Spartan Caselaw

Winner winner chicken dinner! Dineo Motaung Di Gibson Ulrich Grobler Carmen Walters Fundisiwe C. Ntsebesha Jacobus Myburgh Dale Dreyden Lavonne Peterson Eddy Nkosi Nobukhosi Zulu - Taruza - please email Soyeon Podbielski so that she can activate your subscriptions to Spartan Caselaw (soyeon @ louiscaselaw .com w/o the spaces) Congratulations to all winners! Looking forward to another year of daily caselaw updates. Even though I am not practicing law in South Africa anymore I still like to keep up on decelopments; it helps me keep a comparative perspective & sharpens my jurisprudential thinking in general. Thanks to everyone who participated & looking forward to another year with my legal eagles 🦅 ⚖️

Oof! Guys, gals, & whatnot: DO NOT DO THIS! Do NOT rely on authority suggested by a large language model. Do this instead: 1) research the applicable caselaw 2) feed the applicable cases to the LLM 3) provide clear instructions to rely only on authority you have provided to it 4) explain your reasoning in sort of “stream of consciousness” format to the model, then ask it to rephrase using Bluebook style citations to authority & evidence 5) if it does inject authoritative sources triple check that they exist & they stand for the legal proposition the LLM claims it does 6) check your opponent’s citations - hold them to account if they misrepresent the law Connecting applicable theories to new concrete facts is the last remaining domain of superiority human lawyers have. Language models can reason & they can replicate language, but they are not actually able to synthesize & derive applicable legal principles & apply them to a new set of facts discarding obiter dictum & focusing on the distilled legal principles. They just can’t. Not yet, anyway. Trust me I have tried tried tried tried to stick the landing on this & ChatGPT never gives more than 60-70% accurate case citations. Often they’ll give real cases but those cases won’t stand for the proposition it claims it does. Remember, the model approaches language as a mathematical relationship between words. The underlying symbolism, reasoning, & meaning is often totally lost. It just *looks* good. So come up with your own arguments, own authority to rely on, & have the LLM polish your run on sentence fragments into sexy legalese. That’s how it’s done. Don’t be lazy. Read the law. (Use a service like Spartan Caselaw) Understand the law. Apply the law. Let ChatGPT do some of the revising, but never ever ever depend on it for authority without triple checking. If you do ask it for authority (after all, it has learned from the briefs of others) make sure you read closely everything it suggests because it is very hit / miss. Sometimes it can be spot on & sometimes it can be plotting your downfall. #ai #legal

The tale of Mr. Groves & mistaken arrest 👮♂️😞 A case of rights, discretion, & laws to address 📜🤔 An undercover drug bust went down 🕵️🔍 But the wrong Mr. Groves got taken to town 🤦♂️👮♂️ Though the warrant said arrest him for dealing some pills 💊🔨 The video showed it wasn't him at the window sills 🎥🚫 His lawyers argued the cop should have thought twice ⚖️💭 Before arresting, the law says you can pay the price 🧠⚖️ On appeal up to the highest court in the land 🏛 The issue: does cop discretion still stand? 👮♀️❓ The answer? The warrant means you gotta arrest 🔨 No chance to debate what's best 🚫🤔 So the arrest of Mr. Groves, though mistaken, was legal, & yes a bad deal 👍 But his rights were deprived without malice, so he has no case to appeal 🚫🏛 The court clarified the law for future arrests 👮♂️📜 Hopefully preventing more erroneous stressful quests 🙏👮♂️ In summary, mistaken identity led to arrest 👮♂️🤦♂️ But discretion & rights weren't violated, court confessed 🚫🤔🚫🗣 So check your facts before arrests! Avoid errors if you can 🕵️📝 & know that warrant means arrest, no extra discretion for the man 👮♂️🔨 thanks to Spartan Caselaw for the brief #police #rights #arrest #discretion #appeal #law #courtcase #mistakenidentity