ABA Journal: Asked and Answered

After 13 years and 170 episodes, Asked and Answered host Stephanie Francis Ward is hanging up her headphones and switching off her mic. Asked and Answered, the ABA Journal’s first and longest-running podcast, is ending its run—at least for now. In this final episode, Ward discusses her podcast tenure with the Journal’s Lee Rawles. Ward recently accepted a new position within the ABA Journal as an...

When lawyers hear the term "LLM," their first thought may go to a master of law degree that a person earns after law school. However, the acronym also stands for “large language model,” which is technology that generates and creates writing for offerings that include ChatGPT and Google Bard. The technology doesn’t know what is accurate—that’s where lawyers come in—but the writing is impressive, it...

After almost 40 years on the bench, Judge Pauline Newman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has sued her chief, two judge colleagues and the Federal Circuit Judicial Council, following a court committee interview and a medical records request, which she denied, and a suggestion that she should be suspended from work for one year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone....

As stories of some CEOs' outrageous behaviors continue, the amount of activist shareholder activities keeps growing, say Kenneth Mantel and Megan Reda, partners at Olshan Frome Wolosky in New York. They represent investment funds, family offices and people trying to bring change at public companies—and maybe get a seat on the board. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Winning a 2003 landmark U.S. Supreme Court case expanded a gay lawyer's Supreme Court practice, he says, and looking back, it's his favorite case. Because Paul M. Smith was the editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal, clerked for then-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. and handled various Supreme Court cases—including for paying clients—many thought that it made sense for the Washingto...

With the current exam, candidates have a 90% chance of passing, if they follow the advice of their law schools’ academic support staff. When the National Conference of Bar Examiners launches a revamped version of the bar exam in 2026, called the NextGen bar exam, it is expected that there will be new assessments on skills including legal research, investigation and client counseling. And that coul...

In the criminal justice world, pig butchering refers to bacon—but not literally. Instead, it’s a term used to describe scamming someone online out of all their money through promises of romance and cryptocurrency windfalls, says Erin West, a prosecutor in the Santa Clara County, California, district attorney’s office. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As rises in Chicago carjackings continue to increase fear among many residents, Cliff Nellis, an attorney and pastor who founded the Lawndale Christian Legal Center, says his nonprofit group represents a fair amount of young people charged with the crime. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jessica Bednarz has spent much of her career representing people, researching access-to-justice issues and using that knowledge to try to find better ways to deliver legal services. That includes using what’s known as “design thinking” for developing client service programs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the 35 years that Jayne Conroy has been a lawyer, she’s spent the entire time in private practice doing civil litigation and has tried more than 70 cases. Conroy’s work includes leading some of the multidistrict litigation involving opiates with jury trials around the country. Through that, she’s seen juries and judges change their minds about addiction and responsibilities. Her next target is...

Attorneys often expect incarcerated clients to lie and vice versa, says Derrick Hamilton, who served more than 20 years of a second-degree murder sentence. Those outlooks don’t help build good attorney-client relationships, according to Hamilton, who now works with students at the Yeshiva University Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law’s Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice. Learn more about your ad c...

While 2022 was a phenomenal year for attorneys and “anyone with a pulse” and a law license could find work, 2023 might “go back to normal,” says Valerie A. Fontaine, a founding director of the legal search company SeltzerFontaine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As we head into the holiday season, consider what you want your celebrations to look like, rather than meeting everyone else’s expectations, says Laurie Besden, a lawyer who has been sober for almost two decades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The overall employment outcomes for 2007 and 2021 law school graduates were both 91.9%. And while that sounds like a good thing, it could be a warning. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ellen Freeman immigrated from Odesa, Ukraine, to Pittsburgh almost 30 years ago. And although her family always planned to leave—she grew up learning various languages so that she could communicate wherever they settled—moving to the United States as a young single mother was one of the most difficult things that she has ever done. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Aliza Shatzman didn’t realize that federal judicial employees are not protected by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. That is until the judge she worked for in 2020 ended her clerkship early—for reasons that she thinks were due to gender discrimination. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you are studying for the July bar exam, you’re not going to memorize every flashcard for the Multistate Bar Examination, and that’s OK. You can still pass. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A good home-school program provided a nurturing environment that was lacking in elementary education, and the experience helped build confidence for law school, says Haley Taylor Schlitz, a 2022 graduate of Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A recent order from Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott directing the state to consider medical treatments for transgender youths as child abuse is hurtful to children and their families, as is a new Alabama law that makes providing gender-affirming care to a minor a felony, says lawyer Asaf Orr. Special thanks to our sponsor, LawPay. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For young litigators who want to be considered “a lawyer’s lawyer,” careers spent mostly working from home may not get you to where you want to be, according to Robert Giuffra and Evan Chesler, two Wall Street partners who have been trying cases for more than 30 years. Special thanks to our sponsor, LawPay. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Although the Americans with Disabilities Act is decades-old, many businesses, including law firms, continue to treat it as a suggestion, rather than federal law, according to Eve Hill and Jason Turkish, two lawyers who represent plaintiffs in disability cases. Special thanks to our sponsor, LawPay. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Business hasn’t slowed down during the COVID-19 pandemic, which tore many couples apart, according to family law attorneys Stacy D. Phillips, who practices in Los Angeles, and Bonnie E. Rabin, who practices in New York. However, the COVID-19 crisis has made it easier to work together. Special thanks to our sponsor, LawPay. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Physical aspects aren’t the only changes in federal litigation, according to two veteran Chicago litigators. They think jurors, particularly those younger than age 40, are much more forgiving when a witness is caught lying, few care whether a party admits to drug use, and many expect significant documentation from law enforcement trying to defend misconduct charges. Special thanks to our sponsor, ...

The heavy, hardback editions of Martindale-Hubbell law directories, which were published annually and had different volumes for each jurisdiction, represented an important tool for executive search consultants back in the 1980s, before internet access was common, and lawyers’ backgrounds could only be found through paper or word of mouth. Special thanks to our sponsor, LawPay. Learn more about you...

In the late 1980s, law school groups for gay and lesbian students met off campus in case members didn’t want the school community to know their sexual orientation. And there were so few female faculty at law schools, if two or more were seen together talking, male faculty would ask what they were up to. So if they were actually up to something, such as persuading their dean to adopt a faculty pare...