New Civ Pro Rules for 2026

California’s New Legal Rules for 2026: AI, Photo Proof of Service, and Simpler Statements of Decision

New statutes and court rules taking effect in 2026 and 2027 will change how California lawyers serve papers, preserve appellate issues, and disclose their use of artificial intelligence. Appellate attorneys Tim Kowal and Jeff Lewis focus on what actually matters in practice—what to fix now, and where the new traps are likely to appear.

The big changes:

• AI in the Courts: Rule of Court 10.430 requires courts to either ban AI use by judicial officers and research attorneys or adopt a formal AI policy with verification and disclosure requirements. Expect cautious policies, broad disclosures, and little tolerance for “the AI did it” excuses.
• One Deadline for Statements of Decision: AB 515 eliminates the short-trial/long-trial distinction. If you want a statement of decision, you must request it before submitting…and you should do it in writing.

Other changes worth noting:

• Photo Proof of Service: Starting January 2027, AB 747 requires process servers to document service attempts with photographs showing GPS coordinates and timestamps.
• Court Reporter Disclosure: AB 711 requires meet-and-confer declarations to disclose whether court reporter attendance was discussed and the outcome.
• Electronic Service Authorized: SB 85 allows courts to approve service by email or electronic means when traditional service fails.
• Expanded Mediation Authority: Courts may order mediation in cases up to $75,000 if at least one party requests it and no discovery disputes are pending.
• AI Disclosure in Bankruptcy Court: The Southern District of California Bankruptcy Court now requires disclosure of AI tools used and certification of independent accuracy review.

Listen now to understand what to change in your templates and where the next procedural missteps are waiting.

Transcript

Jeffrey 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. If you find this podcast useful, please recommend it to a colleague.

Jeffrey Lewis
And happy new year to all of our listeners. We're going to publish this right around the new year. We appreciate all the support and the downloads over the past year and hope you continue to hang in there as Tim and I put out these episodes.

Tim Kowal
Well, speaking of the new year, new year means new laws. We've got a series of new laws that have just been passed and are going to be many of them to be effective starting next week or in two days from this recording. We're recording on New Year's Eve, Eve on December 30th, 2025. We're talking about new laws effective in 2026. Jeff, we got about a half dozen of them, including some A.I. policies that are going to be effective throughout the courts.

What do we have to watch out for with these? Do you want to start with the AI policies?

Jeffrey Lewis
Sure, actually this one's been around for a few months, but it's new to me. I just discovered this this week and you know, there's abundant new rules and general orders are coming out every day in terms of judges and courts regulating attorney misuse of AI. This is a new twist. It's regarding disclosure and policies for the judicial branch using AI and the rules are California rule of court 10.430.

10-4-30. It's a new rule to address how courts will handle the use of ⁓ generative AI in court-related work. And the core operational change is the courts must either prohibit AI use by judicial officers and their research attorneys or adopt an AI use policy, one of the two.

And so you can expect to find, guess, maybe on local court websites, more more statements of policy disclosing, hey, we use AI, we the judges and our research attorneys, and here's how we use it. And presumably here are some safeguards. And I wonder, I don't know, but I wonder if some law firms might take some of those policies and copy them and use them to help formulate law firm policies. So if any law firm in the future gets tagged with sanctions or something,

for misuse of AI, can say, hey, I was following the same rules as the court system. But that's the new AI rule.

Tim Kowal
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's not a bad idea. Although some of these policies are pretty generic, I think. mean, they still have a lot of room inside the lines to color in. But I do have some recommendations for what law firms and law firm leaders should do.

should do in the way of creating AI policies for their firms. But tell us a little bit more about what's in CRC 10.430. is it only applicable to courts, court officers, judges, and their staff? is it going to apply in any way to we officers of the court who file things in court?

Jeffrey Lewis
I think 10-4-30 is limited to judicial officers, et cetera, but there's nothing stopping these courts when they're issuing an AI policy that governs court-related work from expanding it and saying, oh yeah, attorneys are also going to be subject to this policy. But the state mandate for courts to have these policies, I think it's just limited to the judicial branch and not to the attorneys. But the rule does have six elements. The states don't tell the court what their policy should be.

but it does say, Hey, your policy, if it's going to be kosher as to apply, cover six elements. The first would be that no confidential information or healthcare related data, that kind of stuff can be submitted to a public, a generative AI tool such as chat GPT. So that's the first one. The second is no unlawful discrimination. I don't know how you can have a policy that

mandates that given that most courts don't have the control over what you know these language large language models do but I guess if a court ever became aware that a chat GPT type service was was leaning in a discriminatory way they should stop using it that's going to be an interesting one

Tim Kowal
Yeah, I know that you may not use it to unlawfully discriminate. And I wondered if there's a lot of work being done by that qualifier unlawfully, if there's an intent element in there, some sort of agency on the part of the operator, because no one knows what's going on inside the black box.

Jeffrey Lewis
Yeah. And the third element is the court policies have to have a step, a reasonable effort to verify accuracy and correct or spot erroneous or hallucinated output, meaning fake cases. I think that's super easy. know, Westlaw's got that great word plug in. Clearbrief just announced a great tool that not only will check and make sure that you've got real cases, but issues a little report that

for example, an associate attorney could end up a partner at a law firm and say, Hey, you're not going to get sanctioned. ⁓ So that that's a no brainer. ⁓

Tim Kowal
Yeah. I think there's going to be a big market for that in 2026 after the flood of ⁓ AI sanctions cases in 2025.

Jeffrey Lewis
Yeah. Yeah, fourth element, remove biased offensive harmful content. The court's policy must require reasonable steps to remove biased offensive or harmful content in the material used. Again, you know, the courts don't have control over these these language models, but I'm guessing if it becomes widespread known that a certain model generates offensive material or if the court becomes aware of it, they have to have some some manner of spotting it before it's published.

And then the last one is the policy has to comply with ⁓ laws and ethic rules. So I imagine those rules deal with confidentiality and bias and judicial demeanor and all those rules, meaning nothing that generative AI does trumps the rules that govern both judges and lawyers.

Tim Kowal
I had a question. Something came to mind when I read this policy number five about disclosure, about public facing work when it's entirely generated by AI. it just got me wondering, what kind of work would courts likely produce that is entirely generated by AI? we talking about, remember when we talked with Adam Unikowski about, he was saying about the

the prospect that maybe judges will start using AI to draft their opinions because, you know, they got 25 year old law clerks drafting them now. So if we're not worried too much about a 25 year old law clerk setting policy via judicial opinions, then, you know, there's not too much more to fear with ⁓ judicial opinions. But do you think that's what this is talking about? That if a California judge wants to write

a statement of decision or a court of appeal opinion entirely using AI. They're not prohibited from doing so at least under rule 10.430. You just have to have a clear label or watermark or statement somewhere in the document describing how AI was used to generate the

Jeffrey Lewis
Yeah, you know, that word entirely is murky. And I suspect a lot of courts will use this in cookie cutter areas of the law for like, you know, unlawful detainer cases or lemon law cases where the facts of each case don't really change. It's the name of the parties and the dollars and the dates. And a judge uploads, let's say a favored template.

of how these judgments look or how these orders look in these cookie cutter cases and only change a few words each time. Is that kind of generative AI entirely created by generative AI or is it literally when you go from a blank page to a chat GPT input and then words are written as that was meant by entirely AI generated work. Hopefully the rules will as actually promulgated by the local policies will clear that up.

Tim Kowal
Yeah, you have any idea Jeff how this how policies like this get enforced if if at all are they all ⁓ just just subject to you know self policing

Jeffrey Lewis
Well, I suspect it depends on how it's discovered. So for example, if it becomes known in a courthouse that a certain judge is using AI in a way that's in violation of the policy, let's just say writing things and not reviewing it or writing things that has fake cases. Imagine the first stop is the presiding judge of that court. And that would probably be the end of the matter. But when the public gets wind of it, you're going to see complaints similar to any other

complaint for judicial misconduct, complaints lodged with the judicial council or I suspect it won't be very self-policing at that point.

Tim Kowal
As you said at the top, rule 10.430 does not... It requires courts to adopt a policy if they're going to allow the use of AI, but it also allows courts to forbid the use of AI, at least by judicial officers and staff. What else? Do you have any... Is there any further comments about that? Do you know of any courts that have adopted AI bans?

Jeffrey Lewis
I don't know if any courts have adopted AI bans and I don't know, I haven't come across any courts that have actually implemented these policies, but I'm sure our listeners or Fran will email us if we're wrong. And we'll cover them when they come out.

Tim Kowal
Yeah.

Yeah, well, I think ⁓ I don't want to skip ahead of you, but I think you had a couple of U.S. bankruptcy courts that had adopted some policies that were not quite bans, they start to make things a little bit interesting for practitioners about how they're going because it affects not just the judicial officers, but it affects how attorneys practicing in that court may use AI and the disclosures they have to make if they are going to use AI.

Jeffrey Lewis
Well, yeah, let's talk about the shift gears here and talk about the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of California. It's just one court in one portion of our happy little state. But I could see in the very near future, the state courts initiating uniform rules very similar to this. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Southern District of California has a new standing rule, Bankruptcy General Order Number 210, that says effective January 1st, you know, two days from now. Any pleading motion or paper?

whether moving opposition or in reply that the filer prepared in any aspect by using a generative artificial intelligence must be accompanied by an attestation or certification, certification signed by the filer, identifying the program used, certifying the filer, check the document for factual and legal accuracy using print reporters, traditional legal databases or other reliable means. And it applies to both attorneys and improv.

purse.

Tim Kowal
Yeah, I thought this was drafted a little broadly, and that it could mean that AI that was used merely as a proofreader to find typos. Like if you're using ⁓ Ross Gruven's Brief Catch, or Grammarly, or I guess every tool out there now uses AI in some form or another. I guess maybe they're not all necessarily generative AI. Maybe that's a dividing line.

Jeffrey Lewis
Brief catch.

Tim Kowal
But a lot of tools are generative AI and can be used pretty innocuously to help you find, you I do that. That's one of the practices I've adopted for using AI. I upload my Kowal Law Group Style Guide into ChatGPT and I will pump in my brief and I will tell it, can you tell me where my brief is not consistent with our KLG Style Guide? And it will tell me what sentences are, you know.

have offensive acronyms that are going to send the reader, you know, scrolling upwards in the document to find what does GPLD stand for, you know, and how do we get rid of that acronym?

Jeffrey Lewis
Well, wait, what happens, not to go off on too much of a tangent, what happens when your AI sees a conflict between Tim's rules and Ross's brief catch rules? What controls there? Okay. Look.

Tim Kowal
Tim's rules always control. Yeah. It's the court and then Tim and then everyone else.

Jeffrey Lewis
In the near future, we're going to have disclosure requirements regarding ⁓ generative AI. the answer is overdisclosed. No lawyer ever got sanctioned for overdisclosing. You put on there, I use Westlaw natural language. I use co-counsel. I use Vincent from Clio. I use Chat GPT for non-confidential related queries. You just disclose it all. And then you won't have any issues.

Tim Kowal
Well, I wanted to ask you about that. Is that where we're going? If you start over disclosing to the to the point where disclosures just become boilerplate and they just they're just in your template now, I don't even think about, you know, so if the judge starts asking you, I see that you use chat GPT and Grok and Claude and co-pilot in your brief. And I would I would say, well, Your Honor, that's just in our template. I don't know. We use some of those. We use all of them. Maybe we didn't even use any of them for this brief, but it's just. ⁓

It's just a belt and suspenders that we put in every brief. If you start over disclosing, you're disclosing nothing. So I wonder if the disclosures have to be tailored to each brief.

Jeffrey Lewis
Well, look, look. You know, I don't know about that, but I will say this, the real teeth of this order, and I imagine it also be in a future order, relates to the second step, that not only are you disclosing, but you're certifying that the guy who signed the brief double checked using a print reporter, traditional legal database, or other reliable means, so that that lawyer is on the hook if there's a fake nonsense case.

Tim Kowal
Yeah, I wonder if you know how on the the cover page of a California Court of Appeal brief, you may have many attorneys, you may have all the attorneys at your firm, you may have co-counsel who also wants their name on the brief, but the lead attorney who is responsible for the drafting and the court's responsible to give notices to the lead attorney has to have an asterisk in front of their name. What if you did something similar and attorneys were required for every

Legal citation in the brief that the attorney has personally checked out the attorney must place an asterisk next to it That way if you if there's an asterisk, that's a promise that you have checked out that case And if you start putting asterisk next to cases that you have not checked out you cannot claim that Well, that one just made made it in there because no ⁓ chat GPT is not putting asterisk in there Westlaw is not putting asterisk next next to the cases

If you don't put an asterisk, it means that you have not checked it out. And if you do put an asterisk that you have not checked out, you have made a false statement to the court and sanctions are a coming.

Jeffrey Lewis
Maybe, you know, appellate courts and our superior courts typically do what is familiar and comfortable to them and adding, you know, a certification of word count, a certification regarding interested parties. You just tag onto the list a certificate regarding genera of AI using similar language. I think that's the route rather than the asterisk route. That's going to you're going to start seeing it coming your way.

Tim Kowal
Yeah. What about, are there certain, well, we can get into ⁓ how to use AI in legal writing in another episode. But this was, I thought this was interesting and I just wondered what was gonna happen if ⁓ by way of over disclosures, if this kind of court rule is going to ⁓ force attorneys to make these disclosures, they're gonna sit down and have a firm wide policy.

to make sure that they are in compliance with that court order. And the policy is probably going to be, every pleading template that we generate for this case is going to have a disclosure footnote in it so that we comply with this order. And I don't know that a boilerplate disclosure is going to be all that meaningful.

Jeffrey Lewis
I don't know, Tim. Let's say you're one lawyer on a team of several law firms working on a high stakes appeal. And at the end of the appeal, right before filing or at the end of the drafting process, right before filing, the other lawyers hand you a brief and say, hey, Tim, we filed this and we just signed all these certificates. I suspect that the Tims of the world who are going to be signing certificates will take a second step and run through, you know, take pause a beat.

and run the brief through, you know, clear brief or Westlaw's tools to just make sure there's not any fake cases. Yeah.

Tim Kowal
Yeah, well, what it tells me is that, courts are starting to notice that attorneys are making a lot of missteps when it comes to AI. And yes, I certainly am going to make sure that I comply with every particular court rule in which I practice. But I also want to adopt overall policies that are sound and that I will stand by and that I could tell any judge that this is my policy.

in using AI, I feel that I am adopting it responsibly. I'm not digging my, you putting my head in the sand of pretending that AI doesn't exist, but I'm also not just exuberantly embracing every AI advantage that I can possibly get my hands on just because it's new and shiny and it can save me some time or it can get me some kind of advantage. I want to make sure that I have ⁓ my own policy that I feel good about, that I could talk to any, you know, any judge in a, you know, at a bar event and... ⁓

and confidently explain that's my policy and confidently tell any client that this is how we use AI, this is how we never use AI, and this is how we double check our AI when we do use it.

Jeffrey Lewis
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's move on to the next new law. And that has to do with statements of decision. You know, one of the biggest hurdles we appellate lawyers have is when we're given an appeal involving the substantial evidence rule and either no statement of decision has been requested below or it wasn't requested timely or the statement of decision was arguably defective, but no objections were made to that statement of decision.

The rules regarding the timing and how you object to statements of decision have always been rather murky. And a new law was passed last year, or this year, I should say, was passed in 2025. How about that? It doesn't go into effect till 2027, January 1st, 2027, but you should be on the lookout for this new rule, which changes one thing. It used to be if the total time of a trial is like eight hours or less, you had to request a statement at one time.

And then, you know, for the trials that are long, late eight hours, there's a different deadline for, for, for requesting a statement decision. Now there's just going to be one deadline. You have to request a statement of decision could be ⁓ either in writing or verbally, if there's a court reporter there. And you just have to make that request before the matter submitted for decision. Doesn't matter how long the trial was, could be a five minute trial or a 10 day trial. So that's one big change coming in 2027.

And then there's some other rule changes about, you know, whether or not the court can delegate to a party to draft the statement, the deadlines for objecting. And this is an important one, a deadline for the clerk to enter judgment on the statement of decision. If no statement of decision is requested or after the statement of decision becomes final.

Tim Kowal
Yeah, that one strikes me as important because I do not uncommonly notice that cases will fall into limbo after there's been a tentative decision or even a statement of decision and maybe the judgment just never comes. Maybe no one files the objections or the rest of the statement of decision process stalls out and then the clerk doesn't get around to entering the judgment.

Maybe the parties never submit a proposed judgment, or if they do, it just languishes in the stack of stuff on the court's desk that is important but non-urgent. And then you have to file a motion to get the court to enter a judgment. So hopefully that will maybe expedite that process. When I was reading through these new rules concerning the Statement of Decision process, ⁓ my first reaction was, my gosh, they're going to make it simpler. Because this is a process that's quite

difficult to master. And I get calls on this frequently from trial attorneys. We just won after a trial or we just lost after a trial, a bench trial. Do we need to request a statement of decision? How do we do so? The other side did request a statement of decision. Do we need to object? When do we need to object? What does the objection have to look like? ⁓

Jeffrey Lewis
Is it a good idea to ask the judge 500 questions like contention interrogatories when we object to the statement decision? You get that question, right?

Tim Kowal
Yeah, no such thing as too many. could pretend they're like interrogatories and discovery. Yeah, they love it. No, yeah, you you point them to 632, the only controverted issues. But I was a little let down that there wasn't anything earth shattering about these new rules. I think there were some refinements to some of the deadlines and some of the processes.

Jeffrey Lewis
Judges love that.

Tim Kowal
I think the only thing that was really substantively different is that the, and I think this was from your lips to the legislature's ears, Jeff, that I think we've both talked about this, that if you're gonna make a request for a statement of decision, yes, you can make it on the record anytime before submission or in writing if it's a trial longer than eight hours. But this rule now says that the request must be made before the matter is submitted and it must be in writing.

So I think we've always said that, that maybe just show up on the first day of trial, along with all of your other pretrial statements, your witness list, your exhibit list and everything else, go ahead and submit your request for a statement of decision. Just make it before submission and in the heat of battle, you're trying to figure out, do I have all of my exhibits in the record? Is there anything else I need to do? Do I need to make a motion for JNOV and...

And if it's a short trial and the court says the matter is submitted and you haven't requested a statement of decision, you're hosed. So this avoids that, as long as you're following the rule and you just remember that you've just got to include that in your list of pretrial documents to prepare a request for a statement of decision anytime you're in a bench trial.

Jeffrey Lewis
Yeah. Yeah. All right, let's move on to the next one. AB 711. This is effective this coming year, so January 1st, 2026. And this is an interesting one. There's two pieces to it. One, in discovery motions, when you have to do a declaration regarding a meet confer about the substance of the merits of your discovery motion, that declaration also has to include whether and the results of any conversation you had with ⁓ your opponent about

whether or not a court reporter is going to show up to the hearing. So that's that's the first thing your motion you meet confer declaration has to be expanded to cover a conversation about who or whether there's going to be a court reporter. And then the next

Tim Kowal
You know, Jeff, and we've talked about this one too. We talked in context of the court reporter shortage and it's happened to me a couple of times. On the one hand, I realized there's a court reporter shortage, but on the other hand, as an appellate attorney, my mantra is, did you order a court reporter? And so multiple times I've ordered a court reporter and then shown up to find to my horror that both sides have requested a court reporter and you got two people sitting there when there's... other poor litigants out there who can't find any court reporters. We've got two. One of them has to be sent home.

Jeffrey Lewis
Yeah. And well, that brings us to the second piece of AB 711, which is brought more broadly, not just discovery motions, but all motions. The notice of motion has to state whether or not the moving party is going to be retaining ⁓ a court reporter to show up to the hearing. So I guess that gives the opponent the opportunity if they want a court reporter and the moving party is not going to bring one that the opposing party won't be left short handed or order that second court reporter.

Tim Kowal
Yeah, I've always wondered, know, speaking of that issue of ⁓ there being two court reporters, if you think that, you know, maybe you've ordered the court reporter and you've told the other side, I've got the court reporter, no worries. And then the tentative comes out and it's in your favor. Can you call up your court reporter and say, you know, no need to show up. Everything's turning out, coming out roses for us. We're going to let you go. And then my opponent will show up tomorrow morning and argue his little heart out to no court reporter and there's no record there. Is that licit? Is that allowed or does that violate the spirit of this law or the letter of this law?

Jeffrey Lewis
You're a monster, Tim Kowal

Tim Kowal
I only think about these things because I put myself in the shoes of my, you know, unscrupulous opponents.

Jeffrey Lewis
Yeah, I suspect it violates the spirit of this new rule. If you say you're the moving party and you're going to bring a court reporter and then the court reporter doesn't show up. A judge certainly wouldn't be impressed if down the line the judge learned props in proceedings to get a settled statement that, yeah, the court reporter was told to go home.

Tim Kowal
That would look pretty bad on me.

Jeffrey Lewis
All right, let's take a look at there's a new law and I got to tell you, I read it three or four different times. I had trouble following exactly what this law says, but my latest reading, it's AB 747. It relates to what has to be in a proof of service in unlawful detainer actions and more broadly in civil actions when you're relying on substitute service. And substitute services, you knock on the door three different times, nobody's there. So you leave a copy and then you mail it.

where you leave a copy with someone who's of adult age who's reasonably in charge of the business, yada, yada. And I am guessing, I don't know, that the problem this law was trying to fix is a lot of people, a lot of defendants were having defaults entered against them and they bring motions requesting that the default be set aside based on bogus service. And then the plaintiff says, well, here are all the details showing that our service was righteous. The court, I'm guessing, got tired of those kinds of motions and wanted to front load the process of getting to the court the vital information in terms of was this service bogus or not. So beginning January 1st, 2027, so a full year from now, not a few days from now, it seems as though when you're relying on substitute service, you're gonna have to have a photograph of the three attempts you've made for service, the three unsuccessful attempts and a GPS or some sort of ⁓ timestamp on those photos. So proving that your process server was actually there trying to serve. And a declaration if you're in a bad cell phone area. I live in Palos Verdes and half the streets in Palos Verdes you can't get a cell phone signal. So you could do have your process server do a declaration saying, yeah, there was no signal available. So it's gonna be interesting to show, to see how more detailed the proofs of service are starting 2027 and ⁓ how process servers get this data to the lawyers or transmit it with the proof of service.

Tim Kowal
Yeah, I like this idea. I like this idea. Does it mean that personal service is not effective if it's not accompanied by the photograph and the GPS verification?

Jeffrey Lewis
My reading of the rule is this mostly relates to substitute service, for in terms of GPS and photos. But I think you could read it to if you're affecting service the old fashioned way of just personal service that a photograph of what? I don't know, is it you handing it or the doorway or the person? I don't know what the photograph is, but a photograph and the GPS coordinates will be required.

Tim Kowal
Yeah. And then, course, ⁓ you now that the legislature is embracing the ubiquity of cell phones and the ease of capturing photographs and GPS coordinates when affecting service, know, whenever a law is passed, ⁓ the way around it is found or devised. So I wonder if there will be instances of people using, you know,

AI generated photos to manipulate ⁓ evidence. Obviously, the problem that this is directed toward is that someone is submitting false declarations, either false declarations to support service or to support that there was no service. So someone's submitting false declarations in all these cases. And I sympathize because I've handled some appeals or motions involving these kinds of disputes. And they're terrible. They're just...

Jeffrey Lewis
Yeah.

Yeah.

Tim Kowal
You're weighing credibility based on two different declarations of people who are not in front of you. It's not a trial, it's not an evidentiary hearing, and yet substantial evidence review is going to apply on appeal to whoever the judge found to be more credible, whatever. I think the signature on this document seems more credible than the signature on this other document. So if it's at least supported by some photographic and GPS data, there's something to go off.

Jeffrey Lewis
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's get to the penultimate new law I want to cover here. And this has to do with serving folks by email or electronic technology. I think this new law is a reflection that people probably check their email and social media more often than they pick up a newspaper and read the legal notices in eight foot eight font, you know, point font at the back of the newspaper. So this new law, is going to be code of civil procedure for one three point three or four one point three point three. I was going to be amended. It's going to say, look, if you try to try to try to serve someone and you can't instead of coming to the court and saying, hey, we want to serve them in a newspaper. If you can make a showing that service by electronic mail or other electronic technology would actually apprise someone that there's a lawsuit against them, then the court can authorize that service. the plaintiff still has to do the same kinds of things they would do for service by newspaper, meaning you got to show all the efforts you've made to try to serve them the old fashioned way. I imagine with photos and GPS, etc. But if you make a genuine showing that this is the kind of person who isn't around, but they check their email, like maybe you get email receipts or that kind of thing. The court can order email service.

The new law doesn't really give much in the way of describing how email service would be effective. Is it effective immediately or when you get a read receipt or 10 days after the email is sent? Or does it require email plus service by US mail, similar to substitute service? It doesn't say any of that, but it's an interesting new avenue that plaintiffs who are frustrated with trying to serve defendants have.

Tim Kowal
Yeah. And again, I tend to like this one. I wonder if this in practice is going... This is a May statute, correct? It doesn't require litigants or plaintiffs to seek leave and get leave to serve via email. But if this method is available, I would think that that would be a factor if the court's going to enter a default judgment after showing that, I sent a process server three, four, or five times out there and couldn't find him. It's obvious that they're evading. Can I have a default judgment now? And so you think the court's gonna say, well, why didn't you use section 413.30 and get leave of court to serve by email?

Jeffrey Lewis
Yeah, it is a May. I don't think it is going to be a must situation.

Tim Kowal
Yeah. But then again, it would. ⁓ Yeah, you would avoid those disputes over, well, I never got service. If you've got someone come into your house multiple times and sending it to your last known email address, at some point enough is enough. It looks like you're evading.

Jeffrey Lewis
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's top our list off with the final new law I wanted to address. And this is not operative until 2027. So not a few days from now, but 365 days from now. And this is the circumstances in which a court can order parties to go to mediation.

the old rule was if the dispute was above $50,000, the court could not order you to mediation. That limit has now been lifted to $75,000. But there's an interesting twist here. If you have a matter where the amount of controversy is, I guess, $74,999 or just under $75,000 and the case is set for trial.

and at least one party wants to go to mediation and the other party doesn't. And there's no ongoing discovery disputes impacting the case. The court can order the parties to go to mediation and even assist the parties in mediator selection. And the court can impose a 120 day deadline, 120 days before trial in terms of getting that mediation done. To me, it's an interesting one. I've never come across a case where there wasn't a discovery dispute.

I imagine any party who want to avoid being ordered to go to mediation could reasonably describe a discovery dispute. So it's an interesting law. I'm not sure how much use it will be.

Tim Kowal
Yeah. Well, yeah, that's going to incentivize a lot of litigants to maybe manufacture some discovery disputes. never, you know, I know a lot of excellent attorneys who are excellent mediators, and I see the advantage to mediators. We've had mediators on the program to talk about how you can mediate as an effective resolution technique, even during the appeal.

Jeffrey Lewis
Yeah.

Tim Kowal
But of course it does affect my bottom line, Jeff, and yours, if cases mediate. Just like an arbitration, unless someone is reserving the right to appeal from an arbitration award, there's no right to appeal. And I've always been a little troubled by the idea that judges can take away litigants' right to litigate to a formal judgment in a public forum.

and instead be sent out to mediate in a private forum just doesn't seem to be consistent with the idea of public justice.

Jeffrey Lewis
Well, yeah, for me, the troublesome part is, you know, private mediators don't do it for free. They charge a buck or two and it's an expense. Not all parties can afford that. And so I'd be less troubled if parties were ordered to go to a mandatory settlement conference that doesn't cost the parties anything. But you're saying, hey, go settle your case. And by the way, pay this retired judge or lawyer to ⁓ mediate. That is troublesome to my mind.

Tim Kowal
Yeah, well, and there's also, what is that case? I think it's the Pacific Legal Foundation case where if a party refuses to participate in a court-ordered mediation, then the parties to mediation can go ahead and mediate to the prejudice of the non-participating party's rights. So it does have collateral damage even to ⁓ non-consenting parties. ⁓ But at any rate,

Jeffrey Lewis
Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Kowal
The courts have an interest in getting a lot of these the caseload gluts off of their their dockets so So that will that will probably only marginally change that but the more cases will be sent over to mediation

Jeffrey Lewis
Alright Tim, I think that wraps up my list of new rules around the corner. Unless you had something else to add.

Tim Kowal
No, that'll wrap us up. you have suggestions for future episodes, please email us at info@CalPodcast.com. In our upcoming episodes continuing on into 2026, in our sixth year of broadcasting, you look for more tips on how to lay the groundwork for an appeal when preparing for trial.

Jeffrey Lewis
And happy new year, Tim, happy new year, Fran, and happy new year to all of our listeners.

Tim Kowal
Happy New Year.