ABA Journal Podcasts - Legal Talk Network

Sen. Mazie Hirono's newly released book, Heart of Fire: An Immigrant Daughter's Story, is part political memoir and part love letter to her family and the state she represents. As Hawaii's first female senator, and the only immigrant currently serving in the U.S. Senate, Hirono had a set of unique obstacles to overcome. One of Hirono's strongest influences is her mother, Laura Hirono, who passed a...

Joyce Tong Oelrich and Zohra Tejani, the founders of Tong Tejani, which specializes in government contracts and has mainly technology-sector clients, kept initial client feedback about subscription pricing in mind when they formally launched their firm in May 2020. Special thanks to our sponsors, Alert Communications and Nota.

As the founders of a company that provides AI-powered contract analysis software, Kira Systems' Noah Waisberg and Dr. Alexander Hudek are used to facing skepticism, fear and doubt from attorneys. Will AI steal their jobs? Would using it violate ethics rules? How can it be good for a business model that relies on the billable hour to cut down on the amount of time it takes to review a contract? In...

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has caused there to be fewer court filings in some jurisdictions, Howard Bashman’s blog, How Appealing, continues to share multiple posts on a daily basis about appellate law and legal news. Special thanks to our sponsor, LawPay.

Jill Wine-Banks was barely 30 when she became an assistant Watergate special prosecutor investigating President Richard M. Nixon. In Watergate Girl: My Fight for Truth and Justice Against a Criminal President, Wine-Banks (who was then known as Jill Wine Volner) shares her experience battling political obstruction, courtroom legal wrangling and the era's sexism. Though she'd originally attended law...

When the spread of the novel coronavirus last spring prompted traditional law firms across the country to shutter their physical offices amid much economic uncertainty, the management team at cloud-based law firm FisherBroyles had very different concerns on its radar. The team wanted to make sure that the firm was ready to quickly ramp up hiring. Kevin E. Broyles, the firm’s co-founder and managin...

When Davis M. Walsh and Samuel L. Tarry began assembling Infectious Disease Litigation: Science, Law, and Procedure, they had no idea that soon a pandemic was going to make the topic more relevant than ever. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Walsh and Tarry talk about the experience of editing the book, the unique challenges of litigating infectious disease cases, their advice for attorne...

When she’s posting online, Beth Bourdon is not like most other lawyers, and she says that’s probably why she has more than 50,000 Twitter followers. She is a Florida public defender who represents people charged with homicide. She also helps journalists with Freedom of Information Act requests in her spare time—and that includes a Patreon account, a membership platform that provides funds for the...

By the late 1960s, use of the death penalty was on the decline in the United States. But after the U.S. Supreme Court declared in the 1972 case Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty as practiced violated the Eighth and 14th Amendments, there was a political backlash. By 1976, Georgia had a new capital punishment system that did pass Supreme Court muster, and other states followed suit–including...

Virtual trivia nights and happy hours are among the activities that Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks has hosted in recent months to help welcome new hires into the fold amid a remote working environment. John Van Amsterdam, a shareholder at the Boston-based intellectual property law firm, says the events hosted via video conferencing platforms because of COVID-19 have provided a surprisingly effective ave...

Ask any attorney about the most outlandish clothing they've seen worn in a courtroom, and most will have a colorful story. But what determines the appropriateness of any outfit? In Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History, Stanford law professor Richard Thompson Ford looks at why we wear what we wear; how that has changed over the centuries; and the laws that were codified around what cou...

As a longtime technology consultant to law firms, Heinan Landa knows that lawyers are cautious customers who can be resistant to change. But the old expectations around client service no longer exist, he says, and meeting the new standards requires a shift in the way law firms do business. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Landa tells the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles that he intends his new b...

Rather than focus on the restrictions of teaching via Zoom, Peter H. Huang zeroed in on how he could use the platform in innovative ways. This summer, the University of Colorado Law School professor enjoyed the creativity involved with thinking about different ways to conduct class, and he got pleasure from brainstorming with colleagues on efficient ways to navigate change. Special thanks to our s...

Historian Jane Dailey discusses her new book, White Fright: The Sexual Panic at the Heart of America's Racist History, and what America's history with lynch mobs can teach us about the attack on the Capitol. She and the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles also discuss how the end of Reconstruction impacts us today, and several key court cases that influenced the way courts considered racial identity.

With the shift to virtual recruitment amid the COVID-19 crisis, the speed at which law firms vet and hire lateral partners has increased, according to Michael Ellenhorn, the founder and CEO of Decipher. But Ellenhorn, whose company helps legal industry clients evaluate potential hires, says law firms would be wise not to quicken the hiring process too much. Special thanks to our sponsor Alert Comm...

Jeffrey L. Fisher has argued more than 40 U.S. Supreme Court cases, and he relies heavily on the justices’ body language during arguments. But that wasn’t possible for his last three, which were conducted by phone because of the COVID-19 pandemic. He recently shared his experiences with ABA Journal Senior Writer Stephanie Francis Ward. Special thanks to our sponsor, LawPay.

As a tumultuous year draws to a close, we gathered together ABA Journal editors and reporters to discuss what the past year has been like for them as readers. With the stress of the pandemic and national elections, how had their reading habits changed? Were they concentrating on current events or comfort reads? With our offices operating remotely, did they have more time for reading? Modern Law Li...

Don Fancher, a principal in Deloitte’s legal business services practice in the United States, acknowledges that his firm has been monitoring the regulatory reform developments taking place in several states. But he says Deloitte has no current plans to apply to offer direct legal services in this country as it does in other nations. “These are issues happening in the industry that are important to...

Brittany K. Barnett was a perfect fit for corporate law. As a certified public accountant who comes from a family with an entrepreneurial spirit, it made sense to fulfill her childhood dream and become a lawyer. But the same east Texas upbringing that gave her the ambition to succeed as a corporate attorney also wound up pulling her towards what her mother calls her "heart work": clemency and sent...

April Dawson, an associate dean and professor at the North Carolina Central University School of Law, misses seeing her constitutional law students in person. But the constitutional law and voting rights scholar has been finding creative ways to use technology in the classroom, even before the pandemic, and she says the experience helped her connect with students and foster meaningful discussions,...

In 1963, John Howard Steel was a 28-year-old attorney with a challenging litigation practice, an unhappy marriage and a stiff neck. At the urging of his mother, Steel decided to try physical therapy at a gym owned by an elderly German immigrant named Joseph Pilates. It was a decision that would change Steel's life. Caged Lion: Joseph Pilates & His Legacy is a memoir, history and biography that tel...

Just before students at the University of California at Irvine School of Law were set to return from spring break in March, the university decided that all classes would be moved online because of the spread of COVID-19. L. Song Richardson, the law school’s dean, says the news generated anxiety among students and faculty about how the rest of the spring semester would play out. Richardson emphasiz...

You're a plaintiffs attorney with a promising tort case, but getting the narrative evidence you need from a particular witness is like squeezing blood from a stone. How can you get through to them and help ensure that your client gets the damages needed for long-term care? The real problem might be that your communication styles are fundamentally different, says author and trial consultant Katheri...

Plenty of lawyers in private practice worry about business development during the COVID-19 pandemic, but there may be more opportunities to discover new clients than they realize. And that is thanks to an increase in online events, says Karen Kaplowitz, a lawyer and business development coach. Special thanks to our sponsor, LawPay.

One of the most important ethical obligations a lawyer has is knowing when to tell their client “no.” But how do you know when that moment has come, and how do you deal with it? For legal ethics experts Lawrence J. Fox and Susan R. Martyn, teaching their fellow attorneys how to cope with the dilemmas they may run into at their practices has been a passion for years. It’s also behind their seventh...