ABA Journal Podcasts - Legal Talk Network

Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati announced last month that it had teamed up with Workiva Inc. to create an application that automates the S-1 form that companies must file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission when going public. Special thanks to our sponsors, Alert Communications and Smokeball.

Meg Steenburgh welcomes Krystal Williams to discuss her unconventional path to law. After many years as a business professional, Krystal’s hunger for learning led her to shift her sights to law. She shares some of her experiences as an older student and discusses where her legal career has taken her in the years since law school.  Krystal Williams is founder of Providentia Group, chairman of the b...

A few decades ago, there were no page limits for U.S. Supreme Court briefs, and that brought considerable headaches for the clerks who had to read them. Also, the justices rarely, if ever, asked more than 15 questions total during oral arguments. But that changed in 1986, after Antonin Scalia joined the high court. Special thanks to our sponsor, LawPay.

Hispanics are becoming an increasingly large segment of the U.S. population, and for an enterprising lawyer, serving the legal needs of Spanish-speaking clients seems like a solid business development goal. But running your existing marketing materials through Google Translate and slapping "Se habla español" on your website is not enough, says Liel Levy of Nanato Media. Along with Natalie Fragkoul...

Joe and Kathryn break down the long-awaited John Durham indictment that tagged former Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussmann and find it... less than persuasive. Emory Law School has yet another racial slur in class incident, forcing the gang to ask if there's something in the water down there. But given that the most recent incident involves the brother of another repeat offender on this score, ma...

Priori is an online platform known for using data and technology to connect in-house legal teams with lawyers and law firms who can assist with a wide variety of projects. But Basha Rubin, CEO and co-founder at Priori, says the company noticed that clients were sometimes turning to its online marketplace for help with problems that “might be best solved by a ‘new law’ company or a nontraditional l...

We talk about misbehaving lawyers a lot, but there must be a full moon (per statute a moon "at least 95 percent wholly spherical when measured by appropriate telescopic instruments") or something for lawyers right now because they're wild this week! We've got Biglaw attorneys injecting food with blood, lawyers waving loaded guns around over COVID protocols, a deeply scandalous and tragic situation...

Britney Spears' legal battle over the conservatorship that put her under the control of her father brought international attention to the conservatorship system. But many other rich and famous people have–appropriately or not–also found themselves in the grips of a system that is much more easy to enter than to leave. In Twilight Man: Love and Ruin in the Shadows of Hollywood and the Clark Empire,...

Many Harvard Law School students knew of classmate Rehan Staton through a July 2020 video that went viral, which featured him opening a Harvard Law School acceptance email. There’s a lot more to him than the video, and Staton wanted to connect with classmates more significantly while they attended remote classes over the past year. Special thanks to our sponsor, LawPay.

How do you use LinkedIn? Do you see it as a static resume, or is it the equivalent of your morning newspaper? For Marc W. Halpert, LinkedIn is the most effective way lawyers and other professionals can build their brand, display expertise in niche markets, and nurture business relationships. Halpert was so convinced of this that in 2017, he wrote a book on LinkedIn marketing techniques. Enough has...

Sonja Ebron and her wife, Debra Slone, saw firsthand how difficult it can be to represent yourself in civil cases through experiences they had being sued and suing others. Ebron says the couple’s legal battles spanning several different practice areas ultimately prompted them to develop a platform called Courtroom5, an online toolbox that helps self-represented litigants handle their cases from st...

There’s a business case to be made for hiring attorneys with ADHD, autism, learning disabilities and other neurological differences. Businesses have long touted out-of-the-box thinking, but cookie-cutter hiring practices don’t tend to result in diversity of thought. A legal professional who quite literally thinks differently can be an invaluable part of a team. In her book Great Minds Think Differ...

Patrick Krill, a lawyer who has a consulting business focused on addiction, mental health and well-being in the legal profession, left all social media, except LinkedIn, during the COVID-19 pandemic. He did it for his own mental health and says any business development benefits that came from Twitter or Facebook were not worth the trade-off. Special thanks to our sponsor, LawPay.

Chicago's lakefront with its parks, museums, beaches and public spaces is an accident of history. But can we take lessons from that history to create sustainable and environmentally responsible public spaces? Joseph D. Kearney and Thomas W. Merrill look at the political, commercial and legal wrangling–some of which involved very strange bedfellows–that led to the development of lakefront land and...

When COVID-19 began hitting the United States hard in spring 2020, Janine Sickmeyer was among those in the bankruptcy world who thought that there would be a tsunami of cases. But contrary to the prognostications of many, the influx of bankruptcy matters never materialized. Special thanks to our sponsors, Alert Communications and Nota.

As the 50th anniversary of the Pentagon Papers case approached, First Amendment scholars Lee Bollinger and Geoffrey Stone knew they wanted to mark the occasion somehow. Much has changed since RAND Corporation employee Daniel Ellsberg decided spend weeks photocopying some 7,000 pages of a classified report on the war in Vietnam and sneaking them out via his briefcase to be published by the New York...

As the dean of Pennsylvania State University's law school during the COVID-19 pandemic, and at a time of significant social unrest, Hari Osofsky tried to say yes whenever possible. Leadership involves taking in a variety of viewpoints, she explains, and recognizing what students, professors and administration want is a good way to guarantee people that they are being heard. Special thanks to our s...

Summer is upon us, vaccinations are making travel safer, and you may be looking forward to getting some leisure reading done. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, host Lee Rawles shares some of the books she’s read since our favorites reads of 2020 episode. We are also re-airing a 2017 interview we did with David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of...

Devshi Mehrotra and her classmate Leslie Jones-Dove, who was also passionate about criminal justice reform, contacted local public defenders in the Chicago area to see how the two technologists could potentially be of help. They responded by developing a technology platform known as JusticeText, an AI-powered evidence management tool primarily geared toward public defenders. Special thanks to our ...

A red tie. Manicured nails. Bleached hair. Loafers. The width of a person's hips. These are just a few of the things cited by vice patrol cops as indicators of someone's sexual preferences in the 1930s through the 1960s. In Vice Patrol: Cops, Courts, and the Struggle Over Urban Gay Life Before Stonewall, author Anna Lvovsky examines the way that queer communities were policed in the 1930s through...

In May 2020, lawyer and author David Lat was starting his recovery from a life-threatening bout with COVID-19. A little over a year later, Lat, founder of Above the Law, decided to leave his job as a legal recruiter, go back to writing full time, and leave New York City for the New Jersey suburbs with his husband and their 3-year-old son. The COVID-19 pandemic influenced those changes. Special tha...

When Mark A. Torres was researching his first novel, A Stirring in the North Fork, he came across a piece of local history he'd never known about. Starting during the labor shortages of World War II, Long Island had been home to dozens of camps for several decades, some of which kept migrant workers in deplorable–and often deadly–conditions. As general counsel for the Teamsters Union Local 810, To...

A gratifying legal victory sparked Jacqueline Schafer's desire to create a legal technology product that would help other lawyers efficiently craft case-winning briefs full of compelling evidence. Clearbrief is an AI-powered legal writing tool that launched in March. Special thanks to our sponsors, Alert Communications and Nota.

When they were putting together their new book, Crisis Lawyering: Effective Legal Advocacy in Emergency Situations, editors Ray Brescia and Eric K. Stern didn't know that the world would soon be gripped by a pandemic–but they knew that being ready for crises large or small could only benefit attorneys. In fact, lawyers who specialize in emergency management and handling crisis situations are more...

Emily D. Baker wanted a diversion from 2020, so she started doing her own legal commentary about pop culture, with topics including a pair of "Satan Shoes" associated with rapper Lil Nas X and the conservatorship of Britney Spears. Today, Baker is considered to be an influencer. According to her, she earns more than she did as a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney. Special thanks to our sp...