On The Merits

You don't get to be the oldest law firm in New York without weathering some rough spots. But this may be one of the most difficult periods Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft has ever gone through.  The Wall Street firm, which this week announced a new managing co-partner, has lost nearly three dozen partners just this year. And not all of them have left because of the firm's controversial deal with President Trump for free legal services. On today's episode of our podcast, On The Merits, Bloomberg Law reporter Justin Henry explains why Cadwalader may be too specialized to thrive in today's full-service legal industry. He also talks about ways the firm can turn itself around without having to resort to a merger. Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

In this discussion, Yale Law School professor Scott Shapiro shares his insights on how law firms can harness their vast reserves of proprietary data to build custom AI tools. He emphasizes that firms can achieve remarkable results by training AI on their own work product, enhancing legal reasoning, and speeding up processes. Shapiro describes how he and his students created a generative model using legal documents, addressing both excitement and anxieties around AI in legal education. He argues for the necessity of law firms to adopt tailored AI solutions for improved outcomes.

On today's episode of On The Merits we hear from three lawyers working in the white hot world of data center projects. Mike Rechtin and Justin Stolte are, respectively, real estate and energy partners with Latham & Watkins, and Michelle Kallen is an appellate and advocacy partner at Steptoe. "The latest number that I've seen is a $50 billion annual investment in the data center construction area by 2030," Stolte tells Roy Strom. Stolte talks about how his firm has organized to address the explosion of generative AI and the infrastructure that supports it. Latham real estate partner Rechtin talks about the unique skill set that made him the perfect fit for the niche pursuit, and Steptoe's Kallen tells Jessie Kokrda Kamens about the rapidly evolving regulatory challenges that a robust infrastructure practice faces. Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

The number of law students who graduated in the class of 2024 spiked compared to previous years. That worries Nikia Gray, the head of the National Association for Law Placement. "I think it's going to be a big mistake for law schools to continue to admit large law school class sizes," she said, "when we can predict with some pretty good certainty that GenAI is changing the business models of firms and their hiring practices." Gray spoke to Bloomberg Law editor Jessie Kokrda Kamens on our podcast, On The Merits, about the ways AI will change the jobs of entry-level attorneys. The former Quarles & Brady recruiter also discussed what law students should be doing right now to get ready for a job market that's about to get much more competitive. Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

It's still not clear what, if any, fallout the law firms that struck pro bono deals with President Donald Trump earlier this year will face. But analyzing attorney movements over the last six months provides one data point. On average, law firms that settled subsequently lost attorneys more attorneys than those who fought the president in court, according to data obtained by Bloomberg Law columnist David Lat. But there are some firms that buck this overall trend as well as plenty of caveats. Lat joins our podcast, On The Merits, to walk us through this data on law firm headcounts since Trump started targeting law firms in the spring. Lat also talks about the lawyer moves that will likely happen later this year that could give us an even clearer picture of how firms are doing and what effect the Trump deals are having on them. Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

Delaware recently changed its corporate laws to make them more favorable to companies being sued by their shareholders and the mega-firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz was deeply involved in that process. That's raising some eyebrows because Wachtell is also a go-to firm for companies in Delaware, often called the corporate capital of the world. Lawyers from other prominent firms, like Wilson Sonsini and Richards, Layton & Finger, also helped shape the law. On this episode of our podcast, On The Merits, Bloomberg Law's Jennifer Kay and Roy Strom talk about what firms like Wachtell did in Delaware, what they stand to gain, and what all this has to do with Elon Musk's so-called "DExit." Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

A memo from law firm King & Spalding to its associates saying they need to log 2,400 "productive hours" a year surprised some in the legal world. But today's guest on our podcast, On The Merits, says it shouldn't have. It's always been the case that lawyers need to go beyond meeting their billable hours quotas and put in some non-billable hours in order to advance their careers, according to Jessica Chin Somers, a former Big Law attorney and current managing director at Kinney Recruiting. King & Spalding just wrote down what was essentially a legal industry unwritten rule, she said. Chin Somers talked to Bloomberg Law editor Jessie Kokrda Kamens about why associates might need to have this policy spelled out and about how they can get ahead even when they're not working on client matters. Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

Like most schools worried about academic integrity, the University of Chicago Law School used to discourage its first-year students from using generative AI but now it has crept into that first-year curriculum. Despite its overall inevitability, William Hubbard, a professor and deputy dean, says he's surprised by how often he has to encourage AI-skeptical law students to at least try it out. Hubbard's school has seen how law firms, and especially large law firms, have embraced this new technology and it's followed suit, adding several AI-focused classes to its course offerings. Hubbard says the University of Chicago's students need to graduate with at least a basic familiarity with AI—specifically when it is and isn't appropriate to use in a legal setting. He spoke to Bloomberg Law editor Jessie Kamens for our podcast, On The Merits, about what the legal industry wants law students to learn about AI and how his law school is going about teaching it. Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

The Big Four accounting firm KPMG has taken advantage of relaxed rules in Arizona to start a law firm there, but the company has broader ambitions outside of the state. KPMG says it doesn't want to compete with established players in the legal industry, but Big Law leaders are privately expressing concerns. That's according to Justin Henry, a Bloomberg Law reporter who's the guest on today's episode of our podcast, On The Merits. Henry talks about the legal work KPMG can do now and about the open question of whether it can operate outside of the Grand Canyon State. He also talks about the measures KPMG has taken to insulate its new law firm from the rest of its company, including having lawyers use separate entrances and exits at its Tempe, Ariz., office. Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

The largest law firms in the country are fiercely competitive, so it's notable when nearly 40 of them agree to sign on to a legal brief. That's what happened in an appellate case that could have eroded the attorney-client privilege—and the firms' lucrative white collar defense practices. They breathed a collective sigh of relief earlier this month when the Sixth Circuit overturned a lower court ruling that would have forced FirstEnergy to turn over to its shareholders the results of internal investigations. The company hired Jones Day and Squire Patton Boggs to conduct the probes in response to a bribery scandal and later argued that the work was shielded by attorney-client privilege. On today's episode of our podcast, On The Merits, reporter Roy Strom explains what happened in this case and why it represented such a threat to Big Law. He also gets into the reasons lawyers' hourly rates for white collar defense work can climb so high. Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.