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Danny Wilf-Townsend

@dannywt.bsky.social
693 followers 431 following 108 posts

Associate Professor of Law at Georgetown Law, currently visiting at Yale Law. Working on civil procedure, consumer protection, and AI. Blog: www.wilftownsend.net Academic papers: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAu…

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Reposted by Danny Wilf-Townsend
Noah Kazis @noahkazis.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I have mostly switched to lurking here but some words are so good they must be shared. “Surface the viscerality of parking and of religion”
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Yes, in this and another project, cumulatively over 100 pre-2022 items (not all articles, the other project involved other legal writing), and no false positives so far. The Julian Nyarko essay I linked to did a large batch of pre-AI articles and found zero false positives.
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
After reading this, I wanted to know what the numbers would look like with more recent draft law review articles posted to SSRN. So I put a sample of 200 of them through Pangram 4, and found 57 papers with some AI use, 36 of which had >5% of their text from AI: wilftownsend.net/how-many-rec...
wilftownsend.net
How many recently drafted law review articles are written with AI? A quick examination.
AI use in legal scholarship may not be the most important AI topic being discussed these days, but it is having a moment in the corners of the world that care about these things. Julian Nyarko has an ...
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Is it just me or is the mono blue joke actually kind of funny?
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Excited to be back in New Haven for the academic year, visiting at YLS. Let me know if you come to town! So far I've had pizza three times in ten days, it's going to be work to keep that pace up.
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Very happy to see this study finally made available publicly. In my many conversations with law professors about AI over the last few months, this study is the one that I have found most consistently helps people update their worldview about AI capabilities.
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
This is tangential, but I wonder how the idea / expression distinction will hold up over time with generated AI. Expressing an idea used to be costly, typically taking effort and often some creativity. What happens when ideas serve as prompts and expression is cheap or free, and easily iterated?
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Reposted by Danny Wilf-Townsend
Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 13/04/2026
This morning, I became the first New York City Mayor to visit Housing Court. And what I saw will stay with me for a long time. Families on the brink of losing their homes. Tenants navigating unsafe conditions, harassment, and uncertainty, searching for justice in an overwhelming system. Small property owners trying to keep up with their mortgage payments.
I met with Chief Administrative Judge Joseph Zayas, New York City Administrative Judge Shahabuddeen Ally, and other members of the bench, and I walked through Resolution, HP, and NYCHA Parts. I spoke with people in intake, with legal service providers, and with the advocates who show up every day to stand beside New Yorkers who need support.
Housing court is where the promises we make about dignity, stability and public excellence are tested in real time.
In the months ahead, my team will work closely with the Chief Judge and the Chief
Administrative Judge to confront the concerns we heard - directly from judges, tenants, landlords, legal service providers, and advocates.
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
disagree with, I'd be curious. Part of the background here is recurring conversations with accomplished, ethical lawyers who have integrated AI into their work with strong quality controls and found big productivity boosts. So it seems clearly possible, but hard to get a sense of the proportions.
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
... likely inconsistent with the hypothesis that most use is irresponsible (again, in the colloquial sense of responsibility, as in inattentive to downsides, no quality control, etc.). Of course, it's an argument about low visibility, so it's hard to be certain! But if there's something specific you
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
Thanks for reading. The argument is that what we do know is (1) tens of thousands of lawyers use AI multiple times a day; and (2) a majority of clients are asking for it to be used. That, to me, is consistent with lots of use that people find productive and not causing problems. And it seems ...
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
In case you're interested, I wrote up some relevant thoughts about the low visibility we have into lawyers' responsible AI use here: www.wilftownsend.net/p/the-low-vi...
wilftownsend.net
The low visibility of lawyers' responsible AI use
There are incentives to keep responsible use quiet, while irresponsible use makes headlines. That's a problem for figuring out the right regulatory balance.
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
.. we have strong reasons to think there are plenty of lawyers using AI in ways that are not obviously irresponsible. That low visibility is a problem, because we need a more robust shared sense of costs and benefits to get the regulatory balance right www.wilftownsend.net/p/the-low-vi...
wilftownsend.net
The low visibility of lawyers' responsible AI use
There are incentives to keep responsible use quiet, while irresponsible use makes headlines. That's a problem for figuring out the right regulatory balance.
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
New post up about what I think is an under-discussed problem: the low visibility that we collectively have into responsible AI use by legal professionals. We have lots of data points about hallucinations, but many fewer public discussions of responsible uses, even though ...
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
Thomson Reuters link: thomsonreuters.com/content/dam/... Bloomberg link: aboutblaw.com/bjbL
thomsonreuters.com
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
Of course, that doesn't tell you what proportion of lawyers are "current users." Last spring, Bloomberg found that a majority of lawyers "have used" generative AI for work, which is at least something, but isn't quite the same as "currently use."
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
A periodic update about the frequency and intensity of AI use in legal practice: Thomson Reuters reports that 55% of generative AI users at law firms use it at least daily, with 30% multiple times a day:
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
That all makes sense; thanks for responding! My sense is that AI use in the legal profession is often in the shadows, except for hallucinations and sanctions in courts. Some recent-ish data suggests about 20% of private sector lawyers are using it daily news.bloomberglaw.com/legal-ops-an...
news.bloomberglaw.com
Legal AI Revolution Moves Ahead at Measured Pace, Survey Says
Adoption of artificial intelligence isn’t transforming the day-to-day practices of many lawyers—at least not yet, according to Bloomberg Law’s new State of Practice survey.
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Do you have a sense, from informal conversations or otherwise, of how many lawyers are using the technology in briefs before the court that do not result in hallucinations or other defects?
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
Happy to see a cameo here from one of my favorite tests in all of the law: whether a procedural rule is really a procedural rule depends on whether it "really regulates procedure."
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Reposted by Danny Wilf-Townsend
JP Collins @profjpc.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
Imagine, there are still people who think the United States should switch to the metric system and abandon common sense units of measurement like this
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Reposted by Danny Wilf-Townsend
Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 26/12/2025
some good climate/energy news: * 96% of new US power capacity was carbon-free in 2024 (56 gigawatts!) * 2025 included the first month ever when 51% of power on the U.S. grid was carbon-free * The golbal trend is overwhelming: The world is now investing more $ in clean energy than fossil fuels
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 24/12/2025
…points to analysis but give some for each of those other things too. And it gets tweaked for different issues, eg for some issues spotting it is the real challenge, and so more points go there than with other issues.
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 24/12/2025
No idea if this is the best way, but I just have a detailed rubric where I have specific points for each of those things - eg, a point for spotting the issue, a point for articulating a rule, up to three points for analysis, a point for supporting with relevant authority, etc. I aim to give most…
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
There were only seven of them!
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
Look, it was certainly a *memorable* book.
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
I feel like this article is Michael Orthofer erasure
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Reposted by Danny Wilf-Townsend
Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
I have a new post out in @lawfaremedia.org today about continual learning, the goal of many AI developers to build tools that can learn from their users. That technology could have many uses, but also will challenge existing ways we are trying to regulate AI. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/when...
lawfaremedia.org
When AI Models Can Continually Learn, Will Our Regulations Be Able to Keep Up?
Regulation has already been hard enough for static AI models.
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
For folks who are new to the idea of continual learning, I would recommend this by @dwarkesh.skystack.xyz dwarkesh.com/p/timelines-... and this post by @binarybits.bsky.social understandingai.org/p/context-ro..., which highlight limitations on current AI models from their inability to learn.
understandingai.org
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
For people who are pretty current with conversations about regulating AI, these two paragraphs are the crux of the post. This is responding in part to writing by @deanwb.bsky.social, Ketan Ramakrishnan, and @milesbrundage.bsky.social on entity-based paradigms for AI regulation.
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
I have a new post out in @lawfaremedia.org today about continual learning, the goal of many AI developers to build tools that can learn from their users. That technology could have many uses, but also will challenge existing ways we are trying to regulate AI. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/when...
lawfaremedia.org
When AI Models Can Continually Learn, Will Our Regulations Be Able to Keep Up?
Regulation has already been hard enough for static AI models.
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Reposted by Danny Wilf-Townsend
Lawfare @lawfaremedia.org · 18/12/2025
Regulating static AI models is already difficult and if AI tools will become ones that can learn, regulations will need to adapt quickly. @dannywt.bsky.social explores what new regulatory approaches could look like in a future where change is common and comes fast.
lawfaremedia.org
When AI Models Can Continually Learn, Will Our Regulations Be Able to Keep Up?
Regulation has already been hard enough for static AI models.
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
A thoughtful thread on the Netflix / Warner Bros merger. I think the points about consumer preferences are particularly important — it’s sometimes hard, but often important, to tease apart when law and policy arguments are inflected by different preferences about product features
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
An update for Sonnet 4.5, released last week: it scored 60.2% on my final exam (with extended thinking on, 54.4% without it). That's a big step up (~20 percentage points) from Opus 4.1's scores, and puts Sonnet 4.5 close to, if slightly behind, other lead models. On a human curve, that's ~ an A-/B+
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
Oh, also, from the parochial law professor standpoint (i.e., the most important standpoint) it makes "looking for hallucinations" a less reliable form of trying to monitor student AI use on exams or papers.
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
...has gone up. Certainly not to the point where I would recommend relying on AI for legal advice (or to write your briefs), but the size of the change does seem notable for at least those (and probably other) reasons.
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
...a few thoughts: (1) for practitioners using AI, I would think that fewer hallucinations makes it faster and cheaper to review/check/edit AI-generated outputs. And (2) for non-experts using AI, who aren't editing but just reading (or even relying on) answers, the quality of those answers..
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
I wouldn't draw a big conclusion specifically from this exercise; but it is consistent with my experience that hallucinations in answering legal questions seem way down in general now compared to, e.g., a year ago. In terms of the implications of that broader fact (if it is a fact)...
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
One other note: across the five exam answers and dozens of answer evaluations generated here, I did not notice a single hallucination. This test wasn't designed to measure hallucination rates, but it's consistent with the general sense that they have dropped significantly
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Reposted by Danny Wilf-Townsend
Alex Hemmer @ahemmer.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
Our office is again hiring one or more attorneys for a one-year fellowship to work directly with the Illinois Solicitor General and her team, beginning in August/September 2026. www.governmentjobs.com/careers/ilag...
governmentjobs.com
Job Opportunities | Office of the Illinois Attorney General
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
Overall, GPT-5-Pro was good enough to use for my (informal) approach here—it was both internally consistent and looked good in accuracy spot checks. Its grades show some models scoring in the A- to A range, consistent with what others have found, too.
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
It turns out that some models are deeply inaccurate, and some are frequently inconsistent, but a few are reasonably consistent and accurate. And along the way, I learned that human graders are sometimes less consistent than we might hope.
Text describing consistency rates in human graders
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
The goal here wasn't to use them to grade student work—something I would not recommend. It's instead to see if they can be used to automate the evaluation process of other language models: can we use LLMs to get a sense of different models' relative capacities on legal questions?
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
For my latest round of informal tests of large language models, I looked at how good different models are at taking a law school exam—and also whether they are capable of grading exam answers in a consistent and reasonably accurate way. 🧵 www.wilftownsend.net/p/chatgpt-ta...
wilftownsend.net
ChatGPT takes—and grades—my law school exam
The latest round of informal testing of large language models on legal questions
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
The review of "The Deletion Remedy" also discusses Christina Lee's "Beyond Algorithmic Disgorgement," papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers..... Christina is on the job market this year, and if I were on a hiring committee I would definitely be taking a look.
papers.ssrn.com
Beyond Algorithmic Disgorgement: Remedying Algorithmic Harms
AI regulations are popping up around the world, and they mostly involve ex-ante risk assessment and mitigating those risks. But even with careful risk assessmen
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
It was very nice to have two of my recent articles featured in JOTWELL reviews this month—Maureen Carroll on "Deterring Unenforceable Terms," courtslaw.jotwell.com/should-draft... and @margotkaminski.bsky.social on "The Deletion Remedy" cyber.jotwell.com/ai-disgorgem...
courtslaw.jotwell.com
Should drafters be penalized for clearly unenforceable terms? - Courts Law
Daniel Wilf-Townsend, Deterring Unenforceable Terms, 111 Va. L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2025), available at SSRN (June 6, 2024).Maureen CarrollMost of us (if not all) have entered a contract with one or ...
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
Indicting based on sandwich type could lead to quite a pickle. Let's hope this jury's not on a roll.
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Danny Wilf-Townsend @dannywt.bsky.social · 22/08/2025
Me too! They must be targeting proceduralists. Probably due to our lax morals.
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