Legal Talk Network - Law News and Legal Topics

Bobby Williams is passionate about helping legal professionals find the truth in data. His lengthy career traces back to his natural curiosity in college for all things technical. He taught himself how things work and how digital tools can be applied to data analysis and reveal the clues.

“My job is connecting people to insights,” Williams says, sharing how facts buried in the digital jungle can unearth underlying truths. The hard part is helping everyday people – attorneys, judges, and jurors – understand the process. “My job is to educate them.”

As a paralegal professional, you may not need to manage the digital trail. But Williams shares tips for learning about what’s out there and the available services so you can help your team understand what they need and the kind of experts who can help.

The digital tools around us are here to stay. Cell phones, laptops, cloud storage, digital records management, and even AI hold clues and are part of our lives. That means they are now part of your legal process. If you (and your firm) aren’t keeping up, you’re falling behind.

Mentioned in This Episode:

Black eDiscovery Network

“The Journey to Becoming a Digital Forensics Expert with Bobby Williams,” iDSTalks YouTube

Perplexity AI

NotebookLM

Notion

Claude AI

Dashboard AI

NALA, The Paralegal Association

NALA Conference & Expo 2026

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Statistics show that 90-98% of both civil and criminal cases across the nation are resolved before trial. With seemingly fewer cases reaching a jury, how do we, as legal professionals, preserve a deep appreciation for the jury’s role in our systems of justice? Rocky Dhir welcomes Judge Les Hatch and litigator Cade Browning to discuss our Constitutional right to trial by jury and its enduring importance in our society.

They discuss the virtues of jury trials and their function in our judicial system, then share best practices for jury selection and trial preparation.

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Julie Suk is worried about American democracy.

"Over time, the control of our constitutional future has really been in the domain of the judiciary and the executive branch, with the judiciary increasingly green-lighting actions by the executive branch," Suk tells host Lee Rawles. "And at the same time, our institutions, our lawmaking institutions that are supposed to represent the people have become less and less representative because of gerrymandering, and also less and less capable of making laws that push back against judicial and executive power."

In her new book, The Shadow Court: Rescuing Democracy from the Supreme Court, Suk proposes one potential tool to fight back.

The "shadow docket" may be a familiar term to people who have been paying attention to growing controversies over the U.S. Supreme Court's emergency decisions. But a shadow court is a different–and older–concept, Suk says. Just as a shadow parliament is intended to be a check on the power of a parliament, a shadow court could issue legal opinions independent of h a supreme court's actions. Many other countries have constitutional courts in addition to courts of litigation, that issue advisory opinions on constitutional issues.

Suk proposes that Congress could create "a watchdog institution that provided an alternative jurisprudence or an alternative set of rulings so that the people could know what would we have in America if we actually had institutions that were designed better for the purposes of constitutional lawmaking and constitutional change."

One benefit of an Article I shadow court would be the ability for its judges to weigh in on constitutional questions without the necessity of a plaintiff with standing bringing a case through the entire Article III court system to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, Suk says. They could evaluate pending legislation or executive actions with much greater speed.

"And that opinion is advisory," says Suk. "It's not binding on Congress. It doesn't invalidate the state statute. It doesn't suspend the operation of the executive order in the same way that a court can issue a preliminary or permanent injunction. The shadow court's opinion being advisory, I would say could still, if it's designed properly, could still have a tremendous effect on our politics and also on our law."

In this episode, Suk and Rawles discuss how other countries have used shadow parliaments and constitutional courts to safeguard democracy. They also discuss ways to make a shadow court more reflective of changing public attitudes, and Suk's Lego-piece theory for improving the United States government.

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What does real prep look like? Hosts John Simon, Tim Cronin and Erich Veith discuss re-reading the pleadings (even when you think you remember them), pre-running exhibits with the video tech, using your experts, and why AI can draft your outline but can't do your thinking. Plus: the "just damages" lesson John Simon learned the hard way in year one.

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In 2016, Susan Carns Curtiss added 46 women attorneys she knew to a Facebook group with no real plan behind it, and it's since grown into Girl Attorney, a network of more than 40,000 women lawyers trading practice advice, mentorship, and support across the country. A plaintiff's personal injury and wrongful death trial lawyer in Oklahoma City, Curtiss describes watching newer attorneys increasingly post anonymously about burnout and a lack of mentorship, even as most of the community is thriving, and shares her own recent experience nearly drowning in a growing litigation docket before a longtime colleague stepped in to help her offload cases. She credits two decades of showing up in her local bar and trial lawyer community for having someone to call when she needed it, and pushes back gently on the idea that women's push for work-life balance is a new trend rather than a fight that's been underway for years. Curtiss closes with a call not to look away from what she sees as a broader breakdown in the rule of law, and to find the others who are choosing to stand up rather than turn away.

Proving once again that ALPS Insurance puts the "treat" in retreat, they gathered leaders in law from across the country this summer. These sit-down conversations reveal flavors of leadership and legal trends from a variety of perspectives. Cool takes, one scoop at a time, recorded live at the 2026 ALPS Bar Leaders Retreat in Missoula, MT.