Don’t wall off your success: Open architectures FTW

Walled garden as an illustrative concept

We have a practice management system we rely on to manage our cases. It’s pretty good. It could be a lot better. There’s an API, which should enable integration with other tools that can help it be amazing. But. They locked it down. Annoying.

They’re pumping money into their own home-grown AI tools. They’re trying to upsell me on their solutions. They boast they’ve put / are putting “tens of millions of dollars” into their home-grown AI tech. Cool. But, uh: “OpenAI and Anthropic expect to spend nearly $65 billion combined this year just on the costs to train and operate their AI models.”¹

Our vendor was showing off their agentic offering, and how it could calculate litigation deadlines based on, e.g., C.D. Cal. local rules. “Great, what about a judge's individual procedures?” E.g., Judge Walter issues a standing order with a requirement not found in the local rules (which, annoyingly, is only in his Standing Order filed early in the case, and not in the Scheduling Order issued later, though that covers a lot of the same ground ... But I digress):

Not more than three days after the 7-3 conference for any contemplated motion, counsel shall file a joint statement indicating the date of, duration of, and method of communication used during the conference and the participants in the conference. In addition, the joint statement shall detail the issues discussed and resolved during the conference and the issues remaining. Failure to strictly comply with the Court’s requirements or Local Rule 7-3 will result in the striking and/or the denial of the motion.

So, you know, kind of important. The following is paraphrased but captures the essence of the discussion.

“Uh, you'd have to tell [our AI tool] about that.” 

“Okay, what about finding the first available date for a motion and then calculating dates based on that?”

“You'd have to supply that information [the first available date]. How are you doing it now?”

“I just ask Claude.”

“It can do that?”

Yes:

Claude kicking the new ka-nowledge

Prompt:

Find the first available date for a motion to dismiss before Judge Serena Murillo, C.D. Cal., and calculate all relevant dates.

Response: 

First available hearing date

Judge Murillo hears civil matters on Wednesdays at 1:30 p.m. in Courtroom 5D of the Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez (First Street) Courthouse in Los Angeles. You do not clear the date with the CRD; you self-notice it, but you must first check the closed motion dates posted on her Judges' Procedures and Schedules page.

As posted today, her civil motion calendar is closed on every Wednesday from 9/16/2026 through 12/2/2026, and again on 12/23/2026, 12/30/2026, and 1/6/2027. The first Wednesday not closed is:

Wednesday, December 9, 2026, at 1:30 p.m. The next open date after that is Wednesday, December 16, 2026. Nothing is posted beyond January 6, 2027.

This does not push back when you file. L.R. 6-1 sets a floor of 28 days, not a ceiling, so if your Rule 12 response comes due under Rule 12(a)(1)(A)(i) well before then, you file the motion on that date and simply notice it for December 9. Filing suspends the pleading deadline under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(a)(4) regardless of how far out the hearing sits. ...

Vendor: “Oh, well, [our AI tool] can only work with what’s in the file, it won’t go out to the web.”

“Well, then, how is it going to get updated information like closed hearing dates?”

My opinion: Not Invented Here / Not Monetized Here (or, the term I learned today, “interoperability foreclosure”) is going to kill this company if they don't open their doors and figure out some basics. It’s an integrated world where different tools have different strengths and everyone’s leap-frogging each other moving forward...

And on the opposite end of that spectrum: Markdown. 

_____

¹ Dan Gallagher, The Spiraling Cost of Making AI, Wall St. J. (Apr. 7, 2026)