ABA Journal: Modern Law Library

On the cover of Brian Hochman's book The Listeners: A History of Wiretapping in the United States is a martini cocktail, complete with skewered olive. Someone attempting to judge a book by its cover may think this is a riff on James Bond and his brethren in espionage. But international espionage is not the primary use of wiretapping in the United States; it's a longer, stranger tale than that.Hochman shares the real story that inspired the cover in this episode of the Modern Law Library with the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles. It involves a private detective with a showman's instincts, a congressional hearing and an electronic bug hidden in a martini olive. It was an incident that spooked the legislature so much that in 1968, they banned the "martini olive transmitter"–even though a working prototype had never been built.In this episode, Hochman also talks about America's long history of wiretapping, from Civil War saboteurs to confidence tricksters, from suspicious husbands to rival corporations, from drug dealers to district attorneys. Wiretapping was often seen as "a dirty business," as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes opined in Olmstead v. United States (1928), but also as a necessary tool in the arsenal of law enforcement, particularly once the War on Crime kicked off in the wake of civil rights protests. In the late 1950s, wiretapping was considered by some to be so necessary that New York district attorney Edward S. Silver compared being asked to prosecute criminals without it to being asked to "hunt lions with a peashooter."Hochman kicks off the episode by telling the tale of the first American to be jailed for tapping a wire–and it's a tale with a twist. Special thanks to our sponsor, Posh Virtual Receptionists.

During its time as a Soviet republic within the USSR, Kazakhstan was the site of massive nuclear tests, both above and below ground. The cost to the environment and health of the Kazakh people and livestock was likewise massive, though the full scale of the effects was under-studied and suppressed for decades. Through massive public protests in the 1980s, nuclear-weapons testing in the Semipalatinsk region of Kazakhstan was brought to a halt.But when the Soviet Union dissolved and Kazakhstan became a sovereign state, it now had a conundrum: Should the country—which had no military of its own—retain the nuclear weapons and become the world’s fourth largest nuclear power, or relinquish them in return for international commitments?This is the story that Togzhan Kassenova was born to write. The nuclear policy and nonproliferation expert grew up in the capital city, Almaty, in a family with deep ties to the Semipalatinsk region. Her father, Oumirserik Kassenov, was the head of the country’s first think tank, now known as the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies, and he was charged with helping the fledgling Kazakh government make nuclear policy decisions in the 1990s. Kassenova—who now lives in a different capital city, Washington, D.C.—was also able to access and interpret archival documents from the United States, Kazakhstan and Russia.The result is Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan Gave Up the Bomb. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Kassenova and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss the challenges of writing about top-secret nuclear test programs; the brave Soviet-era medical professionals who sought to record the sicknesses and birth defects caused by nuclear radiation; and the connections between the communities in Kazakhstan and the United States impacted by nuclear testing. She also sheds light on the real international diplomacy that took place that led to Kazakhstan giving up its nuclear arsenal, which was not a foregone conclusion.Atomic Steppe was released only nine days before Russia invaded Ukraine. Kassenova also discusses the parallels between Ukrainian and Kazakh experiences, the Russian attitudes towards the former Soviet republics, and what the international community can do about the threat nuclear weapons still pose today. Special thanks to our sponsor, Posh Virtual Receptionists.

In August 2020, contract attorney Laura Frederick accepted a challenge: Post to LinkedIn once a day, every day, for a month. Frederick thought she might be able to keep up a string of several days in a row. Instead, her daily posts became a way to connect with colleagues, build business, create a brand identity, and have a social lifeline during the isolation of the pandemic. A selection of those posts also found their way into her self-published book, Practical Tips on How to Contract: Techniques and Tactics from an Ex-BigLaw and Ex-Tesla Commercial Contracts Lawyer.Frederick says that she's never been the sort of person who enjoyed the cocktail party circuit way of rainmaking. When she launched her own law practice after years of working in BigLaw and as an in-house attorney for companies including Tesla, she relied for the first year entirely on referrals. But the connections she was able to make through LinkedIn has rapidly expanded opportunities for her legal practice and for her training and skill-development company, How to Contract.Frederick tells the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles that one of her driving motivations for posting daily tips to LinkedIn has been her desire to pass along knowledge gained over the course of her career to younger attorneys. When she was a beginning attorney in the 1990s, she says she gained tremendously by being able to shadow more experienced attorneys at her firm, learning at the side of longtime contract attorneys. The same opportunities are not available now, particularly when so many young attorneys are launching their own solo or small firm practices. She hopes that both Practical Tips on How to Contract and her continuing daily posts to LinkedIn–she's now written more than 400–can help fill that gap. She adds that engaging with her commenters has also taught her lessons that improved her own legal work. In this episode, Frederick talks about the practical steps to building a brand and self-publishing; how she expanded into creating legal cartoons; and what it was like to be an attorney for Tesla. Special thanks to our sponsor, Posh Virtual Receptionists.

Detroit has been the site of many civil rights and labor rights battles, and many notable Black attorneys have called the city home. The first Black president of the ABA, Dennis Archer, came from the Detroit legal community, as does the current ABA president, Reginald Turner. But the full story of one of the city's pioneering legal figures has not been told–until now. In No Equal Justice: The Legacy of Civil Rights Icon George W. Crockett Jr., co-authors Edward J. Littlejohn and Peter J. Hammer have filled in this blank with an absorbing history of Crockett's Floridian childhood, his law school years at the University of Michigan, his defense of Communist activists at the height of the Red Scare, his harrowing search for the murdered Freedom Riders in 1964, his time as a judge on Detroit's Recorder Court, and his election to the U.S. House of Representatives. For this episode of the Modern Law Library, Hammer joined the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles to discuss the research that went into the book, some of Crockett's most high-profile cases, how Crockett ended up serving four months in prison for contempt of court, and to explain why Crockett was one of the Detroit police department's most-hated public figures. Special thanks to our sponsor, Posh Virtual Receptionists. 

Retired judge and bestselling novelist Martin Clark had to deal with his fair share of rejection before he finally broke in more than two decades ago with his debut novel, The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living. After several false starts, that book got Clark’s career up and running. In this episode, the ABA Journal's Matt Reynolds finds out what made the difference for Clark, and gets tips for other lawyers itching to write their first book.Special thanks to our sponsor, Posh Virtual Receptionists.

Law professor Kim Wehle is used to helping her students begin to think like lawyers. But the methodology behind making tough decisions as a legal professional can also benefit the general public. It’s why How To Think Like A Lawyer—and Why: A Common-Sense Guide to Everyday Dilemmas was a natural follow-up to her two previous books, How to Read the Constitution—and Why and What You Need to Know About Voting—and Why. Wehle’s previous books attempted to fill in civics education gaps for the general public. With her newest book, Wehle is hoping to give the general public alternatives to kneejerk or strictly partisan decision-making by encouraging a more methodical approach. In How to Think Like a Lawyer—and Why, Wehle shares what she calls the B-I-C-A-T Method. The five steps to the B-I-C-A-T Method are: 1. Break the problem down.2. Identify your values and your aim.3. Collect lots of information.4. Argue both sides of each point.5. Tolerate the fact that people may disagree with your choice and that you might feel conflicted about your decision. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Wehle and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss how she chose the five different spheres of life highlighted in her book as areas where a lawyerly mind could be particularly useful: work, family life decisions, civic life, health care and when it’s time to hire an actual lawyer. They also take the B-I-C-A-T Method for a spin in a hypothetical situation that’s a real-life dilemma for many parents around the world: How to approach masking in school. Special thanks to our sponsor, Posh Virtual Receptionists.

Hilary J. Allen isn't sorry if you find her new book scary. In fact, she's hoping that Driverless Finance: Fintech's Impact on Financial Stability can spook enough people to create momentum for change.Allen was involved in the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that was formed by Congress to study the causes behind the 2008 financial crisis. Now she sees the possibility of financial collapse on an even greater scale with AI technology being used in the financial industry; "smart contracts" that could bring down banks before human intervention is possible; cryptocurrency and non-fungible token sales being made for the purpose of speculation; and tech giants like Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google contemplating offering financial services. In the future, she warns, banks might not be the only entities that become "too big to fail." While the public is concerned about the safety of driverless cars, there's much less awareness about driverless finance, and the dangers it could pose to the global financial system are real, says Allen. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Allen speaks with the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles about the promise and downsides of some "cutting-edge" financial products, and why innovation is not inherently good. She suggests some avenues for regulation and oversight, urges that regulators be given the technology and access to expertise they need to keep up with new financial products and markets, and explains what an NFT is–and what it isn't. Special thanks to our sponsor, Posh Virtual Receptionists.

There's plenty of conventional wisdom about what makes a good legal brief or court opinion. Judge Robert E. Bacharach of the Denver-based 10th Circuit Court of Appeals says that when judges socialize, their conversations often devolve into discussions about language and pieces of writing they enjoy or revile.But Bacharach decided he wanted to dive deeper, to see what the science of psycholinguistics could teach lawyers and judges about how written words persuade an audience. The result was his new book, Legal Writing: A Judge's Perspective on the Science and Rhetoric of the Written Word, published by the ABA.Legal Writing is a slim volume, but it's packed with tips. It considers details as microscopic as a serif on a letter and as macroscopic as how to create an outline for an argument. In this episode of the Modern Law Library podcast, Bacharach chats about his own writing process; shares his top takeaways from the psycholinguists he consulted; and offers his advice for young litigators looking to hone their skills. 

Most of the spotlights are on the U.S. Supreme Court when it comes to legal cases that impact civil rights. But state supreme courts are the final arbiters of what each state's own constitution dictates. They can have enormous influence on Americans' civil rights and daily lives—and there isn't nearly as much scholarship available on them, particularly when it comes to civil rather than criminal cases. Political scientists James L. Gibson and Michael J. Nelson hope to change this with their new book, Judging Inequality: State Supreme Courts and the Inequality Crisis.When Gibson and Nelson set themselves the task of analyzing civil cases and the court makeups of all 50 state supreme courts, they realized without additional manpower it would be a daunting one, they tell Lee Rawles in this episode of the Modern Law Library podcast. With the help of students, they created a database to track the outcomes of seven kinds of civil cases that would come before each court, and looked to see which courts tended to support the "haves" against the "have nots." They also analyzed the backgrounds of each justice, to the best of their ability. One of their most important findings? It's not as facile as a red state/blue state divide.In this episode, Gibson and Nelson discuss the work that went into their study, the results they found most surprising, and what they as political scientists think that the legal profession should be discussing when it comes to the highest courts in each state.

In her debut novel, All Her Little Secrets, attorney Wanda M. Morris has written a legal thriller full of corporate intrigue and small-town secrets. Morris takes readers inside Atlanta boardrooms and back into the past of her heroine, Ellice Littlejohn. What would possess someone to react to the sight of her boss (and longtime married lover) shot to death in his office by closing the door and walking away without alerting anyone? The trauma behind Littlejohn's actions becomes clearer as readers discover more about her background, and they may have a hard time putting down the novel as Littlejohn tries to discover the real reason behind her subsequent promotion at work. Is she a pawn, a token or a fall guy? Can she protect the people she loves and make sure her long-buried secrets don't rise from the grave?In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Morris discusses her 13-year journey towards publication, tips she has for fellow lawyers who want to write books, and the motivations behind her characters' actions with the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles. While this interview remains spoiler-free, Morris reveals the backstories behind some of the characters in her book, and shares her thoughts on the real-life racism that is reflected in Littlejohn's experiences as the only Black woman attorney in an executive suite.