Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer Legal Talk Network

Now, this is a story all about how Sam Alito's wife got flipped-turned upside down.
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Sam Alito flew his flag upside down in the aftermath of the insurrection. He doesn't deny that, but he blames his wife for it. Dames, amirite? Aside from the obvious ethical issues implicated by having a Supreme Court justice visibly light in the "defending the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic" department, why is Alito so objectively bad at responding to his scandals? Next thing you know, he'll be blaming her for the Dobbs leak too. Meanwhile the California bar exam is running into bankruptcy and rather than address the problem, the State Bar is just gonna kick the can further down the road. And Elon Musk's lawyers again earn their reputation as the gang that can't shoot straight, managing to Streisand Effect a dispute with a Delaware law expert by threatening to fire a Biglaw firm if the professor filed his brief.

Trump's attorneys seems as asleep at the switch as their client.
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Having called Stormy Daniels a liar repeatedly in its opening, the Trump defense team was then shocked and appalled that the prosecution elicited testimony to rehabilitate her credibility. The hits didn't stop there as they attempted to get out of the mess they'd landed in by sex shaming someone whose sexuality is their whole business. Trump lawyers do a lot better when the judge is running their defense. Meanwhile, an organization moved to preemptively pare down Trump's SCOTUS shortlist to the least qualified, worst behaved candidates and its been a very Ponzi-rific week for one Biglaw firm.

Donald Trump, Drake, And James Ho... punchlines write themselves.
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Donald Trump's trial shenanigans continue. Is he going to violate the gag order again? It seems inevitable but... our prediction might shock you! But even if his unfiltered "Truthing" is behind him, there are so many other ways to show contempt of court. And a busy week in Morningside Heights as Columbia Law School students ask school to cancel exams in light of campus unrest, or at a minimum convert its optional pass/fail model to mandatory pass/fail to avoid placing a stigma on worried students. Then conservative judges announced a boycott of Columbia until their demands for "viewpoint diversity" are met. Also, small talk becomes big diss track talk as we devote a whole segment to Drake and Kendrick going to war and the legal implications.

The New York courtroom where Donald Trump is on trial is apparently unpleasant. Is that the former president's doing? The world may never know. Also, the fact that the racists are coming for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson isn't surprising -- but who gave them the green light? And, a judge learns a valuable lesson about hot mics and why you should always assume someone is listening.

Let's see if it pays off as well as a billionaire covering up an affair.
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Donald Trump's hush money trial kicks off after a week of Trump alienating everyone involved in the process by refusing to respect basic decorum and attempting to skirt the gag order by arguing that RTs aren't endorsements. The Am Law 100 is also out and we talk through some of the key takeaways and Judge Ho tried to defend his take on forum shopping and it's... not good.

We continue breaking down the U.S. News & World Report law school rankings and the chaos that its new methodology introduced. And we know exactly who to blame for breaking these rankings. Elon Musk recently went in for a deposition defended by Quinn Emanuel's Alex Spiro and earned a motion for sanctions. And a Berkeley Law protest goes viral, but all the "free speech" talk misses the mark.