ABA Journal Podcasts - Legal Talk Network

In the summer of 2020, when the murder of George Floyd was igniting protests in Minneapolis and around the country, it occurred to Margaret A. Burnham that “George Floyd” was a common-sounding name. Burnham is the founder and director of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at the Northwestern University School of Law, where she is also a professor. She went into the CRRJ’s archive of...

There hasn’t been much progress when it comes to driverless cars. Most major car manufacturers have sunk hundreds of billions into developing and testing driverless cars; yet the finish line seems to be nowhere in sight. So what happened?

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.

For any plaintiff who's been injured or any young attorney just starting out in the field of tort law, it can be daunting to calculate what monetary damages–and nonmonetary damages like pain and suffering–they should be asking for if they win a civil trial or are evaluating a settlement offer. Estimating what the future would have looked like if an accident had never occurred can seem more like a...

The metaverse is all the rage these days. Users can enter a virtual world where they can interact with people from all parts of the physical world, play games, engage in commerce and do a lot of other things. Some law firms have also seen the potential.

Author and lawyer Scott Turow’s latest legal thriller Suspect reintroduces readers to Clarice “Pinky” Granum, the granddaughter of attorney Sandy Stern—a character from the author's novels The Last Trial and his blockbuster debut Presumed Innocent.

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.

In this special two-part episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles speaks with Lisa Napoli, author of Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR, and we hear from Nina Totenberg herself about her new book, Dinners With Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships. Totenberg appeared at an American Bar Foundation event to celebrate the lau...

Programmed to communicate as if they were living, breathing people, AI chatbots function by asking you a series of questions and providing you with your available options. Lawyers, law firms and courts have even gotten into the act.

Justice William O. Douglas could be known for his fiery opinions, turbulent personal life and longtime presidential ambitions. But Judge M. Margaret McKeown is shining a light on his groundbreaking environmental advocacy in Citizen Justice: The Environmental Legacy of William O. Douglas—Public Advocate and Conservation Champion. McKeown, who sits on the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court o...

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.

It’s time for the Modern Law Library’s summer recommendations episode, where host Lee Rawles shares her pop culture picks with you, plus a re-airing of one of our older episodes that has become relevant again. In this case, it’s a 2018 conversation with Mary Ziegler about her book Beyond Abortion: Roe v. Wade and the Battle for Privacy. Ziegler shares information about other areas of the law in wh...

After several collaborations with bestselling author James Patterson, Judge David Ellis of Illinois decided to go it alone for his latest book, Look Closer. In this episode, the ABA Journal's Matt Reynolds talks to Ellis about his Patterson partnership, his own crime fiction and how he balances his judicial work with his writing.

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.

Immigration is an area of law that lends itself well to technological innovations. It is in that intersection in which immigration lawyer Greg Siskind does his work.

In Nobody is Protected: How the Border Patrol Became the Most Dangerous Police Force in the United States, geographer Reece Jones argues that Supreme Court precedent, a growing workforce and mission creep have made the U.S. Border Patrol a national police force that operates without appropriate accountability. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Jones and the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles discus...

Even during times less tumultuous than the one we are in now, lawyers as a profession report high levels of stress. Finding the way to keep motivated and healthy on an individual level while fighting systemic problems is no easy task. It was this challenge that lawyers Nora Bergman and Chelsy Castro set out to address in their new book, 50 Lessons for Happy Lawyers. In this episode of the Modern L...

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.

Are you struggling with debt? Do you have collectors breathing down your neck, threatening to repossess your property and filing lawsuits against you in court? For many Americans facing this dilemma, their options are fairly limited.

Are you a lawyer who plays League of Legends late at night? A World of Warcraft warrior who engages in courtroom combat during your daytime gig? And have you ever wished you could break into esports on a professional level–whether you're armed with a game controller or a briefcase? Well, esports is a growing industry, and if you'd like to make it part of your legal practice, a background in gaming...

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.

As a lawyer, Michelle Good spent years investigating the trauma that Canada’s residential school system inflicted on Indigenous people. As an author, it took her nine years to write her first novel about the lives of five teenagers who leave a church-run school and coalesce in Eastside Vancouver, British Columbia. For Good, it was imperative that she took her time to get the story right. Her patie...

Facial recognition software is becoming a greater part of our everyday lives. But the technology is controversial and not without its critics. Questions about its accuracy—especially relating to recognizing minority faces—remain. Special thanks to our sponsors, Alert Communications and Smokeball.

On the cover of Brian Hochman's book The Listeners: A History of Wiretapping in the United States is a martini cocktail, complete with skewered olive. Someone attempting to judge a book by its cover may think this is a riff on James Bond and his brethren in espionage. But international espionage is not the primary use of wiretapping in the United States; it's a longer, stranger tale than that. Hoc...

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.