Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer

Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer

Thinking Like A Lawyer is a podcast featuring Above the Law's Joe Patrice, Kathryn Rubino, and Chris Williams. Each episode, the hosts will take a topic experienced and enjoyed by regular people, and shine it through the prism of a legal framework. This will either reveal an awesome rainbow of thought, or a disorienting kaleidoscope of issues. Either way, it should be fun.

Episodes

Supreme Court Narrowly Passes Reading Comprehension Section

July 8, 2026 • 29 mins
But Sam Alito still has a job. ----- The Fourteenth Amendment lays out birthright citizenship in clear terms. Every subsequent legal challenge and all the scholarly work on the subject -- until about a year ago -- agreed on how to read it. Yet, the Supreme Court still managed to split on the question, with a 6-3 decision knocking down Donald Trump's executive order purporting to overturn the key constitutional provision -- that w...
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Alito's Outburst And Tough Times For Partners

July 1, 2026 • 32 mins
And a farewell look back as co-host Chris Williams departs the show. ------ Supreme Court action gets spicy as Sam Alito threw a fit from the bench. After Justice Sotomayor took the opportunity to systematically dismantle his reasoning in the asylum case, Alito spoke up out of turn to explain that he'd have brought better arguments if he'd known she planned to dogwalk him. And Biglaw isn't the collegial environment it u...
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Todd Blanche Disgrace Train Rolls On

June 24, 2026 • 36 mins
Supreme Court ignores Judge Newman's rights. ----- All the news that's fit to print agrees that Todd Blanche isn't fit to head the Department of Justice. Something about the whole transforming the DOJ into a weaponized arm of Donald Trump's political grievances thing. The Supreme Court dodged the ongoing Judge Pauline Newman debacle in the Federal Circuit. Her fellow judges have performed an end run around the Con...
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Federal Judges Gone Wild

June 17, 2026 • 30 mins
And a new ranking of top law schools. ------ Above the Law's Top 50 Law School rankings are out and a new school tops the list. But a number of other high prestige law schools have slipped out of the top 10... and it's mostly a matter of cost. Meanwhile, we have two federal judges out of control. Judge Ryan Nelson faces misdemeanor criminal charges over a parking lot altercation, which would be a bad look for a fed...
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Sex In Chambers Met With Slap On Wrist

June 3, 2026 • 33 mins
A federal judge carried on a two-year affair with a high-ranking law enforcement officer by having sex in chambers and lying about it to investigators. The Eleventh Circuit responded with a private reprimand, concealing the judge's identity. But the judges didn't think through their anonymization strategy nearly well enough and AI cracked the case in minutes, revealing Judge Eleanor Ross of the Northern District of Georgi...
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Judge Orders Law Firm To Write Lesson On How Not To Be Naughty Lawyers

May 27, 2026 • 29 mins
And the Federal Circuit's Schoolhouse Rock moment is as damning as it is embarrassing. ----- Quinn Emanuel earned $3 million in sanctions from Judge Edward Chen, who described a "deeply disturbing" culture of lawyering. But worse, the judge ordered the team involved to complete an 8-hour ethics course that the firm itself must design. The Federal Circuit decided to put together a bizarre theme song and music video for t...
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Don't Let The Client Write The Brief As A Treat

May 20, 2026 • 29 mins
More on Biglaw's insider trading scandal and a rare feel good story. ----- We keep learning more from Biglaw's insider trading scandal, with the identity of the Wachtell co-conspirator revealed. How did this scheme succeed for so long? The Department of Justice continued its battle to allow Trump to unilaterally rip up national monuments with another barely coherent brief. They may say "the customer is always right," bu...
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Stealth Layoffs And Sam Alito On Tilt

May 13, 2026 • 33 mins
Also a major insider trading case strikes Biglaw. ----- The legal industry as a whole continues to rake in cash, but a few firms have shown signs of trouble. Reports out of Paul Weiss bear all the hallmarks of a stealth layoff, with litigation associates being let go for "performance" issues that never came up before. Meanwhile, a recent megamerger firm found itself cutting back on supposed redundancies. The Supreme Cou...
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Are There Any Adults Left At The Department Of Justice?

May 6, 2026 • 29 mins
Comey snaps sea shells by the sea shore. ----- A once-venerable institution, the Department of Justice is in disarray these days. The Attorney General got fired, multiple U.S. Attorneys have been booted as illegally appointed, judges have started doling out contempt charges, and Kash Patel is being openly branded J. Edgar Boozer. It got worse last week, as government lawyers filed a brief that -- it seemed -- they handed ove...
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Kash Patel's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

April 29, 2026 • 34 mins
The Atlantic published an article based on multiple insider accounts describing low morale at the FBI, citing current director Kash Patel's drinking and frequent absences. Patel promised swift legal retaliation and made good with an underwhelming $250 million defamation complaint. Amidst this scandal, Patel took to the stage with Acting AG Todd Blanche to announce criminal charges against the Southern Pover...
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Law Firms Are Drowning In Cash. Trump's PAC Is Drowning In Legal Bills.

April 22, 2026 • 32 mins
And is Alito really going to retire? ----- The 2026 Super Rich list has 37 firms clearing $1.45M RPL and $625K PPL thresholds after Am Law had to raise because last year's bar was too easy. Then Kirkland proved what super rich really means by dropping a guaranteed $80M over three years to snatch a star lawyer from Wachtell. The PAC Trump uses to pay lawyers is nearly $500K in the red and owes roughly $1.6...
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Rankings Drama Hits Law Schools, Law Firms

April 15, 2026 • 34 mins
And a crazy billing story. ----- It's that time of year where publications look deep into the souls of complex, nuanced legal institutions and assign them a fixed ranking. U.S. News and World Report issued its latest law school rankings and for the first time ever, Yale has lost its death grip on first place. The rest of the T14 -- which isn't really a thing at this point, since its whole argument for being was that the same...
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Trump's Awful No Good Day At The Supreme Court

April 8, 2026 • 31 mins
And Pam Bondi earned a pink slip. ----- The Supreme Court heard oral argument on Trump's effort to erase birthright citizenship from the Constitution via executive order, and it went as poorly for the administration as expected. But that didn't deter Trump from taking the unprecedented step of attending the argument personally. The president didn't last the whole time though, heading for the exit mid-proceeding as it became ...
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Afroman And Elon Had Very Different Trial Experiences

March 25, 2026 • 30 mins
And the DOJ had an atrocious week. ------ Rapper turned First Amendment hero Afroman took his frustration over a heavy-handed police raid on his Ohio home and turned it into music. When the officers sued him for millions for hurting their feelings, a jury told them to take their $3.9 million demand and pound it like lemon pound cake. Unfortunately, what happened to Afroman happens all the time in America and t...
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AI Hallucinations And Judicial Derangements

March 18, 2026 • 37 mins
And Legalweek talk. ------ It was Legalweek last week, and we discuss the big happenings from the show -- which is pretty much all AI talk -- but while we saw splashy product announcements about the future of working as a lawyer within an AI-enhanced workflow, an assistant U.S. Attorney got bounced from the job for letting AI run too much of the workflow. But the most imaginative large language models wouldn't have...
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John Roberts Suffers The Slings And Arrows Of Pure Rage Trump

March 4, 2026 • 31 mins
And the bar examiners prove once again that they don't care about anyone but themselves. ----- After striking down the Trump administration's tariffs, Chief Justice Roberts has earned nothing but disrespect and abuse from the president he put in power. From a hearty handshake and Trump telling him, "Thank you, won't forget it" last year to getting bypassed in the handshake line at this year's State of the Union, it's been a long ...
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Supreme Court Airs Dirty Laundry

February 25, 2026 • 35 mins
Things get testy down at the courthouse. ----- The Supreme Court struck down Donald Trump's effort to use IEEPA to impose arbitrary tariffs across the world and in the process delivered around 170 pages of epic shade. Meanwhile, the administration informed prospective military lawyers that they're no longer allowed to attend the top law schools in the country, presumably because the Pentagon is getting tired of lawyers ...
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AI Takes The Blame, Epstein Takes The Careers

February 18, 2026 • 31 mins
And law students finally get some good news. With a Biglaw firm officially blaming staff layoffs on AI, what is it going to look like if and when layoffs come for lawyers? It's unlikely to look the same for every Biglaw business model. And it could look even more different for boutiques. Embattled Goldman Sachs chief legal officer Kathryn Ruemmler announced that she'd be leaving her role after her Jeffrey ...
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Epstein Fallout Rocks Legal As Admin Tries To Deflect From ICE

February 11, 2026 • 37 mins
This is likely only the beginning of the reckoning. ----- As predicted on last week's episode, Brad Karp left the top post at Paul Weiss following the disclosure of friendly correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein. But Karp wasn't the only Biglaw lawyer in the files, nor were his conversations the most troubling. A former Clifford Chance trainee drafted a sex contract with Epstein, Goldman Sachs GC Kathy Ruemmler ...
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Accountability In An Age Of Unaccountability

February 4, 2026 • 27 mins
Between Epstein files and ethical breaches, a reckoning seems so close yet so far. ----- A flurry of stories hit the legal world all at once last week, with the government responding to another ICE killing in Minnesota by... arresting journalists and dumping Epstein files. And while the Epstein files don't represent the entire universe -- or, perhaps, even the most relevant -- files about Epstein's dealings, they have set of...
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