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 judges did something about politicized forum shopping and right-wingers can't stop help but crying about how they miss their cheat code.
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 it be the last? Also, the Supreme Court screwed up its metadata, committing an error that would get junior associates fired. And finally, Joe Biden offered the Court some tough talk... by quoting them.
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 Trump immunity case even though there's not a chance they'll endorse his theory. And when should we just let bygones be bygones with a lawyer's bigoted past? A law professor says everyone is way too hard on Thomas's new clerk just because she got fired from a past right-wing organization after racist messages came to light.
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 her.
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. Hogan Lovells must ponder whether invoking the wrath of ancient Roman poltergeists are worth a prime office location. Has anyone considered just working from home?
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 nothing about Miller's legal moves have much connection to reality -- up to and including the fact that he IS NOT A LAWYER. The Supreme Court heard oral argument in the insurrection case and Chief John Roberts hasn't shown his complete ignorance of basic facts about American elections since Shelby County. Finally, Judge Aileen Cannon receives motion to reconsider, the boldest litigation move of all since it requires counsel so confident in their eventual success that they're willing to call the trial judge a moron.
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 Kaplan, one of the Paul Weiss alumni in question, also shared her story of Donald Trump pulling out the half-clever schoolyard insults. We also discuss a firm that announced it would lay off 1/3 of the first years... but not say which ones! And we talk a little about Legalweek and how AI isn't quite ready for primetime... even as lawyers keep getting in trouble for trying.
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 discrimination suit.
'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 court thingies in the proud tradition of the Simpsons' greatest character. We also discuss a racial discrimination lawsuit against Troutman Pepper and whether "the partner is always a jerk" is a defense. And it looks like the federal courts have opened an investigation into Clarence Thomas... which will probably go nowhere.
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 constraints of a closing argument. He was not willing to... but he went ahead and did it anyway. Meanwhile, Slaughter & May joined the ranks of firms trying to crack down on lawyers ducking the office using all its surveillance powers and another firm that announced matching bonuses has instituted a retroactive hours requirement to bait and switch its attorneys.
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. Steven Calabresi has either lost his mind or is engaged in an epic troll with a series of pieces arguing that Clarence Thomas is the bestest and most incorruptible justice ever! Finally, plagiarism is all over the news for mostly bad faith reasons, but it highlights again that the law isn't easily governed by rules of plagiarism and copying by design.
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 discuss all the big stories of the year and ask the question: can it get any worse than this year? (Hint: it can).
Law firms may hem and haw about raises, but they're still doing more than all right for themselves. Rudy's defamation trial did not go well. Before the latest development in the case, we talked about Michael Cohen's fake case brief and the implications of legal technology on criminal justice.
No one wants to admit weakness, but K&L Gates trying to put a smiling face on layoffs left a lot of observers cold. Meanwhile, Stephen Miller is mongering about a conspiracy to make Taylor Swift famous that somehow doesn't revolve around her talent. And Joshua Wright has brought a lawsuit against ASS Law despite still failing to understand that his problems are all in the mirror.
Payable sometime in 2024... of course. ________________________ Milbank got the ball rolling several weeks ago with a round of raises. Cravath has now upped the ante for more senior associates and the Biglaw landscape has finally decided to pile on. Where is all this going and what does it all mean? We've got thoughts. Meanwhile Amy Wax went ahead and invited a white nationalist back to campus and one of her students is disappointed that people weren't nicer about it. Finally, a new lawsuit presents an ethics issue spotter involving Trump lawyer Alina Habba.
Elon Musk files a facially ludicrous lawsuit and Trump argues that sexual assault doesn't count on airplanes _____________ After promising a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters, Elon Musk showed up to court with a string of claims that would fail under his own recitation of facts. Meanwhile, Donald Trump takes aim at the Federal Rules of Evidence in a bid to undermine the E. Jean Carroll case and Stephen Miller goes after Macy's in a cheap publicity stunt.
Donald Trump sought a mistrial in his New York trial based, in part, on our articles being "humorous, irreverent." The GOP frontrunner did not succeed. Ron DeSantis messed with the rights of professors and now has to pick up the tab for their Biglaw lawyers. Or, more accurately, Florida taxpayers will pick up the tab. But that's just the price Floridians have to pay to help their governor finish third in the primaries! We're still waiting to see if more firms join the Milbank pay scale, but in the meantime a host of anonymous naysayers are mouthing off to the press in a pathetic effort to dissuade the market from following suit.
It's been over a week and no firm has yet to announce that it will match Milbank's latest series of raises. Or, more accurately, cost of living adjustments. Meanwhile, Cravath took the plunge on income partnerships, becoming the latest firm to abandon the time-honored one-tier partnership model. And the turmoil over Nixon Peabody's effort to sneak Donald Trump onboard as a client sparks calls for leadership change.
For most major law firms, the prospect of representing Donald Trump and stamping the firm's name on his nutty pet arguments is a non-starter. Over at Nixon Peabody, the firm jumped right in, bringing on the former president as a client and filing a brief complete with the zany "Brandenburg means it can't be an insurrection" argument that Trump's been having all his lawyers make. Partners don't seem happy about this turn of events. But, since we recorded, we've learned that firm leadership doesn't really care that partners are concerned. We also discuss Sam Bankman-Fried's absurd courtroom sketch and the aesthetic brilliance of Jane Rosenberg's dark and brooding courtroom sketches. Finally, a number of Biglaw firms sent an open letter castigating law school deans for campus antisemitism.
Stroock strikes out. -------------- We thought the end might be near for Stroock & Stroock & Lavan when we recorded this episode. We were right. And with that, the Biglaw world moves to exclusively one or fewer ampersands. A senior lawyer tried to pull a prank on an airplane. It ended badly. And we discuss the last time newly elected Speaker of the House Mike Johnson tried to run something. It was a law school and it failed in epic fashion.
LSAT's decision is not totally... illogical. ----------- The LSAT is ditching logic games from upcoming tests and the Above the Law gang is conflicted over whether or not that's a good thing. There's a good argument that the section disproportionately disadvantaged folks with vision issues. On the other hand that was a deficiency that admissions could address on the back end, but without that score schools no longer have a pattern recognition evaluation -- and what's more "thinking like a lawyer" than pattern recognition? We also discuss NYU Law Review getting sued by Stephen Miller and a lawyer citing Hitler approvingly.
A Clio Cloud Conference roundup. ----- Joe checks in from the 2023 Clio Cloud Conference joined by Legaltech News editor-in-chief Stephanie Wilkins, dean of legal tech journalism Bob Ambrogi, and Legal Talk Network producer Laurence Colletti to talk about legal technology and the small law market. We talk artificial intelligence, hot legal trends, and access to justice.
Also Donald Trump's lawyers continue making mistakes. ----- Donald Trump's attorneys don't have a leg to standing on. Get it? They keep making bad standing arguments and the judge has now threatened sanctions. A former prosecutor arrested in road rage incident because... Florida man. Meanwhile, a judge has stopped hearing cases after he started "spraying bullets" in road rage. Though he says he really doesn't remember it -- you know, how gunfights just slip your mind. And we welcome the return of the time-honored but always stupid debate over the value of cold calling in law school.
This week we chat about the First Amendment, sexual harassment, and, yet again, Blackface in the legal community. ----- Most Americans don't understand the First Amendment... just like Amy Coney Barrett! More sexual harassment allegations in Biglaw, which gives us an opportunity to consider the impact of senior attorneys coming forward to prompt change. And, yes, there is talk about Blackface at the end because it sadly keeps coming up.
Sam Alito might be citing witchhunters from the 1600s as authority on the meaning of the Constitution, but the Fifth Circuit is taking it a step further and fighting over how the Bible might interpret a statute governing class action lawsuits. The MyPillow guy lost his composure in a video deposition for all the world to see. Probably had a bad night's sleep on some lumpy pillows. And it was quite the worrying summer for law students. Summer associates don't trust that they're going to get full-time employment and exploding offers have proliferated throughout the industry. At least one firm with a low retention rate this year still found the time to take everyone to the club.
In our latest chat, we discuss Biglaw strip club outings, Jeff Clark taking time away from his indictment to be an idiot online, and associates unhappy with a law firm's office tracker. ----- Gunderson Dettmer got a lot of flack on Reddit from folks accusing the firm of hosting a summer event at a strip club. It wasn't a strip club, but it was a nightclub with scantily clad go-go dancers, which doesn't make it much better from the perspective of a harassment-free work environment. And after making it rain at the club, the firm ended up no-offering a bunch of summers anayway. Jeff Clark took shots at Neal Katyal on social media. He missed. And Goodwin unveiled an office presence tool to let folks know who is in and out of the office at all times. Folks don't seem happy about it, but is it just the price we pay for hybrid work?
Also, how to create a culture that welcomes Biglaw vacations. ------ Amy Coney Barrett recently spoke publicly about how she longs for the days when most Americans couldn't recognize Supreme Court justices, highlighting that justices don't have to be there long for a culture of unaccountability to set in. Speaking of which, the majority of Clarence Thomas's former clerks signed an open letter shrugging off his ethical problems. But the real question is... did any of them bother to read a draft before signing on? And a managing partner wrote the firm about the virtues of taking a real vacation and got some blowback from attorneys.
A little Broadway for this week's title. ----- Law firm productivity is down, but are we really worried about that? It's a traditional harbinger of layoffs, though something about this market feels a bit different. Meanwhile, a right-wing advocacy group has sued a pair of Biglaw firms for offering fellowship programs aimed at improving diversity -- offering a lesson in forum shopping along the way. Finally, former ASS Law professor Joshua Wright brought a defamation suit against former students for harming his professional reputation. He admits that, as a married professor, he was sleeping with multiple students simultaneously but seems to think that's NOT the part that ruins his reputation.
The Fifth Circuit judge made a bunch of headlines last week and we jump into all of them. Plus Texas's use of water saws and Ron De Santis isn't faring well in his battle with Disney. (Always bet on Mickey.)
And they're running out of a bunch of lawyers. A surprising level of jerk content this week as we discuss the value of real Jamaican jerk seasoning, Clarence Thomas getting his RV financed by a health care executive, Alan Dershowitz complaining about his neighbors, and Judge Aileen Cannon botching straightforward criminal law (more than once).