TL;DRTrial lawyer Mark Lanier used AI to help win a landmark $6M social media addiction verdict against Meta and Google, calling it like having 10 extra workers.
Mark Lanier, the Texas trial lawyer who won a landmark $6 million verdict against Meta and Google in a social media addiction case in March, says AI was central to his preparation and execution throughout the five-week trial. Lanier told Business Insider that the technology let him compress 30 hours of work into 10, describing it as having “10 additional workers who are incredibly well-trained, who know the file inside and out, who work 24 hours a day.” The case was the first social media addiction lawsuit to reach a jury verdict in the United States.
The jury found Meta and Google negligent and ruled their platforms were “dangerous,” awarding $3 million in compensatory damages and $3 million in punitive damages. Meta was held 70 per cent responsible and YouTube 30 per cent. The case is a bellwether for more than 1,500 similar lawsuits consolidated in federal multidistrict litigation, meaning its outcome could shape how thousands of pending claims against social media companies are resolved.
Lanier said his team used AI before and during the trial through Boodlebox, a multi-model platform primarily used in higher education that provides access to ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini within a single collaborative workspace. He worked with the company to create a custom licence costing six figures annually, tailored to incorporate his 42 years of trial experience into the AI’s context. Boodlebox serves more than 1,300 colleges and universities and told Business Insider it is exploring enterprise and legal adoption partly because of its work with Lanier.
