The California Appellate Law Podcast
The California Appellate Law Podcast
9th Circuit overrules the appeal-extension rule: 30 Days Means 30 Days
Appealing in the 9th Circuit? Your deadline is 30 days. Don’t let Rule 58’s “separate document” extension lead you astray. Appellate specialists Tim Kowal and Jeff Lewis also discuss ChatGPT 5 (a “market disruptor”), and sanctions strategies in federal court.
- Appeal Deadline Alert: The 9th Circuit in McNeil v. Guitare held that Rule 58's 150-day extension for appeal deadlines applies only to final judgments, not collateral orders like qualified immunity denials.
- Anti-SLAPP Motion Timing: Mora v. Menjivar confirms that filing just a notice of anti-SLAPP motion within the 60-day deadline is insufficient—supporting documents must be filed concurrently.
- Out: Res Judicata. In: Claim Preclusion.
- Sanctions Strategy: 28 U.S.C. § 1927 can be used for sanctions without Rule 11's cumbersome 21-day safe harbor.
- AI Ethics: California courts confirmed in Nolan v. Land of the Free that attorneys must personally read all cited authorities, regardless of whether AI tools were used in brief preparation.
And more practical insights on navigating procedural pitfalls, avoiding sanctions, and ethically incorporating AI tools into your appellate practice.
Jeff Lewis
Welcome everyone, I am Jeff Lewis.
Tim Kowal
And I'm Tim Kowal. Both Jeff and I are certified appellate specialists and as uncertified podcast hosts, we try to bring our audience of trial and appellate attorneys some legal news and perspectives they can use in their practice. As always, if you find this podcast useful, please recommend it to a colleague.
Jeff Lewis
Yeah, give us a five star review on Apple Podcasts, please.
Tim Kowal
All right, Jeff, we have a few more cases and tidbits to report. We had some last week and we have still some more to report, including an important and this is what we'll start with this one, the McNeil case. This is an important case out of the Ninth Circuit. If you have appeals that you're getting ready to take out of a district court in California or anywhere in the Ninth Circuit, be sure that you understand the McNeil case because that has something to say about the deadline to file your notice of appeal.
And really the takeaway with that case is that your deadline is 30 days. Okay. It's a pretty simple rule. Just 30 days, nice round number, 30 days. The confusion is that under rule 58, there is a provision for extending the time to appeal. And that the 30 day deadline does not begin to tick until 150 days after there's been an order.
judgment when there has not been a separate document. It's called the separate document rule. So in certain kinds of cases and especially as the McNeil case articulates, in certain kinds of issues where there's, say for example, an order granting summary judgment. Okay, we all know and we covered on this podcast many times an order granting summary judgment is not the appealable order. Instead, you've got to wait around until you get the final judgment.
summary judgment set forth in a separate document and that's what rule 58 speaks to but in McNeil versus Gattier what happened is that the Ninth Circuit now holds that the additional 150 days that you would ordinarily get under rule 58 if you're waiting around for a separate document it can conflict with the statutory 30-day deadline so in that case the state official had filed who was a defendant filed a motion for summary judgment on grounds of qualified immunity
And that summary judgment was denied. And so the defendant took up an appeal, but the defendant was waiting around because it thought that, this was an order that requires a separate document. So I'm going to wait and see if the court actually gets around to entering that separate document. And then I will file my appeal. Well, after 150 days, there was no separate document. And so the defendant filed the notice of appeal, but the panel said, sorry, that separate document requirement only applies to judgments.
Tim Kowal
And the reason that McNeil articulates is that we already know where we need this separate document. Under 28 USC 2107, that's what governs appealability. And that's the congressional statute that sets forth the 30-day deadline. And it applies. It says that the appeal deadline is, quote, 30 days after the entry of a judgment, order, or decree, end quote.
And in certain cases where there, you know, we know what an appealable order is. We don't need the statute to tell us what that is. And we know what entry means. It just means when the order shows up on the docket, so we don't need another rule of court or federal rule of civil procedure to tell us what entry means. What we can use rule 58 to tell us is what does it mean, what does entry mean when there is
an order entered or some other ruling that normally is, that is not a judgment. Cause that's where we get some ambiguity. So again, in the example of an order granting summary judgment, that's not the judgment. Do we treat it as a judgment? Well, rule 58 would tell us that you don't treat it as a judgment immediately, but after the rule 58 period, if there's been no separate document, then on day 150, we will treat the order granting summary judgment
as the judgment and then you have 30 days. But we don't need that rule to tell us that a collateral order that is appealable under the collateral order doctrine is appealable and has been entered. So the rule 58, 150 day additional deadline is just a raw exercise of amending in effect section 2107 and it's 30 day rule. That's basically the upshot of McNeil. And now Jeff, I see you furrowing your brow so you've got a comment.
Jeff Lewis
No, I just thought I'd stump you with an unexpected unscripted question. Is there an analog in California courts of appeal? If you lose a demurrer and you're waiting to appeal the judgment, not the order sustaining the demurrer and nothing comes out for a while, I don't know, six months. Is there a similar deal? How do you appeal that if there's never a judgment or a request for dismissal or something?
Tim Kowal
Yeah, there's not quite an analog to Rule 58 in California law. And so we run into those vexing situations where we got an order, such as an order granting a summary judgment, but there's no subsequent order. Really what you have to do is run into court and file a motion under Rule, I think it's CCP 128, that says you have to enter a judgment. And I might be misremembering the rule, but...
Jeff Lewis
Yeah.
Jeff Lewis
question is when do do that? you do that on day 61 after the Demer order? Do you do that on day 150, day 180? When does when is the time when an appellate lawyer gets nervous about timeliness?
Tim Kowal
Appellate lawyers are always nervous about timeliness. yeah, the sooner you get nervous, the better. And the more likely it is that you are an appellate attorney if you're getting nervous early. If I were in that situation, I would probably advise filing the notice of appeal early. I would go in early on a motion asking the court to a.
Jeff Lewis
Yeah.
Jeff Lewis
Alright.
Tim Kowal
You must have forgotten to enter the judgment. Please do so. And if you're not able to get timely relief on that, then you just have to go forward with the appeal and let the court of appeal give you an order basically that you can put in front of the trial judge's nose and say, hey, the court of appeal would like you now to issue the formal order. But here's another interesting comparison and contrast with California law.
Jeff Lewis
Yeah. Yeah.
Tim Kowal
It is, you know, I think the McNeil case is, I think it's right. I I get the textual argument and the separation of powers argument that you've got a congressional statutory rule under 28 USC 2107 setting forth the 30 days. And if you want to go beyond that, then, you know, that's for Congress to decide that you've got a longer time to appeal. The Supreme Court in promulgating the federal rules cannot enlarge that.
It can't interpret the terms. And so that's what McNeil does. And it identifies the terms that are subject to interpretation. But it says that the term order in terms of an appealable order and entry are not interpretation, not subject to interpretation. So I get that. But here's a question for you, Jeff. We don't have, in California, there is no statute that sets forth the time to appeal. It's all...
just promulgated by the Judicial Council and the California Rules of Court under 8.104 it sets forth the ordinary 60-day deadline once there's been notice of entry or a file stamp clerk, clerk served, copy of the judgment or otherwise it's 180 days and that's just set not by our legislature it's set by the Judicial Council. Don't you find that odd?
Jeff Lewis
all-powerful judicial council members. Yeah, it is a little odd that, you know, California's never gotten around to, I don't know, fixing that.
Tim Kowal
And yet, the rules, the timelines for appeal are strictly deemed to be jurisdictional. We cannot go beyond the times set forth by the rules, and yet the rules are not set forth by the legislature. So it's not jurisdictional in terms of a separation of powers issue. To the extent it's jurisdictional, it's a jurisdictional limitation that the court itself can expand or limit.
as it deems at the next session of the Judicial Council when they were to decide to amend California rule of court 8.104.
Jeff Lewis
Yeah, right. Yeah.
Tim Kowal
Well, so here's some actionable takeaways from the McNeil case. So McNeil specifically dealt with a collateral order and specifically an order concerning qualified immunity, denying a motion for summary judgment on grounds of qualified immunity. And those kinds of denials are appealable because as we've talked about, Jeff, and you like to favorably compare qualified immunity
defense to the anti-slap where it is a right to be free from suit. So that's why it's immediately appealable as a collateral order. So specifically, if you have a case involving qualified immunity and your summary judgment motion on that defense has been denied, then you've got a 30 day clock and don't start looking at rule 58 and getting lured away by the swan song of rule 58 that you might have an additional 150 days. File your appeal within the 30 days.
So where does Rule 58 still apply? So it applies to final judgments, as we've talked about. If there's been a final ruling in the case, such as an order granting summary judgment, but the court hasn't gotten around to issuing the actual judgment in a separate statement, then that's where Rule 58 applies. That's the classic situation and purpose for Rule 58. And then it probably still also applies where there's judgment-like case ending dispositions.
like as we said, motion granting summary, order granting summary judgment or so far at the moment still orders granting anti-slap motions.
Jeff Lewis
Right.
Tim Kowal
We'll see if those are still long for the Earth in Ninth Circuit land after the order in, shoot, what's the name of the case that we covered a couple months ago,
We'll add that to the show notes.
Jeff Lewis
fill that. Yeah, we'll we'll fill that in post production, right, William?
Tim Kowal
Yeah, that's right. And then here's where rule 58 does not apply, doesn't apply in collateral orders, and it probably also doesn't apply in cases of other immediately appealable orders. So think preliminary injunctions. Those are immediately appealable. They're not judgment, so that probably doesn't apply to... doesn't fall under rule 58, and it's not really judgment-like. So it doesn't fall under rule...
58 but it is an interlocutory order that is appealable So the normal 30-day deadline is going to going to apply there And if you do need more time to file your appeal look at federal rule of appellate procedure for a five and you can you can move the district court to give you an extension of Time to file your appeal by up to 30 days
Jeff Lewis
members of the judicial council have not enacted a similar rule authorizing an extension of the jurisdictional appellate deadline in California courts.
Tim Kowal
And they, yeah, they certainly could, you would think, although it would kind of undermine the line that the rules are strictly jurisdictional.
Jeff Lewis
Indeed.
Tim Kowal
Okay, I did have a situation years ago, Jeff, where we filed an application. We filed a motion to extend our time to file an appeal. It was an appeal of an anti-SLAPP order, and the district court denied it. So part of our appeal was challenging the order denying our Rule 4A5 motion to extend the time to appeal, arguing that the court really didn't...
exercise any discretion just kind of wanted to stick it to us and and on appeal the the panel said well doesn't rule 58 apply and so you were well under the time given the extension under rule 58 so again because an anti-slap order an order granting an anti-slap motion is a is judgment like therefore it applied under rule 58
Jeff Lewis
Okay.
Tim Kowal
Okay, here's a before we get to our further I wanted to discuss with you about chat GPT-5, Jeff. But before we get there, here's just a couple of quick hits, some of the headnotes that I I'd stumbled across. This is on an anti-slap motion. And the case is Mora versus Menjivar. This is out of the California Court of Appeal. It was a it's a published decision. It's back in June 2025.
So this new public published case says that even though you even though the the moving party filed a timely notice of the anti-slap motion, the notice wasn't accompanied concurrently with the memorandum. It was filed later, kind of like the process on a motion for new trial, I guess, when you file the notice of intent and then 10 days later you can file the actual memorandum and supporting papers. That doesn't cut it in the anti-slap context. You've got to file it within that 60-day
presumptive time and just filing the notice followed days later by the memorandum and other supporting documents doesn't cut it. So that motion was denied.
Jeff Lewis
Well, yeah, more more discuss slap motions, but I would extend more to all motions. Maybe aside from a motion for new trial that anytime there's a statutory deadline for getting a motion on file, let's say 45 days on a motion to compel or the ones relating to MSJ's. Those time limits are jurisdictional and to meet those time limits you gotta you gotta file both the notice and memorandum together.
Tim Kowal
Yeah, I'm not sure what the creative idea was behind filing them separately, maybe the decision to file it was pushed to the last day and it just wasn't conceivable. so better try to get something in under the wire rather than later. Of course, if that happens to you, dear listener, then you should consider filing a motion. I believe Jeff probably has a handy that you can...
You can file a motion to get relief from the 60-day presumptive deadline to file your anti-slap motion.
Jeff Lewis
You know, it's interesting. think there's a split of authority there about it's basically a motion for leave to file a late anti-slap motion. Some slappers like me file an anti-slap motion whenever and drop in a footnote or a paragraph, please, please, please judge. Let us file this late and here's why there's no prejudice. Other people that have come across, not me, will file a motion for leave to file a late anti-slap.
and that'll be heard in six months, the leave part, and then the anti-slap motions heard a year later. It just seems like silliness to me. But there is split of authority. Some courts suggest you gotta seek formal leave and some don't.
Tim Kowal
What do you recommend, Jeff?
Jeff Lewis
Me? A lot of times I see late anti-slap motions not allowed to be filed because of prejudice that the purpose of the anti-slap motion is to nip it in the bud and having a hearing a year later after the leave and after the motion itself, that doesn't really effectuate the purpose and policy behind the anti-slap. So I recommend you file the late motion. Well, first of all, I recommend filing a timely motion. But if you get in late, add a footnote or a paragraph, or if you are super cautious and you've got a budget,
You could do an XPARTY application for an order allowing leave to file a late motion. That's one way to solve it.
Tim Kowal
Do you recommend the approach of including the request directly in your belated anti-slap motion? Okay. Not in a concurrent... You wouldn't file two concurrent motions. One the anti-slap motion and then also the motion for leave to file an anti-slap motion belatedly.
Jeff Lewis
Yeah, I do.
Jeff Lewis
No, well, I've never done it. I've never seen it. I've never seen it done successfully that way. Doesn't mean anybody hasn't. I'm sure Fran or somebody else will email us an example of somebody doing it. But I know the courts of appeal in published decisions have gone both ways in terms of whether or not leave by way of notice motion is required as opposed to simply a footnote or a paragraph or a begging at the hearing is enough for the judge to exercise their discretion.
Tim Kowal
Okay, the next case, Jeff, is really just a hygiene of linguistic distinction. If you're still using the term res judicata, get with the program. It's now called claim preclusion. So this is from the Court of Appeals published decision in A, B versus County of San Diego. It's in there in a footnote.
It says although although the parties and the trial court use the term res judicata the correct modern term is claim preclusion So there you have it and hat tip to Israel Gelb for pointing us to that case
Jeff Lewis
I went to one of those law schools that didn't teach Latin, those fancy words. So I think I learned claim preclusion originally.
Tim Kowal
Yeah, well, I learned them side by side and so I still say it side by side in case there are still some Latin holdovers who haven't adopted claim preclusion. So I'll usually say claim preclusion slash res judicata.
Jeff Lewis
OK.
Tim Kowal
It's your decoder just sounds more intellectual. It's like getting free rep.
Jeff Lewis
You know, I have marching orders at my firm to my staff that if a phrase in a document looks like it would be said by a dude wearing a white wig in an old courtroom, you know, comes now presents defendants and buy in through attorneys makes this heretofore motion, get rid of it. And I would say res to judicata falls in that category.
Tim Kowal
Yeah, yeah, right the way you talk. That's what I say. OK, then one last quick hit before we talk a little bit of AI. If you're looking to sanction opposing counsel in your federal court, most attorneys will look to Rule 11. But Rule 11 comes with that clumsy 21-day safe harbor. So instead, consider citing to 28 USC, Section 1927.
and say that the attorney has multiplied the proceedings in any case unreasonably and vexatiously. That's what happened in Rowland v. Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, a July 2025 Ninth Circuit decision. In that case, the defendant general counsel withdrew an erroneous declaration after getting the 21-day safe harbor notice under Rule 11, but still got hit with sanctions.
under 28 USC 1927 and that was affirmed on appeal. So what happened there is that the Defendants General Counsel submitted the only affidavit supporting a personal jurisdiction, Rule 12b-2 motion and made a bunch of statements about what the entity did in the 1970s and 80s. That was a relevant time period. The jurisdictional discovery dragged on for 17 months.
And after plaintiffs served a Rule 11 motion, the defense withdrew the personal jurisdiction motion. But plaintiffs then moved for sanctions under Section 1927. And the district court found that the judicial counsel had showed at least reckless disregard for an accurate account, personally tagging him with about $158,000 in excess costs and fees.
Jeff Lewis
Wow.
Tim Kowal
Yeah, so the fact witness label didn't shield the general counsel. So just because the attorney signing the document was not counsel of record, that's not going to be a good defense for purposes of defending against 1927 sanctions. And just withdrawing the offending motion after getting a rule 11 safe harbor notice still didn't shield you. So that's a pretty powerful hammer there.
Jeff Lewis
Yeah, yeah. Hey, before we move on to chat GPT, I want to throw an audible here and talk about one case. It shouldn't come as a surprise to lawyers these days that they shouldn't use chat GPT to manufacture cases and make up cases or to wholly write briefs without checking citations to make sure they're real cases. There have been a number of well publicized cases sanctioning lawyers, mostly coming from the federal court, sanctioning lawyers for
submitting briefs with fake cases. The California Court of Appeal has finally issued a decision in a published decision. It was Nolan versus Land of the Free. And it says, what everybody else has been thinking, and is now actual California law, that when you sign a brief, you're affirming that you have read all the authorities, whether it's AI or Westlaw or a law clerk.
or a first year associate, whoever you're using to help you get a brief together, you the lawyer, when you're signing it, you've affirmed you've read these cases and not only they're real, but they say what you say they say.
Tim Kowal
Well, that's a good segue into what I wanted to talk to you about with with chat GPT five and particularly five because that's the that's the big new iteration that just came out early last month in in August 2025. And it is as many of these iterations are they just improve the product exponentially and and I didn't want to I don't want to get in in specifics here, Jeff, but in the past I've told you that
Uh, that what I enjoy about using chat GPT is it's kind of like the equivalent of, me as, uh, working in a, firm is a hundred percent remote. So there's no, you know, just walking down the hall and poking your head in someone's door and asking them a stupid question to see if it's actually a stupid question. Uh, I can use chat GPT for that to, uh, you know, tell me if this is a stupid question and it kind of.
Sets me off and tells me, it is a stupid question or maybe there's something to it and here's what else to think about. And it sets me on my way. And then I can go back to do my traditional research and analysis and writing the brief. Now with Chat GPT5, it's gotten so much better that it's almost like I think I would compare it to a not just a junior attorney. I think what I compare it to is like a senior attorney who is a contract attorney. Okay. So an attorney who's very experienced, does very good.
Legal research but obviously is not an attorney or not not your attorney not going to be signing the brief And so you still you know I still personally have the ethical duty to do what you just said Jeff to make sure that I'm reading all the cases And that's that's one of the questions I wanted to ask you is that what do you think? That's a fair comparison to compare AI research with a contract attorney someone who you can't throw him under the bus. He's not
signing your document, even though he may, know, even if your contract attorney has a California bar license, it's not really relevant for your purposes because he's an independent contractor and not signing your briefs. And so you still have the duty of candor to the court in submitting the briefs and arguments that are made, that you're submitting. What do you think about that comparison, Jeff?
Jeff Lewis
I think it's a fair comparison with a disclaimer. I don't use chat GPT for that purpose I use Westlaw's co-counsel product, but let me let me tell you this co-counsel or Thomson Reuters if they were on this zoom They would tell you that their marketing their pitch for why people should use co-counsel is they say that when you Make a prompt to chat GPT draft me a motion on the following facts in these theories that you are somehow waving work product that that
communication between lawyer and chat GPT is not protected by the work product doctrine. And yet when you type that same prompt into Westlaw's co-counsel product, it is protected by work product. And I don't understand that marketing pitch based on same prompt, but two different pieces of software. But I will say I have more assurances. I just feel better about client confidentiality and people not being trained on my data that
using Westlaw's product, which is getting better and better all the time.
Tim Kowal
Well, it is getting very impressive. And I'll tell you just in broad strokes what I have been using it for or my method in using ChatGPT 5 is that I will give it like a research memo of some cases that I've looked at or a circuit split. And I will ask it to review it, tell me what's strong, what's weak, and to...
and to fill in any holes. So if I'm doing a circuit split and I'm not sure if I've hit all the circuits or if I've characterized them correctly, it's amazing at being able to do a job like that. if you think about doing something like if you're doing a petition for review in the California Supreme Court, if you're or if you're going to do an en banc petition or a petition for Sir Sherrari in the U.S. Supreme Court where suddenly you have to apprise yourself of the
state of the law throughout the nation. And that's not relevant to the merits of your case. You never had to do any research on what is the status of the law in other jurisdictions that don't apply to you. But all of a sudden, if you're going to be seeking review in a Supreme Court, you have to know all that. And does your client really want to pay you to do that? You haven't originally done that work product. So you've got really nothing to parlay into that work product. It's all going to be completely novel work product.
that you're going to have to charge for and it gets gets prohibitive. And if you've got ChatGPT5 who can do that in a deep research product and do it very effectively and without hallucination, that is going to be very difficult to decline to use such valuable work product that can be produced so efficiently and effectively.
Jeff Lewis
Yeah? Be careful, Tim.
Tim Kowal
And well, that's the next step is, yeah, what kind of safeguards can we put in place for that? And I wonder if you could probably use Thompson Reuters products or other big guys products to put your brief in and it will, I forget what the name of their tool is, it will site check your entire brief and tell you what cases are red flagged or yellow flagged that you might not have faithfully.
characterized in your brief and so you can make those adjustments. You should also personally check all your sites and so I still do that using ClearBrief because you just run your brief through the ClearBrief process and it will automatically take you to any case that you check on. So that's a very easy way to make sure you don't have any hallucinated cases because if you click on a case and ClearBrief doesn't find that case and show it up in the right hand pane so you can actually read the case and the pin site that you're allegedly citing to.
then you know that you've got a problem. ClearBrief makes it easy to personally spot check all of the cases that maybe ChatGPT has produced for you. But if you can create a set of safeguards, I think this really is one of those, what do they call them? Market disruptors.
Jeff Lewis
Yes, let me say this. There are different tools you can use. One of the most interesting tools I've been playing with lately is the Google LM Notebook product, where you upload a bunch of sources and there's no hallucination because the AI only generates answers based on what you've loaded into that notebook. And so if you had a body of cases that maybe you have time to fully read from different jurisdictions,
to identify splits or whatever. You could theoretically use the Google LM product to summarize those cases and describe the splits. But at the end of the day, somebody with a bar number and eyes and a brain has to read the briefs in the cases to make sure the cases say what you say it says. I mean, let me quote this case that just came out, certified for publication that sanctioned a lawyer $10,000 reported under state bar for
citing fake cases. The Court of Appeals cited before filing his appellate briefs. Had he read them, he would have discovered, as we did, that the cases did not contain the language he purported to quote, did not support the propositions for which they were cited or did not exist.
I don't know how you get around, there's no AI product in the world that can get you around the lawyer must read. But I'm going to say this, where ChatGVT can come in, Candy or Co-Counsel or ClearBrief, is helping you find the body of cases to reduce your wasted time reading cases that don't support your proposition and can speed up your research. Just like how Westlaw Electronic Research sped up research from having to use the books way back in the day.
I'm cautious about this product. I enjoy using it. Lawyers who don't figure out a way to use it are gonna be left behind. They're gonna be outcompeted by other law firms that are embracing this product. with the pressures that lawyers face to meet client demands and to meet court deadlines, you're gonna see a lot more abuse of these products before you see a rebalancing.
Tim Kowal
Yeah, well, and on the other side of it, there's going to be a lot of attorneys who put their head in the sand and say, no, we're not going to use this because that means less billable hours. That means less revenues. So there's going to be a, you got people on different sides of the spectrum. And I wonder if that'll fall on, you know, the attorneys who are doing, doing flat fee work are going to be more than happy to use products like Chat GPT-5 who, so that they can,
They can do in two hours what they thought was going to take them 10 hours without having to, with minimal attorney interaction. And I think that I'd co-sign your advice, Jeff, about at the end of the day, I agree that at end of day, the attorney's got to personally read the cases and vouch for what they say. But also you're right that the power of AI to be able to find and synthesize those cases into potential work product, maybe if we
if we always think of it as potential work product until the attorney has actually put eyes on the work product and checked it all out, that's where the force multiplier is.
Jeff Lewis
I view it as I worked on a journal in law school and spent a lot of time checking the citations for authors who submitted articles that were going be published. maybe a lawyer's role is going to be reduced to that in the future. AI does a lot of the heavy lifting, and you are a clerk checking the citations like we did in the old days.
Tim Kowal
Yeah, yeah, well, if you also think of it as, again, like the senior attorney who is directing the junior attorneys to do the research, depending on how much time and how many junior attorneys you have doing this research, you might not have time to run down all of the potential strategies and lines of attack. But with ChatGPT-5, can run down a lot more potential strategies in a very short amount of time to help you find the most fruitful
high leverage line of attack.
Jeff Lewis
Yeah, and let me say this. One thing I use of chat GPT I do subscribe to that I think is fantastic. If you are quickly drafting a document and you're citing an obscure source, a medical journal, a magazine article, chat GPT is fantastic for giving you the quick citation format for either yellow book or blue book. So if you need to make sure you are citing a source in the proper format, a source you verified existed, you know what it says. It's a great tool for that.
Tim Kowal
Yeah, I saw someone writing that ChatGPT still struggled with legal citations. If you wanted to just write your legal brief without having to give a thought to the proper citation format and then just let ChatGPT help you with it, it stumbles quite a bit. But that was several months ago that I read that, and maybe with later iterations it's gotten better.
Jeff Lewis
Yeah, I haven't run into any problems with it used for that limited purpose.
Tim Kowal
Yeah.
Okay, well, I think that's all we have, Jeff. You know, have you ever thought about asking Notebook LM and its ability to create audio, AI talking head podcasts to replicate the California Appellate Law Podcast? Maybe we could prompt our way out of a job here.
Jeff Lewis
I think I just thought of a good idea for our next April Fool's joke, our next April Fool's episode.
Tim Kowal
Okay, we'll talk about it offline. All right, that's gonna wrap us up this episode. If you have suggestions for future episodes and topics and guests, please email us at info at calpodcast.com. In our upcoming episodes, look for more tips on how to lay the groundwork for a trial when preparing for an appeal.
Jeff Lewis
And also see you next time.
Tim Kowal
See you next time.