Justice Ming Chin wrote more majority opinions in his first decade on the California Supreme Court than any colleague—then retired to discover that mediation feels a lot like his first judicial assignment in family law, where the goal was bringing people together rather than telling them what to do.

Justice Ming’s biggest pet peeve as a mediator: attorneys who won’t share their briefs.

Justice Ming also shares:

• What makes a good petition for review? Hint: think about Justice Broussard saying "if I get one more piece of paper, I'm going to scream."
• Why robust internal debate produces better opinions than rubber-stamping.
• How his experience trying construction arbitrations with expert panels—not lawyers—informs his view that California Supreme Court justices sometimes get arbitration law wrong.

Other highlights:

• The petition reality check—your first paragraph is your only shot: Kitchen-sink petitions go nowhere.
• Why your petition for review was denied: Lacking in merit? Maybe. But sometimes the Court wants the conflict to "percolate." Or it needs a better vehicle.
• And don’t overlook that a low-quality petition foreshadows the quality of your merits brief—which could depress chances of review.
• Federal certification beats petition denial odds: While the Court denies hundreds of petitions for review weekly, Justice Chin "cannot think of any" certified questions from federal courts that were denied during his tenure—making certification an underused path to California Supreme Court review that practitioners should consider more often.
• Justice Chin's senior partner returned his first brief "with blood all over it" and taught him to "take out all the excess words"—a lesson he carried through 450+ Supreme Court opinions.
• Unlike other branches of government, appellate courts must explain their reasoning in detail, but that doesn't mean 150-page opinions.

Listen to the episode to learn what former Supreme Court justices see that no one else can, why depublication tapered down as a lawmaking tool during his tenure, and how Sargon's expert gatekeeping role—authored by Justice Chin—threaded the needle between passive acceptance and becoming "a thirteenth juror."

What question would you ask Justice Chin or one of his colleagues?

Legal writing authority Ross Guberman has been busy absorbing AI tools into his popular BriefCatch and now-related suite of writing tools. Ross returns to discuss how BriefCatch cousin app RealityCheck uses a traditional authority base plus AI power to ruthlessly search and destroy hallucinations in your briefs.

Who else is using RealityCheck? Courts. So let RealityCheck find hallucinations for you before it does for the court.

Ross also talks about the exciting and perilous AI age. Will AI make lawyering less human? Only if, says Ross, you equate “human” with rescheduling meetings over email.

To the contrary, AI used right makes lawyering more human. Not less.

Key points:

• RealityCheck goes beyond hallucinations by catching misquoted language, misstated holdings, and subtle mischaracterizations of case law, as shown by testing on 1990s-era briefs.
• Courts are already using AI-powered tools for records, dockets, and analytics and are likely to adopt RealityCheck more openly within months, with many courts having contacted BriefCatch after Above The Law’s coverage.
• RealityCheck uses deterministic checks against court databases plus AI analysis of quotes and propositions, avoiding reliance on LLM-ingested content and consumer sources like Westlaw, Lexis, or FindLaw.
• BriefChat, trained only on Guberman’s curated materials and the WordRake acquisition (with 12 editing patents), powers BriefChat’s writing guidance and automated editing, with new context-aware tools in development to adapt to jurisdiction, style, judge, and court rules.
• Changing judicial reading habits (screens, short attention spans, footnote issues) and concerns over AI bias in binding adjudication mean specialized tools should aim to make lawyers more like themselves, not “Sherlocked,” while supporting uses like mediation and pre-filing verification.

Seen AI hallucinations or bad cites in your cases? Tell us what happened, or how you’re guarding against it.

The law is riddled with things "everybody knows" that aren't actually true. In this April Fool's-themed episode, Tim Kowal and Jeff Lewis discuss several legal myths, half-truths, and courtroom fictions—from rules of evidence to constitutional assumptions to a Scopes Monkey Trial mythology that is more Hollywood script than record.

Key points:

• Miranda warnings aren't in the Constitution—but they're constitutionally required anyway: The specific warnings don't appear in constitutional text; they're a prophylactic rule. Yet they're binding—even Congress can’t touch them.
• Dual citizenship was never authorized—it emerged by accident: No Congress ever passed a statute permitting dual citizenship. Great Britain and German have asserted jurisdiction via conscription of the children of their subjects—even though born in the U.S. This is context directly relevant to Trump v. Barbara arguments this week.
• "One phone call" is Hollywood fiction: California Penal Code § 851.5 grants at least three completed calls within three hours of booking, plus additional calls for custodial parents.
• Circumstantial evidence carries the same weight as direct evidence: DNA and fingerprints are circumstantial; CALCRIM 223 instructs juries to treat both types equally.
• The Scopes Trial was staged, and the textbook taught eugenics: Think this was religious fundamentalism vs. science? Think again. The evolution text in question, George William Hunter's Civic Biology, ranked races hierarchically and endorsed selective breeding. William Jennings Bryan is regarded a buffoon, but his actual argument was more about local curriculum control than creationism.
• Buck v. Bell has never been overruled: Remember the monstrous 1927 opinion upholding compulsory sterilization? Still good law. Technically.

What legal tropes get irk you?