Client Letter · February 2026

Is February an appropriate time to send a client letter and gifts? I don't know. Probably not. I won't wish anyone a happy holidays, merry Christmas, or happy New Year. Let's call it a Valentine's Day note to the clients whose trust enables me to do what I love.

It has been a wild 12-14 months. The letter will cover stats and practice highlights, just like last year. A ranking of court locations. Top transcript quotes of the year. And of course AI.

↓ Scroll
Try the Trial Game
Dodge objections • Collect evidence • Win the case
🔥
8
TROs & PIs
Last 14 Months
🤖
30%+
Time & Cost Savings
Per Brief via AI (avg)
🏛️
15
Trial Days
Last 12 Months
🪦
0
Years Left to Win
Under 40 Awards
Team Hours
YoY Growth
2,500
2023
↑ 100%
5,000
2024
↑ 127%
11,340
2025
↑ 58%
17,862
2,300 YTD
2026
Pace
Practice Highlights
⚔️

Competitor Tech Disputes

CFAA vs antitrust. Business defamation. Unfair competition. Tortious interference. Trade secrets both ways. These seem on the rise–have been taking us to Baltimore, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Utah, among other places.

🏗️

Startup / Tech Financing

An interesting Corporate VC warrant financing case in Delaware–resolved favorably. M&A earnout dispute (ongoing) which is likely to go to federal court. Litigated some interesting non-compete issues in connection with a private equity acquisition of a business serving Disneyworld. Made a dispute go away that threatened to compromise a big venture financing.

🤖

AI

Working on a defamation/trademark dispute over the origins of a major AI entity (referred by a founder from another case–thank you). Handling multiple trade secrets disputes involving AI companies. Got a W in one of them recently against someone at one of my prior firms. Been helping AI companies get ready for the EU AI Act. Global data collection project underway with strategies in South Korea, India, Mexico, Egypt, South Africa, Japan, Europe, and China across privacy, right of publicity and copyright. AI product liability issues are popping up. Bot / Robotic Process Automation is maybe the phrase of the year so far. Some fun work helping GC and in-house functions set up AI use cases across their teams. Taught the AI class at Cal in the LLM program last year.

Crypto

Lots of action here. Avi Eisenberg woke up and decided to try two back-to-back TROs this January in Wyoming and SDNY. The Wyoming transcript doesn't make the top 7 list below, but it has some choice quotes re: forum shopping. Last year was a long multi-week bench trial on competing claims for CFAA, antitrust, breach of duty, and civil fraud in the District of Puerto Rico. Ongoing arbitration work in crypto. Got the first TRO I'm aware of that orders freezes of funds traced through Tornado Cash. Representing victims in a big $200m+ forfeiture in D.C. which may break ground if it goes the right way. Handled some state investigations trying to fill the gap of enforcement. Took on the SEC about setting aside the last DeFi settlement of the Biden admin (lost, but we put a good showing and got our client's story out there).

⚖️

Class Actions

The never-ending flood of wiretapping cases is not slowing down. False advertising. Autorenewal. Had a great win in a Biometric Information Privacy Act class action in Illinois. Voluntary dismissal after filing a motion to dismiss and serving a Rule 11 motion. From a plaintiffs' firm feeling good about coming off a $300m+ BIPA trial win. Clients this year also had to deal with some Prop 65 and food labeling class actions as well as employment.

🛡️

Defamation & Section 230

Still doing a lot of these. Multiple nation-state defamation matters popped up in the last year. Litigating the Prime case vs Ryan Garcia. (And happened to be sitting next to Mr. Garcia at the Fontainebleau sauna with Gaurav – who can confirm no contact with a represented party was made.) Worked on a Second Circuit appeal of a Section 230 issue involving a hardware device with an app capability.

Outside GC work. Working with some cool emerging tech co's as a fractional outside counsel is not the bulk of my day-to-day, but a fun part of it. This past year companies had financings–both debt and equity. One exited to a public company in an M&A transaction. Lots of product launches. Licensing. Innovative intellectual property campaigns, including some exciting AI patents.
Associates. In the last year have done their first depos, handled billion dollar CEOs as witnesses, won tough motions in federal court, and the writing growth is great across the board.
Overall, the practice continues to move up market, while maintaining the flexibility to invest in new relationships and emerging technology companies. I have been getting more confident to say no more and in some tricky situations stand up for principles and draw a line in the sand. Always worth it every time.
Big thanks to friends and co-counsel who have been a pleasure to work and collaborate with over the last year. Hajir and Paul who have helped with multiple matters and shared lots of wisdom. Rafael at The Crypto Lawyers — who helped carry the load on a long bench trial and is doing great work for victims. Kahlil and Branson who have developed some very cool AI use cases. Adam who is just as badass as when he was at GBN. Matt for great intel on opposing counsel. Tristan for allowing my Cal jersey into the club. Craig, Gaurav, Reid, Randy, Ivo, Daniel, Grant, and many others who will never escape "check out this debate card" now in the form of "check out this brief or transcript."
Court Locations
Have had some great court locations this year. District of Puerto Rico. San Diego, North by Carlsbad and the main court house downtown. Santa Barbara–amazing court location inside and out. District of Maryland. Great oysters and crab in Baltimore. Wyoming. Beat the case and got it dismissed virtually, so didn't get a chance to go. But let me know if anybody needs help there. Florida, Texas, SDNY – all virtual or stayed this past year.
Puerto Rico San Diego Santa Barbara Baltimore Wyoming Florida Texas SDNY Delaware Utah
Puerto Rico beach Puerto Rico resort Carlsbad beach Pacific Beach Pacific Beach sunset Señor Grubby's burrito Burrito and Topo Chico
Puerto Rico · San Diego · Carlsbad
Santa Barbara Courthouse interior Courthouse plaque Courthouse entrance arch
Santa Barbara Courthouse
Baltimore harbor night Baltimore harbor with iPad
Baltimore Harbor
Client Events & Fun
🏈

Seattle

To watch the Niners lose :(

⛷️

Park City

For CLEs about startups

🎰

Vegas

To hear Delaware and Nevada judges square off

Seahawks game in Seattle Park City snow Vegas Fontainebleau pool
Seattle · Park City · Las Vegas
Awards & Milestones
Thanks to everyone for supporting and providing references for awards in 2025. These are moving the needle in pitches.
  • Law360 rising stars. previous winners include Iftimie and Tristan
  • American Lawyer CA Legal Awards (under 40) Lawyers on the Fast Track
  • A new award not announced yet but will be in April. A legit top 100 nationwide commercial litigator list
  • Partner promotion at GT to a more senior equity level. Just last week while in trial. I think it means they want more capital.
AI
2025 was the takeoff year for legal use cases. Things changed around April when we started using o3. Now GPT Pro and Anthropic 4.6 can put out mid-level associate work consistently. The value in trial is insane. Probably $50k+ per day savings on not having a team working around the clock to mine depos, evidence, and transcripts. Apart from the savings we also get big quality boosts on work product. We can go a lot deeper on arguments. Really get creative with narrative presentation.
Tooling and use cases.

Claude Code

You can do crazy stuff. Wrote software that will watch as a brief is edited and live-comment feedback based on grabbing prior briefs and cases. Can take comments on a doc and turn it into an interactive web-based revision roadmap with boxes to check.

Claude Opus 4.6

Claud Opus 4.6 is really smart and fast. Amazing ability to comb through spreadsheets. We were able to pinpoint the most critical cells to disprove the other side's narrative in multi-tens of thousand line spreadsheets in minutes.

GPT Pro

Still the best for argument outlining and case review / research. Don't start a brief without it.

Use Cases

Brief outlining, depo and trial cross and direct, live oral argument bullets based on what the other guy is saying. It's all super useful. Can build crazy-good demonstratives.

On Privilege

The recent decision by Judge Rakoff is interesting. So clients should be careful about doing AI conversations on their own. Strengthens the case for lawyers' use of AI tools as privileged–make sure to de-select train the model back.

Impact on Business

This is having a big impact on the business side of the practice. It's driving growth. Lots of pitches focusing on our AI usage; clients care. Everything is faster, higher quality, and less expensive. It seems we are able to handle more cases with same amount of people.

Next thing: Bots 100%.
I dream of being able to email the AI, send teams message, and it works on projects continuously. Think it will happen soon. But in general, I have no idea what is going to happen. It is insane where we are today vs where I perceived things to be in February 2025. Totally bonkers.

Top 7 Transcript Moments

Upvote & downvote for live re-ranking

7
"Been Doing This a Long Time" Hearing
Opposing Counsel
"And if I'm going to be candid, Your Honor, I was a little taken aback by the report [referring to Court's tentative ruling granting our trade secrets identification protective order motion and denying their motion to compel] saying that seems to be not even close because I have been doing this for a long time — since I was a first-year associate, and as Your Honor can tell, that's been a long time at this point. And this for me, this is right down the middle of the type of trade secret list that we see all the time on both sides."
···
Burshteyn
"He's right. He has been doing this for a long time. This wouldn't come out like this if there was something there, right? The context, the reason the statute exists, the first reason, is to avoid the filing of meritless trade secret claims in situations like this where we have three individuals that have been sued individually who, as I think another opposing counsel said in the last hearing, are freaking out actually."
6
"Wrong Table, Counsel" Trial
After opposing counsel started walking to the wrong table…
The Court
"In federal court, here's the rule. Plaintiff always gets to have the place of privilege to the jury because you have the burden of proof. So in any courtroom in this great country, when you walk in, you're defendant, you look at the table farthest away. That's always going to be you. Okay? You need to actually go back to the podiums, please, for the speaking part, yes."
5
"Freaking Out" (The Original) Hearing
Opposing Counsel
"My client is freaking out — to use a legal term of art."
···
The Court
"I appreciate that. But that doesn't shortcut meet and confer."
4
"These Darn Motions" Bench Ruling
The Court
"And it is — back in — when I was starting out as a lawyer, people never used to file these darn motions to dismiss with the rapidity and constancy that we get now. It's just — it's — to me, it's always the money a lot of the time because you can't get to the nub of the case until you've done a little bit of work on it."
3
"My Mind's Like Blank" Cross-Examination
Cross-examination of lead plaintiff witness
Witness
"My mind's like blank. Can we just pause for a few minutes? I'm having a hard time."
2
"Thank You For Your Work" Bench Trial 🥈
The Court
"That'd be great. Well thank you all for your work this week. I'll look forward to your submission."
The proceedings concluded at 5:01 p.m. — at the conclusion of a 3-day bench trial.
1
"Pure Garbage" Trial 👑
The Court
"All right. Thank you very much. Let me start by mentioning that I really consider this motion pure garbage. . . . The fact that this may have to extend into an additional day or two days is not unheard of. I don't know a case which has ever been perfectly predicted down to the minute for direct examination and cross-examination. . . . It is not my concern that it is Mother's Day weekend. It is my concern to push this case as quickly as possible. And frankly that's what we've been doing since the beginning. A day and a half of testimony is not too much testimony in a bitcoin case which is extremely complex and you're dealing with an awful lot of money and serious consequences, and damages."
···
The Court
"And I lived and worked in New York City and I know how things work up there, and I don't think that this is an indication of any respect either if it were filed there."
Burshteyn
"Your Honor, I'm not from New York, I'm from California."
The Court
"Okay, then California. Wonderful, I have a daughter who lives in California. I don't think that this is a sign of respect in California either — or anyplace."
Burshteyn
"We have an obligation to advocate for our client —" [Cut off]
⏳ 10 trial days later…
The Court
"Well, thank you very much. Outstanding closing remarks. I can't describe what you guys have left me to deal with. It's indescribable, as a matter of fact. They don't prepare you in law school to handle a case like this. I do recognize that the parties have worked extremely hard and I do appreciate their professionalism and their courtesy, the courtesy demonstrated for each other throughout this oftentimes very, very contentious hearing."
Thanks all for another year of trust and support, especially during some very challenging cases and matters. Hope 2026 is a year of prosperity, growth, peace, and fun.
Signature
Mike Burshteyn
🕴️ Try the Trial Game