New York City Bar Association Podcast

Pema Sherpa is a mindfulness researcher and keynote speaker who helps organizations boost employee well-being and performance. Born and raised in Nepal, she studied the mind-body relationship at Harvard University and teaches mindfulness in a way that's both philosophically grounded and useful for people in demanding careers. She co-authored The Daily Buddhist with her husband, pairing short, daily teachings with practical, modern application.

Presented by the City Bar's Mindfulness & Well-Being in Law Committee, Pema talks with committee members Katiuska Moure and Nancy Batterman about her upbringing, her path into mindfulness research, and some practical keys lawyers and law students can use to build healthier daily habits even before they're ready to meditate.

Selected Links from the Episode:
The Daily Buddhist (book): https://thedailybuddhist.net/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/daily.buddhist/

00:00 Introduction
02:02 Pema's Journey
06:28 Harvard and Career Pivot
08:54 Immigrant Law Student Challenges
12:38 Tools for Students
16:44 Bringing Resilience into Legal Practice
20:09 Body Basics and the Nervous System
24:30 "Work With What You Have"
30:21 Meditation Isn't the Entry Point
33:28 Daily Buddhist Resources
39:44 Closing Thoughts and Committee Resources

Katherine Hughes hosts the latest podcast from the City Bar’s Presidential Task Force on Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technologies. She is joined by WashU Law Dean Stefanie Lindquist and AI Collaborative Co-Director Oliver Roberts to discuss how generative AI is reshaping law school teaching, assessment, and professional preparation.

Dean Lindquist describes her wake-up call about student AI use, making AI a central dean priority, forming an AI task force, partnering with Roberts, and hiring an LLM engineer to support experimentation and tool-building. Roberts traces early experiences with hallucinated citations and argues AI education must go beyond AI regulation to hands-on tool use across legal workflows, core terminology, tool selection, and explicit ethics (competence, confidentiality, supervision, and overreliance).

They discuss institutional guardrails such as eliminating take-home exams, using simulations, workflow-based pedagogy, and new assessment ideas like oral exams and quizzing students on submitted work. They also note scholarship and journal pressures and conclude that lawyers who can’t use AI will be replaced by those who can.

02:13 Why AI Became Institutional
03:50 Oliver’s AI Origin Story
05:34 Faculty Misconceptions
07:26 JD Learning Outcomes
09:58 Core AI Competencies
13:04 Schoolwide Guardrails
16:56 Teaching Ethics through Scenarios
21:19 Hidden Ethics Pitfalls
23:56 Rethinking Assessment
27:10 Drafting and Disclosure
32:05 Workflows In Practice
35:41 Handling Faculty Skepticism
38:08 AI In Clinics
40:10 Scholarship And Journals
43:05 Closing Advice

Environmental lawyer and Animal Law Committee member Robin Happel hosts a discussion on noise pollution and noise law with Jamie Banks of Quiet Communities and ocean noise researcher Vanessa ZoBell. Jamie explains how chronic leaf-blower and land-care noise led her to found Quiet Communities. She describes gaps in federal, state, and local noise regulation, focusing on the 1972 Noise Control Act, the rise and 1982 defunding of EPA’s Office of Noise Abatement and Control, and Quiet Communities’ lawsuit to reactivate the program. Vanessa outlines major ocean noise sources (commercial shipping and seismic air-gun surveys) and impacts on marine life, including stress, masking, behavioral changes, and examples such as post-9/11 stress hormone reductions in right whales and sonar-linked beaked whale strandings. They discuss challenges of relying on A-weighted averages, low-frequency noise, communication barriers, voluntary and incentive-based programs, electrification of equipment, vessel speed reduction benefits, and long-term California soundscape findings tied to economic events and marine heatwaves, plus vulnerable human populations and environmental justice concerns.

00:42 Jamie on Quiet Communities
04:17 Vanessa on Ocean Acoustics
06:19 Major Ocean Noise Sources
08:34 Noise Control Act History
13:30 How Noise Harms Marine Life
18:23 Ecological Impacts on Land
20:34 Rethinking Noise Metrics
27:14 Shipping Slowdown Success
33:48 Incentives and Federal Tools
40:31 Decadal Soundscape Study
46:29 Vulnerable Groups and Justice

In this episode, a panel of legal experts discusses the different approaches taken by the Second and Ninth Circuits on two key areas of copyright law: substantial similarity and the Server Test.

Presented by the New York City Bar Association’s Copyright & Literary Property and Entertainment Law Committees, the panel explores recent and emerging case law and the Second and Ninth Circuits’ divergent approaches to analyzing substantial similarity, a key element of copyright infringement, as well as the ongoing debate surrounding the Server Test, which addresses whether the posting of online content constitutes a “display” within the meaning of the Copyright Act.

Moderated by Dwayne Amos, Associate at Kasowitz LLP, the episode features a panel of leading copyright litigators and experts, including:

• Barry Werbin, Counsel, Herrick Feinstein LLP
• Aaron Moss, Partner, Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP and author of the Copyright Lately blog
• Marc Lebowitz, Principal, Lebowitz Law Office
• James Bartolomei, Of Counsel, Duncan Firm

The wide-ranging discussion covers the practical implications of these divergent approaches for copyright owners, litigators, content creators, online platforms, forum selection, free speech, and the application of copyright law nationwide.

This episode was produced by Jose Landivar, Senior Associate at Coates IP LLP, with contributions from Philippa Loengard, Executive Director, Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts and Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School, and support from the New York City Bar Association Communications Team.

Copyright Lately: Creative Law for Curious People – www.copyrightlately.com

Tiffany Smith (WilmerHale) speaks with Beth Haddock (Warburton Advisers) and Boaz Goldwater (Davis Polk) about Treasury’s notice of proposed rulemaking implementing the Genius Act’s framework for regulating payment stablecoins, focusing on guidance for state regimes to qualify as “substantially similar” to the federal approach.

This podcast episode from the City Bar’s Presidential Task Force on AI and Digital Technologies compares the dual federal/state structure to banking and securities regulation, and describes “uniform” requirements versus areas with limited state calibration (e.g., capital, liquidity, supervisory procedures). We discuss the inter-agency stablecoin certification review committee’s discretion, challenges from evolving OCC standards, and the ten billion outstanding issuance threshold that triggers transition to OCC supervision while retaining state oversight, with possible waivers for certain pre-existing state regimes. We highlight key ambiguities for issuers, including moving federal benchmarks, supervisory capacity, and unresolved capital/liquidity measurement issues.

01:38 Genius Act Rulemaking Overview
03:08 Dual Federal State Framework
04:17 Why a State Pathway
09:31 State Discretion in Practice
11:31 Managing Moving Goalposts
13:34 Certification Review Committee
15:56 Reserve Capital Liquidity Rules
19:05 Crossing the 10 Billion Threshold
23:42 Supervision and Enforcement Capacity
25:33 Choosing State vs Federal Oversight
28:20 Open Questions and Comment Priorities