Welcome to another edition of Thinking Like a Lawyer.
Still, still not professional enough as a group to get through the literal first sentence
of the show.
I mean, it's our bit now.
Now, it would be unprofessional if we ignored it.
Maybe.
It can see the work of images.
We have a thing.
We do the thing.
So this is the Above the Law podcast.
I'm Joe Patrice from Above the Law.
I'm joined by Catherine Anne-Chris.
We're going to talk about some of the top stories of the week that was in the legal universe
as we usually do.
That said, we also usually, because this is all about standard practice, I guess, is what
everyone's telling me.
So we also usually begin with a little segment that we call Small Talk that we signal in,
that we bring in with a bit of fanfare.
That's true.
See, and I don't even get mad anymore that you wait until I speak before you play the fanfare,
because you like to interrupt me specifically.
No, that's not true at all.
I just get in when Small Talk begins.
The fact that you try to start Small Talk before the official announcement is your own
fault.
So I should just wait dead air style so that I can play the sound effect and then we can
move on properly.
In Joe's defense, I do feel like he's an equal opportunity to interrupt her.
That's all.
So who wants to talk about their weekend?
Mine was exhausting.
That's all.
I'm really busy these days.
I see no light at the end of said tunnel of busyness either.
So it was really unpleasant.
But what about everybody else?
You always bring with Joe.
Joe.
Yeah, I know.
He really deserves like some EOR vibes over here.
Oh, a turdly.
Oh, bother.
I was also busy.
I actually had my baby shower this weekend.
Okay.
Whoo.
So yeah, having a baby pretty soon and my mom's sister and childhood best friend and mother
in law threw me a fantastic baby shower.
It looks like my house threw up orange because the theme was welcome cutie, like cutie oranges,
which is super adorable for sure.
But there is a lot of orange still in my house, which I'm not opposed to.
But I may have to temporarily at least root for the Mets so this all makes sense.
I thought you were telling us you were leaving about the law to join Reuters.
It's not orange.
The main menu or video here.
See, I think of relativity.
I think when I see all these orange circles.
Oh, yeah.
That's true.
Let's bring it back to legal tech, you guys.
Yeah, we should see if relativity wants to sponsor you.
Well, I have the paraphernalia.
For it.
There we go.
That's what I was saying.
How about you, Chris?
What did you do this weekend?
Yeah, so I'm having that thing where I don't remember if I've ever lived the life.
Oh, I did a thing.
So here's the thing.
I celebrated come my new year.
So happy new year, right?
So there the so the Cambodia, the new year celebration is like three days long.
And you know how the it's funny thinking about time in different cultures.
So in the in in the stakes, the year is 2023 a great because yeah, because Jesus is parent
like death was the starting point.
No, that is not.
That's not how that works.
Yeah.
I thought it was at the end of the day over Lord.
I thought it was right.
Yeah, yeah, theoretically, that was a bad calculation of his birth, which was incorrect
because he was would have been in March or something.
All the other things, no, it would have been in negative for a would have been in for
BC, but also had been originally to do it off of the birth of birth.
Off of birth.
Yes.
Not the death of Christ.
Correct.
Okay.
Anyway, it's Jesus anchored.
We get it.
So Cambodia is a Buddhist.
Yes.
Yes.
It's more more more than I know, dominate, you know, so now so I'm far for everyone.
I heard I was a horrible Buddhist chant.
Anyway, I think the year here is like 1555.
Okay.
So it's cool to have a new year and not have see people have like the 2000s glasses.
There were no glasses, but if there were New Year's glasses, it would have been.
I love that that's the thing that annoys you about new year celebrations in the States.
It's just weird glasses.
Well, here's the thing.
But no, it hasn't been the word except for 2023.
I think I saw like the wave of New Year's glasses they have this year.
They were really low effort.
Like it was like 20 zero two three and like the eyes were in like, like part of the two
part and it was like, it didn't look, it didn't look right.
You know, 2020 was a great year for New Year's glasses makers.
But after that, it just sure stopped then.
They should have been like, listen, this is, this is going to be the best that it's ever
going to be 2020 and then ended it there.
I actually saw somebody once say that every year I go into New Year's thinking, well,
they can't turn this year into glasses and every year.
Yeah, turns out the path of least resistance will be have the New Year's glasses, but you
find out which culture has the easiest year to make glasses out of.
So next year it'll be like 1556.
And that's what they'll sell in the States.
And they'll be like, okay, you cultured now, not that it's just impractical to have 2024.
Do enough of that.
Yeah, no, I think that that can be the whole thing.
Well, you can find us on legal talk network.
Yeah, I mean, that's the wrong sound effect for the end.
So yeah, that's the end of small talk.
We could now talk about big talk.
What is a what's.
Big talk.
What's.
Yeah.
All right, that's all right.
Would this has gone steadily off the rails.
You know, like, it's exactly where it's meant to be.
I like it though.
Instead of big talk and it's a small talk being like, we don't be like, boom, boom,
boom.
I mean, I do have I do have that.
So we can we can absolutely do that.
Yeah.
All right.
So we're all right.
I think the biggest of talk.
Yes.
Is pretty pretty big ethics scandal going on again.
I feel like that little intro, something I've said multiple times over the course of this
podcast in last six months in particular, but the last issue.
No.
Well, yes, actually, but hold on.
Let's stop and just assure people that you are not stuck in a time warp.
This was in fact the top story we talked about last week.
Yes.
And we're just going to talk about it.
There's more.
Because there's more.
There's more.
Clarence Thomas still has ethics issues.
What's the latest on the Thomas scandal, Chris?
The other law that he I mean, it's still like a not reporting flavored.
So this one is more details about the the generous and totally not influencing gifts of
Mr. Harlan Crow.
Is it Harlan or Batman?
I forget it's just some rich dude.
And so it turns out that he or her bought Justice Thomas's mom's house.
His mom still lives in the house.
The house and like the plot sold around had about a market value of say like let's say
45,000 crow bought it all together like about 140, 150.
So shots out to Thomas being a landlord, a land flipper.
But yeah, so his best friend.
He's a negotiator.
Yeah.
Clarence Thomas.
Yeah.
So his best.
So one of the defense about the the bright and not bribery.
That's what happened over the last 20 years.
He was just like, oh, this is just two bros with money taking care of each other.
And they're just really close.
And you can tell they're really close because his friend is his mom's landlord since he
owns the property.
And by the way, the additions that he made to the property were about this is again crow
or about the value of the house and the land itself.
So you know, keeping the money in their family and not on the record.
Yeah.
Exactly. I think the lack of disclosure is one of the most disturbing elements of the
stories that, you know, disclosure for the and not for me is the kind of way that Clarence
Thomas has gone about all of these deals.
There are rules requiring a there are laws requiring disclosure of the stuff.
There is no real repercussion to not following these things.
This turns out as Clarence Thomas now said that he will revise past disclosures to include
all this, but he got caught.
But he personally felt like the issue was that he took a loss on these deals and therefore
didn't think he had to disclose them.
This of course makes no sense.
If you were getting, if you got involved in a land deal with somebody that you thought
you're going to make money on and then you didn't, that doesn't mean that you weren't
influenced and having an influence when it comes to court decisions that may impact
that deal, right?
You had a financial stake.
The fact that it didn't work out is irrelevant.
And obviously that's why the rule doesn't have a line in it that says profitable or
loss.
You have to disclose it.
I mean, that to me is absolutely one of the most damning aspects of this, of this whole
revelation is that he's really bad at statutory interpretation.
I think it was Professor Lipman, I'm not sure, but somebody this morning made the point that
last term, Clarence Thomas, said that if your court appointed lawyer misreads a statute,
you are responsible and cannot appeal that.
However, Clarence Thomas cannot read what happened in this statute and says, oh, yeah,
sorry, by that.
Shrugg emoji is the only answer.
Oh, I guess I'll redo it.
No consequences.
Those are completely off the table in any realistic way because the only way to have
consequences involves a detailed political process that there's not 67 votes for, let
alone control of the house, which would have to happen first before there's any sort of,
you know, actual consequences here.
And he can't read statutes by his own admission.
Either he willfully knew what it said and decided not to disclose it, which, you know, is probably
the actual answer.
That's something right here.
He's very, very bad at his job.
Yeah.
Like, like so bad at his job that that it's in and of itself is disqualifying.
Yeah, it's interesting.
I thought the ProPublica, like put out that big report of all of these issues and then
waited for it to become the biggest story ever and then drop this one.
More information.
I was like, did they just find this one out or were they holding back on this, which,
you know, either way, I'm impressed.
You know, obviously I don't know.
I don't have any context there, but I wonder if they were waiting for it.
Yeah.
And confirmation or, you know, once it started to gain traction that perhaps folks were more
willing to disclose and confirm details.
Always a possibility.
That's true.
Like there is, there is a journalistic reason that this makes sense.
What I hope the takeaway from this is, is that the people, the, they go low, low people,
high people will finally shut up.
Cause this is a clear example of like, for a very long time, Thomas and friends have been
the, you know, rule of law, we have to, you know, do things by the book people, right?
Here's what's, here's what's dressed.
Here's the moral authority.
People say, oh, if we aren't holding ourselves accountable, when they do things, we'll give
them excuses to be different.
We now know they'll just say, oh, oops, my bad.
Checked out my friends.
What do you do?
So I, I think we need to stop playing the accountability game.
That's all.
Yeah.
It is weird.
But also would like to take it to a, a little bit bigger of, of an issue when that line
about that, you know, he viewed it as an individual's fault that their lawyer screwed up when he
writes an opinion.
There's something to be said for this speaks to the nature, the, the problematic nature
of textualism as a concept to obviously he's an originalist, but these are intertwined
theories that some people draw from both, but to these statutes, if he can be confused
by the statute, which I don't think he is, I agree with you that it is, he's probably
being a bad faith actor, but let's give him the benefit of the doubt.
The benefit of the doubt is he was confused by the wording of a statute.
Well, that's a pretty good reason not to hold people to the letter of these statutes
all the time, right?
And he's in an infinitely better place to understand the statute, right?
As someone who's been educated in the law specifically and has literally been one of
the nine authorities on the law for, you know, 30 years or so.
30 years.
Yeah.
And so there's, there is a philosophical moment here that if you take him at his word, it,
it kind of gives the lie to the whole, uh, intellectual underpinnings of textualism.
Anyway.
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All right.
So, uh, the other topic we have is, uh, one of our least favorite, but still a good sound
effect.
Lay offs.
Don't talk about layoffs.
You kidding me?
Lay offs.
So we have more layoff news.
Yeah.
Sherman and Sterling have laid off some staff members, which, you know, earlier in the year
they had done a round of staff and associate layoffs, uh, and, you know, which is the latest
of a series of bad news, financial news for the firm.
There's been lots of chatter about what's the end result will be at the firm.
If there will be more layoffs still unclear at this point, but we've also have information
about firms delaying start dates for associates.
Cooley is doing that now.
We already knew that Gunderson was doing that, which means that, you know, these folks that
are currently in law school who set to graduate next month, they, they already have for the
most part, their jobs lined up, right?
They know which big law firms they're going to go to.
Uh, and one of those firms Cooley has said, you were supposed to start in the fall.
You're actually going to wait until January of 2024.
Right.
So, you know, it's not like your student loan payments start immediately after, but-
You get six months, so just pushes that past that mark.
Yeah, it definitely, yeah.
And even if it didn't push it all the way past that mark, it, you know, it takes away
a few months that you could be collecting some cash to get you through.
So it has bigger repercussions than just, you know, your start date has been pushed,
uh, because especially if you have gone to a law school that allows you to work at a
firm like that, your bills are fairly significant.
I mean, the other thing is you probably had options, right?
You know, someone who went to a firm like Cooley probably had other options as well.
Uh, and so getting sort of cut off of the knees like this is a real problem for, for
folks and we're seeing these repercussions or reverberations throughout the industry,
even firms that are much more so, you know, Cooley and Gundish and are both West Coast
have very tech heavy kinds of firms where that's where we've seen the majority, not
all, but the majority of these sort of austerity measures happening.
But we're even seeing the implications for sort of East Coast firms.
Bill Bank came out last week and sent an email to their incoming class saying you may have
heard lots of rumors about start dates and pushing them off and you might be worried
given the state of the market generally, but don't your job is very safe.
Rest assured we have not changed our start date.
You're still expected on September 18th.
Yeah.
And I do think that was an interesting move.
And I thought with that, I thought of some of these firms that well, we were hearing
gloom and doom from some corners.
And then we were seeing the people who were giving interviews to American lawyer talking
about how, you know, they actually did really well last year.
And I, you know, have very much been reading those as kind of the negative space there
that I've been reading those saying that they're those particular firms are trying to make
clear things may be bad out there, but we're, we want to get ahead of the fact that we
are not those places.
And so be very focused on who's not having those interviews published in a lot of ways.
And this kind of goes with that.
I think that there's a sense, a mood that there's economic problems, deal slowdowns
and so on that said, I think there are several firms that that is not impacting and they
are trying and doing whatever they can to make clear that folks know that.
And I think this millbank email is an example of that.
Some of these American lawyer interviews are examples of that.
And it's not, I mean, American lawyer interviews everybody for their financials, but the ones
that are turning them into articles and promoting them.
We're aware and I think you're right, but something that I appreciated about the mill
bank movements that it's not directed to the industry at large, but rather the specific
actors who, you know, are the most worried and the most anxious, potentially, because
they're not yet really part of the industry.
They probably don't remember if they ever had access to the American lawyer login from
their firm.
Right, right, right.
But these, and that kind of direct communication, I think speaks to, you know, reaching out
to folks who are potentially anxious and make sure.
And I think this kind of goes to those little things that help to build a culture.
You feel much more reassured when you're at a firm that goes out of the way and saying,
you might be feeling a certain way.
Here's the information you actually need to know.
Right.
I think that's true.
I still think that barring the Federal Reserve screwing us even worse, which they seem to
help in on doing, no matter how good things look, they seem like they're going to destroy
it.
But barring that, I do think that deal momentum is going to pick up in the second half of
the year in some of these firms that are hemorrhaging associates because they have suffered
the first, you know, for the last two or three quarters are going to see that as a problem.
And the people who have held the line are going to come out on top.
That said, we'll, we'll see.
I think Q three and four should be returning to normal, but I don't know.
We will see.
Yeah.
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Today's legal news is rarely as straightforward as the headlines that accompany them.
On lawyer to lawyer, we provide legal perspective.
You need to better understand the current events that shape our society.
Join me, Craig Williams and a wide variety of industry experts as we break down the top
stories.
All right, so we had a preview of the US News rankings last week that just showed us the
top 14 law schools, a completely arbitrary cut off, but it's the cut off they've used
forever.
So we got that.
There were some interesting things.
Bunch is that there were basically 8 million ties and UCLA got ahead of Georgetown.
That said, they were supposed to release the full list tomorrow as we're recording this.
April 18th, I believe it is.
Or was.
Right.
Right.
And with that said, and that is not going to happen now.
Yeah, they pushed it back for at least a week until April 25th, I think is the date that
they're currently touting.
And it's not particularly clear why.
Yeah, I think that's on how many times they could tie three schools in a row.
It's still be a numbered list rather than just vibes.
Yeah, it did feel like the top 14 was really here's four rankings that were dividing these
14 between.
But yeah, well, there's some speculation that they there might be some ABA bar or passage
data that was misapplied.
But the other argument is that a lot of what I think is happening is they US News had to
come up with a new methodology this year because a bunch of these schools threw it hissy fit
over how the system ranks.
And look, we do not defend the US News rankings.
We have our own law school ranking that we think is actually a little bit better.
A little, but you know, fair, but US News does what it does.
And that's, you know, they whether you like it or not, they're they're doing their best
to be an objective measure.
And a bunch of law schools decided they were going to bolt on this and boycott, giving certain
bits of data to US News, US News therefore had to come up with a whole new way of doing
this.
And now these schools, I think, are irritated that it didn't work out as well for them.
And it's like, well, the consequences of your own actions.
Well, yes, and no, right?
Again, it could very easily be math.
That is the problem.
We don't actually know.
But the other part of this is that historically US News has absolutely changed their methodology
in response to pressure from law schools.
They dropped diversity rankings a few years ago once the embargoed, you know, once they
did their preview and that changed some stuff.
So this is a method that has worked in the past.
And so, you know, from a law school's perspective, if there's data that you don't think is correctly
applied or given too much weight, I don't, I mean, whether it's their own consequences
or not, it seems like something they have a responsibility to their kind of constituents
to pursue.
Well, I mean, and that brings us to the unfortunate question, which is why does the US News have
constituents?
Sure.
They should be their constituents, if anyone should be the students, but who are the perspective
students at least?
Yeah.
I think you're right, but it is also worth noting that this has happened before, you
know, there have been times where law school pressure has had a direct impact on US News's
methodology.
Yeah.
So in that sense, it's not particularly surprising, but I think given the change the
tumult regarding the, regarding the rankings makes it much more of a bigger story.
Yeah.
Like this boycott was so ill conceived from jump.
And now all of a sudden, and maybe it has nothing to do with it, but frankly, the appearance
that has anything to do with it makes it just as bad.
Like it caused a, but it hurt those, though, theoretically could just hurt those schools
by not giving over their data.
Instead, what happened is US News just tried to come up with some new way of doing it to
get around all that.
Now people are angry about that.
It's like every bit of the, every stage of this has been the fault of the boycotting people.
And, you know, here we are again.
US News's statement also says that, and I think because they didn't get the data directly
from the law schools, there's a lot more inquiries from the law schools who received
sort of the draft rankings already about what data they actually used and know that's
wrong because, and, you know, which again, you know, participation in the process would
solve.
Right.
Yeah.
When they were doing it, they would be making these shadowy guesses as to what's going on.
Like it, I don't know.
It was so dumb and been dumb from the, from the jump.
And here we are now with the mistakes that the Yale has brought once again.
Has anyone done a GPT law school records?
It's just just asked GPT to rank people.
Yeah.
I don't know.
And in a weird way, the whole ranking debacle has just proven that Yale is by far their
most dominant law school in the country, right?
Yeah.
What they do other everyone feels they need to, or a large percentage feel the need to
follow.
Yeah.
Maybe that was the real, that was the real ranking trick.
The real ranking trick was what if we do something incredibly stupid and see if everyone
follows us.
And if they do.
And listen, there's, there was very little chance of repercussion on Yale specifically.
Sure.
Right.
Like they're still tied for one.
Yeah.
They're not getting out of that spot.
So you know, they just proved that other people, well, well, the fact that it's a tire loss,
I don't think so there have been ties.
Yeah.
I don't think that they perceive that as a loss.
Yeah.
They still get to put the number one law school on all their promotional materials, according
to US news.
And I think that that is, you know, that's the benefit.
You know, they just said, Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we all jumped off this cliff, watched
a bunch of people do it and stood at the top of the cliff still.
Yeah.
That's something like the open here.
I'm going to keep it a butt.
It's that old, that video game Lemmings.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which do you know that that all was completely made up in a Walt Disney screw up?
Have you ever heard this story?
No, I don't know this story.
So the whole idea that Lemmings jump off cliffs and all is from some like they don't
at all.
It's from some Walt Disney nature documentary that they did like back in the 50s and 60s,
they would do those nature documentaries and they incorrectly saw this hat.
This event happened and described it as this is a thing Lemmings do and it became part of
the cultural zeitgeist despite not at all being true as it turns out.
Who does jump off cliffs?
There was video of something jumping off cliffs.
Yeah.
I mean, it was it was it was not because that's a thing that they do, which makes sense, right?
Because it would not really be an adaptive species.
It does seem it does seem like that's a real problem.
That would not really bode well for their continued survival.
Speaking of, if you'd like to jump off the ATL cliff and keep following us, I don't know
if I'm going for it.
Oh, you're going to try to transition us out?
Was that what you were trying to do?
Okay, interesting.
That was the gong show for that attempt.
Just not not smooth enough.
You've got to you've got to work on your segways.
Anyway, with that said, we will, however, say that thanks for listening.
You should listen to the show every week and you can be helped by doing that by subscribing
to it so you get the new episodes when they come out.
You should give a rating and review to it.
That all helps more people find the show.
You should be following other shows.
Catherine's the host of the Chibot.
I'm on the Legal Tech Week Journal's roundtable.
There are many other shows that we aren't on on the Legal Talk Network that you can also check
out.
You should be reading above the law so you can read these and other stories before we
chat about them here.
Follow on social media.
The Twitter's has us at at etlblog.
I'm at Joseph Peche.
She's at Catherine1, the numeral one, and Chris is at rights for rent.
The W rights, not the art rights.
And with all of that, I think we're done.
Please.
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