Biglaw capitulators face new challenge and James Comey gets indicted. ----- 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 Co...
Oct 01, 2025•30 min•Season 1Ep. 433
Law firm fires lawyer over Kirk comments and law school announces new scholarships. ----- 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 pa...
Sep 24, 2025•31 min•Season 1Ep. 433
Compare and contrast as ACB and Sotomayor ride (media) circuit. ----- 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 c...
Sep 17, 2025•30 min•Season 1Ep. 432
Law school is more expensive than it used to be... but barely more expensive! ----- 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 mu...
Sep 10, 2025•37 min•Season 1Ep. 431
The Department of Justice is having a rough time getting those trumped up charges (pun intended) from the fed's takeover of D.C. to stick. Plus lawyer getting slammed for trying to use opposing counsel's premature baby as leverage. And infamous law professor Amy Wax has her legal case against University of Pennsylvania thrown out of court, but it's unlikely to be the end of her antics.
Sep 03, 2025•28 min•Season 1Ep. 430
We know where some of those pro bono payola hours are going. ----- 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...
Aug 27, 2025•35 min•Season 1Ep. 429
Law firms get some worrying numbers from last quarter. ----- 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 p...
Aug 20, 2025•33 min•Season 1Ep. 426
Milbank delighted with special summer bonuses , ranging from $6-25 thousand, for associates. And that's great for them! But where are all the matches? We have a theory on when associates at other firms will be able to cash in. 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 t...
Aug 13, 2025•31 min•Season 1Ep. 427
And Coldplay and pierogis. ----- 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 sp...
Aug 06, 2025•30 min•Season 1Ep. 425
Get it together, people! ----- 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 ...
Jul 30, 2025•33 min•Season 1Ep. 425
Lots to chew on this week. ----- 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...
Jul 16, 2025•38 min•Season 1Ep. 423
Law firm mergers and John Roberts brags for the crowd. ----- 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 aga...
Jul 09, 2025•41 min•Season 1Ep. 422
The Term ended with a whole lot of nonsense. ----- 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 w...
Jul 02, 2025•38 min•Season 1Ep. 418
And the Supreme Court has a wild one. ----- 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...
Jun 25, 2025•34 min•Season 1Ep. 420
Also, the role of bar associations in 2025. ----- 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, t...
Jun 18, 2025•34 min•Season 1Ep. 419
Caving law firms experience exodus. ----- 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 L...
Jun 11, 2025•33 min•Season 1Ep. 418
Quite the combination of words. ----- 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...
Jun 04, 2025•35 min•Season 1Ep. 417
From the administrative state to voting rights, they're just sort of winging it trying to reverse engineer results. ----- 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 ...
May 28, 2025•38 min•Season 1Ep. 416
Seashellgate meets Surrendergate. ----- 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 der...
May 21, 2025•40 min•Season 1Ep. 415
What if we just act like nothing happened? ----- 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...
May 14, 2025•34 min•Season 1Ep. 414
It was a bad week to compromise your values. ----- 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 fi...
May 07, 2025•31 min•Season 1Ep. 413
The arrest of Wisconsin judge Hannah Dugan is straight outta dystopian fiction. But at least retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer still has faith in the system, which makes one of us. Speaking of the High Court, Justice Sam Alito's dissent would be laughable if he weren't so powerful.
Apr 30, 2025•27 min•Season 1Ep. 412
And the world continues to melt. ----- 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 admin...
Apr 23, 2025•32 min•Season 1Ep. 411
US News and World Report released its most recent law school rankings with a side of chaos , but the big takeaway is the scrambling and erosion of the "T14" as an organizing concept. Is it time to dismiss the rankings as arbitrary ? At least until law schools agree to cooperate again. Also, Surrendergate continues and the "we'll do some pro bono for veterans" deal has turned dramatically, with the White House now claiming the authority to "assign" Biglaw firms to work on administration projects....
Apr 16, 2025•38 min•Season 1Ep. 410
And now we have a tracker for that! ----- 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 h...
Apr 09, 2025•30 min•Season 1Ep. 409
A great divide is developing. ----- 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 pol...
Apr 02, 2025•32 min•Season 1Ep. 408
Courage seems to be in short supply in Biglaw. ----- 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 i...
Mar 26, 2025•31 min•Season 1Ep. 407
There's no escaping the administration's influence on the legal landscape. ----- 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...
Mar 19, 2025•34 min•Season 1Ep. 406
ACB isn't having it. ----- 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 ?...
Mar 12, 2025•31 min•Season 1Ep. 405
And the new USNWR rankings are dealing with some crazy data. ----- 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 ....
Mar 05, 2025•34 min•Season 1Ep. 404
