Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer

Also Ron DeSantis is getting beaten up by Disney again.The Supreme Court punts on a thorny felony murder case, prompting a conversation over whether the use and abuse of the rule can ever truly be reformed. There's also a super biller out there who managed to bill an average of over 10 hours a day last year. Presumably the attorney is weeping in a corner somewhere. Finally, Disney took its fight with Ron DeSantis up a notch with a new lawsuit that hasn't made everyone happy.Become a host of the ABA Law Student Podcast: Apply Here!

Yes, there's still more to say about Clarence Thomas.On this week's episode of Thinking Like A Lawyer Kathryn and Chris go back to the Clarence Thomas ethics well as Ted Cruz decides to weigh in. The New York Bar Exam was kind of a debacle, or at least the process of revealing the results was a debacle. And the Supreme Court gave reproductive freedom advocates a small victory last week, which prompted Justice Samuel Alito to tear down his female colleagues.

Who reads all of the statute anyway?The ethical hits just keep coming for Clarence Thomas as a second story about the gifts he collected from Harlan Crow expanded to include buying and maintaining a house for Thomas's mom. Rent free of course. Thomas doesn't have a particularly good excuse for not disclosing this since the text of the disclosure requirements are pretty clear. I guess holding people to the text of the laws they break only matters for poor people facing life in prison whose lawyers sleep through trial. We also discuss a new spate of layoffs and why we still feel cautiously optimistic about the second half of the year and the decision by U.S. News to delay its law school rankings.

Clarence Thomas takes some me time.An ethical quagmire surrounds Clarence Thomas. No, not that one. Not that one either. This one is about the gifts he's taken over the years without disclosures. Donald Trump took all of a couple hours after his indictment to start riling up his mob against the judge and prosecutor. And a Paul Hastings associate issues some bad advice.

Also Morgan & Morgan has had it with insurance lobbyists and the legal profession is losing talent to OnlyFans.Ron DeSantis tried to punish Disney by dissolving the local government dominated by Disney flopped when the smart lawyers pointed out that it would put the state on the hook for a deluge of liability. His latest effort to then replace all the board members flopped because while he crowed about his legal maneuvering to cable news, Disney publicly noticed some land use meetings and entered deals that functionally transferred the board's power to the company through the life of the last surviving descendent of King Charles III, making Lilibet of Sussex, the youngest of the group, arguably Disney's most important princess. Meanwhile, Morgan & Morgan has informed staff that it's no longer granting additional curtesies beyond those legally required after the insurance lobby secured massive a giant tort reform package in Florida. And a judge and young lawyer have both left the legal industry for OnlyFans... in case any of you are looking to lateral.

Latest podcast also talks about ranking the best law schools the worst way possible.With March upon us, we created our our bracket-based challenge to rerank the top law schools based on... nothing. If the law schools don't want to provide data to ranking services, we'll show them what that looks like. It's pretty bad. Speaking of bad, a litigant got a bit of a lecture from a federal judge who cautioned for more civility in filings and let's just say he did not get it. Finally, we return to the hybrid work model with a study in contrasts. One firm announces that it's going to close up the office for the month of August while another puts bonuses in jeopardy if an associate prefers to work in the office on different days. One of these firms will have a happier roster before this is all said and done.

Also, Elon Musk really needs legal counsel.Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan is the latest speaker to cry foul that an audience of law students heckled him to death. He's received an apology from Stanford Law School already, but the videos released from the event and the witness accounts appear to show the judge playing the role of wrestling heel. Taking the honest if probing questions from the audience and obstinately refusing to answer to further frustrate the students. Elon Musk fired up his Twitter machine to lurch the company into a potentially massive liability before someone -- presumably a lawyer -- told him about wrongful termination. Maybe he shouldn't be too quick to ditch the requirement that he run every Tweet by a lawyer first. Finally, Merrick Garland is taking heat for the fact that it's 2023 and Donald Trump has yet to be charged for anything stemming from the Capitol riot. But Garland's right.

And a pop quiz: do you know what 'bofadeez' is?Judge Roger Benitez of the Southern District of California decided to use his marshal to take a 13-year-old girl out of the audience and handcuff her in the jury box. Apparently, he didn't realize arbitrary acts of psychological torture upon children was frowned upon in this establishment. Now the Ninth Circuit is looking into a formal complaint. Also, those Dr. Rick commercials scold people turning into their parents for trying to leave voicemails, but it might be worth checking to see what the voicemail greeting you set 10 years ago says. Because for one aspiring lawyer it wasn't great. Finally, the Fifth Circuit's Judge Ho thinks it's wrong to prosecute political rivals on made up charges and frighteningly he's in the minority on this question.

And Sidney Powell drew the judge she needed at the right time.It may tickle the search engine algorithms, but the phrase "quiet quitting" seems out of place among lawyers. A firm sued one of its former attorneys for "quiet quitting" on them and now she's hired Wigdor to countersue, which is about as loud as lawyers can get. Meanwhile, the Texas judge hearing the state bar's complaint against Sidney Powell was a tad too quiet with a sparse summary judgment order kicking the case citing confusion about exhibit numbering. Finally, Wikipedia tried to stand up for the Constitution... the federal government told it to sit down.

On this week's podcast, we discuss a North Dakota law firm sued its associates and won, seeking to clawback paychecks for failing to meet billing requirements during the pandemic. Wasn't there a program to protect employers from cutting salaries during the downturn, you might ask? There was! And the firm took gobs of it. Also, Clarence Thomas is likely getting a statue in his honor, because as they say in Unforgiven, "deserve's got nothing to do with it." Finally, the one simple trick to $100 million in billables that the Third Circuit doesn't want Jones Day to know about.