THE VALLEY CURRENT®️ COMPUTERLAW GROUP LLP

What happens when doing the responsible thing becomes a competitive disadvantage? In this episode of The Valley Current®, host Jack Russo examines whether frontier AI companies can realistically regulate themselves while racing for market share, talent, capital, and technological dominance. Anthropic's costly safety controls suggest that voluntary restraint can have real teeth, but the economics o...

What happens to professional expertise when AI can do the technical work faster, cheaper, and at scale? As wealthtech collides with a historic $124 trillion generational wealth transfer, the disruption reaches far beyond financial advisors. Host Jack Russo explores what happens when AI begins commoditizing the work that once justified expensive credentials, professional fees, and armies of junior...

Can a sitting president be charged with perjury, or does the presidency itself put prosecution out of reach? In this episode of The Valley Current®, host Jack Russo examines a constitutional puzzle where the law appears clearer than the path to enforcing it. The Supreme Court says unofficial conduct receives no presidential immunity, yet restrictions on official-act evidence can make proving a cas...

What if the Big Law partnership track isn't a ladder at all, but a tournament where the rules can change mid-game? Host Jack Russo examines a 2026 lawsuit alleging that attorney Matthew Cali's path to partnership unraveled after he survived a "widow-maker" heart attack. From punishing billable-hour demands and opaque credit allocation to shrinking equity partnerships, Jack digs into the economics...

  Florida doesn't just discourage frivolous pro se filings. It has found a way to make some litigants pay with something far more valuable than money. Host Jack Russo examines Florida's unusually aggressive approach to filing abuse, where vexatious litigant restrictions, prefiling orders, and other procedural barriers are only the beginning. For prisoners who repeatedly pursue frivolous claims, th...

New York has no statewide vexatious-litigant blacklist, yet it processes millions of cases while confronting everything from panicked tenants to determined serial filers. How does the system keep its doors open without letting abuse consume the courts? Host Jack Russo examines New York's distinctly flexible answer: Part 130 sanctions, judge-crafted filing injunctions, and electronic gatekeeping ra...

California built one of the nation's toughest systems for stopping abusive self-represented litigants, but it deliberately left one courthouse door far less guarded. In this installment of The Valley Current®, host Jack Russo examines California's "pro per" rules and the striking divide between civil litigation and cases involving criminal defendants and habeas petitions. On the civil side, vexati...

In federal court, filing without a lawyer does not mean filing without consequences. But those consequences change dramatically depending on which courthouse door you enter. Host Jack Russo examines the sharp divide between civil cases, where Rule 11 can expose pro se litigants to fines and crushing attorney fees, and criminal or post-conviction proceedings, where courts rely instead on procedural...

Meta entered the courtroom facing staggering financial exposure. By the end of Round 1, the plaintiffs had drawn first blood. In this episode of The Valley Current®, host Jack Russo examines how a coalition of state Attorneys General opened its case with hard numbers, damaging internal communications, and a deceptively simple theory: "hook, hold, harvest, hide." Then came whistleblower Arturo Béja...

Meta faces a legal problem most companies never encounter: What happens when settling may be financially impossible, but losing could be catastrophic? In an Oakland federal courtroom, state attorneys general are accusing Meta of addictive product design, child privacy violations, and concealing what it knew about the risks to young users. With theoretical exposure reaching $1.4 trillion, this is n...

How far would you go to live longer, and at what point does the pursuit itself become part of the risk? Entrepreneur Bryan Johnson has spent millions turning his own body into one of the world's most closely monitored longevity experiments, embracing extreme measurement, supplementation, and medical intervention in a highly engineered war on aging. But what happens when even that level of control...

The IRS may be auditing fewer nonprofits, but when it chooses a target, the odds are increasingly stacked in its favor. With data models now driving much of the selection process, an innocent-looking Form 990 can become a roadmap to an organization's weakest points. In this episode of The Valley Current®, host Jack Russo examines what lawyers, founders, executives, and nonprofit boards need to kno...

America's military may be unmatched, but its ammunition supply tells a far more unsettling story. The 2026 Iran conflict burned through critical missile stockpiles at a pace the defense industry cannot quickly replace, creating a window of vulnerability that could stretch into the next decade. In this episode of The Valley Current®, host Jack Russo examines the dangerous arithmetic behind American...

Couples can spend years planning the wedding, yet barely consider the financial contract that begins the moment they say "I do." And here's the catch: there is no such thing as having no agreement. If you don't write your own, the state effectively writes one for you. In this episode of The Valley Current®, host Jack Russo explores the legal minefield of prenuptial agreements across 50 states, Was...

A nuclear threat. 150,000 drones. And two nuclear powers testing just how far the other is willing to go. In this episode of The Valley Current®, host Jack Russo examines the dangerous standoff between Russia and Britain through the unforgiving logic of game theory. Moscow warns of devastating consequences if Britain continues supplying Ukraine, while London refuses to blink. But after years of Ru...

A helmet can save your life, but should the government be able to force you to wear one? America's helmet laws sit at the intersection of personal liberty, public safety, and constitutional power, creating a patchwork where crossing a state line can completely change the rules. In this episode of The Valley Current®, host Jack Russo examines the decades-long legal fight over helmet mandates, from...

A $3 billion fraud verdict in one courtroom. A $1.5 million settlement and claims of exoneration in another. In this episode of The Valley Current®, host Jack Russo examines the striking accountability gap surrounding Elon Musk and asks what happens when extraordinary wealth makes ordinary deterrence almost meaningless. The discussion moves beyond the verdict itself to the second- and third-order...

At 4:31 in the morning, a 50–49 Senate vote ended one battle in Donald Trump's political war of attrition. But the real story wasn't who won, it was what had been traded away to get there. In this episode of The Valley Current®, host Jack Russo examines a persistence strategy that treats legal defeats not as endings, but as opportunities to regroup, revise, and strike again. From Todd Blanche's ra...

The Supreme Court ruled. The administration lost. Six weeks later, President Trump was back with two new executive orders and a new legal strategy. In this episode of The Valley Current®, host Jack Russo examines the escalating constitutional battle over birthright citizenship and a calculated tactic known as "iterative narrowing": keep rewriting the policy, narrow the target, and force the courts...

AI isn't replacing knowledge workers, but it is rewriting the rules of expertise. Jack Russo explores why lawyers, doctors, accountants, and other professionals must understand how deep learning actually works, where generative AI can go wrong, and why human judgment remains essential when powerful technology produces convincing but potentially costly mistakes. Jack Russo Managing Partner Jrusso@c...

AI isn't replacing knowledge workers, it's changing what it means to be one. In this episode of The Valley Current®, Jack Russo explores why understanding deep learning has become a professional responsibility rather than a technical curiosity. From lawyers sanctioned for AI-generated hallucinations to physicians, accountants, and financial advisors navigating a rapidly changing regulatory landsca...

A poop-themed dog toy took on one of America's most iconic whiskey brands and after 12 years in federal court, it helped reshape trademark law. In this episode of The Valley Current®, Jack Russo unpacks the extraordinary legal battle between Jack Daniel's and VIP Products, tracing the case from the trial court to the Supreme Court and back to the Ninth Circuit. Along the way, he explains how parod...

Every trial team needs an advocate, but the smartest ones also need a skeptic. The most valuable voice in high-stakes litigation may be the one that's least invested in the outcome. In today's episode of The Valley Current®, Jack Russo explains why the best litigation strategy often begins with an objective perspective. He explores how a neutral appellate specialist can add value at five critical...

The most expensive legal mistakes aren't always bad arguments; sometimes they're undisclosed conflicts. Jack Russo explores the $25.4 million judgment against Cooley LLP, the founder-investor conflict at its center, and why transparency and independent legal advice remain essential in high-stakes startup transactions. Jack Russo Managing Partner Jrusso@computerlaw.com www.computerlaw.com https://w...

The most expensive legal mistakes aren't always bad arguments; sometimes they're undisclosed conflicts. In this episode of The Valley Current®, host Jack Russo examines the $25.4 million judgment against Cooley LLP and the startup dispute that became one of the most closely watched legal malpractice cases in Silicon Valley. At the center is a founder who claimed the same law firm advising him was...