Meanwhile, in the Southern District of Mississippi…
Yesterday, a man named Brud Rossmann, who claims to be a Harvard Law grad and a former DOJ attorney, filed a complaint against Sergey Ivanov, a business professor at the University of the District of Columbia, and “The ‘Jews’ More Generally.” Also John Does 1-3.
And during the high holidays, no less!
Context Windows In Legal AI And Why Content Still Determines Quality
Legal teams ask a practical question. If large language models are so capable, why does legal AI still depend on curated content, and why does surfacing that content matter so much?
This may not shock you, but it’s already been dismissed.
Twitter’s BoozyBarrister has been covering this filing, tweeting out the caption and later the full complaint (available here). BoozyBarrister is also giving out helpful advice to the uninitiated who try to tackle the whole complaint:
Just a quick note:
When someone is suing "The Jews," you need to go in with some lowered expectations. https://t.co/4xRgfV8NxV
— BoozyBarrister (@BoozyBarrister) September 27, 2017
Humans in the Loop: The People Powering Trusted Legal AI
As the use of artificial intelligence permeates legal practice, a critical question confronts every legal professional who uses these tools: Can I trust this?
The complaint is indeed 51 pages long and seeks $10 million for a somewhat meandering set of allegations of surveillance and attempted murder. Perhaps I’m old-fashioned, but I believe a multi-decade conspiracy to commit murder would demand more than $10 million in relief, but Rossmann must be a man of perspective.
Sadly, Rossmann is no stranger to cases like this. In 2011, he earned a benchslap for a lawsuit he brought against Chase, and in 2015, he sued Anthony Scaramucci for fraud. The latter suit was promptly dismissed as well, which is too bad because after his tenure in the White House, I think we’d all have loved to read a transcript of Mooch getting deposed by this guy.
Pro se filings sometimes mix comedy with sadness when they offer a window into the soul of someone who feels aggrieved but can’t quite articulate who or what has really put them there. A sadness compounded when you can deconstruct from the ramblings the influence of familiar tropes of white male victimhood (and all the associated tenets of anti-Semitism, homophobia, etc.) and realize this sort of thing is inevitable in a culture that traffics in that stuff — overtly or through innuendo.
But Rossmann has an answer to all those who wish to naysay his complaint. As he acknowledges in his first footnote:
Well, touché.
Joe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.