In an AI-enabled legal world, writing and research are no longer what set lawyers apart. What matters now is judgment—the ability to choose wisely under uncertainty, explain tradeoffs, and earn trust. This piece explores why judgment is becoming the lawyer’s most valuable skill, where AI helps sharpen it, and why it can never replace it.

Many employment risks don’t come from bad decisions—they come from decisions made without a shared starting point. This article explores why the absence of defaults quietly creates inconsistency, overloads in-house legal teams, and makes outcomes harder to defend, even when everyone acts in good faith.

An employer won in arbitration—yet the PAGA case survived. A recent Court of Appeal decision highlights why some arbitration victories end PAGA claims while others do not, and what courts are really focusing on when standing is at issue.

New York’s new AI oversight law isn’t really about AI. It’s about governance. California employers should pay attention not because the statute will be copied west, but because California already regulates outcomes — and governance is what makes those outcomes explainable, defensible, and durable over time.

The EEOC’s warning of a coming DEI reckoning in 2026 isn’t really about politics or ideology. It’s about systems. As equity principles move deeper into compensation, performance, and AI-supported decision-making, the real question for employers becomes whether those systems can explain themselves years later—under scrutiny—by people who didn’t design them.

California’s SB 642 quietly transforms pay equity compliance. By redefining pay as total compensation and extending the life of pay equity claims, the law turns compensation into a systems and governance issue—one increasingly shaped by AI, data, and cross-functional decision-making. This in-house perspective explores the risks most alerts miss and how employers can prepare.

California is moving toward greater oversight of artificial intelligence in the workplace. Although the proposed “No Robo Bosses Act” (SB 7) did not pass, it offers a clear preview of how California may regulate AI-driven employment decisions in the future. This article explains what the bill signaled, why existing California employment and discrimination laws already apply to workplace AI, and why employers should involve both employment and privacy teams when evaluating AI and automated decision-making tools.