Legal Talk Network - Law News and Legal Topics

Legal Talk Network
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The Legal Talk Network feed is curated weekly by the Legal Talk Network team, featuring three standout episodes from across the network. Each selection showcases smart conversations, timely topics, and leading voices in the legal industry making it easy to stay up to date with the most compelling content LTN has to offer. Legal Talk Network is the premier provider of podcasts for attorneys and legal professionals, with more than 25 shows exploring today’s most important legal issues, current events, technology, and the future of law. Legal Talk Network's shows are hosted by today’s leading industry professionals and feature high profile guests.

  1. 4h ago

    Doing Hiring Right: Tips From an HR Professional | New Solo

    Hiring anyone is different from hiring properly. In this episode, tips from HR expert Jeff Levin, the founder, CEO, and president of Levin HR Consulting, a fractional HR consulting partner. Many law firms don’t put real thought into hiring, they’re “winging it,” Levin says. The key to successful hiring is developing a dependable, repeatable process. Get organized. When you’re running a small firm, your own firm, you are the HR department, and you can’t take that responsibility lightly. If you’re hiring, sit down and think about it for a while. Give yourself the time to work on it. What do you want? What skills are important, vital even? “If you can come up with what that list is before you begin, that’s your anchor,” Levin says. And how do you write the perfect job posting?  Hiring is a delicate dance, and it can also have consequences, even from asking the wrong or improper questions. And if it’s too much, when do you call in a professional HR consultant to help with the process? Topics: Hiring the right people as you build your team and scale your business is too important to be left to chance and whims. You need a reliable, repeatable process. Build a profile before you start interviewing. What skills, what experience, what capabilities will the right person have? If you don’t make a list, you’re flailing around the dark. Build a “success profile” for each position. It’s OK to admit something’s not right after you’ve made the hire. Sometimes you have deal with that, whether that means an improvement plan or ultimately parting ways.   Resources: Microsoft Excel Clio legal software ClioCon 2026 ABA Techshow 2027 Subscribe to New Solo: https://play.megaphone.fm/snklydceswminrbke6phsq

    Doing Hiring Right: Tips From an HR Professional | New Solo

  2. 1d ago

    Custody Wars: Why High-Conflict Cases Get So Ugly and How to Keep Yours From Spiraling with Attorney Lindsay Belmont | Confessions of a Divorce Assassin

    In a custody case, a good legal outcome can still fall short of protecting a family. Attorney Lindsay Belmont of Nebraska Legal Group, who has spent over a decade in private practice and gravitates toward the most contentious custody cases, explains why fear of the unknown drives so much conflict between divorcing parents and what judges want to see from them instead. She breaks down how courts handle parental alienation, including a case where she proved everything on paper and the relationship still did not recover, and why she argues that neither mom nor dad should be presumed to deserve a particular custody arrangement. Belmont walks through how a child’s age shapes a parenting schedule, from a 2-2-3 rotation for young children to week on, week off for older kids, and what happens when a teenager refuses to follow a court order, including a judge’s blunt question to a father who wanted his 16-year-old forced to comply. The conversation also covers when courts interview children, why counseling for kids can be ordered over a parent’s objection, and why a CPS finding of “unfounded” or “insufficient evidence” is not the end of the road when abuse is alleged. Belmont closes with a candid look at whether divorce hurts kids and what she most wants parents to remember when the dust settles. Subscribe to Confessions of a Divorce Assassin: https://play.megaphone.fm/yddxa_zfqjimbgjtoqzijw

    Custody Wars: Why High-Conflict Cases Get So Ugly and How to Keep Yours From Spiraling with Attorney Lindsay Belmont | Confessions of a Divorce Assassin

  3. 3d ago

    What do we know about the first woman judge in the United States? | Modern Law Library

    When Tracy Thomas first joined the faculty of the University of Akron School of Law, the dean assumed she must know all about their local heroine, Judge Florence Allen. "She was literally staring at me from my classroom," says Thomas. "There was a picture of Florence Allen on one of our old concrete wall classrooms." Born in 1884, Florence Allen would chalk up many firsts. In 1918, she became the first female prosecutor in Ohio. In 1920, she became the first female judge in Ohio when she won election to the Cuyahoga County Common Police Court in Cleveland. In 1922, she was elected to become the nation's first woman to serve on a state supreme court. And in 1934, she was appointed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, the first woman to be a federal appellate judge. She even came within a hair's breadth of being nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, by two different presidents. But who was Florence Allen, and why did it take so long for her successors to make it to the bench? After her retirement in 1959, the next woman to be appointed to the 6th Circuit was in 1979. Although she joined the Ohio Supreme Court in 1922, another woman wouldn't serve on that court until the 1980s. In her new book, The First Woman Judge: The Life and Legacy of Florence Allen, Thomas delves into Allen's suffragette connections, her political ambitions, and the two women who would be her life partners. She shares how Thomas navigated in a world of men, and built a base of support from women of both political parties. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Thomas and host Lee Rawles talk about the responses of Allen's judicial colleagues to her ascending the bench (one took to his bed for two days); her defense of another female judge during the Lavender Scare; and why she ended up having to hear so many tax and patent cases.  Subscribe to Modern Law Library: https://play.megaphone.fm/93wtgxnatpsubsdxwklzwq

    What do we know about the first woman judge in the United States? | Modern Law Library

  4. Oct 21

    What 250 Years of the Rule of Law Asks of Today's Lawyers – 2026 ALPS Bar Leaders Retreat | On the Road with Legal Talk Network

    As Virginia marks 250 years since its lawyers helped shape American democracy, Susan Bradford Tarley, President of the Virginia State Bar, is framing her term around what that legacy still demands of the profession today. A real estate and business law partner at Tarley Robinson PLC, she's built her presidency around four priorities: foundational ethics, attorney wellness, the bar's strategic plan, and Virginia's shortage of lawyers in underserved areas, detailed in the bar's own EGAD Report on where new attorneys are and aren't landing. She also weighs in on attorneys caught submitting briefs built on AI-hallucinated cases, some of whom doubled down even after a judge flagged them, arguing it's a symptom of skipping the work rather than a problem with the tool itself. Tarley closes on wellness as the precondition for everything else, arguing that lawyers can only take the small steps that sustain the rule of law if they put their own oxygen masks on first. Proving once again that ALPS Insurance puts the "treat" in retreat, they gathered leaders in law from across the country this summer. These sit-down conversations reveal flavors of leadership and legal trends from a variety of perspectives. Cool takes, one scoop at a time, recorded live at the 2026 ALPS Bar Leaders Retreat in Missoula, MT. Subscribe to On the Road with Legal Talk Network: https://play.megaphone.fm/h8vh3xgmrsy2c2ilp1avcw

    What 250 Years of the Rule of Law Asks of Today's Lawyers – 2026 ALPS Bar Leaders Retreat | On the Road with Legal Talk Network

  5. Oct 19

    Seat at the Table: Cash Flow Practices That Support Firm Growth | Un-Billable Hour

    In this episode of the Un-Billable Hour’s Seat at the Table: Being a great lawyer is important, being able to afford to be a great lawyer also matters. Billing and collections are an important part of your firm. How much time do you spend understanding how you run your business vs. How much time you spend “working.” You’ve got to bill as well as produce results. Take control of how you’re paid and when. Cash crunches happen. But you can navigate them if you plan, prepare, and keep an eye on your bottom line, every day. The money often shows up later than the work does. Nobody told you that. Practicing law and producing results that help real people with real problems are wonderful things. But you are also a business, and people depend on you, and cash flow matters. Here’s where it gets tough. So how do you know from looking at the bottom line, how a firm – your firm – is really doing? Is it making money? What percent of revenue should go to payroll or marketing, where are your leaks?  This episode of Seat at the Table features money experts Amira Hasenbush, Brooke Lively, and Joy Lutz as they share insights with Christopher T. Anderson and get into the nitty gritty of running a law firm that not only produces results for clients but also produces profits for the owners.  Hear how a firm can look profitable on paper but still not produce profits. Taxes, expenses, debt, billing “slippage,” and collection slowdowns all add up. Are you seeing the big picture? Cash flow, payroll, unintended outflows, and bookkeeping are all vital to your bottom line. Learn how to train yourself for profit. Mentioned in This Episode: Clio Legal Trends Report Lawpay ClioCon 2026, Oct. 26-27, 2026 Legal Talk Network Unbillable Hour …And of course Wimpy! Subscribe to Un-Billable Hour: https://play.megaphone.fm/qxfro4f-suekajnwe_solw

    Seat at the Table: Cash Flow Practices That Support Firm Growth | Un-Billable Hour

  6. Oct 16

    The Numbers Don’t Lie: How Data Analysis Can Uncover the Truth | The Paralegal Voice

    Bobby Williams is passionate about helping legal professionals find the truth in data. His lengthy career traces back to his natural curiosity in college for all things technical. He taught himself how things work and how digital tools can be applied to data analysis and reveal the clues.  “My job is connecting people to insights,” Williams says, sharing how facts buried in the digital jungle can unearth underlying truths. The hard part is helping everyday people – attorneys, judges, and jurors – understand the process. “My job is to educate them.”  As a paralegal professional, you may not need to manage the digital trail. But Williams shares tips for learning about what’s out there and the available services so you can help your team understand what they need and the kind of experts who can help.  The digital tools around us are here to stay. Cell phones, laptops, cloud storage, digital records management, and even AI hold clues and are part of our lives. That means they are now part of your legal process. If you (and your firm) aren’t keeping up, you’re falling behind.  Mentioned in This Episode: Black eDiscovery Network “The Journey to Becoming a Digital Forensics Expert with Bobby Williams,” iDSTalks YouTube Perplexity AI NotebookLM Notion Claude AI Dashboard AI NALA, The Paralegal Association NALA Conference & Expo 2026 Subscribe to The Paralegal Voice: https://play.megaphone.fm/sq1e-saoq6ga2fue1-y_qw

    The Numbers Don’t Lie: How Data Analysis Can Uncover the Truth | The Paralegal Voice

  7. Oct 14

    Is the Jury Trial Still Relevant in Modern Litigation? | State Bar of Texas Podcast

    Statistics show that 90-98% of both civil and criminal cases across the nation are resolved before trial. With seemingly fewer cases reaching a jury, how do we, as legal professionals, preserve a deep appreciation for the jury’s role in our systems of justice? Rocky Dhir welcomes Judge Les Hatch and litigator Cade Browning to discuss our Constitutional right to trial by jury and its enduring importance in our society.  They discuss the virtues of jury trials and their function in our judicial system, then share best practices for jury selection and trial preparation.  Subscribe to State Bar of Texas Podcast: https://play.megaphone.fm/_hh0l5izt4mfkr1zmxo_cg

    Is the Jury Trial Still Relevant in Modern Litigation? | State Bar of Texas Podcast

  8. Oct 13

    Could a shadow court restore the balance of power to American democracy? | Modern Law Library

    Julie Suk is worried about American democracy.  "Over time, the control of our constitutional future has really been in the domain of the judiciary and the executive branch, with the judiciary increasingly green-lighting actions by the executive branch," Suk tells host Lee Rawles. "And at the same time, our institutions, our lawmaking institutions that are supposed to represent the people have become less and less representative because of gerrymandering, and also less and less capable of making laws that push back against judicial and executive power."  In her new book, The Shadow Court: Rescuing Democracy from the Supreme Court, Suk proposes one potential tool to fight back.  The "shadow docket" may be a familiar term to people who have been paying attention to growing controversies over the U.S. Supreme Court's emergency decisions. But a shadow court is a different–and older–concept, Suk says. Just as a shadow parliament is intended to be a check on the power of a parliament, a shadow court could issue legal opinions independent of h a supreme court's actions. Many other countries have constitutional courts in addition to courts of litigation, that issue advisory opinions on constitutional issues.  Suk proposes that Congress could create "a watchdog institution that provided an alternative jurisprudence or an alternative set of rulings so that the people could know what would we have in America if we actually had institutions that were designed better for the purposes of constitutional lawmaking and constitutional change."  One benefit of an Article I shadow court would be the ability for its judges to weigh in on constitutional questions without the necessity of a plaintiff with standing bringing a case through the entire Article III court system to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, Suk says. They could evaluate pending legislation or executive actions with much greater speed.  "And that opinion is advisory," says Suk. "It's not binding on Congress. It doesn't invalidate the state statute. It doesn't suspend the operation of the executive order in the same way that a court can issue a preliminary or permanent injunction. The shadow court's opinion being advisory, I would say could still, if it's designed properly, could still have a tremendous effect on our politics and also on our law." In this episode, Suk and Rawles discuss how other countries have used shadow parliaments and constitutional courts to safeguard democracy. They also discuss ways to make a shadow court more reflective of changing public attitudes, and Suk's Lego-piece theory for improving the United States government. Subscribe to Modern Law Library: https://play.megaphone.fm/93wtgxnatpsubsdxwklzwq

    Could a shadow court restore the balance of power to American democracy? | Modern Law Library
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The Legal Talk Network feed is curated weekly by the Legal Talk Network team, featuring three standout episodes from across the network. Each selection showcases smart conversations, timely topics, and leading voices in the legal industry making it easy to stay up to date with the most compelling content LTN has to offer. Legal Talk Network is the premier provider of podcasts for attorneys and legal professionals, with more than 25 shows exploring today’s most important legal issues, current events, technology, and the future of law. Legal Talk Network's shows are hosted by today’s leading industry professionals and feature high profile guests.

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