Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer

More and more firms are adopting a non-equity partner tier, delaying equity consideration while extracting maximum value from high billing but relatively lowly paid senior attorneys tied to the job by the dangling hope of a future promotion that may never arrive.

With the 2010s wrapping up, Joe and Kathryn focus on all the law firms we've lost over the last decade. Industry pressures, bad strategies, and fraud allegations managed to put several former mainstays to rest over the last 10 years. What lessons can we take from the demise of these once-proud firms? Where is this whole profession heading? Will this next recession finish off what 2009 started?

To close out the year, Joe runs down the top 10 stories of the year at Above the Law. Are there key insights or interesting trends to be gained from reviewing the site’s traffic figures? Probably not, but here we are.

The president of the United States was impeached for only the third time in history. Let the obscure legal theorizing begin! Joe and Elie break down the curious argument that the House doesn’t even need to hand over the articles.

It's bonus season in Biglaw, and the major firms are slowly but surely rolling out their bonus announcements and telling associates what they'll be getting in their stockings this year. But Elie sees a bit of a Scrooge in the early first move and slow matching cycle. What's going on with the legal market and are we really looking at a recession in the making?

The "practice-ready" law school model is oft-discussed and rarely implemented, but maybe technology will finally force law schools to focus on teaching practical skills. Joe and Kathryn chat with Jessica Robinson, Vice President of Client Services at Casepoint about the maturation of the eDiscovery process, the project management lessons that fuel effective discovery, and the importance of learnin...

Mark Godsey discusses his conversion to an advocate for the wrongfully convicted and his grasp of the psychology that consistently lands the wrong people in prison.

With Kavanaugh's arrival, the last Term provided a glimpse of the fully armed and operational Roberts Court.

Joe and Elie chat with Rich Douglas, COO of Themis, about the bar exam and how to conquer it. Rich also tells us about the Themis Law School Essentials program of free review materials for law school courses and we discuss the impact the GRE is going to have on law school admissions.

With Veteran's Day this week, we decided to focus on a group that faces professional hurdles that most lawyers don't. Attorneys married into the military find themselves moving around the country or overseas every couple of years, which presents a problem in a practice still largely geographically fixed.

There's a bird loose in the Harvard Law School library, prompting Joe and Elie to have an impromptu debate over whether or not libraries are still essential in a world of digital research. Speaking of the internet, Deadspin's entire staff resigned last week and the duo discuss the legal and policy implications of the blogosphere's loss. Labor law, private equity business models, the bankruptcy cod...

This week's discussion of law firm growth trajectories never gets to happen as Elie's irritation with Trump's lawyers spills into the entire show. Becoming a bag man for the Ukraine deal raises ethical concerns, but is merely representing Trump an ethical problem? More to the point, is it something bar disciplinary committees should really be looking into?

With offers for summer employment going out to law students around the country, Thinking Like A Lawyer unveils its annual "The Offer" series. If you're wondering which of your offers you should take, Joe and Elie are happy to anonymously discuss them. Just send them to tips@abovethelaw.com subject line "The Offer." In the meantime, here are some general thoughts on the job hunt process.

Joe and Elie discuss the in-house world. Lawyers and law students often daydream about what they perceive as the cushy world of going in-house. But these lawyers face their own challenges. A recent comprehensive survey of corporate legal departments reveals confusion over privacy requirements and complaints over outside counsel costs.

Joe and Kathryn have a spontaneous chat about lawyers on television. From game shows to reality competitions, lawyers were all over the place last week. In a sense though, aren't these shows metaphors for the legal profession? No, they're probably not -- but that's not going to stop us from trying to explain how they might be.

Brazil has officially made a cat an attorney and this week Kathryn and Joe explore the feline's new career serving as both legal mascot and a symbolic advocate for animal legal concerns in the country. Meanwhile, Elie tries to speculate about impeachment and mostly fails because who cares about hearings that haven't even started yet when there's A LAWYER CAT TO TALK ABOUT!

Joe and Elie are joined by Alaric Dearment of MedCity News to discuss the legal framework surrounding the opioid lawsuits. How does something like this become a stunning breakdown of regulation in the face of industry greed? This is your overview.

Joe and Kathryn discuss the top stories of the week at Above the Law including the rise and fall of Judge Posner's pro se organization, Weil Gotshal's cafeteria cold shoulder, and the California Bar's good news. Plus we talk a bit about Emory's struggles with racial slurs. Just another week in the annals of the legal industry.

Kathryn Rubino joins Joe for a discussion of the latest Mansfield Rule efforts and the problem of lagging Biglaw diversity generally. From reputational rankings to deequitization to bar exam shenanigans the obstacles to building a truly diverse workforce in law are more baked into the system than current reforms seem able to handle.

With election season prematurely upon us, lawyers across the country will gear up to run for office, and their opponents will gear up to bash them for the clientele they've served. Should lawyers ever be criticized for zealously defending clients? Is the justice system undermined if attorneys feel some clients are too toxic to represent?

Disclaimer: This episode was originally aired on Dec 11, 2018.The International Legal Technology Association's annual conference came and went this past week, so we were unable to record a podcast. But we have a treat from the archives -- a conversation with Intapp board member and all-around law firm business expert Ralph Baxter about what the future holds for law firms.

As we prepare to enter another football season, Elie and Joe discuss some high-profile sports law stories making the rounds and focus on the most important intellectual property question that you would have thought was too dumb to ask: can you trademark the word, "the"?

Joe and Elie address some hypothetical situations about the legal industry and discuss which path they'd rather take knowing what they know. Imagine Thinking Like A Lawyer's "The Decision" series helping students choose a law school, but applied to a bunch of random legal questions.

Joe and Kathryn do another rapidfire rundown of the biggest stories in legal news this week. Bar exam horror stories! Jones Day's salary and discrimination suit woes! The imminent collapse of a national Biglaw firm! All that and more. Plus sound effects!!!

Joe and Elie watched some of these hearings everyone's talking about and break down some of the key legal issues that got lost in the spectacle. This is just what happens when a careful, conscientious attorney tries to talk to a bunch of local dry cleaner magnates who've managed to fall backward into Congress and then it all gets ciphered by talking heads churning a 24-hour news cycle.