, audits and training. But who will supervise the AI agents working through the night? Who is responsible when the AI takes an action no one specifically instructed it to take? Who audits its process rather than merely reviewing its output? What happens when its objective conflicts with the client’s interests, the firm’s interests, or the system’s own interpretation of its instructions?”
• “Law firm leaders don’t need to resolve every debate about whether AI will become genuinely autonomous or whether the most extreme scenarios are likely. But they need to recognize the risks. No firm wants to be caught having placed extraordinary power inside an institution built on confidentiality without adequate means of controlling it. And experts agree that no one knows whether AI can be controlled.”