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PODCAST

Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer

Legal Talk Network

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.

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All Episodes

29:41

Law Firms Are Drowning In Cash. Trump's PAC Is...

Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer ·

2026/04/22

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 $1.6M to 12 firms. When will lawyers learn that he's never going to pay his bills... at least with

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34:10

Rankings Drama Hits Law Schools, Law Firms

Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer ·

2026/04/15

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 14 schools never fell out of the top 14 -- is also topsy-turvy, with the

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31:06

Trump's Awful No Good Day At The Supreme Court

Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer ·

2026/04/08

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 clear that his Solicitor General was getting boatraced by the competition

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30:44

Afroman And Elon Had Very Different Trial Experiences

Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer ·

2026/03/25

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 there's not a lot being done to stop it. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice had a rough

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37:05

AI Hallucinations And Judicial Derangements

Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer ·

2026/03/18

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 predicted opening a federal judicial opinion with the phrase "swinging dicks." That

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31:53

John Roberts Suffers The Slings And Arrows Of Pure...

Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer ·

2026/03/04

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 strange trip for Roberts. And yet he wouldn't have it any other way

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35:20

Supreme Court Airs Dirty Laundry

Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer ·

2026/02/25

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 who can actually identify a war crime when they see one. Finally, the public

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28:29

AI Takes The Blame, Epstein Takes The Careers

Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer ·

2026/02/18

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 Epstein connections came out in the last file dump. And we found out that the late Ken Starr

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37:21

Epstein Fallout Rocks Legal As Admin Tries To Deflect...

Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer ·

2026/02/11

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 made a joke with Epstein that normally you wouldn't make with someone who already pleaded

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27:17

Accountability In An Age Of Unaccountability

Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer ·

2026/02/04

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 off downstream shockwaves in the legal industry. Meanwhile, another judge

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31:12

Trump's Cook Case Looks Cooked

Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer ·

2026/01/29

After taking a hacksaw to nearly a century's worth of congressionally approved independent agencies, the Supreme Court appeared to hit a wall during oral argument over Trump's attempted firing of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. The Unitary Executive Theory is all fun and games until the justices start worrying about their personal finances. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice now takes the position that the text of the Alien Enemies Act would have authorized the unilateral deportation of the

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30:13

Alienating Our Affections

Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer ·

2026/01/21

Supreme Court hacking and the end of a Biglaw era.------ The Biglaw world continues to watch single-tier partnerships slip away with Sullivan & Cromwell joining the income partner trend. Will the industry have any single-tier firms left by the end of the year? Also former Senator and current Hogan Lovells lawyer Kyrsten Sinema tagged with an alienation of affection tort from her former bodyguard's soon-to-be ex-wife. Come for the bad soap opera plot, stay for the MDMA-inspired psychedelic trip

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36:42

Minnesota Becoming A Constitutional Law Issue-Spotter

Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer ·

2026/01/14

And Judge Ho's auditioning for MAGA favor takes a disgusting turn.------ With polls showing more Americans now favor abolishing ICE than keeping it, a lot of people will be disappointed to learn that the law is set up to make it almost impossible to hold anyone accountable for killing Renee Good. From sovereign immunity, to the Federal Officer Removal Statute, to the decline of Bivens, to qualified immunity, the whole system is arrayed to shield federal agents from legal redress. Speaking of the

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35:00

2026 Prediction Time!

Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer ·

2026/01/07

Welcome to another dumpster fire of a year.----- We begin the year by peering into our crystal balls and issuing some predictions for 2026. Who will be fired? What's going to happen with law schools? Is a big change on the horizon for Biglaw? Our predictions will inevitably be wrong, but we'll offer them with a lot of confidence -- just like AI would. Also a whole lot of sports talk for a law podcast.

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40:46

A Look Back At The 2025 Dumpster Fire

Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer ·

2025/12/31

Three trends dominated this year's coverage.----- We've made it to the end of the year! And what do we have to show for it as a profession? Our most elite law firms signed deals rather than stand up for themselves in the face of illegal Trump bullying efforts. Others quietly tried to erase their history to avoid the administration's ire. But some firms did fight back and achieved consistent success in court, while the dealmakers got heckled and derided by young lawyers. And, as anyone who has

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33:01

Closing Out The Year With Mergers And Attacks On The...

Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer ·

2025/12/24

Ho ho ho...gan Lovells merging.----- A critical analysis of the best variety of Coca-Cola product gives way to a conversation about law this week. Cadwalader ends its tumultuous year -- involving a Trump administration capitulation and a series of defections -- with a big quasi-transatlantic merger announcement with cross-Pond Hogan Lovells. Christmas came early -- to the extent anyone thinks of U.S. News law school rankings as "Christmas" -- with a prediction about the new law school pecking

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36:02

At Least The Robots In The Coming War Against Humans...

Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer ·

2025/12/17

If you want 2025 in a nutshell, it doesn't get much better than a blundering Secretary of Defense bragging that the Pentagon bought an expensive, bespoke AI bot and it immediately started calling out the Trump administration for committing war crimes. As the legal industry ventures into a hallucinatory AI frontier, it's worth remembering that sometimes the bots outperform the human lawyers. At the Supreme Court, Justice Sotomayor tries to convince her colleagues not to blow up the federal government

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33:14

This Is Why We Have Bar Exams

Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer ·

2025/12/10

And the DOJ continues to be a hot mess.----- Kim Kardashian is trying to enter the legal profession without a law school education. The bar exam is a deeply flawed and largely unnecessary test, but the best case for having some kind of licensing exam is to make sure anyone taking an alternative path to a law license meets the minimum requirements for a lawyer. Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to oscillate between bluster and blunder. Lindsey Halligan's doomed reign as quasi U.S

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35:17

A Bad Week For Trump's Fake U.S. Attorneys

Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer ·

2025/12/03

And a shorter summer associate program.----- While most of us celebrated Thanksgiving, some of Trump's phony U.S. Attorneys were the real turkeys. First, a conservative leaning panel of the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the million dollar sanctions against Donald Trump and the parking garage lawyer he claims to have running the District of New Jersey. Then his Eastern District cosplaying prosecutor managed to lose not one, but two of the high profile revenge cases she brought. In other news, a major

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33:57

Bonus Season Begins In Earnest

Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer ·

2025/11/26

Bonuses and botched prosecutions.----- Bonus season is underway, and Biglaw firms are lining up to reward associates for a year's worth of effort. The market scale -- unless some firm breaks rank and crashes the party -- tracks last year, which can be a bit anticlimactic, but with the economy possibly resting on the precipice of recession, this was probably all we could hope for. Also, we discuss Lindsey Halligan's epic fail in the James Comey case -- and we recorded this before the judge tossed

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