Compliance Stuff

The Texas Business Court has entered the growing national debate about whether conversations with AI tools like ChatGPT are discoverable, and it came down on the side of protection. In a minute entry filed June 3, 2026, Judge Grant Dorfman of the Eleventh Division ruled that a non-lawyer’s ChatGPT conversations, prepared in anticipation of litigation, can qualify as protected attorney work product under Texas procedural rules. The ruling came in Tate Group Automotive, LLC v. Legacy Automotive Capital, LLC , Cause No. 25-BC11B-0020, after the Court completed an in camera review of ChatGPT “conversations” that the plaintiff had withheld from production. The decision continues the developing judicial dialogue on AI discoverability, siding with two federal courts that have found no waiver and expressly splitting from another federal court that reached the opposite conclusion. In doing so, the Court rejected the argument that a non-lawyer’s sharing of information with ChatGPT necessarily wa...

The White House’s recent push to require all federal employees to sign non-disclosure agreements may have you wondering whether NDAs might be right for your organization. While they’re one of your most powerful tools for protecting confidential business information, trade secrets, and competitive advantages, they’re also one of the easiest agreements to get wrong. Here’s an eight-step plan for deploying effective and legally compliant NDAs. 1. If an Employee Accesses Confidential Information, Use an NDA If an employee has any access to confidential business information, then you should have them sign an NDA. They are your first line of defense against trade secret theft. These agreements are generally subject to far less scrutiny than non-compete agreements and can appropriately be used with a broader subset of employees. Trade secret laws require that employers take reasonable measures to protect the secrecy of their sensitive information, and having an NDA in place could help you ma...

Key Points Joint development agreements are a common way to structure collaborative development and growth projects , but they can come with risks, including potential disputes over confidential information and intellectual property ownership. Companies can mitigate these risks through thoughtful and careful drafting that clearly delineates each party’s rights and obligations during the joint development activities. Implementing and maintaining clear policies and procedures internally will also help minimize exposure from the risks associated with these transactions. __________ Provisions and Practices Relating to Confidential Information Protecting a company’s confidential information — and ensuring there is the ability to sort through whose confidential information is whose — is of the utmost importance in a joint development agreement (JDA) . Thus, the language parties use in drafting their agreement and the practices they implement during the relationship can make or break trade se...