Explore every episode of the podcast Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer

The firm's collapse has put a glut of talented lawyers on the market. ----- 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 the Milbank pay scale that's been in place for months now.  

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 hit with a $2 million benchslap for hiding evidence. We also look at what happens when a law firm starts to unravel. Cadwalader’s merger with Hogan Lovells was supposed to stop the bleeding, but it sent even more partners running for the exits. And Freshfields’ global managing partner lived every lawyer’s nightmare when he accidentally sent the firm’s secret AI spinoff plans to the entire firm, along with a bonus insult to some very important clients. Listen in, then tell us which story scared you most by emailing tips@abovethelaw.com with your pick for the scariest story of the year.

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 defense ignores two things: both of them went back and passed, and neither claimed to be anyone’s general counsel in the meantime. Meanwhile, DHS kept airing its $20 million taxpayer-funded Trump ad campaign after a federal judge ordered it pulled. DOJ’s own status report explained that agency counsel didn’t see the email with the order until the next morning. Sorry, just seeing this! Over in Biglaw, the news was considerably cheerier. Cooley became the latest firm to hop aboard the Milbank money train, moving all U.S. associates to the new market salary scale. Quinn Emanuel scaled back its famous Work From Anywhere policy, even so, it’s still the most flexible deal in Biglaw. And Lowenstein Sandler earned some well-deserved applause with a new paid leave policy for parents whose newborns face extended NICU stays.

Supreme Court auditions are just down the hall and to the extreme right. ----- 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 another judicial opinion into a rant about pronouns to... audition for the Supreme Court. Finally, Ropes & Gray announced a new policy to allow attorneys time to experiment with AI, and everyone should follow suit.

And the inevitable -- if stupid -- return of Richard Nixon ----- 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 matching the Milbank scale, with a since-removed White & Case job posting teasing the new salary range. And the Justice Department is eyeing an indirect exoneration of Richard Nixon. If that sounds like a ridiculous way for the DOJ to spend 2026, it is.

And the fashion police have too much time on their hands. ----- 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 attacked a lawyer for her sleeveless dress. And, how long are Biglaw lawyers working in London?

And how AI and college sports are basically running the same terrible playbook. ----- 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 that fits into one story by the way. Finally, Brett Kavanaugh crashed a Notre Dame dorm and... wait, he did what?

When you think of this firm, do you think 'smaller platform'? ----- 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! ----- 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 their way into the conversation.

This episode is sponsored by Smith.ai. ----- Discussing what we learned about legal technology in Nashville. ----- 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 conversation she and Joe have had at these conferences for the last several years. Catching up on the state of the industry, what it means for both Biglaw and the small and solo market, and trying to figure out what happens next.

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 & Berman, a 500-plus-lawyer insurance-defense shop, reportedly signed a letter of intent to sell a stake to Charlesbank Capital Partners at a roughly $700 million valuation. Structured through a management services organization to sidestep Rule 5.4's ban on non-lawyer ownership, it would be the largest PE investment in an American law firm to date -- a toehold, not yet a takeover. And in the category of career moves we can't recommend, a prominent Pittsburgh attorney landed himself in a fraternity drug scandal. Paul Robinson, a practice-group chair at Meyer, Darragh, Buckler, Bebenek & Eck, was charged with tampering and hindering apprehension for allegedly making evidence disappear from a multistate cocaine ring that prosecutors say his son helped run out of Penn State's Delta Upsilon and Sigma Chi houses -- where, per the AG, packaging kilos doubled as a pledge task.  

Also, Yale Law School grads have a side chat to discuss their infamous classmates. ----- 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 taking meetings about taking private equity money, opening the door to investors buying stakes in law firms. The proposal revolves around the "management services organization," the same structure that put private equity in charge of your dentist. And J.D. and Usha Vance's Yale Law classmates maintain a private Signal group to compare notes on a couple they sat next to in Contracts.

Remember when Trump lost the birthright citizenship case? Because he doesn't. ----- 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 having lost the birthright citizenship case, Donald Trump signed new executive orders explaining that he won it, moving one antecedent about six words to the left and calling it a holding. It's kicking off a string of proclamations from the White House that it's the real winner of cases it decidedly lost.

And summer bonuses have arrived. ----- 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 Biglaw -- or at least some of Biglaw -- with Milbank announcing a special treat. Finally, Wachtell's kissgate scandal spilled over into Gibson Dunn's lateral hiring coup, and we're reminded that work-life balance is important.

And Todd Blanche keeps trying to get over the Judiciary speedbump. ----- 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 January 6 slush fund. A new book says Blanche once feared bringing frivolous cases. He seems to have gotten over that. And Elena Kagan publicly claims her colleagues get a "bad rap" for supporting Trump. She's wrong and making these statements unfairly maligns her liberal colleagues facing personal attacks for their work. Oh, and John Yoo is back in the news.

Maybe in several years, we can get it back. ----- 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 law firms that settled with the Trump administration to avoid getting dragged into court have... been dragged into court. If only there had been a podcast warning those firms that this was the natural and logical consequence of those deals. Also, spoiler alert for this episode if you aren't familiar with Homer's 3000-year-old poem.

From firms to law schools, innocent bystanders take heat. ----- 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 bringing their computers to class at all. And we have a deep dive into Moana. 

But Sam Alito still has a job. ----- 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. Or maybe it was 6-3 with an asterisk, because Neil Gorsuch went rogue, mostly agreeing with birthright citizenship in the only scenario the Trump administration really wanted to snuff out. Chief Justice Roberts also took his burning desire to be seen as the middle of the Court comically too far, authoring contradictory opinions back-to-back. And Sam Alito did not retire, despite reports. And in Biglaw, we continue to wonder where all the raises are.

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

Supreme Court ignores Judge Newman's rights. ----- 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 keep coming out. But does it really produce different legal resumes for men and women?

And a new ranking of top law schools. ------ 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 drama, after her initial "apology letters" went public and prompted the Eleventh Circuit to find a new opportunity to look the other way.

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 scores of former judges and other professionals behind the complaint against Pam Bondi -- that Florida previously punted, claiming that it couldn't investigate a sitting Attorney General -- renewed the call, noting that Bondi may be many things, but she's definitely not the Attorney General anymore.

And the Federal Circuit's Schoolhouse Rock moment is as damning as it is embarrassing. ----- 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 York has a long history of abusing pregnant women in custody and now we've learned that the courts arraigned a woman while she gave birth in the courtroom -- while she may or may not have been handcuffed.

More on Biglaw's insider trading scandal and a rare feel good story. ----- 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 punish disciplinary authorities for seeking to enforce ethical rules against government lawyers. And one prestigious litigation firm earns praise from the judge for allowing a young associate to take on key responsibility. 

Also a major insider trading case strikes Biglaw. ----- 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 tantrum at Justice Jackson. Also, the DOJ announced breaking up a major insider trading scheme involving multiple Biglaw firms.

Comey snaps sea shells by the sea shore. ----- 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, it read more pro se than DOJ. Meanwhile, over in the ironically named Civil Rights Division, they're filing briefs with "DRAFT" watermarks because apparently quality control is woke. This is all before we deal with the government filing federal criminal charges against Jim Comey over a picture of sea shells. At least one corner of legal still does work they can be proud of, as a Skadden partner leaves to become GC of OnlyFans. 

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 the DOJ bothered to double-check the charging documents, because the indictment fails to allege a whole element. In non-DOJ news, Sullivan & Cromwell sent a letter to the court apologizing for filing a number of documents with AI hallucinations.

And is Alito really going to retire? ----- 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 retire to cheer on insurrections as a private citizen? If he does, Senate Republicans are ready to embrace the hypocrisy and ram through a replacement. Could it be Ted Cruz?

And a crazy billing story. ----- 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.

And Pam Bondi earned a pink slip. ----- 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.

And the DOJ had an atrocious week. ------ 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. 

And Legalweek talk. ------ 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.

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

Things get testy down at the courthouse. ----- 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."

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 also saw the first majr firm strike a blow against the expedited law school recruiting cycle.

This is likely only the beginning of the reckoning. ----- 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.

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

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 helped out a former client's fraud. 

Supreme Court hacking and the end of a Biglaw era. ------ 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.

And Judge Ho's auditioning for MAGA favor takes a disgusting turn. ------ 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.

Welcome to another dumpster fire of a year. ----- 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.

Three trends dominated this year's coverage. ----- 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?

Ho ho ho...gan Lovells merging. ----- 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.

If you want 2025 in a nutshell, it doesn't get much better than a blundering Secretary of Defense bragging that the Pentagon bought an expensive, bespoke AI bot and it immediately started calling out the Trump administration for committing war crimes. As the legal industry ventures into a hallucinatory AI frontier, it's worth remembering that sometimes the bots outperform the human lawyers. At the Supreme Court, Justice Sotomayor tries to convince her colleagues not to blow up the federal government over a theory concocted in the 1970s. Sadly, she's fighting the wrong fight. And in a world of mergers -- especially cross-border mergers -- we have a reminder that sometimes it doesn't work out.

And the DOJ continues to be a hot mess. ----- 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.

And a shorter summer associate program. ----- 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.

Bonuses and botched prosecutions. ----- 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.

But seriously, what would be a good legal dominatrix name? ------ 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.

And Kirkland tries a little tenderness. FedSoc does not. ----- 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. 

DOJ punishing lawyers, the future of the billable hour, and dark times for public interest work. ----- 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.