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 Sa...
May 13, 2026•34 min•Season 1Ep. 462
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 ram...
May 06, 2026•30 min•Season 1Ep. 464
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...
Apr 29, 2026•35 min•Season 1Ep. 463
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 w...
Apr 22, 2026•33 min•Season 1Ep. 461
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 t...
Apr 15, 2026•34 min•Season 1Ep. 461
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 competiti...
Apr 08, 2026•31 min•Season 1Ep. 459
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 roug...
Mar 25, 2026•31 min•Season 1Ep. 458
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." T...
Mar 18, 2026•37 min•Season 1Ep. 457
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...
Mar 04, 2026•32 min•Season 1Ep. 456
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 publi...
Feb 25, 2026•35 min•Season 1Ep. 455
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 S...
Feb 18, 2026•32 min•Season 1Ep. 454
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 plea...
Feb 11, 2026•37 min•Season 1Ep. 453
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...
Feb 04, 2026•27 min•Season 1Ep. 452
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 t...
Jan 29, 2026•31 min•Season 1Ep. 451
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 ...
Jan 21, 2026•30 min•Season 1Ep. 450
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 ...
Jan 14, 2026•37 min•Season 1Ep. 449
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....
Jan 07, 2026•35 min•Season 1Ep. 448
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...
Dec 31, 2025•41 min•Season 1Ep. 447
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 o...
Dec 24, 2025•33 min•Season 1Ep. 446
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 gover...
Dec 17, 2025•36 min•Season 1Ep. 445
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. At...
Dec 10, 2025•33 min•Season 1Ep. 444
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 majo...
Dec 03, 2025•35 min•Season 1Ep. 443
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 toss...
Nov 26, 2025•34 min•Season 1Ep. 442
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....
Nov 19, 2025•32 min•Season 1Ep. 441
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 themse...
Nov 12, 2025•31 min•Season 1Ep. 440
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 y...
Nov 05, 2025•40 min•Season 1Ep. 439
And a Biglaw firm seeks help while an in-house attorney blows up her career. ----- 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 ...
Oct 29, 2025•38 min•Season 1Ep. 438
Also frivolous lawsuits and the insidiousness of dishonest analysis. ----- 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...
Oct 22, 2025•36 min•Season 1Ep. 437
Just in time for the AI slop to take over. ----- 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 shi...
Oct 15, 2025•38 min•Season 1Ep. 434
One can only hope. ----- 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 ba...
Oct 08, 2025•35 min•Season 1Ep. 435
