Congratulations to all of my students leveling up to 2Ls, 3Ls, and bar-exam studiers. For all of you—but especially those sticking around @UNLCollegeofLaw a while longer—I have some homework: Read Lyrissa Lidsky and Andrew Daves’s Inevitable Errors: Defamation by Hallucination in AI Reasoning Models. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I only just now found time for it. It had been sitting on my reading list for too long. The article is worth reading for its treatment of AI defamation alone. Lidsky and Daves offer a careful, sensible account of how defamation law should handle LLM hallucinations—those plausible but false AI outputs that can fabricate accusations, fake legal materials, or other reputationally damaging statements. I agree with almost all of their analysis. BUT the reason I especially recommend the article to students and young lawyers is broader: It is a fantastic example of how to apply existing law to a genuinely new and difficult problem. New technologies often tempt lawyers into thinking old legal categories have become obsolete. More often, the better first move is to ask what existing law already can do: What is the harm? Who acted with fault? Who was in the best position to avoid the injury? What older doctrines were built for analogous pressures? That kind of work is slower than announcing a brand-new legislative framework. It is also better lawyering. So if you are a student writing a note, or a young lawyer trying to persuade a court to see a problem in a new way, this is the model: start with doctrine, respect what came before, and adapt carefully. Only then ask whether something truly new is needed. Prof. Lyrissa Lidsky and Andrew Daves don’t need my praise to know they have done excellent work. But it never hurts either. Thanks to them both. #AILaw #Defamation #LegalEducation @UFLaw