Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer

Also, the Supreme Court's really sticking it to the Fifth Circuit. ----- We've got a few firms dipping into the summer bonus pool. But so far the pack hasn't followed them into the water. The Supreme Court continues to shoot down the Fifth Circuit, recognizing that politicians can't use false arrests to squelch free speech and using the Circuit to exorcise -- just a little -- their Second Amendmen...

We talk about finding the right law school for you, and wonder how deep the SCOTUS drama goes. ----- The Above the Law Top 50 Law Schools ranking is here and this year it's putting power in the hands of the users. Meanwhile at the Supreme Court, ACB tells her colleagues that not every legal problem is a job for bad history. Sam and Martha-Ann Alito release Unplugged album, and it only took a matte...

Except ATM machines have limits. ----- When ProPublica first reported that Clarence Thomas had taken half a million in gifts, it turns out they had only scratched the surface. New financial disclosures and some number-crunching from Fix the Court show that Thomas has taken over $5 million in gifts and likely gifts. Meanwhile, Ketanji Brown Jackson got roughly Beyonce tickets with a roughly $4000 f...

The Trump conviction excuse tour is not going well for his attorneys. ----- Donald Trump is now a convicted felon and everyone wants to know why his attorneys phoned in the defense. They... don't have good answers. At all. Continuing the Trump beat, Judge Aileen Cannon continued to display a delicate mix of cynical obstinance and outright incompetence, slow-playing a motion to keep Trump from publ...

An appeal to common sense is denied. ----- You might have thought flying a flag upside after January 6 would be the only "Sam Alito w/10 flag" story of the week, but you'd be wrong. The justice followed it up with another flag tied to the riots and got appropriately roasted over it all by Elena Kagan. Biglaw always paid well, but with partners crossing the $20 million compensation barrier, the str...

Now, this is a story all about how Sam Alito's wife got flipped-turned upside down. ----- Sam Alito flew his flag upside down in the aftermath of the insurrection. He doesn't deny that, but he blames his wife for it. Dames, amirite? Aside from the obvious ethical issues implicated by having a Supreme Court justice visibly light in the "defending the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and do...

Trump's attorneys seems as asleep at the switch as their client. ----- Having called Stormy Daniels a liar repeatedly in its opening, the Trump defense team was then shocked and appalled that the prosecution elicited testimony to rehabilitate her credibility. The hits didn't stop there as they attempted to get out of the mess they'd landed in by sex shaming someone whose sexuality is their whole b...

Donald Trump, Drake, And James Ho... punchlines write themselves. ----- Donald Trump's trial shenanigans continue. Is he going to violate the gag order again? It seems inevitable but... our prediction might shock you! But even if his unfiltered "Truthing" is behind him, there are so many other ways to show contempt of court. And a busy week in Morningside Heights as Columbia Law School students as...

The New York courtroom where Donald Trump is on trial is apparently unpleasant. Is that the former president's doing? The world may never know. Also, the fact that the racists are coming for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson isn't surprising -- but who gave them the green light? And, a judge learns a valuable lesson about hot mics and why you should always assume someone is listening.

Let's see if it pays off as well as a billionaire covering up an affair. ----- Donald Trump's hush money trial kicks off after a week of Trump alienating everyone involved in the process by refusing to respect basic decorum and attempting to skirt the gag order by arguing that RTs aren't endorsements. The Am Law 100 is also out and we talk through some of the key takeaways and Judge Ho tried to de...

We continue breaking down the U.S. News & World Report law school rankings and the chaos that its new methodology introduced. And we know exactly who to blame for breaking these rankings. Elon Musk recently went in for a deposition defended by Quinn Emanuel's Alex Spiro and earned a motion for sanctions. And a Berkeley Law protest goes viral, but all the "free speech" talk misses the mark.

Haphazard ranking serves as a reminder that service hasn't quite found the right formula after law schools started withdrawing their data.  _______________ The full U.S. News & World Report law school rankings are out and they are... something. Duke is tied with Harvard? NYU nearly drops out of the top 10? Are we just hurling darts at a dartboard here? In a sense, yes. At least ever since law scho...

Breaking down the action-packed final week of March. ___________ Special guest Liz Dye joins us to talk about the week that was. First, we delve into the abortion pill oral argument where even most of the conservatives scoffed at the right-wing effort to let an Amarillo courthouse second-guess the FDA on science. Almost as though the Chief Justice just tried to crack down on that practice. But alo...

Conservative justices can't stop telling on themselves when it comes to forum shopping. __________________ Joe Biden says he got a standing ovation for trying to BS his way through a law school cold call. We call BS on that. Also Cooley Law School finds itself at the bottom of the heap when it comes to bar passage rates again. At some point, the ABA has to step in... right? Finally, the nation's j...

Parental leave and a bumbling Supreme Court highlight the week. _____________________________ Are law firms going to get stingy with parental leave? While most firms report solid revenue, sparking resentment over a few weeks of leave seems like a weird strategy, but DLA Piper recently cut back on the leave available to non-birthing parents. It's a first as far as Above the Law can tell, but will i...

Bond... unaffordable cash bond. _________________________________ Donald Trump needed to put up some cash before E. Jean Carroll can begin executed the judgment she has against him. Instead, Trump tried to argue that he was simply too rich to put up a bond. The argument was not persuasive, but it did get Above the Law mentioned on Stephen Colbert. We also discuss the Supreme Court taking up the Tr...

Another firm begins cracking down on office attendance through punishment. Law firms want lawyers back in the office, but if they don't want associates spending that office time fielding calls from recruiters, it's time to consider incentives that treat lawyers like professionals. A Bush judge questioned Trump's manhood and Amy Wax fights back against the slap on the wrist Penn prepared to give he...

The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are living children for the purposes of Alabama law. And while there are a lot of serious implications for the future of family fertility efforts, let's take a second to consider how much this absolutely breaks the state's rule against perpetuities. An attorney in the YSL case faces gang charges herself. She's made some... marketing decisions. Ho...

Even-keeled professionalism may pay off over time, but being a mercurial lunatic always pays off now. ______________________________ Former Trump aide Stephen Miller used Super Bowl week to launch a stunt employment discrimination complaint against the NFL. The rule in question is the subject of a much better legal challenge that it doesn't do ENOUGH to address anti-Black discrimination, but nothi...

We're reaching peak Alina saturation. ___________ Last week may have officially been "Legalweek" but it was bad lawyer week at Above the Law, where Alina Habba dominated traffic with her ongoing futility. Her rapid retreat from the very phony "it's actually bias that so many prominent lawyers all worked at Paul Weiss" motion after being informed of the very real sanctions that could result. Robbie...

Sometimes you can't actually fake being smart. _________________________________________________ Alina Habba may soon be replaced in the Trump legal team constellation, but we'll always have memories of her crackerjack legal analysis and the stupid swimsuit debate. There are four justices who don't seem to care about the Supremacy Clause. And Davis Polk faced -- and successfully beat -- a discrimi...

'The only rules are there are no rules' apparently doesn't fly in Judge Kaplan's courtroom. ____________________________________ We don't even talk about Alina Habba's weird swimsuit thing on the show because it broke after we wrapped recording (next week, I guess!), but we have more than enough material discussing Trump's lawyer bumble through basic courtroom procedure and lodge motions for bad c...

Who needs a judge's approval to start ranting in court? Every other person ever, you say? ___________________________________________________ Donald Trump's legal team informed Justice Arthur Engoron that their client would deliver closing remarks in violation of basic New York rules, setting off a series of decreasingly coherent emails with the judge over Trump's willingness to abide by the const...

Maybe GPT-5 will want a free RV? _______________________________________________ The Chief spent his entire annual report on the federal judiciary on the rise of artificial intelligence and how AI cannot possibly replace judges because the judge is so much harder and more nuanced than, say, calling balls and strikes. Not that anyone would be stupid enough to describe being a judge like that. Steve...

The highs and mostly lows from the year that was. __________________________________________ As we turn the page to 2024, we reminisce over the top stories at Above the Law over the past year. Layoffs, salary hikes, ethical quagmires at the Supreme Court, Donald Trump's criminal cases... the legal industry provided a lot of fodder for Above the Law this past year. Join Thinking Like A Lawyer as we...