Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer

The Trump Administration Struggled With The Bar Exam And Its Inbox

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 bill

Iron Curtain Descends On Biglaw Financials

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 l

Bird Watching: Hawks vs. Hawkeyes

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

All The Court's A Stage And Trump Judges Merely Players

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 t

Weil Get You And... Then Maybe You'll Go To Cravath

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 bu

Law Firm Passive Aggressiveness On Parade

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 lea

Legal Catastrophes The Old-Fashioned Way

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 havin

The ILTACON Wrap-Up

This episode is sponsored by Smith.ai. ----- Discussing what we learned about legal technology in Nashville. ----- The International Legal Technology Association conf

A Tribute, A Tactic, Or An Appellate Issue?

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: prose

Luigi's Double Jeopardy Gamble And The DOJ's Complicity

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

Biglaw Surrenders Were Worse Than We Thought

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

Will We Never Learn Our Lesson About The Bar Exam?

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 j

Park Benches And Supreme Court Benches

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 maki

2026: A Rule Of Law Odyssey

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 com

Collateral Damage Across The Legal Industry

From firms to law schools, innocent bystanders take heat. ----- Everyone talks about conflicts and redundancies, but the saddest merger collateral damage is forcing le

Supreme Court Narrowly Passes Reading Comprehension Section

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 wor

Alito's Outburst And Tough Times For Partners

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 Sotom

Todd Blanche Disgrace Train Rolls On

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 abo

Federal Judges Gone Wild

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

Sex In Chambers Met With Slap On Wrist

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 Circu