Jennings Haug Keleher McLeod Waterfall LLP (JKW) announced that Vikrama “Vika” Chandrashekar has joined the firm’s Denver office as a litigation partner in its business law and litigation practice.
News & Insights
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by Herrick K. Lidstone
2026 was a “popular” year for legislation directly impacting lawyers and arguably our ethical obligations. A number of bills directly affect lawyers, including three discussed in this article.
HB25-1090-Protections Against Deceptive Pricing Practices Although this bill was adopted in 2025, it became effective January 1, 2026 and has a significant impact on lawyers and other professionals who bill their services by the hour or in many other forms. As I have written in my article, Attorney Engagement Letters and the Colorado Consumer Protection Act, this resulted in nearly all attorney engagement letters becoming subject to the Colorado Consumer Protection Act (the “CCPA”) and requiring certain “clear and conspicuous” warnings to be set forth in the engagement letter. The imposition of these additional requirements to most attorney (and LLP) engagement letters (and those of other professionals) seems to be a significant change to most existing practices.
Jennings Haug Keleher McLeod Waterfall (JKW) is pleased to announce that attorneys with the firm’s environmental law and employment law practices have been recognized for excellence in the law in the 2026 edition of Chambers USA, the world’s leading independent professional legal research company.
Jennings Haug Keleher McLeod Waterfall LLP (JKW) announces that Hillary Gagnon has joined the firm’s Estate Planning, Trust, Probate and Administrative law practice in the firm’s Phoenix office as a partner.
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by Joseph Brophy for the Maricopa Lawyer, a publication of the Maricopa County Bar Association
There are several AI applications that attorneys can use to transcribe conversations with a client, such as Otter, Fireflies and Descript. These applications replace old-fashioned attorney note taking. Using AI transcriptions theoretically ensures an accurate record of what was said and solves the problem of having to later decipher the written notes of a lawyer who writes like a third grader. When an attorney uses these applications, several ethical rules are implicated, which are discussed in this month’s ethics article.
Attorneys in the firm’s Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico offices are named Super Lawyers and Rising Stars in business litigation, civil litigation, general commercial litigation, construction litigation, employment law, environmental law, surety law and securities litigation.
CLE Program hosted by the Arizona State Bar Association
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024) fundamentally reshaped federal administrative law by overruling the Chevron doctrine.
Corporate crises can strike without warning—and the court of public opinion never closes. Preparation, speed, and coordinated communication are critical to protecting reputation and minimizing risk.
Jennings Haug Keleher McLeod Waterfall (JKW) is pleased to announce that Christopher Shanley has joined the firm’s Phoenix office.
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by Joseph Brophy for the Maricopa Lawyer, a publication of the Maricopa County Bar Association
Five years ago, Arizona became the first state to allow non-lawyers to have ownership interests in law firms. This was not popular in many circles. The ABA passed a resolution affirming its commitment to law firms owned exclusively by lawyers, rebuking what Arizona did under the guise of protecting the public from non-lawyers who are driven by profit motive.
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by Joseph Brophy for the Maricopa Lawyer, a publication of the Maricopa County Bar Association
At this point in the AI revolution, most lawyers will have read an article about an unfortunate, downtrodden, or overworked lawyer who made a fatefully ill-advised decision to rely on generative AI to “assist” them in drafting a motion. For those of you that have not heard, AI is not ready for prime time when it comes to legal research, analysis and especially case citations. There is a long list of lawyers who have learned the hard way that no matter how coherent and logical AI-generated legal analysis may look and sound, commercial large language model AI (ChatGPT, Grok, Perplexity) is prone to “hallucinations” – bad ones – that can leave a lawyer arguing gibberish and getting into ethical hot water. Indeed, a recent study of inquiries made to law-specific AI programs used by Westlaw and Lexis (which are far superior to commercial AI when it comes to use by legal practitioners) showed an error rate of 17%.