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This post originally appeared in UW Law Library News and was written by Scott Park, Digital Collections and Reference Librarian.
As we approach Thanksgiving, you might assume the fourth Thursday of November has always been the designated date for this federal holiday. The actual history reveals a more contentious story involving presidential proclamations, state resistance, and congressional compromise.

The Beginning
On September 28, 1789, just before leaving for recess, the first Federal Congress passed a resolution asking that the

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Continue Reading When America Celebrated Two Thanksgivings

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For two decades, Wisconsin courts have followed the approach to statutory interpretation established in State ex rel. Kalal v. Circuit Court for Dane County, 2004 WI 58, 271 Wis. 2d 633, 681 N.W.2d 110. As noted in a recent blog post from Stafford Rosenbaum, that framework may soon change.

Kalal established a two-step methodology for interpreting statutes. Courts first examine the statute’s text using only “intrinsic sources”—the statute’s language, structure, purpose, and closely-related statutes. If the meaning…
Continue Reading Is a Change to Wisconsin’s Statutory Interpretation Framework Imminent?

The November issue of Wisconsin Lawyer features a practical guide I wrote on using generative AI effectively in legal practice. “AI Prompting for Legal Professionals: The Art of Asking the Right Question” offers a framework for attorneys looking to improve their interactions with AI tools while maintaining professional standards.
The central premise is straightforward: the same critical thinking skills lawyers use when interviewing clients or examining witnesses apply equally when working with AI. Vague information from a client…
Continue Reading A Practical Guide on AI Prompting for Legal Professionals

Lawyers who fail to verify AI-generated content do so at their own peril – and now, potentially at the peril of fee awards. A California Court of Appeals decision adds a new wrinkle to the growing body of AI hallucination cases by asking: What happens when opposing counsel fails to detect an opponent’s fake citations?

A Familiar Story with an Unexpected Twist
In Noland v. Land of the Free, L.P., the attorney used ChatGPT to enhance his appellate briefs…
Continue Reading Does Fee Denial Signal New Expectations for Detecting Opposing Counsel’s AI Hallucinations?

In case you missed it, the latest edition of the Bluebook has introduced a new rule on citing AI-generated content. While I agree that a rule addressing GenAI was needed, unfortunately, Rule 18.3’s approach misses the mark.

University of Idaho law professor Jessica Gunder has published a thorough critique of the new rule titled “Yikes! The Bluebook’s Generative AI Rule is Flawed” that lays out exactly why Rule 18.3 is problematic. Her analysis raises serious concerns that legal educators,…
Continue Reading The Bluebook’s New AI Citation Rule Misses the Mark

The Wisconsin Compliance Initiative will host “A New Era of Corporate Compliance: Opportunities, Risks, and Ethical Dimensions of Generative AI and Emerging Technologies” on Wednesday, September 17, from 4:00 to 6:00 PM. The program is available virtually or in person at UW Law School and qualifies for 2 CLE credits.  See registration information.
The program features three sessions examining how AI is affecting corporate compliance work:
Session 1: Emerging Technologies and Compliance: What Regulators Expect and What GenAI…
Continue Reading UW Law School Explores GenAI’s Role in Corporate Compliance

J. Willard Hurst, Pen & Ink Drawing
Drawing of Hurst accompanied 1990 NYT article

The University of Wisconsin Law Library is pleased to announce that the J. Willard Hurst Collection is once again available through the UW Law School Digital Repository. The collection was temporarily offline while we enhanced the metadata to improve search capabilities, providing researchers with better access to the papers and materials of the scholar generally recognized as the father of modern American legal history.
A Wisconsin Legacy
J. Willard Hurst

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Continue Reading The Father of Modern American Legal History Returns: Enhanced Access to the J. Willard Hurst Collection

a group of people smiling at the cameraThe clerks of the Class of 2025 Diversity Clerkship Program. For more photos,
see the album on the State Bar of Wisconsin Facebook page.

Aug. 4, 2025 – It is a program to boost the next generation of lawyers – and also Wisconsin legal firms and organizations who employ them.

The State Bar of Wisconsin’s Diversity Clerkship Program matches first-year law students from all backgrounds from Wisconsin law schools with legal offices, firms, and corporations for a 10-week

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Continue Reading The State Bar Diversity Clerkship Program: A Win-Win for Students and Employers

The University of Wisconsin Law Library recently received a remarkable historical gift: an original April 22, 1865 Chicago Tribune newspaper documenting President Lincoln’s funeral train journey. The framed newspaper was generously donated by Tonia Neustifter, wife of the late UW Law School Professor Ralph Cagle, who passed away in 2023.

Photo of Tonia Neustifter and her daughter, Liz
Tonia Neustifter and daughter, Liz

This historic newspaper provides a firsthand account of the extraordinary funeral procession that followed Lincoln’s assassination. The President’s remains traveled over 1,700 miles…
Continue Reading A Historic Gift: 1865 Chicago Tribune Documents Lincoln’s Final Journey

Attorney Tiffany Highstrom to present “The Preparation of Financial Statements in Family Law Cases 2025” for the State Bar of Wisconsin
Attorney Tiffany Highstrom will present on best practices for preparing financial statements for family court cases on Thursday, July 24, 2025, during the State Bar of Wisconsin’s CLE seminar, “The Preparation of Financial Statements in Family Law Cases 2025,” which will also be available via recorded webcast after July 24. Tiffany will discuss when financial disclosures…
Continue Reading Attorney Tiffany Highstrom Presents on Preparation of Financial Statements in Family Law Cases

This morning, received an email from Academia.edu informing me that it had created an AI-generated podcast about an article that I authored a few years ago entitled, Representing Law Faculty Scholarly Impact: Strategies for Improving Citation Metrics Accuracy and Promoting Scholarly Visibility.  If you’re not familiar with Academia.edu, it’s a commercial platform for sharing academic research.
I had the option of whether to include it on my Academia profile.  I chose to add it since it represents an…
Continue Reading Evaluating AI-Generated Podcasts of Scholarly Works: Academia.edu v. NotebookLM

Here is the latest faculty scholarship from the University of Wisconsin Law School Legal Studies Research Papers series vis SSRN.

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Continue Reading Recent UW Law Faculty Scholarship: Antitrust Market Evolution; Multiracial, Interclass Democracy; Race and Elections; and Corporate Misconduct Enforcement

People often think of generative AI tools as systems that query vast universes of training data – like asking ChatGPT to draw from its broad knowledge base trained on billions of web pages, books, and articles. These large language models can answer general questions and provide information on virtually any topic.  Sort of like a sledgehammer.  And sometimes you need a sledgehammer.
Then there are more specific LLMs like Lexis Protege or Westlaw CoCounsel that narrow that universe just…
Continue Reading Sometimes You Need the Small Hammer: Using Google’s NotebookLM for Document Analysis

The latest edition of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation is hot off the presses.  Although this 22nd edition retains the same basic approach to legal citation, there are some notable changes, including one that I’m especially excited about: the addition of Tribal law citation rules.

  • A new Rule 22 provides instructions for citing Tribal Nations in legal writing
  • Additionally, Rule 21.4 in the Treaties section now includes specific guidance for citing treaties with Tribal Nations, treating them with the

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Continue Reading New 22nd Edition of The Bluebook Adds Tribal Law Citation Rules

Here is the latest faculty scholarship from the University of Wisconsin Law School Legal Studies Research Papers series vis SSRN.

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Continue Reading Recent UW Law Faculty Scholarship: Tax Law (Mis)Information & Misimpressions, Environmental Protection in War, Monopoly Bottlenecks, Impeachment in US & South Korea, & Limits On Legislative Overrides in OH

The Free Law Project recently announced its intention to build a citator using AI.

If successful, the emergence of an open-access, open-source legal citator would be significant to both practitioners and the public.  Citators, such as Shepard’s and KeyCite, answer the foundational question of whether the case law you are using is good law, bad law, or somewhere in between.  FLP’s mission is to “democratize access to this crucial information for small law firms, independent researchers, self-represented litigants,…
Continue Reading Is It Still Good Law? Free Law Project to Build Citator using AI