On The Merits

There are currently more than 160,000 practicing lawyers over the age of 65 in the U.S., a 50% increase from just a decade ago. But this age group is also more at risk of Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia. That can have serious consequences for a lawyer's clients, especially if that attorney is a solo practitioner or works in a small firm. On this episode of On The Merits, Bloomberg L...

Bloomberg Law columnist Vivia Chen recently wrote about a failed attempt to rank law schools based on diversity. She started her column by saying "old White men" need to get out of the way on issues like this. That line elicited some passionate responses from several Bloomberg Law readers. On this bonus weekend episode of our podcast, On The Merits, we talk to Vivia about the responses, and also h...

Just accessing, let alone paying for, mental health care was difficult in the U.S. even before the pandemic. Now, especially for people suffering from "long Covid," the situation is dire. On this episode of our weekly legal news podcast, On The Merits, we speak with Bloomberg Law's Lydia Wheeler about her latest reporting that examines the financial and policy implications for Covid long haulers....

The holders of H-1B visas, who work in tech, science, and other highly skilled occupations, can bring their children to the U.S. legally. However, as soon as those children turn 21, they lose their dependent status and risk deportation to a country they may have no recollection of ever having lived in. On this episode of On The Merits, Bloomberg Law's Genevieve Douglas talks about the difficult ch...

The ADA requires employers to give disabled workers "reasonable accommodations" in the workplace. But, when it comes to disputes over work-from-home arrangements, employers almost always won with the argument that the job can't be performed remotely. That, as you might imagine, has changed. On this episode of our weekly legal news podcast, On The Merits, Bloomberg Law's Erin Mulvaney tells us abou...

Federal appellate court judges rarely speak to the press. Fortunately for us, Judge Evan Wallach, a nine-year veteran of the U.S Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, who recently announced he will be taking senior status at the end of May, granted an exclusive interview to Bloomberg Law's Perry Cooper. On this episode of On The Merits, Cooper talks about her surprise at how candid Wallach was...

The predictions from a few years ago that the so-called "gig economy" would take over the country are looking a little shakier now. That's because California and other states have enacted laws that force many gig apps to classify their users as employees. On this episode of On The Merits, Bloomberg Law's Maeve Allsup talks about how, despite a pro-gig economy ballot initiative last year, many of t...

Berkshire Hathaway is unusual in a lot of ways, including the fact that it doesn't have a general counsel or even an in-house legal team. Today on our weekly podcast, On The Merits, Bloomberg Law's Brian Baxter explains why Warren Buffett's holding company exclusively uses an outside law firm and how that firm has benefited from its relationship to The Oracle of Omaha. (3:12) Also, Bloomberg Law l...

For many businesses, 2020 was a truly awful year—but that was not the case for Kirkland & Ellis’s bankruptcy practice. On today’s episode of our podcast, On The Merits, business of law reporter Roy Strom talks about his analysis of bankruptcy data that shows Kirkland handled a tremendous share of the many major bankruptcies that were filed last year. (2:36) Also, our new columnist Vivia Chen on th...

State bar exams are getting some tweaks and may be fully overhauled in the near future. On this week’s episode of our podcast, On The Merits, Bloomberg Law’s Sam Skolnik talks about how emergency changes made to state bar exams, in response to the pandemic, have many thinking that a wholesale revision of how the exams are administered may not be a bad idea. (2:48) Also, legal editor Carmen Castro-...

This week's episode of our new weekly legal podcast, On The Merits, explores the push to increase the minimum wage for tipped workers. The hourly wage for tipped workers, $2.13, hasn't gone up in decades and is $5.12 lower than for non-tipped workers. (3:01) We also get a lesson in negligence while learning about a casino pool party accident that led to an embarrassing benchslap. (12:14)

Our new weekly podcast, On The Merits features some of the best reporting from across the Bloomberg Law newsroom. For the inaugural episode, we learn that states are sharing reams of sensitive, personally identifiable information about Covid-19 vaccine recipients with the CDC, all while staying in compliance with HIPAA. Bloomberg Law's Jacquie Lee explains how the famously strict medical privacy l...

Introducing "On The Merits," a new weekly legal news podcast from Bloomberg Law.

A live interview with Sally Yates, former deputy attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice, exploring the current state of risk for public and private companies. Yates is interviewed by David Westin, an anchor at Bloomberg TV and former general counsel of Capital Cities/ABC. Sponsors: Epiq www.epiqglobal.com/ Bloomberg Law www.bloomberglaw.com/ More Information: Big Law Business https://b...

Josh Block is joined by legal journalist, Victor Li, the author of a new book about Richard Nixon's time as a law firm partner in New York City. In between his loss in the 1962 gubernatorial election in California and the 1968 presidential campaign, Nixon was a rainmaking partner at the Wall Street law firm, Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie & Alexander. In “Nixon in New York: How Wall Street Helped Ric...

After Ruth Bader Ginsburg graduated from Columbia Law School in 1959, tied for first in her class, she could not get a job as an associate in big law. As her classmate Professor Arthur R. Miller tells it, a partner at a prestigious firm was told about the brightest student in his class but, when her gender was mentioned, the partner wouldn’t even consider her. Which law firm? Miller isn’t saying....

Jad Abumrad is the executive producer and creator of More Perfect, a podcast that explores Supreme Court cases and tries to explain the impact of the Court’s decisions on the lives of Americans. The challenge is making the cases “come alive,” Abumrad told Josh Block of Big Law Business. “Can I make it feel exciting and visceral? but also honor the complexity of the arguments?” In this podcast inte...

Law firm leaders from Wilson Sonsini and Orrick were joined by in-house leaders from Workday and Malwarebytes to talk about the state of the legal industry at this month’s Big Law Business Summit-West. This episode of the our podcast was recorded live at the Summit. The panel was moderated by Michael Hytha of Bloomberg News and includes Ed Brown, ‎Vice President and General Counsel, Malwarebytes;...

"Starting in the 2000s it was women who had already made partner, and who were not leaving [big law] for work-life balance reasons, but were leaving for business reasons and I don’t think that trend is going to change." – Nicole Galli, former litigation partner at Pepper Hamilton, who now has her own small firm. In the second of our two-episode podcast series, Josh Block of Big Law Business explor...

Why are many women lawyers choosing to leave big law, and starting their own law firms, even after they make partner? In the first of a two-episode podcast series, Big Law Business's Josh Block explores that question with Stephanie Russell-Kraft, who recently reported on the topic, and Nicole Galli, a former partner at Pepper Hamilton, who now has her own small firm. Subscribe to On The Merits on ...

There’s some good news if you’re an equity partner at a large law firm. Based on the findings of a survey of firms released by Wells Fargo Private Bank’s Legal Specialty Group, equity partners should see “healthy levels of profit” this year, according to Joe Mendola, a senior director of sales with the group. However, Mendola also warned that this continues to be “a challenging time” for many firm...

Women represent private parties in civil litigation just 18.5% of the time in New York according to a New York State Bar Association report released earlier this month. Judge Shira Scheindlin backed up those findings during a recent podcast recording: “what I witnessed in the courtroom was a great gender disparity in privately retained counsel.” Judge Scheindlin, a former Federal District Court Ju...

Kasowitz Benson Torres has been representing Donald Trump, in various matters, for more than 15 years. In May, when the firm’s founding partner Marc Kasowitz was chosen to represent the president in the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, the lawyer and firm were thrust into the spotlight. In this episode we take a deep dive on Kasowitz Benson. Josh Block talks with Bob Van Voris...

Leaders from Venable, Latham & Watkins, Morgan Stanley, and Capital One talk about the state of the legal industry. This episode was recorded live at the Big Law Business Summit, and moderated by Bloomberg Businessweek’s Megan Murphy. Topics include talent management, how corporations choose law firms, automation in the legal industry, pressure on the law firm economic model, whether law firms are...

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff thinks increased competition has had an impact on law firms, for the worse. “It is to the point that the professional ethics and the professional responsibilities of the firms have been affected,” Rakoff told Big Law Business, explaining that firms, in order to keep clients, are willing to endorse risky behavior. In the podcast interview with Big Law Business’s Casey...