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It's that time of year where publications look deep into the souls of complex, nuanced legal institutions and assign them a fixed ranking. U.S. News and World Report issued its latest law school rankings and for the first time ever, Yale has lost its death grip on first place. The rest of the T14 -- which isn't really a thing at this point, since its whole argument for being was that the same 14 schools never fell out of the top 14 -- is also topsy-turvy, with the HYS-CCN model scrambled by the likes of Penn, Duke, and UVA. Are the rankings just busted, or are they catching up with a new reality? At the same time, Vault put out its rankings of law firms based on prestige and while the list looks familiar, the firms that made deals with Donald Trump took a hit. And none more than Paul Weiss, which seems to be taking much more reputational heat for these deals than the other capitulators. Finally, we talk about billing and the time-space continuum.

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The Supreme Court heard oral argument on Trump's effort to erase birthright citizenship from the Constitution via executive order, and it went as poorly for the administration as expected. But that didn't deter Trump from taking the unprecedented step of attending the argument personally. The president didn't last the whole time though, heading for the exit mid-proceeding as it became clear that his Solicitor General was getting boatraced by the competition. Afterward, the graduates of the Twitter School of Law ran to their computers to complain about Justice Jackson because... racism. Meanwhile, a Texas judge earns viral infamy for sniping at an IT worker and then doubled down on arrogance. And the Attorney General got canned.

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Rapper turned First Amendment hero Afroman took his frustration over a heavy-handed police raid on his Ohio home and turned it into music. When the officers sued him for millions for hurting their feelings, a jury told them to take their $3.9 million demand and pound it like lemon pound cake. Unfortunately, what happened to Afroman happens all the time in America and there's not a lot being done to stop it. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice had a rough week, catching headlines for lowering hiring standards and running interference to protect Jeffrey Epstein's accomplices. That's before a judge literally tossed a DOJ lawyer from the courtroom over the U.S. Attorney's Office operating without any legal oversight. And Elon Musk went into court to argue that he wasn't fraudulent, he's just stupid. Jurors decided it's possible to be both. 

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It was Legalweek last week, and we discuss the big happenings from the show -- which is pretty much all AI talk -- but while we saw splashy product announcements about the future of working as a lawyer within an AI-enhanced workflow, an assistant U.S. Attorney got bounced from the job for letting AI run too much of the workflow. But the most imaginative large language models wouldn't have predicted opening a federal judicial opinion with the phrase "swinging dicks." That takes a special level of deranged that's pure Judge Lawrence VanDyke. The certified non-qualified occupant of a Ninth Circuit seat kicked off an official taxpayer funded rant about wokeness framed as vulgar trolling to appeal to the White House. His colleagues -- most of them anyway -- issued a plea for decorum, that went basically nowhere.

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After striking down the Trump administration's tariffs, Chief Justice Roberts has earned nothing but disrespect and abuse from the president he put in power. From a hearty handshake and Trump telling him, "Thank you, won't forget it" last year to getting bypassed in the handshake line at this year's State of the Union, it's been a long strange trip for Roberts. And yet he wouldn't have it any other way because for Roberts, ritualistic humiliation is a small price to pay for dismantling the Voting Rights Act. A blizzard took out the Northeast right before the bar exam and examiners... did not care. And another wrinkle in the AI legal advice discussion, with a different court ruling that chat prompts used in preparing a legal defense are shielded from discovery.

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The Supreme Court struck down Donald Trump's effort to use IEEPA to impose arbitrary tariffs across the world and in the process delivered around 170 pages of epic shade. Meanwhile, the administration informed prospective military lawyers that they're no longer allowed to attend the top law schools in the country, presumably because the Pentagon is getting tired of lawyers who can actually identify a war crime when they see one. Finally, the public got another look at how lawyers do their job and predictably overreacted. Les Wexner's attorney got caught on a hot mic giving his client... blunt advice and a court ruled that "wings" don't mean "wings."

With a Biglaw firm officially blaming staff layoffs on AI, what is it going to look like if and when layoffs come for lawyers? It's unlikely to look the same for every Biglaw business model. And it could look even more different for boutiques. Embattled Goldman Sachs chief legal officer Kathryn Ruemmler announced that she'd be leaving her role after her Jeffrey Epstein connections came out in the last file dump. And we found out that the late Ken Starr thought of Epstein as a brother, which tracks. We also saw the first majr firm strike a blow against the expedited law school recruiting cycle.

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As predicted on last week's episode, Brad Karp left the top post at Paul Weiss following the disclosure of friendly correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein. But Karp wasn't the only Biglaw lawyer in the files, nor were his conversations the most troubling. A former Clifford Chance trainee drafted a sex contract with Epstein, Goldman Sachs GC Kathy Ruemmler made a joke with Epstein that normally you wouldn't make with someone who already pleaded guilty to child prostitution charges, and Alan Dershowitz managed to drag Paul Weiss into the case again when people found sex tourism legal analysis in the files from a now-Paul Weiss partner... passing along Dershowitz's thoughts.

Meanwhile in Minnesota, a DOJ lawyer called out the broken immigration system before literally asking to be held in contempt so she could get some sleep. which is what happens when an administration breaks the legal system so thoroughly that even its own lawyers can't keep up with the chaos. And legal tech took a financial jolt as Anthropic announced its entry into the legal tech space.

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A flurry of stories hit the legal world all at once last week, with the government responding to another ICE killing in Minnesota by... arresting journalists and dumping Epstein files. And while the Epstein files don't represent the entire universe -- or, perhaps, even the most relevant -- files about Epstein's dealings, they have set off downstream shockwaves in the legal industry. Meanwhile, another judge learns that we frown upon judges arbitrarily handcuffing lawyers. Finally, it's time for the profession to come together behind helping our self-regulators hold Trump administration lawyers accountable. The ethical breaches keep adding up and while there's never going to be the warranted criminal law reckoning, we can at least make sure our profession is protected by disbarring all these administration lawyers getting caught affirmatively lying to courts... and worse.

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The Biglaw world continues to watch single-tier partnerships slip away with Sullivan & Cromwell joining the income partner trend. Will the industry have any single-tier firms left by the end of the year? Also former Senator and current Hogan Lovells lawyer Kyrsten Sinema tagged with an alienation of affection tort from her former bodyguard's soon-to-be ex-wife. Come for the bad soap opera plot, stay for the MDMA-inspired psychedelic trip allegations. Finally, the Supreme Court got hacked, but federal law enforcement managed, a couple years after the fact, to track down the culprit whose social media handle was "ihackedthegovernment." Cracker jack work all around.

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With polls showing more Americans now favor abolishing ICE than keeping it, a lot of people will be disappointed to learn that the law is set up to make it almost impossible to hold anyone accountable for killing Renee Good. From sovereign immunity, to the Federal Officer Removal Statute, to the decline of Bivens, to qualified immunity, the whole system is arrayed to shield federal agents from legal redress. Speaking of the Minnesota ICE surge, we moved a step closer to a genuine Third Amendment case after the Department of Homeland Security pressured Hilton Hotels into dropping a franchisee that had refused to rent rooms to DHS. And finally, Judge James Ho published a broadside against fellow judges in his bid to reach the top of the Trump administration's Supreme Court wishlist. And all he had to do was mock judges receiving violent threats and dishonor a judge's murdered son.

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We begin the year by peering into our crystal balls and issuing some predictions for 2026. Who will be fired? What's going to happen with law schools? Is a big change on the horizon for Biglaw? Our predictions will inevitably be wrong, but we'll offer them with a lot of confidence -- just like AI would.

Also a whole lot of sports talk for a law podcast.

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We've made it to the end of the year! And what do we have to show for it as a profession? Our most elite law firms signed deals rather than stand up for themselves in the face of illegal Trump bullying efforts. Others quietly tried to erase their history to avoid the administration's ire. But some firms did fight back and achieved consistent success in court, while the dealmakers got heckled and derided by young lawyers. And, as anyone who has ever watched Star Wars knows, deals with authoritarians just get worse all the time. The New York Times even wrote a feature on a certain publication covering this story.

We also ran headlong into a constitutional crisis marked by DOJ lawyers lying to courts -- when the DOJ even bothers to field lawyers legally -- senior government officials declaring "war" on federal judges, and judges being arrested. As right-wing threats against federal judges escalated, the Supreme Court responded with disinterest, preferring to fan the flames with nakedly partisan shadow docket rulings to grease the wheels of Trump's assault on the structure of government. And, finally, we look at the year of AI in legal. Hallucinations dominated the conversation -- from law firms and judges alike -- but this was also the year legal tech made huge bets on AI and folks started to realize that the profession can't avoid the technology. The billable hour may finally be on the decline, but does AI risk making lawyers dumber?

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A critical analysis of the best variety of Coca-Cola product gives way to a conversation about law this week. Cadwalader ends its tumultuous year -- involving a Trump administration capitulation and a series of defections -- with a big quasi-transatlantic merger announcement with cross-Pond Hogan Lovells. Christmas came early -- to the extent anyone thinks of U.S. News law school rankings as "Christmas" -- with a prediction about the new law school pecking order. And it looks like garbage at a time when those rankings may be more important than ever. Also, ICE appears to be publishing an enemies list? That doesn't seem great. All that and some thoughts on Alan Dershowitz writing a new book suggesting Trump might be able to get a third term despite the clear text of the Constitution.

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Kim Kardashian is trying to enter the legal profession without a law school education. The bar exam is a deeply flawed and largely unnecessary test, but the best case for having some kind of licensing exam is to make sure anyone taking an alternative path to a law license meets the minimum requirements for a lawyer. Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to oscillate between bluster and blunder. Lindsey Halligan's doomed reign as quasi U.S. Attorney draws an ethics complaint. Luckily for her, the Virginia State Bar has no interest in doing its job. And Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche is threatening lawyers to stop pointing out DOJ mistakes.

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While most of us celebrated Thanksgiving, some of Trump's phony U.S. Attorneys were the real turkeys. First, a conservative leaning panel of the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the million dollar sanctions against Donald Trump and the parking garage lawyer he claims to have running the District of New Jersey. Then his Eastern District cosplaying prosecutor managed to lose not one, but two of the high profile revenge cases she brought. In other news, a major firm announced a new look summer associate program as it tries to deal with the law school recruiting free-for-all that everyone hates, yet no one seems able to do anything about.

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Bonus season is underway, and Biglaw firms are lining up to reward associates for a year's worth of effort. The market scale -- unless some firm breaks rank and crashes the party -- tracks last year, which can be a bit anticlimactic, but with the economy possibly resting on the precipice of recession, this was probably all we could hope for. Also, we discuss Lindsey Halligan's epic fail in the James Comey case -- and we recorded this before the judge tossed the case. Finally, Judge Jerry Smith decided to commit his unhinged conspiracy theories to paper in a massive, doorstop of a dissent in the Texas redistricting case. And we discuss Thanksgiving sides.

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Biglaw recruiting director out after racist rant goes public. A squabble between lawyers and their former firm presents important lessons on document management, but we spend most of the time wondering about the best legally themed dominatrix names. And we talk about Paul Weiss getting heckled at the New York Bar Foundation awards gala, providing one more embarrassing story to a rough year.

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The news that Kirkland had to teach its lawyers how to stop being mean to the private equity industry is incredibly funny. We're not saying Kirkland is getting a bad rap here, but when did corporate clients become such fragile snowflakes? The Federalist Society's annual meeting brought together the leading minds of the Trump legal movement to call for a "war" to impeach the federal judges -- many of them longtime conservatives themselves -- for not appropriately facilitating the administration. And the DOJ completes its humiliation in the D.C. sandwich thrower case by failing to secure even a misdemeanor conviction. 

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We talk about the DOJ lawyers suspended by the White House for calling January 6 a riot in a sentencing memo. and the conversation veers down a rabbit hole about the proper role of pardons. For years, the billable hour seemed like the cockroach of law firm management, but after surviving numerous brushes with death, AI might finally force firms to look into alternative fee structures. And if you're in law school and thinking about serving the public interest, expect it to be a lot more expensive unless your future employer is blessed by the Trump administration.

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Catching up with the slice of the conservative legal movement who have stared into the moral abyss of the Trump administration and recoiled in horror. The Society for the Rule of Law held its annual summit and while many attendees voiced clear-eyed opposition, some continued to grapple with the cognitive dissonance in recognizing that Trump might be the natural and logical consequence of their own long championed conservative projects. One attendee who has no illusions over the gravity of the threat though was Judge Michael Luttig who railed against the Supreme Court in the legal equivalent of a rousing halftime locker room speech. Also, Cadwalader seems increasingly at an existential crossroads and looking for a merger partner. And a lawyer loses her job over ballpark rant -- and what's more, her team lost.

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Appeals court decides that some things are best left unsaid. And among those things are calling your judge the c-word. Just so we're clear, even though this was over Zoom, we're not talking about "cat." After trying to bully Michigan Law Review through litigation, the anti-DEI publicity hounds at FASORP have dropped the case. And with Trump inching closer to declaring martial law in America's cities, right-leaning legal analysts have started the process of normalizing abuse of the Insurrection Act by pretending its strict limits are really just open-ended invitations and if anyone's to blame for Donald Trump's authoritarianism, it's really Joe Biden. We manage to talk about AI and Baudrillard in a single episode.

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Some law firms are handing out recruiting entertainment budgets to law students. While we don't fault law students some sweet walking around money, placing that power in the hands of students highlights the breakdown in the law school recruiting process and a real risk of baking more bias into hiring. Why has Kirkland memory holes its incoming partner class? The decision to opt out of its traditional announcement message seems like a move to shield its high-achievers, but there are some other possibilities. And a Senator wants some answers after a pair of federal judges issue opinions with possible (read: likely) AI hallucinations.

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For a long time, the bar exam seemed like the nasty habit that the legal profession just couldn't quit. But there's finally some progress on that front, with Utah unveiling a new alternative pathway to licensure that values experience and the skills that an actual practitioner needs. We also check in on Cadwalader, where the firm brings on a new co-manager while taking some serious blows in the lateral market. Finally, the Supreme Court is back in session, so we look back at the summer of shadows, when the Court's shadow docket finally crashed into the reality of a president unwilling to play the game and Justice Thomas shed a little light on his decision to bail on teaching his class after Dobbs.

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Perennially embattled Cooley Law School once again called out by the ABA over sagging bar passage rates. The school has been out of compliance with ABA standards since 2020, and now finds itself on probation with its accreditor. The last time something like this happened, Cooley sued the ABA into relenting. History is a flat circle. After learning that Paul Weiss and Kirkland were providing free legal services to the Commerce Department, presumably in an effort to satisfy their pro bono payola obligations, we wondered how this could possibly be legal in light of 31 U.S.C. 1342. Apparently, lawmakers wondered the same thing. And James Comey finds himself indicted after a whirlwind that involved removing the existing top federal prosecutor for refusing to file a sham case and replacing him with an in-over-her-head Florida insurance lawyer.

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Perkins Coie cut ties with an attorney over Charlie Kirk comments on social media. The remarks were measured and reasonable, but the firm is still fighting the Trump administration in court and -- seemingly -- does not want any distractions or mere appearance of bias. But is that a worthy excuse? A Pillsbury partner received a benchslapping over what the judge considered unchecked entitlement. A Biglaw partner? Entitled? No! Also, a law school responds to the new federal loan caps with guaranteed scholarships to cover the gap. Is this the start of a trend?

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Amy Coney Barrett and Sonia Sotomayor are both hitting the talk shows and it's highlighting how awkward the nation's relationship with the Supreme Court really is. Barrett went on Fox and accurately stated that the Constitution prohibits Trump running for a third term. Then the host offered a "wink wink" prompt and she started backpedaling. Meanwhile, Sotomayor went on Colbert and bent over backward to give her conservative colleagues the benefit of the doubt, requiring Colbert to step in and remind us of the fire in Sotomayor's dissent. Two very different media hits, but a consistent reminder that the justices just aren't willing to forge a genuine connection with the public over media. Also, Ropes & Gray maintains a single-tier partnership (for now) and Megan Thee Stallion case introduces the world to process servers taking things up a notch.

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Federal judges have had to deal with more and more threats from conservatives whipped into up by the Trump administration rhetoric blasting judges blocking illegal executive orders, only to be unceremoniously overruled by the Supreme Court. Last week, multiple judges called out the Republican justices for issuing unexplained opinions refusing to challenge -- indeed, passively encouraging -- Trump's attacks. So much for Chief Justice Roberts sanctimoniously declaring that the threats are just a product of the public not understanding the opinions. Law school tuition has skyrocketed in real terms for decades, but based on the last 10 years, the fever may finally have broken. Meanwhile, Amy Coney Barrett has some books to sell! And she's going to do it by playing up her image as the tortured, yet principled conservative who strips Americans of long enshrined freedoms, but just because she has no other choice. And, as she made clear in Dobbs, women and choice just don't mix!

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Be prepared to be on the clock a lot longer at King & Spalding, where the firm has introduced a 2400 hour “productive” time target. In other words, attorneys will have to figure out how to describe 2400 hours worth of work to the firm’s billing software every year. This seems to follow the overarching retreat from the work from home era, which also made news this week with a firm announcing a new office mandate… but just for some associates. Justice Jackson drew upon a generational touchstone to succinctly describe the Supreme Court majority’s jurisprudence. And a pair of the spineless firms are providing free legal services to the Commerce Department.

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The new D.C. folk hero who threw a sandwich at Trump's surge publicity stunt turned out to be a DOJ attorney. He's been fired because this administration will not stand for disrespecting law enforcement... unless they're trying to kill Capitol police officers on January 6. Meanwhile, the legal industry enjoyed a muted quarter. Are they preparing to batten down the hatches for a recession? Supreme Court begins moving the pieces into place to tear down Obergefell.

There was some fishiness (now resolved) with the constitution on congress's website. Which, honestly, should be more shocking than it is.

Biglaw partner lateral moves are all the rage, with some major moves this summer. But not everyone is benefitting from the hotness of the lateral market -- all because of a little thing called due diligence.

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A woman went into cardiac arrest during the New York bar exam. Thankfully, the administrators responded swiftly. JUST KIDDING! They yelled at other examinees to be quiet and keep working on the test while they deliberated about calling for emergency assistance, according to multiple witnesses. The woman survived, but the bar exam's unwillingness to admit its mistakes expose the rotten incentives of this stupid, unnecessary test. The Coldplay jumbotron affair sparks litigation rumors... which might be the only idea worse than taking your affair to a concert. And Alan Dershowitz is very angry that no one will sell him a pierogi.

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It was a very bad week for lawyers and hallucinations. A federal judge had to withdraw an opinion with fake cites. One Biglaw firm fired a partner over an invented case, while another firm got tossed off a case over AI shenanigans. And the scribe of Ashurbanipal got mercilessly trolled by a judge pointing out that his fake AI cite apology included... another fake cite. Why does it seem like this is all getting worse? A Biglaw firm pushes its start date leaving incoming associates in the lurch and Alina Habba might be the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey. Or maybe not. Or maybe yes.

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Biglaw summer associate let go after biting upwards of 15 people at the firm. Now that sounds crazy, but that's because it is. We also discuss a lawyer's biting response to a demand letter. A lot of the professional decorum advocates objected to the tone, but at a certain point how does the profession pushback against aggressive and unfounded demands without public shaming? There's not another readily accessible disincentive. Finally, we address the gnashing of teeth in conservative media ecosphere over Superman being an immigrant and the knots they're willing to tie themselves into in order to avoid the obvious.

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Has the era of the mid-sized firm come to an end? Probably not, but with increasing nationalization and the financial pressures that go along with it, mid-sized firms are consolidating and a valuable segment (and price point!) may be lost. Lawyers have faced a steady stream of sanctions for citing fake cases generated by AI, but now a judge officially blessed an order based on AI-hallucinated cases as a critical firewall in the war against machine slop is breached. While AI holds out promise for access to justice, the risk of a lawless free-for-all looms. Speaking of lawless free-for-alls, the Chief Justice explains that he doesn't care about substantive criticism of the Court because he has votes and the critics don't.

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Taking a sledgehammer where a chisel -- or better yet nothing -- would do, the Supreme Court nixed injunctions it didn't like by striking down the power to issue universal injunctions totally and addressed schools teaching that gay people exist by expanding strict scrutiny to parents lodging religious complaints. But at least they whined and took swipes at each other over it! Meanwhile, Justice Sonia Sotomayor figured out that if the majority wants to hide their rulings, the dissent can characterize them on their own. Also, the University of Florida Law School gave a top prize to a paper advocating a Whites-Only Constitution. The professor? Trump-appointed federal judge. The school's effort to explain itself left a lot to be desired.

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Except those judges aren't going to like it when you catch them. Like the poor lawyer here who called a judge "honey" during oral argument and entered a spiral of no return. We also had a dramatic week at the Supreme Court, with Justice Gorsuch trying to start something with Justice Jackson and Justice Jackson shutting it right down, and Sam Alito using his concurrence to complain that the transgender care ban is an act of discrimination... and the he wants the Court to be more proud of it. And Vault put out its law firm prestige rankings. Hopefully nothing went down immediately after their survey that radically changed how people perceive the firms!

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According to a new survey, lawyers think their law firms are really tolerant of jerks. Are they right about that, or just overly sensitive? The DC Bar election ended in a blowout, but why? For all the complaining about some wild theories on social media, the simpler reason is that leading a bar association in 2025 means standing up to the administration and Pam Bondi's brother never convinced the members that he'd be able to do that. In fact, the right-wing fear of strong bar associations has gotten so serious that the Florida supreme court actively kneecapped their state bar. And we talk about attending David Lat's Original Jurisdiction party, which you should also be reading.

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Paul Weiss fancied itself clever when it offered Trump pro bono payola in exchange for dropping an illegal executive order. Instead it keeps hemorrhaging senior lawyers with more departing to join the recent rainmaker spinoff and associates reportedly high on the new firm's wish list. While litigators are largely driving defections from surrender firms, at what point does a hollowed out litigation department start to impact the firm as a whole? Harvard Law Review found itself harassed by the government and it looks like the reason might be a snitch burrowed into the White House. And the one-track partnership model took more hits with Ropes & Gray and Debevoise agreeing to add non-equity tiers.

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Lawsuit against former Texas SG alleges bizarre cosmic sex fetish. The administration made two significant changes to the judicial nomination process, firing the ABA from its neutral evaluator role and kicking the Federalist Society to the curb. The latter move came with an epic rant declaring Leonard Leo a sleazebag. Broken clocks and all. And Kash Patel lays out the FBI's priorities and child predators and terrorists are now lower on the most wanted list than, "your neighbor who posted an 8647 joke."

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As Supreme Court season hits fever pitch, we're joined by Professor Leah Litman, author of Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes, to discuss the nightmare we're facing. Elena Kagan took the opportunity to humiliate her colleagues last week calling out an arbitrary carve out created to protect their investments. Kagan's frustration seems to be growing down the stretch, having just eviscerated the government in the birthright citizenship case. Meanwhile, Kristi Noem failed introductory constitutional law in front of the Senate, flailing as she tried to define habeas corpus.

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Since we're cursed to act as keepers of the flame to remind the legal community that several large law firms really did willingly sell out to the Trump administration, this week we discuss our columnist Vivia Chen's exploration of the unique impact of these moves on young lawyers learning early that Biglaw is more than happy to throw them under the bus.

We also discuss how James Comey's Instagram pic triggered a tragicomic meltdown of some of the most deranged people on the internet ranting about seashells as a subliminal assassination threat worthy of John Wilkes Squarepants. Unfortunately, some of those internet denizens are also running federal law enforcement. And we conduct a lightning round of quirky Am Law 100 financial facts that will make you appreciate that you took some time off last year.

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Biglaw firms who gave in to Trump suffered a scathing 60 Minutes piece and key talent defections, so they've decided upon a new tactic: pretending they never made a deal at all! It does not appear to be working. Meanwhile, Justice David Souter died reminding everyone of an era when the federal judiciary cared more about the right answer than appeasing political patrons. Unfortunately, Souter's nomination inadvertently triggered that change. And we have a Biglaw merging in the offing that hopes to create a new $2B firm.

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Perkins Coie secured a permanent injunction against the Trump administration's retaliatory executive order. Meanwhile, firms that balked at putting up a fight against the illegal attacks have seen the White House drag them into police brutality cases and law schools start openly talking about students taking their talents elsewhere. And then the harshest cut of all -- a deep pocketed client bailed on a collaborator firm to give business to a firm standing up to Trump. Who could've predicted except anyone who ever watched Star Wars. Also we talk about California's latest bar exam debacle and the White House's threat against Amal Clooney.

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We've got key financial data from the top law firms and the takeaway is that it's good to be a big firm. The Am Law 100 this year revealed that more and more firms have joined the super rich and things look bright for Biglaw. Unless someone triggers a global depression or something. We also discuss what it means to be "bipartisan" in an environment where the intellectual stars of the conservative legal movement are ALSO lining up to call out the Trump administration as a threat to the rule of law. Finally, we flag a troubling law school story about scholarships getting cut when admissions gets blindsided by applications.

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After a few weeks of watching some law firms stand up to facially illegal demands from the Trump administration... and more law firms rapidly cave to those same demands, we put together a helpful tracker to keep clients, potential laterals, and law students fully aware of where firms currently stand. But we depend on you out there to keep us up-to-date! Meanwhile, more associates have taken a stand against their surrendering firms and some law students have already told the firm recruiting events that they aren't interested in firms that can't stand up for themselves. Also the February bar exam numbers were terrible.

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Following the Paul Weiss surrender we discussed last week, Skadden preemptively followed suit agreeing to commit $100M in pro bono payola to the MAGA cause. Bringing to light some embarrassing email policies in the process. But other Biglaw firms showed a little more life, with Jenner & Block and WilmerHale suing the administration over its retaliatory executive orders. And a major firm announced an end to on-campus recruiting, which seems like a bad policy for both students and the firm.

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Paul Weiss folded immediately in the face of Trump's threat, offering the president pro bono services and a retreat from DEI. For a firm that built its reputation on litigation, the move came as a surprise. A Skadden associate called upon the industry to develop a backbone. So she's not going to be working there any more. There are a lot of dumb things about the administration's mass deportation to an El Salvadoran prison, but its unironic inversion of the burden of proof is definitely the scariest.

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The Trump administration continues its revenge tour against Biglaw, and Perkins Coie is fighting back. Through counsel at Williams & Connolly, Perkins delivered a scorching takedown of the administration's arbitrary retaliation against the firm, earning a partial TRO. Meanwhile, most of Biglaw remains silent. And if they aren't silent, they're silently deleting references to diversity, including a clumsy effort that autodeleted pronouns from email signatures. And "Stop the Steal" lawyer turned interim US Attorney Ed Martin has his first ethics complaint on the job he hasn't even really started.

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Remember when Arrested Development made this a gag? John Roberts is living it out in real time as the president explains -- on national television -- that Roberts is a partisan hack.

Amy Coney Barrett seems less excited about the prospect. Meanwhile, the administration is threatening law firms. The dean of one law school is stepping up. Also, what is this -- now former -- partner doing?

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We're not saying Diddy is an unsavory client, but we are saying Osama bin Laden's lawyer just noped out of continuing to represent him. We also got some limited insight into the US News rankings and there's some potential tumult at the top. And Judge Reyes had to blow up a hapless DOJ lawyer trying to defend the indefensible and the Trump administration displayed its inner snowflake.

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Elon Musk's aimless cost-cutting escapades turn to the SEC where DOGE slashed their Westlaw access because no one over there is smart enough to know how legal research works. Apparently now is an opportune time to start committing securities fraud! Speaking of aimless, former judge Alex Kozinski penned a meandering opinion piece about canceling elections in case, maybe, some president might want to consider it. And a few law schools quietly reworked their websites to remove diversity language. They probably won't be the last.

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Imagine the audacity it takes for a rookie lawyer to refuse to do the work assigned by a midlevel or senior associate. And expect to keep their job? The story of a beleaguered midlevel asking for help with an unruly junior refusing to work has us wondering if the kids are not all right. Also the administration starts calling for impeachment when a judge imposes a TRO of less than a week and that doesn't bode well for when they start losing real injunctions. And is there any legal question simpler than "the Twenty-Second Amendment limits presidents to two terms"?

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If United Healthcare considered spending more on a cancer patient and less on lawyers to sue doctors for pointing out they didn't spend on the cancer patient they wouldn't be getting so thoroughly dragged online. While the mockery they're getting is funny, this underscores the dangerous weaponization of defamation (and also copyright) laws, allowing deep pocketed antagonists to squelch criticism by filing low merit suits. Also, a Biglaw firm quietly scrubbed its website of a lot of its "diversity" language as the government steps up threats against private companies. And the ABA thinks the Supreme Court needs ethical rules.

Chapters

0:00 Small Talk

9:50 UnitedHealthcare

15:46 DEI

21:03 Top Law Firm Representing Trump

23:47 ABA’s Stance on Supreme Court Ethics

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A jumbo sized episode this week as Thinking Like A Lawyer celebrates its 400th episode with a look back at some big changes in law firms, law schools, and the courts that have unfolded over its last 10 years of podcasting. Original co-host Elie Mystal from The Nation joins the gang to share his thoughts. He's not particularly optimistic.

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Trump administration slashes jobs for young lawyers months before they officially start sparking a scramble for jobs. The Justice Department followed up that news by terminating career DOJ lawyers for the sin of having worked on Trump's criminal cases. One Biglaw firm informs its associates that they're not getting their full bonuses based on office attendance. While we're at it... should lawyers rely on law firm bonuses anyway? And a professor gets disciplined for political comments raising the debate: what exactly constitutes a violation of academic freedom?

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Supreme Court litigator Tom Goldstein, co-founder of SCOTUSblog, is on the wrong side of the law facing a multi-count indictment related to the alleged fallout of a hard-core gambling lifestyle. All while routinely arguing multiple cases in front of the Supreme Court. Legen...wait for it...dary. Also Proskauer proves that every rose has its thorn and Yale stares down on of the most epic downgrades in law school history.

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Sullivan & Cromwell are bringing attorneys back to the office five days a week. The stated reason is to mirror "normal business hours" which is a cruel joke in an abnormal business hour industry. Democratic Party superlawyer Marc Elias faces an uprising at his firm after staff proposed a mandatory arbitration agreement despite many of his top clients openly campaigning on... banning mandatory arbitration agreements. Finally, Wilson Sonsini hands out bonuses but pulls a fast one with special payments.

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Apparently, Clarence Thomas just didn't understand how to read the nearly 50-year-old statute requiring him to report massively expensive gifts. That's the Judicial Conference's official take in a new letter to the Senate panel looking into the ethical cesspool. The letter becomes public just as Chief Justice Roberts releases his annual report asserting that most criticism of the Court should be seen as improper intimidation and even violence. Before the holidays, we discussed Biglaw firms bucking the trend and not paying out special bonuses. Happy to report that they've reversed course.

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It's a very special holiday episode of Thinking Like A Lawyer with three straight "Ho" stories. First, Hogan Lovells irks associates with a bonus announcement without matching the industry standard special bonuses. Meanwhile, law enforcement just can't help making Luigi Mangione look more like a sexy martyr and now someone claiming to be UnitedHealthcare is trying to assert ownership of his likeness. And Judge James Ho walks back his prior support for birthright citizenship now that it might cost him a job on the Supreme Court.

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Can lunch save professional civility? Almost assuredly not, but one judge is going to try. Partnership isn't what it used to be. Instead of long careers with equity ownership, partners are making lateral jumps with more frequency than ever. More out of the murder of a Kentucky judge earlier this year... "running a brothel out of that courtroom" sounds ominous.

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(00:00)Small Talk

(02:15)Mysterious Drone Sightings

(07:20)Lawyer Lunch Date

(12:03)Laterals Aren't Loving This Biglaw Firm

(19:15)Slain Judge Accused Of 'Running A Brothel Out Of That Courtroom'

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Elon Musk says his AI will be able to deliver judicial opinions as soon as he feeds it "all" the cases. It will not, but his impulse sheds some light on a disturbing lack of respect for the rule of law. A pair of judges planning to take senior status as soon as Biden confirmed their successors have withdrawn their plans after the Senate sat on their proposed openings. And law school applications are up big time... and that's not good news for a lot of students.

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A pregnant law student sought modest accommodations when finals came over her due date. The school rejected the request saying, "Motherhood is not for the Faint of Heart." It did not go over well with fellow students. Or alumni. Or faculty. Or pretty much anyone. Drake accused the music industry of conspiring to help Kendrick demolish him in rap battle. RICO claims? They really not like us. Finally, Jonathan Turley accused liberal rage for the disturbing swatting attack he suffered. When his theory of the case turned out to be... wildly and completely wrong, he took a swipe at Joe. And missed.

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A law firm left its confidential internal documents with juicy information unprotected and was shocked, SHOCKED to find out attorneys read them. Pam Bondi is next at bat for the Attorney General job. While her decision to drop an official investigation into Trump University conveniently after he started supporting her will get a lot of attention, don't sleep on the TAIL of her fight over another family's dog. And, finally, we have an un-bear-ably wild tale of a "bear" attack on luxury cars.

00:00 Small Talk

03:10 Happy Thanksgiving

07:00 Biglaw Associates Caught Reading Private Emails

14:03 Goodbye Matt Gaetz, Hello Pam Bondi

17:26 Pam Bondi’s Dog Drama

23:04 The Bear That Attacked Luxury Cars

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The Federalist Society conference included a tour de force in rhetorical fallacy from the Fifth Circuit's Judge Edith Jones, suggesting that it's an attack on the "rule of law" to talk about court reform and that such criticism results in death threats! Very cool. Very judicial. We also have a disturbing story out of Biglaw, and discuss the instant reaction to Matt Gaetz being nominated to serve as Attorney General and the dumbest takes that nomination has inspired.

00:00 Small Talk

5:53 The National Lawyers Convention & Judge Jones

24:29 Biglaw Partner Removed After Wife's Remains Found

30:00 Misc. Stories

34:14 Closing Remarks

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It's the most wonderful time of the year! Milbank continues to relish its role as the Pied Piper of Biglaw bonuses, once again jumping the traditional late November bonus announcement kickoff to set the bar for 2024 annual bonuses. We also learned that a number of firms make non-equity pay a share of the partnership expenses despite holding no equity. And one partner out there is using work email to complain about the neighbors with offensive terminology.

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Sammy Alito openly defies the Constitution with European knighthood. Chicago Law tapes classes but isn't interested in letting students actually use those recordings. Students are, unsurprisingly, pissed. Professor Richard Epstein brags about replacing scientists with judges. Yes, the same guy who said COVID would only kill 500 people and got the first Trump administration sold on the idea. And mark your calendars for the lawyer movie from Hallmark's holiday season.

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Of all the iconic lines from Dr. Strangelove, maybe the best is "You can't fight in here. This is the War Room!" Recently, Harvard began punishing students (and faculty) for silent library protests while studying almost as though maintaining a "non-disruptive atmosphere" isn't the school's real concern. Donald Trump brags about Tiffany Trump's class ranking... even though her law school doesn't rank students. And states are preparing for the Supreme Court to launch a large-scale rollback on rights.

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We've got some young lawyers out there who don't understand the basics of professionalism and it runs a lot deeper than just lacking experience. That said, there are some experienced attorneys falling down on fulfilling a different set of professional obligations. Meanwhile, Chief Justice Roberts is apparently very, very sad that the public didn't appreciate his latest Constitutional rewrite.

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Kathryn Mizelle was rated unqualified by the ABA and it shows. The Trump appointee just took it upon herself to rewrite the law despite acknowledging that higher courts have explicitly declined to do so. But she's a very special snowflake apparently. Law school rankings are primed for a major shuffle if we're to believe the available data. And... why do we need a new Matlock?

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Eric Adams got indicted last week and quickly pulled out the big litigation guns to explain that the Supreme Court already said bribery was cool. Meanwhile, Jonathan Turley rushed to the embattled mayor's defense to explain why ACTUALLY it was way worse that AOC once wore a borrowed dress to a party. Judge Pauline Newman's fight to end the pocket impeachment her colleagues on the Federal Circuit imposed upon her has added even more objective medical evidence that the other judges will continue to pretend they can't understand. And Shohei Ohtani's 50-50 home run ball reminds everyone that free stuff still has taxable value.

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Hardcore porn shows up in a law school lecture. You know, the rest of us managed to learn the relevant standards for obscenity laws within the context of the First Amendment without visual aides. Also, Diddy's lawyers forgot how track changes works with embarrassing results. And Judge Aileen Cannon doesn't know her Founding Fathers... how a flubbed disclosure form speaks to Originalism's cynical lie.

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Law firms are merging like crazy with announcement after announcement after announcement. What's driving this big push and is this just going to be the way of the future? Also a judge invites us to meet the new racist, same as the old racist and we discuss the next must have for anyone taking depositions.

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Latham announced a new 4-day office work week, bucking the 3-day consensus, but attorneys are wondering where they plan to put everybody. Meanwhile Milbank is so eager to get to work that they're inviting first-years to start early. Another firm joins the non-equity partner ranks, and the DOJ files an antitrust case with some of the hottest docs ever.

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Disney's lawyers made headlines last week, but not the good kind like you want. After lawyers argued that a free trial to Disney+ required a wrongful death suit to move to forced arbitration, we wondered how everyone from outside to inside counsel dropped the ball here. Immediately after recording, Disney backtracked. Also, is Skadden falling behind? And we talk legal technology!

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The bar exam is officially past, now we wait to learn passed. This year's examination included dehydrating applicants and examinees missing out on their family's Olympic success. While bar exam changes are coming -- and law students can get paid to help -- at the end of the day it's a giant boondoggle pushed by people who've never even taken the test. With Supreme Court term limits on the table, let's talk a bit about how those work. And Jonathan Turley offers a disturbing look into his bizarro view of free speech.

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As soon as J.D. Vance found himself on the GOP ticket, everyone who remembered him from his Yale Law days shared their thoughts and brought out their receipts. “JD’s rise is a triumph for angry jerks everywhere,” isn't a ringing endorsement. The campaign also tried to pull a fast one with some tricky phrasing about his time on the Yale Law Journal. Kirkland & Ellis adopts a carrot and stick approach -- rewarding associates for recruiting and punishing partners for leaving. And we talk about the Baldwin case.

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The Department of Justice has appointed special counsel to investigate politically charged cases for over a century. But Judge Aileen Cannon decided she has found a nugget of wisdom that every judge since the late 1800s overlooked and jettisoned Trump's classified documents case claiming that Jack Smith's was unconstitutionally appointed. Another of Trump's appointees stepped down after the circuit compiled nearly 1000 pages of misconduct allegations against him. And Northwestern's overwhelmingly white faculty isn't white enough for some and they've filed a lawsuit.

Cannon kindred Northwestern.

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Law firms are rolling in dough as partners are charging more and billing more. But comparing Biglaw to the NBA? Come on, New York Times. Despite all the money, it's not trickling down to associates in the form of mass summer bonuses yet, though there may still be some green on the horizon. And why are certain people so angry about testing reform?

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The Supreme Court closed out its season sidestepping text, precedent, and history -- the trifecta! -- to invent a new form of immunity to bail out Donald Trump. Weird, because so many of them were asked about this precise issue under oath and offered very different analysis. We also got January 6 legalized -- over the fiery dissent of Amy Coney Barrett -- the foundation of the administrative state thrown into chaos -- and a blessing for anyone who wants to make it illegal to be homeless.

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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 Amendment hangover. Is there anything normal about the YSL trial? The answer is no.

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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 matter of days into the Clarence Thomas Transparency Era for him to get caught covering up more gifts.

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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 face value. Meanwhile, there's a summer associate taking a horse and carriage to work and Columbia Law Review is finally back online after its board nuked the website over an article about Palestinian rights.

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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 publicly lying about the FBI and then asking for briefing on how the Supreme Court's CFPB case impacts the prosecution -- which it only could have if the Supreme Court came out the other way. And students no longer care about the USNWR rankings... but maybe there's a better measure of prestige.

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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 structure of Biglaw inevitably shifts to accommodate the new normal. And a law school deals with the most avoidable cheating scandal ever.

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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 domestic" department, why is Alito so objectively bad at responding to his scandals? Next thing you know, he'll be blaming her for the Dobbs leak too. Meanwhile the California bar exam is running into bankruptcy and rather than address the problem, the State Bar is just gonna kick the can further down the road. And Elon Musk's lawyers again earn their reputation as the gang that can't shoot straight, managing to Streisand Effect a dispute with a Delaware law expert by threatening to fire a Biglaw firm if the professor filed his brief.

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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 business. Trump lawyers do a lot better when the judge is running their defense. Meanwhile, an organization moved to preemptively pare down Trump's SCOTUS shortlist to the least qualified, worst behaved candidates and its been a very Ponzi-rific week for one Biglaw firm.

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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 ask school to cancel exams in light of campus unrest, or at a minimum convert its optional pass/fail model to mandatory pass/fail to avoid placing a stigma on worried students. Then conservative judges announced a boycott of Columbia until their demands for "viewpoint diversity" are met. Also, small talk becomes big diss track talk as we devote a whole segment to Drake and Kendrick going to war and the legal implications.

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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 defend his take on forum shopping and it's... not good.

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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 schools started withdrawing their cooperation. Meanwhile, a Biglaw firm tried to promote healthy sleep despite being the primary reason associates don't sleep and Trump's bond in the NY civil fraud case looks a little suspect.

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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 along the way Neil Gorsuch showed off his (lack of) research skills and Alito and Thomas sought to revive the legal legacy of a chronic self-pleasurer. Then we check out the end of the showdown between Ron DeSantis and Disney that looks like a major victory for DeSantis until you, ya know, actually read the settlement agreement. Finally, Trump's got another gag order and went straight to work setting up the inevitable contempt hearing over it.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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).

Also a hard-working Biglaw staffer gets caught up in a political backlash to what seems like an honest misunderstanding. And law students have no freaking idea what they're in for.

The Supreme Court's ethical lapses reached such heights that a fellow federal judge had to step in to publicly ask what's wrong with these people. And it's not just the big ticket scandals anymore, with the Court's reputation so tarnished that folks freak out over non-scandals (or at the most minor ones) like Venmogate and Sonia's Book Club. Meanwhile, more Biglaw firms opt for a 4-day mandatory office policy, though there's still not a lot of momentum behind the move. And Judge Pauline Newman of the Federal Circuit continues to fight against her colleagues for her right to continue to hear cases.

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Elon Musk is desperately seeking a win and if he can't get it in a cage match against Mark Zuckerberg, he'll try his hand in court. Spoiler: it's going to go just about as badly. He's sent a legal threat to Facebook that fails to articulate much in the way of a legal issue and now he's suing Wachtell for being the lawyers that forced him to buy the company in the first place. Meanwhile the Supreme Court Term ended in a blaze of gaslighting and a hail of disingenuous spin. And now law schools are facing legal threats if their student body looks diverse. Finally, bar prep is just a little bit more stressful for students prepping with Themis, which continues to suffer website problems in the critical weeks before the exam.

Donald Trump is struggling to find representation in his multi-count federal criminal case and it shows because he just can't stop saying incredibly damaging stuff about his case. Like how he will plead guilty for money. This is what happens after decades developing a reputation for stiffing attorneys. We also have more layoffs from Orrick and Reed Smith -- what can we glean from these moves? And a Massachusetts court expanded the standard for ineffective assistance of counsel to include instances where the lawyer is clearly bigoted.

Donald Trump got indicted since we last convened. And then the case got assigned to the same judge who got professionally scorched for trying to bail Trump out in the first place. Apparently he thinks the government pays people to plead guilty? It's all very weird. Davis Polk plays follow-the-leader with Skadden and announces a 4-day in-office work week -- is this the start of a trend or not? Barber Ranen is no longer Barber Ranen after racist, sexist, and antisemitic emails between the founders at their last firm came to light. There's a lot to be said about baked in structures of discrimination and casual bigotry, but also... how did labor and employment attorneys think it was a good idea to put this in writing?

And we talk about a bear cop.

After a year of sword rattling that higher education is "hostile to free speech" because students don't appropriately sit quiet and absorb what speakers on stage are laying down, the media grandstanding came to a halt -- and in the case of the NY Post went into reverse -- amid calls to defund CUNY Law School over a speaker. Apparently it's only a "free speech crisis" in one direction. Meanwhile, the Second Circuit seems highly skeptical of Central Park Karen's claim that her former employer defamed her for citing its zero tolerance for racism in firing her. And by "highly skeptical" we mean the panel appears to have granted oral argument simply to dunk on her lawyer. Speaking of lawyers getting dunked on, the hapless attorneys who filed a response filled with fake caselaw they got off of ChatGPT are in serious trouble. But don't mistake this for "the perils of technology" because this was a failure of good old-fashioned lawyering.

Biglaw has always played follow-the-leader. Usually it's about bonuses, but Skadden is taking a big gamble that the rest of the industry will follow it back to a Monday-Thursday office work week. If the rest of Biglaw doesn't follow suit, the giant sucking sound you hear will be Skadden talent lateraling to rival firms. Also the Supreme Court's ethical follies continued with John Roberts teasing a secret plan to cure its ethical woes, while Gibson Dunn took a turn as legal industry laughing stock with a shoddily researched letter on behalf of Harlan Crow. And the Court sided with a grandmother after the county stole $25,000 from her... but dig a little deeper and her case wasn't as sympathetic as it looked.

Ron DeSantis is about to announce a run for president, but meanwhile he's botching remedial civil procedure and running face first in the Fourteenth Amendment. Also, the Kamala Harris camp seems interested in reigniting her tough-on-crime persona by trashing public defenders. It's dangerous rhetoric that erodes faith in the justice system. Finally, Justice Kagan lashes out at Justice Sotomayor over intellectual property rights.

After law schools threw a public tantrum over the U.S. News and World Report ranking, with several withholding key data required to create a credible list, the rankings are now out and... they have serious credibility problems. Missing data, important factors glossed over, and shady employment accounting from the schools result in a broken list. Congratulations boycotting schools! You've managed to make it all worse. Meanwhile, in Ohio a pregnant lawyer sought a continuance after being put on emergency bed rest and got denied by the state supreme court because screw your human frailties. Finally, Dechert joins the layoff trend with a 5 percent global cut. As always, we wonder if this has broader significance or not.

Since we last chatted about Clarence Thomas facing an intractable ethics scandal... more stuff happened! We learned that he also got private school tuition off a donor, that Ginni was getting paid by FedSoc Prime (Leonard Leo) under the table, and that the courts were asked to deal with all of this over a decade ago and declined. Meanwhile, Lewis Brisbois faced a massive defection with upwards of 150 attorneys bolting for a boutique and prompting a leadership change. Still, with over a thousand attorneys how much does it really matter to shed a few hundred? Finally, Florida passed a new piece of performative racism legislation targeting permits for undocumented workers including DACA participants... and this places Dreamer attorneys in jeopardy of losing their licenses.

The Supreme Court punts on a thorny felony murder case, prompting a conversation over whether the use and abuse of the rule can ever truly be reformed. There's also a super biller out there who managed to bill an average of over 10 hours a day last year. Presumably the attorney is weeping in a corner somewhere. Finally, Disney took its fight with Ron DeSantis up a notch with a new lawsuit that hasn't made everyone happy.

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On this week's episode of Thinking Like A Lawyer Kathryn and Chris go back to the Clarence Thomas ethics well as Ted Cruz decides to weigh in. The New York Bar Exam was kind of a debacle, or at least the process of revealing the results was a debacle. And the Supreme Court gave reproductive freedom advocates a small victory last week, which prompted Justice Samuel Alito to tear down his female colleagues.

The ethical hits just keep coming for Clarence Thomas as a second story about the gifts he collected from Harlan Crow expanded to include buying and maintaining a house for Thomas's mom. Rent free of course. Thomas doesn't have a particularly good excuse for not disclosing this since the text of the disclosure requirements are pretty clear. I guess holding people to the text of the laws they break only matters for poor people facing life in prison whose lawyers sleep through trial. We also discuss a new spate of layoffs and why we still feel cautiously optimistic about the second half of the year and the decision by U.S. News to delay its law school rankings.

An ethical quagmire surrounds Clarence Thomas. No, not that one. Not that one either. This one is about the gifts he's taken over the years without disclosures. Donald Trump took all of a couple hours after his indictment to start riling up his mob against the judge and prosecutor. And a Paul Hastings associate issues some bad advice.

Ron DeSantis tried to punish Disney by dissolving the local government dominated by Disney flopped when the smart lawyers pointed out that it would put the state on the hook for a deluge of liability. His latest effort to then replace all the board members flopped because while he crowed about his legal maneuvering to cable news, Disney publicly noticed some land use meetings and entered deals that functionally transferred the board's power to the company through the life of the last surviving descendent of King Charles III, making Lilibet of Sussex, the youngest of the group, arguably Disney's most important princess. Meanwhile, Morgan & Morgan has informed staff that it's no longer granting additional curtesies beyond those legally required after the insurance lobby secured massive a giant tort reform package in Florida. And a judge and young lawyer have both left the legal industry for OnlyFans... in case any of you are looking to lateral.

With March upon us, we created our our bracket-based challenge to rerank the top law schools based on... nothing. If the law schools don't want to provide data to ranking services, we'll show them what that looks like. It's pretty bad. Speaking of bad, a litigant got a bit of a lecture from a federal judge who cautioned for more civility in filings and let's just say he did not get it. Finally, we return to the hybrid work model with a study in contrasts. One firm announces that it's going to close up the office for the month of August while another puts bonuses in jeopardy if an associate prefers to work in the office on different days. One of these firms will have a happier roster before this is all said and done.

Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan is the latest speaker to cry foul that an audience of law students heckled him to death. He's received an apology from Stanford Law School already, but the videos released from the event and the witness accounts appear to show the judge playing the role of wrestling heel. Taking the honest if probing questions from the audience and obstinately refusing to answer to further frustrate the students. Elon Musk fired up his Twitter machine to lurch the company into a potentially massive liability before someone -- presumably a lawyer -- told him about wrongful termination. Maybe he shouldn't be too quick to ditch the requirement that he run every Tweet by a lawyer first. Finally, Merrick Garland is taking heat for the fact that it's 2023 and Donald Trump has yet to be charged for anything stemming from the Capitol riot. But Garland's right.

Judge Roger Benitez of the Southern District of California decided to use his marshal to take a 13-year-old girl out of the audience and handcuff her in the jury box. Apparently, he didn't realize arbitrary acts of psychological torture upon children was frowned upon in this establishment. Now the Ninth Circuit is looking into a formal complaint. Also, those Dr. Rick commercials scold people turning into their parents for trying to leave voicemails, but it might be worth checking to see what the voicemail greeting you set 10 years ago says. Because for one aspiring lawyer it wasn't great. Finally, the Fifth Circuit's Judge Ho thinks it's wrong to prosecute political rivals on made up charges and frighteningly he's in the minority on this question.

It may tickle the search engine algorithms, but the phrase "quiet quitting" seems out of place among lawyers. A firm sued one of its former attorneys for "quiet quitting" on them and now she's hired Wigdor to countersue, which is about as loud as lawyers can get. Meanwhile, the Texas judge hearing the state bar's complaint against Sidney Powell was a tad too quiet with a sparse summary judgment order kicking the case citing confusion about exhibit numbering. Finally, Wikipedia tried to stand up for the Constitution... the federal government told it to sit down.

How much continuing power should a judge have over the lives of defendants who plead guilty? A judge recently forced a woman to withdraw and apologize for statements diverting blame for an incident that she'd admitted to in court. A January 6th defendant is in hot water for the same thing. Prosecutors use overcharging and the ordeal of trial to leverage defendants into pleading guilty but a guilty plea has to mean something, doesn't it? Also, we discuss whether Biglaw has a cancel culture problem (it doesn't) and Judge Ho's case research (it's bad).

Every high schooler has a group text chain and then a chain where they complain about the people they don't like on the group chain. Brett Kavanaugh is unaware of the second chain. Because when you have to do public tours to convince people that you have friends, you don't have friends. Meanwhile, a law professor didn't take too kindly to a student request. And while cursing at students isn't acceptable, the frustration probably was justified. Finally, there are a lot of thorny ethical challenges in this world, but some conflicts are pretty clear. Like, $62 million clear.

The Supreme Court's inquiry into the source of the leak of its draft opinion in Dobbs failed to find the culprit among the clerks and permanent staff. Attorneys familiar with internal investigations pointed out that the report appeared carefully drafted to mislead the public without technically lying about the failure to investigate the people with the most access and motive, leaving the Court's legitimacy more compromised than when the investigation started. Meanwhile, an attorney caught billing hundreds of hours for document review he didn't do earns a suspension, and Goodwin Procter makes heads spin as its layoffs are immediately followed with a major lateral move.

A (now former) senior attorney at an Ohio law firm texted an associate blasting her for interviewing for another job while on maternity leave. The controversy laid bare the persistent threat of pregnancy discrimination, but also the ways these attitudes fester when management fails to take swift, decisive action. The Department of Justice appointed a special counsel to look into Joe Biden's mishandled classified documents in a case of Republicans needing to be careful what they wish for. Also Marjorie Taylor Greene found herself on the wrong end of a scathing cease and desist from Dr. Dre's legal team and Elon Musk continues to struggle with the aftermath of obliterating Twitter's legal department.

While Goodwin Procter announced a major round of attorney layoffs, Holland & Knight announced a blockbuster expansion by adding Waller Lansden. Two different paths both driven by industry uncertainty: should firms cut or grow their way out of declining demand? Also, Ginni Thomas kept doing Ginni Thomas things.

The week between Christmas and the New Year is usually pretty dead for legal news, which makes it the perfect time for a firm to try to slip some shady stuff past the goalie. Shearman started telling associates that they would not be getting bonuses for a variety of previous unannounced reasons. Foley Hoag tried to retroactively apply next year's hours requirement to this year's bonuses (they did the right thing and retreated within 48 hours). And Nelson Mullins sprung a new "collections" policy that you really have to hear about to believe.

Are we going to talk about it anyway? Of course. What else are we going to do?

When an associate left Jones Day before serving a full two years, the firm billed for pro-rated bar study expenses. Once again, just because an agreement allows a firm to do something, doesn't mean it should. It's just not a good look for a firm. Speaking of optics, we also talk about Justice Brett Kavanaugh partying with Matt Gaetz and Alex Acosta -- and more importantly, parties with business before the Court this Term -- all while Supreme Court legitimacy sinks like a stone. Speaking of legitimacy, the Fifth Circuit agrees that a judge committed an ethical breach in hearing a case, but decided to just sweep it under the rug. Also, by the time this posts, Twitter will have changed its policies five more times, but we discuss the legal ramifications, if any, of Twitter's short-lived ban on mentioning "competitors."

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 electoral advantage, and it seemed to be a bridge too far for three conservative justices. All that and a chat about Congress making it a national secret how much money Ginni Thomas makes from outside interests.

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 and called it a day. Speaking of decisions, the Eleventh Circuit finally put a stop to Judge Aileen Cannon's string of zany decisions in the Trump seized documents case. Also, a former Biglaw partner thrust herself in the spotlight to bemoan her firm for enforcing the bare minimum of anti-harassment policies and a pair of law schools controversially announces a merger.

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 claim that the test's value as part of the process is overemphasized and that affording admissions more flexibility is a better tool. We also discuss the tale of a judge who questioned if a lawyer was faking a stroke. Spoiler alert: he was not. And we talk about rising Biglaw rates in an era of economic uncertainty.

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 its founder and co-chair from identifying himself to the media as either a "founder" or "co-chair" -- a move that backfired when Steven Calabresi's immediate response was to tell the media that the Board had voted to bar him from calling himself the founder or co-chair. Please do not let these people write your contracts! We also discuss "Paul Clement's Lament" that law firms care more about money than his passion project of making America objectively worse and more dangerous. And more news of bubbling layoffs!

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.

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 tweaks. Cravath's originally announced policy has added a wrinkle and Ropes & Gray has folks positively grumpy. How long will the growing pains last? We also discuss Slaughter & May's new late night policy, the challenges facing Magic Circle firms.

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 Biglaw with two top-tier mergers. All that and a brief aside about Liechtenstein admiralty law.

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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.

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 documents... that seems like something the firm should've stopped earlier. And Judge James Ho is trying to help conservative Yale students by announcing he'll never hire them. And you thought Ginni wasn't making sense.

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 one incident in their lives? Trump did that too, proposing Judge Dearie as special master, apparently on the logic that the judge got made at the Department of Justice once and assuming he'd hold a grudge. What about misleading the Supreme Court about the relief you want to be a political pawn? That's frowned upon as well... but no one seems like they're going to do anything about it.

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 indirectly points out that it's his fault. Also, maybe ACB forgot whole parts of the First Amendment because she doesn't plan on those existing much longer. And we go down an antitrust rabbit hole at one point.

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 about it. Also we have a couple of horror stories about judges refusing to respect lawyers with families and the best way to build an office culture.

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 handcuffed to this! We also discuss debt relief and how it impacts law students. And we discuss Jones Day and ponder if lawyers are morally complicit in the work their firms perform.

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 Leonard Leo, the guru behind the Federalist Society who now has a billion in shadowy money to play with. Speaking of right-wing law students, Yale Law grad J.D. Vance really understands the opioid crisis in Ohio... because his charity appears to have contributed to it!

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 into her clothes. All this and a brief chat about ILTACON.

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 whining about that. And Nicholas Sandmann's "epic" defamation lawsuit against the entire mainstream media ended with a thud... just like we said it would.

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 and so are all the indignities. Like asking applicants to spend over $100 on lunch.

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 Supreme Court justices for lying during the confirmation process -- even if there's no hope of removal -- and we chat about the value of a good video deposition angle.

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 Texas legislators sent to Sidley Austin suggesting it would go after the firm for its health plan covering health care travel and the future of state border-crossing laws and guns and briefly preview Elon Musk's Twitter fight.

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 concluded Supreme Court Term -- and the nightmarish preview the justices dropped on the last day -- and chats about the latest in the Britney Spears litigation.

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 tradition, but a 111 year old gun permit statute is not as historically rooted as a 14 year old Supreme Court opinion. It's a wild time to try to untangle the rule of law. Also, Biglaw firms are scrambling to react to the Dobbs opinion, and former Solicitor General Paul Clement throws a pity party in the papers.

The January 6 Committee is very interested in speaking with Ginni Thomas following revelations that she had a correspondence with John Eastman about election shenanigans. But more interesting is the revelation that Eastman was telling his buddies that he had inside information about closed door Supreme Court meetings casting an even brighter spotlight on Thomas. It's still anyone's guess who leaked the Dobbs opinion, but it's worth noting that Occam's Razor is undefeated. We also discuss the latest religious schools opinion from the Supreme Court and UCLA's Absent-Minded... or just plain absent... professor.

The latest edition of the ATL Top 50 Law Schools ranking is out and provides some interesting insights into legal education. As the ATL system privileges "outputs" by focusing on job placement and costs rather than incoming student GPAs and LSAT scores, the ranking gives prospective students a look at the best bang for their tuition buck and gives law schools a great way to game the system: be cheaper and get your grads jobs that will let them pay off debt. We talk about the rankings and some curious schools dropping down the list. We also discuss associate resistance to the "3-day in-person work week" model. It seems as though lawyers don't want to return to the office at all and that might not be in their best interest.

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.

Everything keeps coming back to New Haven. Conservatives are doxxing law students for saying they might not party with FedSoc anymore. Professors are whitewashing Alito opinions. Alums are attacking the press. Why can't this school chill out a little? Also a Biglaw firm needs some lessons in collegiality and Elon Musk is trying to make his own law firm.

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Special thanks to our sponsor, Posh Virtual Receptionists, LLC.

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And all that's before we even get to one of the least qualified federal judges in American history deciding that there's no statutory basis for the CDC to regulate proactive public health measures based on... some curious wordplay.

Phew.

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Special thanks to our sponsor, Posh Virtual Receptionists, LLC.

Special thanks to our sponsor, Posh Virtual Receptionists, LLC.

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