H. Daniel Smith

@MattWalshBlog The challenge is finding justices as good as Mr. Thomas and Mr. Alito.

Clarence Thomas is a brilliant man and one of the greatest justices of all time. He also needs to retire immediately. He's 77 years old. If Democrats win the midterms and then the presidency, which they very likely could, there's a significant chance they will get to replace him with another Kentanji Brown Jackson. That would be a disaster for the country. We need to get young conservatives on the court right now. Alito, too. He's 76.

@misfitpatriot_ Not sure there is room on Rushmore.

I’m going to need all of you to calm the fuck down. Theres some kind of mass psychosis going on right now and a bunch of basement dwelling virgins are sperging the fuck out because their narrative is failing. Everything is going to be fine guys. Trump is going to win the war, and the mid terms. Tyler Robinson will be convicted for the murder of Charlie Kirk, There will be peace in the Middle East, and Israel will still exist. Radical Islam, Communist China, and the New World Order will fail. American exceptionalism will flourish, and when it’s all said and done, Trumps face will be chiseled into Mt Rushmore where it belongs. If you’re still upset after all that winning, you can drive to South Dakota and flip off MAGA Mountain whenever you want, because gas will be cheap as fuck.

@BOSSportsGordo It’s performative. If easier and safer coming out it’s harder and more dangerous going in. It’s a fad precipitated by our narcissistic world. It’s an imposition on others .

Serious question for people who back into parking spaces - what’s the point?

@shipwreckedcrew It’s bad writing. He should read Strunk and White.

Judge Leon is a famous for his exclamation points. It's almost a meme now.

@ianmiles I took the Home Office tweet as satire.

This is incredible. Something is going on in the UK. The Home Office just changed its policy of arresting people for speech crimes, and not only that, it is directly addressing the grooming gang scandal in regards to ethnicity, religion, and cultural backgrounds. Why now? They’ve been denying that they did anything wrong for the longest period of time.

@SellersCounsel Close a deal. You’ll feel better.

Guys I completely forgot how to golf over the winter it is so bad

@JackPosobiec Slow news day?

A hot dog is a sandwich

@PitchingNinja It’s Schroedinger’s cat!

Umpire incompetence or a Rulebook/ABS Mismatch issue? 🤔 This pitch may have been both: -a Strike according the rulebook strike zone (3 dimensional/starting at the front of the plate), and -a Ball, according to ABS (2 dimensional/measured at the middle of the plate).

@GrantHorvatGolf Hasn’t the loft on a typical 7 iron change enough that it is now what a 6 iron used to be?

Wesley Bryan and I got into a heated argument about what the majority of people’s favorite club is. I will stand firm and say it’s a 7 iron. There’s something about that club that’s very different than an 8 and 6. Wesley said a driver or 60 degree is the majority favorite. Who’s right here?

Arthur Hogue, in “Origins of the Common Law” says that everyone who has looked into it concludes that the origin of the common law is the customs of the people. But where do the customs come from? Random chance? I suggest that, all things being equal, a society will naturally gravitate to private property and all that that implies. Hence, trespass is the mother of all torts. This natural inclination arises from a natural law that is innate to humans. Debate if you will what is the force that through the green fuse drives the flower, but some force it is and it is not devised by humans.

@Handre the spontaneous order framing is right. the 'discovery of eternal principles' part is doing a lot of work. common law worked because the feedback loop was tight. real people, real stakes, reversible precedent. thats the mechanism worth preserving. the metaphysics is optional.

The common law represents spontaneous order in its purest form—judges discovering eternal principles of justice rather than manufacturing arbitrary rules from thin air. When medieval English judges faced property disputes or contract breaches, they didn't consult parliamentary statutes or royal decrees. They examined the facts, applied reason, and sought principles that would maintain social harmony. Each decision built upon previous wisdom, creating a self-correcting system that evolved toward greater efficiency and justice. The common law grew organically from human action, not human design. Consider how property rights emerged through centuries of case law. Judges didn't wake up one morning and decide to "create" property rights—they recognized that secure ownership already existed as a natural human institution. When someone stole your horse or occupied your land, judges applied logic: the first user, the improver, the legitimate purchaser had superior claims. These weren't arbitrary political choices but discoveries of natural law principles that predated any court system. This process mirrors market discovery perfectly. Just as entrepreneurs discover consumer preferences through profit and loss, judges discovered legal principles through the success or failure of their decisions. Bad precedents created chaos and got overturned. Good precedents promoted order and persisted. No central planner orchestrated this evolution—it emerged from countless individual decisions responding to real human conflicts. Contrast this with today's legislative lawmaking, where 535 politicians manufacture 40,000 pages of new federal rules annually, most covering situations they've never encountered and consequences they can't predict. Common law judges dealt with actual disputes between real people with real stakes. They couldn't hide behind abstract theories or political talking points—their decisions either worked or created more problems. Modern statutory law doesn't discover anything—it imposes the political preferences of temporary majorities on everyone else, regardless of logic or justice.

@SellersCounsel Scam artists seems harsh. Might be some history there.

Been thinking about some of these arguments today. “Charging insane amounts of money” - legal fees aren’t small but they are typically one of the smaller ones on the settlement statement “To understand language” - that’s part of what lawyers charge for, but in many cases my clients understand the language just as well as I do. Especially when it’s not their first deal. They’re paying me for much more than just explaining the contract to them. Experience, drafting attention to detail, negotiation, etc. are just a few of the skills that come to mind “Language that’s purposefully written to confuse dumb people” - I could see why it seems that way, but that’s actually not true. A good drafter’s goal is always clarity. I want my language to be so clear that it can’t be misunderstood by even the dumbest person that reads it. Except when the parties choose to leave it ambiguous and fight about it later, of course. But the nature of transactions says that even the most plain language drafting will get complex. You’re often going to have to draft around several hypotheticals. Parties are going to have compromises that are difficult to put into words. Trust me when I say we try very hard, but there are some things you just can’t write at a 5th grade level (which is what most people say to aim for with plain language writing). It also would probably surprise nonlawyers to know that lawyers are trained on linguistics in law school. The words you choose matter. There are methods of judicial interpretation which inform how something should be drafted. There are terms of art that might seem like legalese or puffery but have established and adjudicated definitions which carry more weight than a plain language translation would. Synonyms rarely exist in contracts. And I guess all this helps explain why I have yet to see an AI-generated contract that I would be happy with. Because sure it can throw the words together, but it gives a result without understanding why those words were chosen. It’s a photocopy of a painting, lacking the texture or vibrance to make it authentic. Can it be taught all those things? Idk. To me it seems there is too much human judgment necessary. But we will see. For now, though, the drafting should be done by lawyers using AI as a tool for efficiency.

@lawheroezV2 Well, as Occam might have said, keep it as simple as possible, but no simpler.

@lawheroezV2 Sometimes a legal pad and a pencil are the right tools.

Counter point: depending on the use case and the user need and expectations: sometimes AI isn’t the right fit for the problem at hand. I think this is the wrong mindset and narrative. It should be more of what’s the most suitable tech to solve the problem rather than let’s use AI otherwise you’re not AI native. The former is about real customer impact the latter is about fluff and AI crusades

@shipwreckedcrew Plus, our military got re-educated on asymmetrical desert warfare.

Question: Are you old enough to remember the period 1980 to 2002 with regard to Iraq and the Saddam Hussein regime? Do you think the world is better off today without an Iraq led by Saddam Hussein or his two sons that he had positioned to succeed him? Do you remember the military government of Hafez Al-Assad in Syria from 1971 to 2000, a Soviet backed regime? Can you distinguish between Hafez and Bashar Al-Assad times in office in Syria? If not -- if your really lack an understanding of how much better the Middle East is today as a result of U.S. intervention starting with the First Gulf War after Hussein invaded and took over Kuwait, then you're simply too ignorant and uninformed to comment on the geopolitics of the region.

@lawheroezV2 My definition of a “take” is “a quick response, written or spoken, to a newsworthy event, that is premature, uninformed, and almost always wrong.”

Hot takes on X rarely are truly hot takes and are mostly trivial and popular vs contrarian, insightful, and original.

@marclauritsen @lawheroezV2 Nir is good, also find Zack Shapiro, and when I reply to stuff it’s incredibly insightful!

@lawheroezV2 Who do you recommend following here for a good view of the fire?

Legaltech discussions are on fire. 🔥 Love seeing the discussions around use of AI and potential impact. It opens our minds and hopefully gets us thinking about what if.

I would also say that law firms have been talking about “knowledge management” for 20 years at least, but the tools did not exist to make that possible even with large capital investments. AI promises to break through to real knowledge management and recapture. I have specific ideas how that will start to work.

Great read. Loved this part. It’s mind blowing but also very true in a painful way: “America’s top 100 law firms made a combined $69 billion in profit in 2025, greater than Google’s 2025 R&D budget. Every cent was paid out to the firms’ partners as compensation. Imagine if they had allocated even a fraction of these profits into R&D instead. What kinds of technology could they have built to advance the industry?” I’ve had many conversations with law firm leaders about this for years. I would always explain to them that they’re sitting on insane data, expertise, and talent. Imagine what you could be doing with these when you apply the right technology in the right place. Think about what we could develop. Law firms should more like R&D/innovation based tech companies. We could be solving more complex problems and create insane new ways to create value for clients. And every time I’d say they’d look at me as if I’m a fucking alien. 😔 The second thought that came to mind as i was reading this was that software will transform services and the distinction between the two will be more difficult but equally and maybe even more so, a different services layer will also make software different and more valuable. Services have unique, value creating, human aspects that should be kept. Otherwise everything will look like software. People love speaking with and working with humans. It’s key to creating the right experience. It’s about finding the right balance.

@lawheroezV2 The old joke is that law firms won’t make any capital investments unless they can recover them in the next billing cycle.

@SaysSimulation Nation states tend to do what they perceive as in their national interest not matter what the treaties say.

Forget the "analysis", the short video is worth watching. NATO is *effectively* over by mutual consent between the US & Europe, even though the treaty remains. The US is not obligated to defend Europe, never has been. Article V merely says that nations will take "such action 1/

Plus, whatever you think AI will do someday, we are in a transition period during which understanding and refinement of the tools is ongoing. A whole lot of traditional practice will occur before we figure out how best to leverage AI. I think right now we have a sort of “last mile” situation, where we see the tornado down the mile road and we’re scratching our heads trying to figure out how to turn some of it into electricity when it gets to us.

I've gotten a bunch of feedback similar to the below on my job listing, so figured I'd take the opportunity to clarify. Nowhere am I claiming that lawyers or the legal profession will be outright replaced by AI--although much of the grunt work that lawyers currently waste billable hours on will be automated. The opportunity here, for law firms that see what's coming around the corner with AI, is to rethink how associate development works, focusing on judgement and client service much earlier in careers, rather than just maximizing billable time. To be clear, I'm not hiring for grunt work (Claude can do that well), I'm hoping to hire for the next generation of AI-augmented legal services. Practically, that means advising co-founders on how to split equity among one another, advising on what key terms in a commercial contract are actually worth fighting over, and how to handle sensitive communications with investors. If you are currently an EC/VC associate in BigLaw (really open to any level of seniority here), please do reach out at info@rains.law. More on the distinction here if anyone reading this interested: x.com/zackbshapiro/s…