Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer

Also the country may have dodged a constitutional bullet. If Ebeneezer Scrooge ran a law firm, he would probably bill associates for his own lack of work. It turns out, there's a law firm in North Dakota doing that right now. Also, the Supreme Court heard argument on the independent state legislature theory, a tortured reading of the Constitution designed to give Republicans a permanent federal el...

But they caught me with some contemporaneous third-party emails? We discuss the crackerjack investigation the Supreme Court performed into allegations that Justice Sam Alito has a history of leaking decisions. After a religious leader confessed to lobbying efforts that included leaks from Alito concerning key decisions, Alito told the Court "it wasn't me" and, remarkably, they just accepted that a...

ABA poised to eliminate standardized testing requirement... but should it? Taking the LSAT is the first step in the law school journey. But it doesn't have to be. The ABA is considering dropping its requirement that accredited schools employ standardized testing as part of admissions. Some argue that the LSAT is a critical tool in promoting diversity in both law school and the profession. Others c...

Elite law schools are withdrawing from the U.S. News & World Report rankings one by one, but what does it all mean? We've never loved the USNWR methodology, but the reasons these schools cite for departing the rankings don't seem all that great. Maybe the schools would like to help a certain alternative ranking get better results! And the Biglaw bonus cycle has kicked off even amid an uncertain bu...

Annual gathering aims to silence woke heretics... misses spectacularly. The Federalist Society national convention kicked off with Judge William Pryor mocking Above the Law for insinuating that the organization is a bunch of ideological hacks in a monologue that was "funny" to the extent it amounted to a quarter hour of self-owns. A day later, FedSoc proved its hackery when the Board voted to bar...

It's not 2009 all over again, but it's not great. Layoffs are continuing to percolate through the legal industry. Will they stay contained to a few firms with hard hit clients or are we seeing the beginning of widespread firings. Meanwhile, Jones Day has another brush with the Streisand Effect, leading the panel to have to explain who Barbra Streisand is to our youngest member.

Also, hybrid work models show strain. While Ye (née Kanye West) continues to bring new meaning to his song Black Skinhead with a flurry of antisemitic remarks, Biglaw firms are being Heartless and leaving his stable of representation a Ghost Town. But are they Stronger for making the move? Meanwhile, work from home policies remain in their infancy, but firms are already frustrating associates with...

Donald Trump is threatening a dumb lawsuit against the Pulitzer committee, but is it dumb like a fox? Because the right certainly has New York Times v. Sullivan in their crosshairs. There's still no information about the Supreme Court's investigation into the Dobbs leak. Color me utterly unsurprised. Steve Bannon is heading to jail, but that might not be the end of his legal woes. Maybe that feder...

Also lawyers don't make enough money... maybe. An anonymous Illinois bar applicant took to Reddit to confess to cheating on the exam. Perhaps "anonymous" should be placed in quotes because the author proceeded to provide a ton of identifying details triggering a bar examiner investigation. Also, new data suggests lawyers should raise rates, but is that really true? And merger mania is back in Bigl...

Joe went to a conference... here's what went down. The crew couldn't convene this week because of the Clio Cloud Conference, but here's Joe's interview with Pamela Smith talking about lawyer public relations.

But it might make you a sociopath. Ginni Thomas testified to the January 6 committee that she still believes the election was stolen from Donald Trump. They wouldn't call it the "big" lie if it went down easy! But she also testified that she and Clarence don't talk about work, which might be even less believable than her stolen election claim. Also, an attorney billed 277 hours to review 20 docume...

Receive The Appropriate Prizes. Did you know that it's not a good idea to keep two sets of accounting ledgers in order to scam banks and skimp on taxes? It's true! And the majority of the Trump family is finding that out as the NY Attorney General files a lawsuit. Have you considered putting your very freedom in the hands of a judge with decades of experience based on your own misunderstanding of...

And we speak of mermaids and copyrights. There are people out there planning to digitally replace Ariel in the new Little Mermaid movie with a computer generated white character. This is great news... if you're Disney's outside IP enforcement counsel! Meanwhile, the SCOTUS offseason heats up with Chief Justice Roberts complaining that the public questions the Court's legitimacy and Justice Kagan i...

Also, judges need to get their act together. Did you ever think we'd hear a Supreme Court justice questioning the law school model? Well, it happened! Sandwiched between some nonsense about the Dobbs leak, Neil Gorsuch mused that the United States may not need to force students through 7 years of higher education to practice law. We may not have all the answers, but at least people are talking abo...

See, it was an elaborate art piece to demonstrate the futility of law. We breakdown the shenanigans involved in the latest Trump search warrant order... which is in a civil matter... with a different judge... invoking privileges Trump doesn't have... granting relief he didn't even ask for. What does any of that even mean? Good luck to the judge's clerks in their future endeavors after getting hand...

Um... 28 U.S.C. Section... Why Not? The Donald Trump warrant fight provides a scattershot of weird challenges to unravel for the non-lawyers in our lives. We've got collateral attacks and special masters and still no clear sense of how there's any jurisdiction for any of it. But he's found a judge seemingly willing to play along. As a reminder, the job of finding judges like these belongs to Leona...

We didn't plan to get this deep into the feels, but here we are. Kathryn and Joe sat down to talk about a couple human interest stories in law. Joe discusses the story of AXDRAFT, a Ukraine-based legal tech provider (part of the Onit family) and its struggles and triumphs in the face of an ongoing catastrophe while Kathryn talks about an Afghan judge who fled the country with her law degree sewn i...

The FBI's search of Trump's residence has brought on a whole lot of caterwauling on cable news and social media from lawyers and law professors in Trump's orbit. Yet no one seems able (or willing) to accurately describe the whole warrant process. Meanwhile, a federal judge is pulling the rug out from his replacement -- who would diversify the bench -- for the stupidest reason. And a new report sug...

Alex Jones is not going to be paying anything near what the jury determined. While slapping Alex Jones with $45 million in punitive damages for defaming the families of Sandy Hook Elementary shooting victims. But the state of Texas makes juries deliberate and then substitutes its own cap for their decision. Thanks for your jury service, but we've decided to go in a different direction! Now get out...

This podcast must vest, if at all, within 21 years... The bar exam decided to ask a couple of rule against perpetuities questions, obliterating its last claim to legitimacy -- that it teaches real-life practical law. Another reminder that licensing is broken and we need to take bold steps to reform it. Clarence Thomas opted to give up his cushy seminar at George Washington Law and some people are...

Mistakes were made. A lawyer tried to get away with a little misogynistic insulting in open court. It did not end well for him. Meanwhile, a Biglaw partner laments low hours and associates skipping out on the office. This should be a warning to associates as the economy cools because whether or not this is fair, this is the sort of thinking that guides layoff decisions. And the bar exam is here an...

Due diligence is your friend, Elon. Twitter has sued Elon Musk for walking away from his plans to purchase the company and it's hard to see how Musk gets out of this unscathed. Twitter's deal lawyers negotiated a pretty ironclad agreement, Musk's complaints fail basic logic, and Delaware law is roundly against him. But other than that, he's doing great! We also talk about the value of impeaching S...

Plus Texas targets Biglaw. Since the Dobbs opinion came down, Supreme Court justices have faced protests outside their homes and outside their favorite restaurants. The Supreme Court asked local officials to clamp down on it and Morton's Steakhouse used its JD from the Filet Mignon School of Law, but the Court's problem is its own pesky precedents catching up with it. We also discuss the threat Te...

January 6 hearings invite a more hearsay mistakes than the bar exam. Hearsay isn't the easiest concept in the world in application, but compared to the "fertile octogenarian" it's at least straightforward. The complexity is in all the exceptions, not hearsay itself. And yet the January 6 hearings invited a lot of hearsay talk that wildly missed the mark. The gang also takes a look back at the now...

Constitutional law is more of a vibe now. Well there's not much to talk about in the legal world besides the Supreme Court so... let's do that. The Court ruled that state legislatures are both free to craft the laws that suit their state and that state legislatures are dangerously lawless entities that must be crushed by judicial fiat... WITHIN A DAY! The half century of Roe isn't a historical tra...