Alan N. Walter

AI policy your bar association wrote is for BigLaw; here’s what solo, small firms should do instead

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This Insight originally appeared in the September 2026 issue of the ABA Journal. Bar associations throughout the country have steadily issued ethics opinions regarding artificial intelligence. The ABA issued Formal Opinion 512 in July 2024. The Florida Bar issued Opinion 24-1 in January 2024. The State Bar of Texas issued Opinion 705 in February 2025. The North Carolina State Bar issued 2024 … Read more

Flock Cameras Are Legal Today. That Answer Has an Expiration Date.

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Drive through almost any American suburb now and there is a good chance a Flock Safety camera is reading your license plate before you reach the next stop sign. The cameras have spread to thousands of towns, homeowners associations and police departments, and the question residents keep asking is simple: is this legal? The honest … Read more

New Jersey Cocktails To Go Are Now Permanent

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Governor Mikie Sherrill signed S4384 on August 28, 2026, four days before the COVID-era rules were set to expire. The law took effect immediately. The sealed margarita you have been picking up with your takeout since 2020 is now a permanent fixture of New Jersey law rather than an emergency measure on a countdown. The headlines all … Read more

Local Prohibition of Data Centers

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The data center backlash has gone national, and it is moving faster than the law that governs it. Trackers count hundreds of local pauses and prohibitions across dozens of states. San Marcos, Texas removed data centers from its list of allowed uses in June. Lysander, New York approved a six month pause. In New Jersey, East Orange introduced an ordinance barring … Read more

Meta Will Pay Up to $17.1 Billion and Rebuild Instagram and Facebook for Teenagers

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Eight days into a federal trial in Oakland, Meta stopped fighting. On August 26, 2026, the company and a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general filed a proposed consent judgment and a joint motion to enter it, resolving claims that Instagram and Facebook were built to addict children and that Meta lied about it. The money is the … Read more

The Fraud is in the Closing: AI, Spoofed Emails and New Jersey Lawyers

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This article was originally published in New Jersey Lawyer in August 2026. When Fraud Moves Into the Closing Process Transactional lawyers have long treated fraud as a problem of deal substance: misstatements in financial disclosures, omissions in disclosure schedules, inaccuracies in representations and warranties. The risk, conventionally understood, lives in the four corners of the agreement.  That … Read more

Congress Supersized the QSBS Exclusion and NJ Finally Signed On

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For 30 years the qualified small business stock (QSBS) exclusion sat demurely in Section 1202 of the Internal Revenue Code, a generous benefit that few founders planned for and many discovered only after it was too late to qualify. That obscurity is ending. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law on July 4, 2025, delivered the … Read more

Trump’s IRS Immunity Deal Is Not Law. It’s Paperwork.

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This insight was originally published by Slate under the title The Trump Immunity Deal Is Neither a Deal Nor Does It Provide Immunity. A single sheet of paper sits somewhere in the files of the Justice Department announcing, in capital letters, that the United States is “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED” from pursuing any claims against … Read more

So, Claude, Why Didn’t the Dinosaurs Invent AI?

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The Term Sheet Was Six Miles Wide. Why the dinosaurs never invented artificial intelligence is usually answered with brain to body mass ratios and a shortage of opposable thumbs. That answer is lazy. The dinosaurs came close. Their failure was not cognitive. It was structural, procedural and in the end catastrophically uninsured. Start with the … Read more

The Supreme Court’s Tolerance Will Be Tested by the Alaska Beer Confiscation Case

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This article (with different graphics) was originally published on Slate in July 2026. The state of Alaska has spent the past 14 years trying to confiscate an 82-year-old bush pilot’s $95,000 airplane because a passenger packed a six-pack of Budweiser with her groceries.  That sentence is not a simplification. It is the whole case. And … Read more