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...

On May 20, 2025, Washington Governor Bob Ferguson took the final step toward implementing  House Bill (HB) 1213 ’s expansion of the state’s paid family and medical leave program when he greenlit funding for the program as part of the state appropriations budget for the 2025-2027 biennium. With this funding, the new law will take effect on January 1, 2026. Quick Hits Washington State’s HB 1213 expands job protection rights under the state’s paid family and medical leave program. The amended leave program reduces the minimum increment of time off from eight consecutive hours to four consecutive hours. HB 1213 also broadens health insurance coverage requirements, along with a variety of other miscellaneous changes. HB 1213 expands the Washington Paid Family and Medical Leave (WPFML) program, which is a state-administered program that provides Washington employees with paid time off from work for serious personal and family medical leave. Here is an overview of the key changes to WPFML...