> I also disagree about the "beholder words"; to me "it was surprisingly low" means "I am drawing your attention to the fact that the low value surprised me" rather than "you need to be surprised by the low value".
I agree with your interpretation, but here the issue is that "beholder words" don't give the reader the information necessary for them to make their own judgment. Readers are left thinking "ok, but how low is 'surprisingly low?'" Writers should tell the reader the exact number, saying "surprisingly" communicates nothing because it's relative.
I'd agree with this. Kagan is the best overall, Roberts is up there when he wants to be and isn't forcing it, and yes Thomas writes fairly well but what he writes is abysmal.
Alito is hands down the worst writer and one of the worst to ever sit on the court. He's not the brightest but thinks he's a savant and writes with a smugness and conceit that drips off the page on top of being as disingenuous as they come. Reading anything he writes is torture.
Yeah, when he's like this his writing goes off a cliff. I feel like it peaks any time Sotomayor wrote whatever he's disagreeing with, but that may just be me.
It has more to do with the nature of the product – can it be reasonably stored in bulk for length without eroding in quality. This goes for anything physically settled. Look at the agricultural products traded at the CME and you'll see there aren't any markets for perishable products like strawberries.
But is there a law forbidding strawberry futures? The wiki page mentions only onions and box office returns. How can other perishable futures "ban themselves" while onions need to be banned?
They're not banning themselves. There's no market for them. A market will arise based on the market size, product characteristics, etc. Without anyone willing to make markets and trade strawberries, there's no futures market for them. All that to say, there's no need for a law banning something if there's no willing market for it. There was an onions futures market and that's why the law is specific to onions.
Levine is a uniquely good writer. And, as mentioned, his choice of subject matter (law + finance) is a major factor. Both are such broad fields that you can always find something interesting happening in one corner or another, and both are relevant to everyone no matter the field they're in personally.
As someone who has a similar background to Levine, I'm a big fan and can say it's uncommon to find someone like him who can write effectively and with levity.
I still prefer using ballpoints with schmidt easyflow 9000 ink[1], but yeah rollerballs (gel) are a great midpoint between fountains and ballpoints. My Zebra G-750[2] is super smooth.
Yeah that's not how investigations work. USAOs don't publicize ongoing investigations for obvious reasons. Once they wrap up an investigation but before convening a grand jury to indict, they may send a target letter, but they typically don't. Most often, people don't find out until they're indicted.
Tether CEO additional statement on X - “At Tether, we deal regularly and directly with law enforcement officials to help prevent rogue nations, terrorists and criminals from misusing USDt. We would know if we are being investigated as the article falsely claimed. Based on that, we can confirm that the allegations in the article are unequivocally false.”
Again, that's not how it works. They wouldn't know if they're being investigated unless the USAO told them. And if the USAO had told them they're a target of an investigation then they'd say that instead of this garbage quote. Hell they may even be working with the sdny on some investigations, but in no way does that mean they would know if they themselves are the subject of another investigation. In other words, unless Tether is somehow working with the investigators on an investigation into Tether, Tether wouldn't know they're being investigated.
Looks interesting. Always looking at apps in this space, but I've found a good rhythm using 2do [https://www.2doapp.com/]. It allows you to set a "due" date, a "start" date, or a duration for a task. I also use the "snooze" feature a ton because it allows me to repeat a notification in 5 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day, etc if I cannot complete it at the originally set time.
I also use Things as others have mentioned but for more ad hoc tasks and reminders. 2do is great for my daily routine tasks and others that are recurring.
This makes little sense. Commenting on a proposed rule and filing a lawsuit are two entirely different tasks and two entirely different processes. That people were able to submit more comments and do so in an easier manner says nothing about broader "legal risk" to corporations.
And as you can see, the authors are co-founders of some related startup and this article is nothing more than a weak pitch.
The bigger issue here is that actual legal practice looks nothing like the bar, so whether or not an llm passes says nothing about how llms will impact the legal field.
Passing the bar should not be understood to mean "can successfully perform legal tasks."
> Passing the bar should not be understood to mean "can successfully perform legal tasks."
Nobody does except a bunch of HNers who among other things, apparently have no idea that a considerable chunk of rulings and opinions in the US federal court system and upper state courts are drafted by law clerks who, ahem, have not taken the bar yet...
The point of the bar and MPRE is like the point of most professional examinations: try to establish minimum standards. That said, the bar does test for "successfully perform legal tasks", actually.
For the US bar, a chunk of your score is based off following instructions on case from the lead attorney, and another chunk is based on essay answers. Literally demonstrating that you can perform legal tasks and have both the knowledge and critical thinking skills necessary.
Further, as previously mentioned, in the US, people usually take it after a clerkship...where they've been receiving extensive training and experience in practical application of law.
Further, law firms do not hire purely based on your bar score. They also look at your grades, what programs you participated in (many law schools run legal clinics to help give students some practical experience, under supervision), your recommendations, who you clerked for, etc. When you're hired, you're under supervision by more senior attorneys as you gain experience.
There's also the MPRE, or ethics test - which involves answering how to handle theoretical scenarios you would find yourself in as a practicing attorney.
Multiple people in this discussion are acting like it's a multiple choice test and if you pass, you're given a pat on the ass and the next day you roll into criminal court and become lead on a murder case...
Indeed, and this is also the general problem with most current ways to evaluate AI: by every test there's at least one model which looks wildly superhuman, but actually using them reveals they're book-smart at everything without having any street-smarts.
The difference between expectation and reality is tripping people up in both directions — a nearly-free everything-intern is still very useful, but to treat LLMs* as experts (or capable of meaningful on-the-job learning if you're not fine-tuning the model) is a mistake.
* special purpose AI like Stockfish, however, should be treated as experts
This, along with several other "meta" objections, is a significant portion of the discussion in the paper.
They basically say two things. First, although the measurement is repeatable at face value, there are several factors that make it less impressive than assumed, and the model performs fairly poorly compared to likely prospective lawyers. Second, there is a number of reasons why the percentile on the test doesn't measure lawyering skills.
One of the other interesting points they bring up is that there is no incentive for humans to seek scores much above passing on the test, because your career outlook doesn't depend on it in any way. This is different from many other placement exams.
I agree with your interpretation, but here the issue is that "beholder words" don't give the reader the information necessary for them to make their own judgment. Readers are left thinking "ok, but how low is 'surprisingly low?'" Writers should tell the reader the exact number, saying "surprisingly" communicates nothing because it's relative.