From Auckland University - Comment: Judges around the world have pulled lawyers up for submitting AI-generated material to the court that’s wrong. To those lawyers who do want to use it – here’s a warning.

The second edition of LensenMcGavin AI's The Reading List is out now. Some really fantastic reads, including New Zealand's own (via Australia) Joshua Yuvaraj. See below: open.substack.com/pub/lensenmc...

www.royalsociety.org.nz/what-we-do/f... 👀

My babies have started laughing with each other. It is precious

There’s so much lost by not reading the source material, whether you’re reading someone else’s summary (eg a case head note) or a summary created without human input

Even more annoying is that the original poster is using the LLM to “wade through a mountain of papers for a systemic review”. Which means feeding a lot of academic material into the plagiarism machine that always lies, without the consent of the authors.

nap time and one baby wakes so you pick that baby up to rock back to sleep, but then the other baby wakes up. So you try to get first baby back into cot without waking to deal with second baby and end up with two awake babies who should really be asleep for another hour

They are 6 months old today and I am still trying to finish this 🫠

It really bothers me how the skill of summarising is devalued. It is a hard thing to do well and it is important to learning. Ughhhhhhhhhhhh

It’s World #Sepsis Day Sepsis kills 11 million people each year. Symptoms incl.: 🔸Fever or shivering 🔸Confusion 🔸Shortness of breath 🔸Rash that does not fade when pressed 🔸Extreme discomfort 🔸Sweaty skin Seek medical care as soon as possible when an infection is not getting better.

Sad to hear of the passing of Conor Gearty. www.lse.ac.uk/law/news/202...

This is despicable. I spent 3 weeks in Auckland City Hospital & the state of the facilities was appalling. My broken window was propped up by a [clean] piss pot in a room that had no other ventilation and was 26°. In another room the bathroom door didn’t shut and screws were hanging from the lock.

It’s really something trying to finish a revise and resubmit with infant twins. I do like 5 mins a day, every couple of days. At this rate I’ll be finished by the time they start school 🙃

You see, the great thing about law is that it comes down to what the law says, regardless of how “distinguished” or “leading” or “expert” a lawyer may be. It is a curiously egalitarian subject, where a cat can speak to a king, or at least to the king’s counsel.

Apparently “leading” lawyers and “experts” say that the Good Friday Agreement is no obstacle to UK leaving ECHR. Me, being neither, merely sets out what the Good Friday Agreement expressly says. davidallengreen.com/2023/07/why-...

www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa... Ongoing impact of Tamiefuna v R: "In the Quarter 3 plan the government has signalled its clear intent to change the law, so that police have the lawful ability to collect, use and retain information about individuals in public places for lawful policing purposes"

www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa... Ongoing impact of Tamiefuna v R: "In the Quarter 3 plan the government has signalled its clear intent to change the law, so that police have the lawful ability to collect, use and retain information about individuals in public places for lawful policing purposes"

From this, we realized we could generate large portions of some books with certain models, like a near-pristine copy of Harry Potter using Llama 3.1 70B. This work is ongoing; preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2505.12546 More to come (hopefully soon)!

I’m excited to share that my paper with @jtlg.bsky.social , "The Files are in the Computer: On Copyright, Memorization, and Generative AI" (April 2024), is out in the AI Disrupting Law symposium issue of the Chicago-Kent Law Review! The full issue is here: scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/cklawreview/

This should be a major disciplinary matter EVERY SINGLE TIME. No excuses. You are misleading the court. As far as I am concerned there are NO legitimate use cases for genAI is law.

Transformative work of the day, footlong edition

This article is irresponsible reporting. As Eddie states below, when relevant evidence is not put before a jury because a judge has ordered that it shouldn’t be, there are good reasons for it. We are all to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, and we all have the right to a fair trial.

Graduated with my PhD a year ago. And 5 years before that, my LLM. Now I’m about to wake my twins up.

People always ask me : “Cristi, how do you manage parenting a baby while going up for tenure?” It’s easy. The secret is *flow-based-scheduling*. Here are its three core strategies for new academic parents: Sleep when the baby sleeps Cry when the baby cries Publish when the baby publishes

Should really stop working while on maternity leave 🫠 (I did it to myself)

Today: the Chief Justice gave me advice on raising twins at the launch of my co-authored book, Mahoney on Evidence.

www.1news.co.nz/2025/05/09/t... “The case of Mahia Tamiefuna and his quashed conviction for aggravated robbery shows how illegally obtained evidence cannot be used by police as evidence.” I didn’t write that - it’s not true. There are many cases where IOE is admitted. This is just not 1 of them.

I couldn’t resist: theconversation.com/inadmissible... Now to try and have a nap before the babies wake up again 😴

www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/3606... Tamiefuna acquitted today following successful appeal to the Supreme Court. Sooo I guess the suppression order was lifted! It took me like 10 days to read the judgment in between feeding my twins. Would love to write something on this but alas...

I recently spent 17 days in Auckland hospital and the condition of the hospital itself was pretty dire. We need far more investment in our health system, including paying doctors and nurses an appropriate salary. I had some bad experiences while in hospital, but some of the staff were amazing

I’ve decided the last months of a PhD are actually pretty good prep for becoming a mother of twins (doing the same thing over and over and over with no time for anything else day after day). The babies are 1 month old now and we’re doing ok.

Burden wins: www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/assets/cases...

Last day of work before parental leave completed, out of office on, but the article I was trying to submit is not finished and I’m still waiting for the Supreme Court to release Tamiefuna and ESR v Burden 🥲 Life quite literally carries on though (x2, because I’m expecting twins any day now)

The Supreme People’s Court has confirmed the record-breaking award of damages for plant variety rights infringement in China, in a case about the Envy® apple variety that was bred in New Zealand: ipkitten.blogspot.com/2025/03/appl...

I provided some comments for this piece (coincidentally alongside my ex boss Andrew Brown!)

I highly recommend the book about New Zealand trademark law written by Rob Batty and Kevin Glover. It has a very useful discussion of New Zealand’s trademark statute and cases in New Zealand, the UK, Europe, and other countries. Info about the book is here: store.lexisnexis.com/en-nz/produc...

Here is a link to the podcast, in which Rob Batty talks about the NZ trademark registration law that applies to swear words and I discuss US law and some of the topics I cover in my forthcoming Cambridge University Press book about trademark law and free speech: www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/the-...

My Auckland Law School colleague Rob Batty and @lpramsey.bsky.social recorded this podcast last week about offensive trade marks

A good summary of the link between the rule of law and democracy by @joycewhitevance.bsky.social. open.substack.com/pub/joycevan...

US deports hundreds of Venezuelans "despite" court order. Meaning, of course: "in breach of". On the face of it, it looks like there is now a full constitutional crisis in United States, in that the executive is now freely ignoring court orders. Crisis point reached. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Great opportunity to join the fantastic public law team at UoM

The law of geographical indications would like a word (Cue “it’s only champagne if…” meme)

TIL that NZ paid parental leave is less than minimum wage (min wage is $23.15 an hour, PPL is $18.87 if you qualify for max entitlement) 🙃

As is often the way with these things, the word count was tight so we weren't able to add some detail we would have liked! But anyone interested in this area is in luck: next week, @lpramsey.bsky.social is giving a public lecture at Auckland Law School where she will talk about some of these issues

Rob Batty and I have written a piece for The Conversation on offensive trade marks: theconversation.com/what-the-f-t... We comment on Paddy Gower's attempt to register "This Is The Fucking News", still under examination, compared with his application for "THIS IS THE F#$%ING NEWS", now registered.

Rob Batty and I have written a piece for The Conversation on offensive trade marks: theconversation.com/what-the-f-t... We comment on Paddy Gower's attempt to register "This Is The Fucking News", still under examination, compared with his application for "THIS IS THE F#$%ING NEWS", now registered.

NZ Supreme Court has just published Alalääkkölä v Palmer [2025] NZSC 9 - I haven't read any of it yet but this is about copyright and relationship property. We do NOT get many NZSC cases on IP so this is going to be a big deal. www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/assets/cases...

Really looking forward to the Trade Marks and Freedom of Expression workshop at UNSW Sydney today. I’m not able to join in person but I wish I could! Joining from Auckland 🤓

In early March 2020 the NHS sent an ambulance to my house. Paramedics came in with no PPE after asking if I’d been to China (I hadn’t). 2 weeks later my college told all international students to go home. I couldn’t (and didn’t for over 2 years). I lost my voice for ~8 weeks. #fiveyearson

New call for papers for a conference on the impact of the Human Rights Act across multiple areas of law after 25 years in effect. Conference being put together by @echrhawk.bsky.social and @lewisgrahamlaw.bsky.social at @lawatleeds.bsky.social this September: