Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer

The blue wave hits law firms.

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Biglaw firms that struck pro bono payola deals with the Trump administration woke up last week to the prospect of two legislative chambers run by Democrats with a lot of questions about those deals. The same ranking members that firms have more or less blown off for Trump's whole second term will soon receive some subpoenas. One former Biglaw associate turned her firing into a seat in the new Congress, as Melat Kiros prevailed in Colorado to become the first Gen Z woman elected to Congress. And Jeanine...

The firm's collapse has put a glut of talented lawyers on the market.

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We look back on the wild week that brought down a Biglaw behemoth. Weil Gotshal, a firm that rang up $2B in revenue last year against zero debt, is going out of business. As the firm's lawyers frantically seek landing spots, Weil reminds everyone that they need to keep billing so the firm can afford the severance packages it needs to pay. Was that reminder gauche or a fair nod to professional obligations? We also discuss firms slowly yet surely matching...

It’s Halloween week, so we’re turning off the lights and telling scary stories. But twist! These aren’t about ghosts, they’re about the legal industry in 2026. First up: how the Supreme Court let Alabama bring back a congressional map a federal court found intentionally discriminatory, without offering a word of explanation. Then there’s the Justice Department’s plan to let the Attorney General freeze state bar ethics investigations into DOJ lawyers. And no firm is too elite to get burned: Sullivan & Cromwell had to apologize to a bankruptcy judge for AI hallucinations, and Skadden and Kirkland got...

It was a rough week for the Trump administration’s relationship with credentials… and email. New White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia spent years on cable news billed as a “lawyer,” but there was no record of her being licensed anywhere. It’s the move every law clerk has been tempted to make, except she also called herself “General Counsel.” Turns out she took the California bar exam, failed, and called herself a lawyer anyway. By the time she was out of the job, her defenders had settled on the argument that Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris also failed the bar. That defe...

Supreme Court auditions are just down the hall and to the extreme right.

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That headline is a tad overdramatic, but Kirkland & Ellis did announce that it would no longer help journalists reporting on its financial strength. For years, most law firms have volunteered key data about their businesses to reporters to facilitate the rankings. Does Kirkland's move signal a trend? Judge James Ho hijacked a judicial opinion to complain that people accuse judges (read: him) of using his job as an auditioning platform for the Supreme Court. Then he immediately turned around to turn ano...

And the inevitable -- if stupid -- return of Richard Nixon

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In a display that could only be described as cartoonish, Senator Eric Schmitt thought he had Jack Smith dead to rights, before he tripped over himself and fell into a heap of mousetraps. After the special prosecutor denied attending an Atlanta Hawks game, Schmitt cried perjury. Eventually Smith revealed he'd gone to an Iowa Hawkeyes game, blowing up Schmitt's conspiracy addled theory. And the faceplant somehow managed to drag Harvard Law and George Mason's ASSLaw down with it. Meanwhile, Biglaw may be inching closer to m...

And the fashion police have too much time on their hands.

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The Supreme Court finally put down the dead horse that the Eighth Circuit kept beating, ruling for the third time that Missouri can't impose an illegal gerrymander in time for this election. But this farce highlights a growing problem as conservative -- primarily Trump-appointed -- judges use the federal courts as a staging ground for polishing their resumes. It's not just the Eighth Circuit either. The Fifth and even the Second have seen these antics. Also the fashion police arrived in Texas and attac...

And how AI and college sports are basically running the same terrible playbook.

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More fallout from the big Weil departures. Joe and Kathryn talk about balancing business and why "values" is not necessarily the corporate speak language law firms should adopt all the time. Plus new speculation that Weil is considering merger partners -- has the music stopped on merger musical chairs, or does the industry have another blockbuster left in it. Then we discuss ChatGPT, college sports, Ted Cruz, conference realignment, the AI regulation freakout, ESPN, and the Protect College Sports Act. All of th...

When you think of this firm, do you think 'smaller platform'?

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Weil labels Cravath a "smaller platform" following partner departure, vaulting to the top of the leaderboard as the most passive aggressive statement a law firm has made this year. Which is saying a lot. Meanwhile, Missouri Republicans spent the week putting on a civil procedure issue spotter exam as they tried to ram through a gerrymandered map that even the Supreme Court wouldn't bless. Finally, we ask when a judge's style crosses the line to become too informal.

No generative AI required!

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With AI hallucinations dominating the legal ethics headlines for years now, it's nice to see lawyers landing in hot water without having to rely on technology. For example, Holland & Knight got itself removed from a case in Rhode Island after accidentally putting opposing counsel on their internal emails about "dumb" Rhode Island judges. Meanwhile, Skadden and Kirkland caught a $2 million sanction after repeatedly withholding evidence and the Lewis Rice bankruptcy lead is out following allegations of serving the wrong client. All that and somehow the Golden Girls manage to work thei...

This episode is sponsored by Smith.ai.

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Discussing what we learned about legal technology in Nashville.

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The International Legal Technology Association conference broke its own attendance records as the legal world flocked to Nashville to figure out what's going on with the technology that promises to revolutionize the practice of law... and can't quite stop producing fake cases. Maddy Martin, Senior VP of Growth at Smith.ai -- the sponsor of this episode of Thinking Like A Lawyer -- stops by to recreate the sort of exhibit hall floor co...

The murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother accused of strangling her three young children, has spawned a courtroom subplot with real legal stakes: prosecutor Shanan Buckingham has spent weeks in Plymouth Superior Court in a rotating collection of hair bows, widely read as a tribute to five-year-old Cora, who loved them. But even a well-meant gesture is a gamble, handing the defense a ready-made argument that the state is leaning on sympathy over substance and potentially seeding an appeal. Over in the business of law, private equity finally got the yes it's been chasing: Wood Smith Henning & Be...

Also, Yale Law School grads have a side chat to discuss their infamous classmates.

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Luigi Mangione's lawyers say their client can't be tried for murder now that he's pleaded guilty to federal stalking charges. At issue is a voluntary admission that his stalking led to the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, which is not an element of stalking but can be a sentencing enhancement. And his team hope this is enough to trigger New York's broad double jeopardy restrictions. Why is the Department of Justice going along with this? Meanwhile, Biglaw giants are tak...

Remember when Trump lost the birthright citizenship case? Because he doesn't.

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Despite protestations that its deal with the Trump administration didn't forfeit the firm's independence, Paul Weiss reportedly seriously debated letting Stephen Miller review the firm's webpage edits according to the New York Times. The same reporting turned up the $3.5 million the firm spent to make its first openly transgender partner leave quietly. Elsewhere, Biglaw is now the largest employer of new law grads, even though it's a bigger slice of a smaller pie, with first-year hiring down for the first time since 2014. And havin...

And summer bonuses have arrived.

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The profession yet again forced law school graduates to take a closed-book doctrinal memory test to earn the right to perform a job where answering questions from memory constitutes malpractice. And, yet again, the ritual came with a series of catastrophes and a fully canceled test. In Maryland, the test faced delays. Missouri's delays were even worse, reminding us that the NCBE doesn't guarantee a better exam than the much-maligned California experiment. And in Washington, they had to cancel the whole test. In happier news, summer bonuses came to Big...

And Todd Blanche keeps trying to get over the Judiciary speedbump.

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The biggest story in legal last week was an unfortunate guerrilla antagonizing of a couple making out on a park bench... who just happened to be a Wachtell partner and associate. And now an internal HR problem is suddenly national news. Say what you will about the person who filmed it, but "get a room" was good advice. Meanwhile, Todd Blanche's confirmation hearings continued to drag on, with former supporters abandoning him and even some Republicans wondering why he can't commit to ruling out a...

Maybe in several years, we can get it back.

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A Vault 50 law firm announced deep staff layoffs -- upward of 10 percent -- last week. Is this a sign of things to come -- a byproduct of AI pressure and a precarious economy -- or a unique problem for that firm? Controversy erupted after the Trump administration swiftly fired a legally appointed U.S. Attorney to replace him with an illegally named imposter. The statute authorizes the dismissal, but the replacement undermines law and order, rendering the district functionally incapable of prosecuting anyone legally. And the...

From firms to law schools, innocent bystanders take heat.

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Everyone talks about conflicts and redundancies, but the saddest merger collateral damage is forcing legacy lawyers to go back through the last six months of their time. That's what's happening to the Cadwalader associates as their timekeeping system merges with Hogan Lovells. On the law school side, the University of Chicago unveiled its new AI policy to keep students genuinely learning while still tackling the reality of a future AI-enhanced workflow. But laptops became the collateral damage there, as the new policy bans students from b...

But Sam Alito still has a job.

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The Fourteenth Amendment lays out birthright citizenship in clear terms. Every subsequent legal challenge and all the scholarly work on the subject -- until about a year ago -- agreed on how to read it. Yet, the Supreme Court still managed to split on the question, with a 6-3 decision knocking down Donald Trump's executive order purporting to overturn the key constitutional provision -- that was more accurately 5-4, with Kavanaugh agreeing with the result on other grounds, but joining the dissent in erasing the Fourteenth Amendment...

And a farewell look back as co-host Chris Williams departs the show.

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Supreme Court action gets spicy as Sam Alito threw a fit from the bench. After Justice Sotomayor took the opportunity to systematically dismantle his reasoning in the asylum case, Alito spoke up out of turn to explain that he'd have brought better arguments if he'd known she planned to dogwalk him. And Biglaw isn't the collegial environment it used to be, with partners being given haircuts by leadership. And we say goodbye to Chris Williams, who is leaving us as a co-host aft...

Supreme Court ignores Judge Newman's rights.

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All the news that's fit to print agrees that Todd Blanche isn't fit to head the Department of Justice. Something about the whole transforming the DOJ into a weaponized arm of Donald Trump's political grievances thing. The Supreme Court dodged the ongoing Judge Pauline Newman debacle in the Federal Circuit. Her fellow judges have performed an end run around the Constitution, and the rest of the judiciary seems content to just look the other way. And as more folks use AI to brush up their resumes, its biases kee...

And a new ranking of top law schools.

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Above the Law's Top 50 Law School rankings are out and a new school tops the list. But a number of other high prestige law schools have slipped out of the top 10... and it's mostly a matter of cost. Meanwhile, we have two federal judges out of control. Judge Ryan Nelson faces misdemeanor criminal charges over a parking lot altercation, which would be a bad look for a federal judge, but not nearly as egregious as his parking job. And we have more on the Eleanor Ross dra...

A federal judge carried on a two-year affair with a high-ranking law enforcement officer by having sex in chambers and lying about it to investigators. The Eleventh Circuit responded with a private reprimand, concealing the judge's identity. But the judges didn't think through their anonymization strategy nearly well enough and AI cracked the case in minutes, revealing Judge Eleanor Ross of the Northern District of Georgia. Meanwhile, in lawyer ethics, a bar complaint in New York focuses on Todd Blanche, citing the ruling out of Tennessee finding a presumptively vindictive prosecution of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. And down in Florida, the...

And the Federal Circuit's Schoolhouse Rock moment is as damning as it is embarrassing.

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Quinn Emanuel earned $3 million in sanctions from Judge Edward Chen, who described a "deeply disturbing" culture of lawyering. But worse, the judge ordered the team involved to complete an 8-hour ethics course that the firm itself must design. The Federal Circuit decided to put together a bizarre theme song and music video for themselves. Along the way, they managed to double down on their shadow impeachment of Judge Pauline Newman by erasing the still active judge from the video. New Yor...

More on Biglaw's insider trading scandal and a rare feel good story.

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We keep learning more from Biglaw's insider trading scandal, with the identity of the Wachtell co-conspirator revealed. How did this scheme succeed for so long? The Department of Justice continued its battle to allow Trump to unilaterally rip up national monuments with another barely coherent brief. They may say "the customer is always right," but when it comes to litigation, turning over the briefing to the client can present serious ethical issues. Which might be why this DOJ is fighting so hard to...

Also a major insider trading case strikes Biglaw.

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The legal industry as a whole continues to rake in cash, but a few firms have shown signs of trouble. Reports out of Paul Weiss bear all the hallmarks of a stealth layoff, with litigation associates being let go for "performance" issues that never came up before. Meanwhile, a recent megamerger firm found itself cutting back on supposed redundancies. The Supreme Court set out to obliterate what’s left of voting rights, and along the way Sam Alito managed to cite fake facts and throw a temper...

Comey snaps sea shells by the sea shore.

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A once-venerable institution, the Department of Justice is in disarray these days. The Attorney General got fired, multiple U.S. Attorneys have been booted as illegally appointed, judges have started doling out contempt charges, and Kash Patel is being openly branded J. Edgar Boozer. It got worse last week, as government lawyers filed a brief that -- it seemed -- they handed over to Donald Trump to write in the form of a Truth Social post. With rampant grammatical errors, irrelevant tangents, and all caps tirades, i...

The Atlantic published an article based on multiple insider accounts describing low morale at the FBI, citing current director Kash Patel's drinking and frequent absences. Patel promised swift legal retaliation and made good with an underwhelming $250 million defamation complaint. Amidst this scandal, Patel took to the stage with Acting AG Todd Blanche to announce criminal charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center and, by extension, tell hate groups that the Trump administration has their backs. As a distraction tactic, the announcement flopped because Patel spent the press conference undermining his own defamation case. On top of this, the no one at...

And is Alito really going to retire?

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The 2026 Super Rich list has 37 firms clearing $1.45M RPL and $625K PPL thresholds after Am Law had to raise because last year's bar was too easy. Then Kirkland proved what super rich really means by dropping a guaranteed $80M over three years to snatch a star lawyer from Wachtell. The PAC Trump uses to pay lawyers is nearly $500K in the red and owes roughly $1.6M to 12 firms. When will lawyers learn that he's never going to pay his bills... at least with money. Will Sam Alito retir...

And a crazy billing story.

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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 s...

And Pam Bondi earned a pink slip.

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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 Ju...

And the DOJ had an atrocious week.

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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...

And Legalweek talk.

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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 Lawre...

And the bar examiners prove once again that they don't care about anyone but themselves.

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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 t...

Things get testy down at the courthouse.

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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 go...

And law students finally get some good news.

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 als...

This is likely only the beginning of the reckoning.

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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 th...

Between Epstein files and ethical breaches, a reckoning seems so close yet so far.

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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...

After taking a hacksaw to nearly a century's worth of congressionally approved independent agencies, the Supreme Court appeared to hit a wall during oral argument over Trump's attempted firing of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. The Unitary Executive Theory is all fun and games until the justices start worrying about their personal finances. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice now takes the position that the text of the Alien Enemies Act would have authorized the unilateral deportation of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones for being part of the "British Invasion." Finally, Willkie Farr hit with massive lawsuit alleging the firm...

Supreme Court hacking and the end of a Biglaw era.

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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...