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PODCAST

On The Merits

On The Merits takes you behind the scenes of the legal world and the inner workings of law firms. This podcast offers in-depth analysis on the latest trends, challenges, and opportunities shaping the business of law and the legal industry overall. You"ll gain insights into how the latest government actions, policies, and business developments are impacting the industry and hear from leading attorneys, legal scholars, industry experts, and our own team of journalists as they share their perspectives

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All Episodes

14:10

Latham & Watkins M&A Leaders on the 'Year of the Mega...

On The Merits ·

2026/01/13

Latham & Watkins beat out its rival Kirkland & Ellis in our annual League Tables ranking of M&A activity for 2025. And on this episode of our podcast, On The Merits, the firm's M&A co-chairs talk about what went down in what one called "the year of the mega deal."Alex Kelly and Paul Kukish spoke with Bloomberg Law reporter Mahira Dayal about why Latham was able to work on almost 800 deals in 2025 totaling more than $780 billion in value. Kukish said AI and AI-adjacent deals were a big part of the

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14:25

Law Firm Crackup Comes Amid Anti-Plaintiff Mood in...

On The Merits ·

2026/01/06

There's never a good time for a law firm to see one of its most prominent partners leave and take several attorneys with him. But this is especially bad timing for Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann.The firm specializes in representing shareholders suing companies in Delaware, the incorporation capital of the world. But ever since Elon Musk reincorporated Tesla outside the state in response to a lawsuit over his pay package—a lawsuit Bernstein Litowitz led—the state has changed its laws to make

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16:59

Trump, Mergers and AI: A Tumultuous Year in the World...

On The Merits ·

2025/12/30

It's not a very controversial statement to say that Donald Trump's attacks on law firms were the biggest Big Law story in 2025. But, according to the guests on today's episode of our podcast, On The Merits, the ramifications of those attacks are still playing out and may spill over into next year and beyond.Bloomberg Law editors Chris Opfer and Alessandra Rafferty said the attacks are still affecting the decisions firms make, or don't make, in hard-to-detect ways—even though the president is no

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15:24

Cadwalader Loses Its Long Struggle to Stay Independent

On The Merits ·

2025/12/23

New York's oldest law firm answered the outstanding question surrounding its ability to remain independent with a resounding no when it announced a merger with Hogan Lovells last week.As Bloomberg Law reporter Meghan Tribe tells it, Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft had been in a gradual decline since the 2008 global financial crisis. It also failed to adapt to the new reality of the legal industry in which lateral hiring is not just commonplace but necessary for a firm's survival, she said. On

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24:27

Everyone Hates Early Law School Recruiting, But...

On The Merits ·

2025/12/19

It's become common now for firms to recruit elite law students even before the end of their first semester of their first year of law school, something that would have been unheard of before the pandemic.That's a far cry from the days when firms waited until the summer before the 2L year to start recruiting students through on campus interviews. It's a trend that hurts everyone involved, according to the guests on today's episode of our podcast, On The Merits: columnist David Lat and Nikia Gray,

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15:58

Client Relationships Suffer as Lawyers Put Billing on...

On The Merits ·

2025/12/09

Now is the time of year when many law firms pressure their attorneys to get their clients to pay bills before the end of the year. It's something that clients loathe just as much as their attorneys, according to today's guest on our podcast, On The Merits. Eric Dodson Greenberg, the general counsel of Cox Media Group, said the lawyer-client relationship can suffer when firms bill too aggressively and not thoughtfully enough—a problem made worse by the move toward automated billing. He said he's

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16:53

OpenAI's GC Chang Shares Insights from 'Extremely...

On The Merits ·

2025/12/02

OpenAI is a relatively new tech startup with the litigation demands of a massive Fortune 500 company. That means that Che Chang, its general counsel, has had to scale up his department fast.On today's episode of our podcast, On The Merits, Chang speaks with Bloomberg Law reporter Aruni Soni about how he hires lawyers to work for the ChatGPT maker and how OpenAI works with its outside law firms. On top of these usual legal officer duties, Chang discusses the "immense responsibility" of guiding

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14:04

Brad Karp Heckling Shows Anger at Law Firms Hasn't Faded

On The Merits ·

2025/11/24

It's been a difficult year for Brad Karp, chair of Wall Street law firm Paul Weiss. In January he suffered a heart attack and then, a few months later, he chose to strike a pro bono deal with the Trump administration to stave off a punitive executive order. In a recent speech at a gala event in New York, Karp said the latter was more painful than the former. But during that speech, a fellow attorney stood up and heckled him—an indication of how raw feelings within the legal industry still are

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12:29

McDermott Wooing Outside Investment May Portend...

On The Merits ·

2025/11/18

As Big Law looks for ways to scale up, McDermott Will & Schulte says it's looking at outside investment in the firm—a move that could set off a paradigm shift in how law firms run their businesses. If it does sell a part of itself to investors, McDermott would be by far the largest publicly known firm to take this step. Outside investment represents a new source of capital for law firms looking to expand, but does come with myriad risks and potential roadblocks. On this episode of our

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14:47

Top In-House Lawyers Absorb More Responsibility, Much...

On The Merits ·

2025/11/10

The top lawyers at the largest publicly traded companies in America are being asked to wear many hats at once—and also getting paid handsomely to do so.That's the takeaway from a recent story by Bloomberg Law senior reporters Brian Baxter and Andrew Ramonas, who crunched data from SEC filings of S&P 500 companies and found out how much these attorneys are making. Alphabet's J. Kent Walker Jr. leads the list with a total compensation package exceeding $30 million. On this episode of our podcast,

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17:10

Ropes & Gray Is Exception, Not the Rule, for...

On The Merits ·

2025/11/04

Most of the biggest law firms in the US have a two-tier partnership model, where some partners have equity in the firm while others don't. So it was a bit of a surprise when the firm Ropes & Gray announced last month it will be sticking with its one-tier model. Is this a sign that the trend toward non-equity partners is starting to reverse? Not according to today's guests on our podcast, On The Merits, law firm consultant Janet Stanton with Adam Smith Esq. and legal recruiter Scott Love with The

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20:07

Firms That Did Trump Deals Forgot They Were Law...

On The Merits ·

2025/10/28

On this episode of our podcast, On The Merits, we take another look at the reasoning behind the deals law firms struck with the Trump administration earlier this year to avoid punitive executive orders.We previously heard from Yale Law School professor John Morley, who said these firms had no choice because an executive order could have kickstarted a devastating run on the partnership. Today's podcast guest sees it differently. David McGowan, a professor at the University of San Diego School

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14:21

Goodwin Chair on Revenue Rise and New Competitors for...

On The Merits ·

2025/10/21

Goodwin Procter made a splash this month when it announced it had raked in $2.7 billion in the 2025 fiscal year, a record for the firm and a 12% gain from the previous yearOn this episode of our news podcast, On The Merits, we hear from the firm's chair, Anthony McCusker, about how Goodwin managed this feat. He tells Bloomberg Law reporter Tatyana Monnay that he attributes the firm's recent success to a long-term strategic plan it developed called "Goodwin 2033." He also talks about where he

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13:47

What a GC Wants to Hear From His Outside Law Firms on AI

On The Merits ·

2025/10/16

Today's guest on our podcast, On The Merits, is a general counsel who is looking for more from the law firms trying to win his business. Specifically, he wants to hear more about how and why they're using AI.Eric Dodson Greenberg is the top lawyer at Cox Media Group, which owns dozens of TV and radio stations across the country. He recently wrote a series of articles for Bloomberg Law about how generative AI will change the relationship between law firms and their corporate clients—and not

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14:25

Trump Attacks Could Have Killed Law Firms, Yale Prof...

On The Merits ·

2025/10/07

President Donald Trump's attacks on law firms have hand their intended impact, even as courts shoot down executive orders against some as unconstitutional and the details of White House deals with others remain unclear, according to Yale Law School professor John Morley. "The point here is to extract a demonstrative form of obedience," Morely said. He said he's already seen a "chilling effect" with firms less willing to take on matters pushing back against the administration than in Trump's

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12:02

NY's Oldest Law Firm Loses Key Partners, Faces Tough...

On The Merits ·

2025/09/30

You don't get to be the oldest law firm in New York without weathering some rough spots. But this may be one of the most difficult periods Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft has ever gone through. The Wall Street firm, which this week announced a new managing co-partner, has lost nearly three dozen partners just this year. And not all of them have left because of the firm's controversial deal with President Trump for free legal services. On today's episode of our podcast, On The Merits, Bloomberg

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12:28

Every Law Firm Should Build Their Own AI, Yale...

On The Merits ·

2025/09/25

Law firms "have gold sitting on their hard drives," according to Yale Law School professor Scott Shapiro.Shapiro has enthusiastically embraced the use of generative AI in his classroom. He says firms should draw on the mountains of proprietary information at their fingertips to build their own tools. "If only they would train the large language models correctly, they, I believe, would get absolutely stupendous results," he said. Shapiro spoke to Bloomberg Law editor Jessie Kokrda Kamens

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19:13

Data Center Explosion Hands Big Law Cross-Practice...

On The Merits ·

2025/09/23

On today's episode of On The Merits we hear from three lawyers working in the white hot world of data center projects. Mike Rechtin and Justin Stolte are, respectively, real estate and energy partners with Latham & Watkins, and Michelle Kallen is an appellate and advocacy partner at Steptoe."The latest number that I've seen is a $50 billion annual investment in the data center construction area by 2030," Stolte tells Roy Strom. Stolte talks about how his firm has organized to address the

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12:17

Why Law Schools are Making a 'Big Mistake' in AI Era...

On The Merits ·

2025/09/18

The number of law students who graduated in the class of 2024 spiked compared to previous years. That worries Nikia Gray, the head of the National Association for Law Placement."I think it's going to be a big mistake for law schools to continue to admit large law school class sizes," she said, "when we can predict with some pretty good certainty that GenAI is changing the business models of firms and their hiring practices." Gray spoke to Bloomberg Law editor Jessie Kokrda Kamens on our

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14:49

Trump's Law Firm Deals May Have Hurt Headcount: David...

On The Merits ·

2025/09/16

It's still not clear what, if any, fallout the law firms that struck pro bono deals with President Donald Trump earlier this year will face. But analyzing attorney movements over the last six months provides one data point. On average, law firms that settled subsequently lost attorneys more attorneys than those who fought the president in court, according to data obtained by Bloomberg Law columnist David Lat. But there are some firms that buck this overall trend as well as plenty of caveats

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302 results

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