AI has made the news harder to stay ahead of. The cycle runs faster: a ruling posted in the morning is rewritten across dozens of sites by noon and buried by the next day. One story now runs under a dozen headlines, and the rulings and settlements that matter get lost among the copies.
I built Mass Tort Wire for my own desk to keep up with that pace. Every time it opens, it gathers the news on the litigations I follow, the firms I watch, and the trade and legal press, with a separate pass over the last 24 hours so a new ruling surfaces the day it lands. It folds the rewrites of a story into a single item and strips out the stories that waste a reader’s time. This fall I am setting up copies for a small number of plaintiff firms and the companies that serve them.
What it watches
Your litigations. Each tracked litigation runs its own news search, over the window you choose and again over the last 24 hours, so a busy docket still surfaces yesterday’s ruling. A litigation can carry the other names the press uses for it. Talc also catches “baby powder.” Asbestos also catches “mesothelioma.”
The firms you watch. Each firm name runs its own search for verdicts, filings, leadership appointments, sponsorships and deals. A firm’s own blog can feed the wire directly, and when the firm’s post and the press story about it cover the same event, the two appear as one item.
The trade and legal press. Reuters and Law360 run on every copy. The update pages on Lawsuit Informer and the analysis on Lawsuit Intelligencer arrive the day they publish.
What it leaves out
The filters come from reading the raw feed every day and blocking whatever wasted the morning. Stock-picking publishers, price-move headlines and investor-alert press releases about defendants stay off the wire. Permit and zoning fights over data centers stay off while the data center lawsuits stay on. A documentary about the 1982 Tylenol poisonings does not surface under the Tylenol litigation. Link wrappers and sites that rewrite one story into eight headlines are blocked at the source. A story found only by a firm-name search has to be about the firm, so a car model or a hockey player who shares a firm’s name stays off.
How it reads
The wire runs in a phone or desktop browser and installs to a home screen like an app. It scans when opened, groups stories by day, and marks anything that reached it in the last 24 hours as NEW. A revised update page counts as new again, so a ruling added to a page you already read gets its own flag.
Three tabs sort the feed. News Wire carries everything. Deal Wire carries law firm investment, MSO and funding news, and appears only for firms that track those topics. AI Wire follows AI in the courts and in legal work, and keeps only the stories about law.
Three starting desks
Litigation desk. The active consumer mass torts and the national plaintiff firms, for a firm that signs cases.
Deal desk, buyer. MSO and private equity news, the platforms doing deals, and the docket events that price an inventory: bellwether results, Daubert rulings, settlement programs.
Deal desk, seller. The same deal coverage, plus the state rules on nonlawyer ownership and fee sharing, and the firms that have already taken investment.
Every desk is a starting point. A firm adds its own litigations and firms on top, and I adjust any copy the same day a firm asks.
Terms of the pilot
A copy is free. It lives at its own address with the firm’s name at the top. The firm gets a read-only key to share across its team, and I keep the key that edits the copy, so a forwarded key can read the wire and cannot change it. The firm’s topic list stays in that copy and is never shared with another firm.
The wire counts opens, scans and story clicks so I can see whether it earns its place on a firm’s screen. It records nothing else. It may carry one sponsor line later, from a company that serves the plaintiff bar. A law firm will never be a sponsor.