Welp, a deal is a deal. Elon University School of Law Dean Zak Kramer made his students a promise: hit an 85% first-time bar passage rate as a class, and he’d get a tattoo in their honor. Equal parts motivation and branding… and a little bit of a stunt, but one a dean...

Ed. note: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day. Mr. President, I would hope that you would consider this young lady and the person she is, what she’s been through, and consider a pardon. —  Kevin Reddington, Lindsay Clancy’s defense attorney, in comments...

Last year, we featured a documentary from Minor Character Theater about Rutgers Law grad Brian Finklebar, the former general counsel to the Willy Wonka Chocolate company as his C-Suite slowly drives him insane with illegal lotteries, rampant labor violations, and...

Most contracting playbooks contain instructions that make perfect sense to experienced lawyers. “Generally resist this provision.” “Accept if commercially reasonable.” “Escalate material deviations.” “Use judgment.” A human lawyer can often work with that language. An...

The post ILTACON News Round-Up Part 4, The Business Of Law: Litera, Aderant, Oddr, TRĒ AI, Intapp appeared first on Above the Law.Last week’s ILTACON, the annual conference of the International Legal Technology Association, brought what may have been the busiest news...

The legal academy recently worked itself into a lather over AI-generated law review submissions. According to one law professor writing on Twitter, the AI detection platform Pangram had flagged a law review submission as having substantially AI-generated text. This...

Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day! In 1982, which New York M&A lawyer dreamed up a defensive maneuver to fend off the corporate raiders that were then terrorizing America’s boardrooms — a tactic so effective it’s been called the...

In-House Counsel Woes: Imagine being Jurassic Park’s general counsel. They Left Biglaw To Build Something New. Now They’re Paying For It: In the best possible way. It’s Never Too Soon To Start Working On Business Development: Take this important advice from the CEO of...

Eleventh Circuit Chief Judge William Pryor seems like a good supervisor to have! Whether you’re a Democratic-appointed judge using your chambers to have sex with a police official whose department routinely shows up in your courthouse or a Republican-appointed judge...

Turns Out ‘I Forgot’ Isn’t A Great Discovery Strategy: Just ask Skadden and Kirkland. She Don’t Lie/She Don’t Lie/Cocaine: Missouri legislative candidate arrested for trying to plant cocaine on primary opponent. The Most Forgiving Judge In The World: Chief Judge...

Two of the most prestigious and most expensive Biglaw firms just got caught doing the kind of thing they tell you not to in professional responsibility class. Earlier this week, Judge Marc T. Treadwell of the US District Court for the Middle District of Georgia...

Ed. Note: A weekly roundup of just a few items from Howard Bashman’s How Appealing blog, the Web’s first blog devoted to appellate litigation. Check out these stories and more at How Appealing. “Supreme Court refuses to put proof-of-citizenship amendment on Michigan...

“I don’t want a mistrial. Why would I want a mistrial? I kicked the shit out of their case.” – Reddington 😂 pic.twitter.com/xGPKkEOdeA— Moodie Monroe (@moodienews) September 3, 2026 — Lindsay Clancy’s attorney Kevin Reddington. Judge William Sullivan expressed his...

Chaka Patterson, founder and CEO of Chaka Strategy and author of The Hot Seat: Mastering the Public Company General Counsel Role, joins me to unpack what actually separates a successful general counsel from one who’s gone within five years. His answer has almost...

Outperforming your local competition via Google Business Profile optimization requires integrating “under the hood” tweaks on two fronts: human perception and behavior, on the one hand, and algorithmic selection processes, on the other. Simply put, your law firm has...

At some point today, Judge Indira Talwani will tell Donald Trump once again that his scheme to use the Post Office to weed out “illegal” ballots is entirely ultra vires. She’s already said so at least four times, blocking much of Trump’s executive order telling USPS...

Thomas Christopher Ross is the Republican nominee for a state House district in Missouri. He beat Louise Secker in the August 4 primary by a mere 32 votes. Then, on September 2, he was charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine and amphetamine under 21 U.S.C. §§...

The post Associate Compensation Scorecard: Biglaw Firms Will Eventually Get Around To Matching Milbank… Right? appeared first on Above the Law.Since we broke the news of the new $235K salary scale for associates at large law firms in the United States — a trend that...

For much of the legal profession’s history, having a large and impressive office was seemingly an important part of running a successful law firm. Firms often occupied prime real estate in expensive parts of town, and attorneys might have private offices, conference...

The July bar exam is over. Your job search should not be on pause. In Florida, the July 2026 results are scheduled for September 18. Some graduates have jobs. Others watch classmates announce start dates while their inboxes remain quiet. If you are in the second...

One thing I learned as a trial lawyer, sometimes the hard way, is that trusting your gut instinct is not the same as relying on data. That’s why in later years I became such an advocate of data-based litigation analytics. Data has the unpleasant way of separating what...

To quote the opening line from the court opinion that this post is based upon, “Millions of American teenagers have sex.” This post is has nothing to do with whether that sort of thing is good or bad, natural or otherwise, nor the moral implications of it all....

* Skadden and Kirkland fined $2 million after judge deemed firms engaged in “a widespread, long-running cover-up.” [Atlanta Journal-Constitution] * Clients of Pogust Goodhead and Quinn Emanuel say they’re dropping their firms, but the firms argue that they can’t be...

Private equity circles the legal profession like a vulture. Even elite law firms are reportedly taking meetings and while none of them appear ready to hand the keys over to private equity yet, the fact that they’re even taking meetings means the idea cleared the first...

The NCAA has suffered a lot of self-inflicted legal injuries over the years, but the entity decided it couldn’t sustain the revelation that its lawyers from Holland & Knight — man, two Holland & Knight stories in one day! — were privately dissing the judge and...

The post On LawNext: Why Legal AI Pioneer Pablo Arredondo Is Joining Clio To Build Technology For The Courts appeared first on Above the Law.Pablo Arredondo, the Casetext cofounder who helped build some of the earliest and most influential applications of AI in legal...

In 1859, which chief justice of California’s Supreme Court resigned his seat, challenged a sitting United States senator to a duel over a political grudge, and shot him dead? Hint: Three decades later, that same man was himself gunned down — by a deputy U.S. marshal...

Usually, the first year after we’ve passed the bar, professional dues are waived, giving time for new admittees to get on their feet, at least a little bit. So, that is the baby lawyer dues stage. Then comes the “toddler stage.” We’ve all been through that: still...

For young lawyers, business development can often seem like something to worry about later in their careers, once they’ve mastered their practice and are closer to making partner. But waiting to build a book of business may be one of the biggest mistakes an aspiring...

When Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, a leading international law firm, made the decision to adopt legal AI, it knew building the right foundation would be key to a successful rollout. The firm first built Wendell Intelligence, its in-house AI orchestration platform,...

The Justice Department filed a statement of interest in the sprawling OpenAI copyright case, declaring the administration’s official position that training a large language model on copyrighted text amounts to fair use. From the DOJ’s perspective, it is indeed a...

“AI as a Teammate” panelists, from left, Jeff Cox of Steno, Damien Riehl of Clio, Daniel Himmel of Legora, and Nick Hafen of BYU Law School.If there’s one overarching takeaway from ILTACON 2026, it’s that legal tech has hit the big time. As Above the Law’s Stephen...

Earlier this week, NYU Law’s Rule of Law Lab and the Berkeley Judicial Institute released Threats to the Independence of the Federal Judiciary, a report built on interviews with 34 federal judges conducted between October 2025 and July 2026. It arrived alongside a...

Ed. note: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day. [Lawyers ​continue to] submit materials that have hallucinations or have some other anomaly, and they attribute it to AI, and that simply can’t ‌exist. Our ⁠system, our courts, our judiciary has to rely on the...

In what famous “Trial of the Century” did legendary defense attorney Clarence Darrow give a 12-hour closing argument? Hint: It’s not the Scopes Monkey Trial, if that’s what you’re thinking. Rather, the famed civil libertarian railed against the death penalty at...

In my prior column, I wrote about patience. I spent time on the idea that not every situation resolves on your timeline and that pushing too hard or too fast can do more damage than the problem you are trying to solve. I want to build on that idea.  There is a...

* Wachtell report for the NBA ends up sinking the Clippers, who will lose $30 million and lose 5 first-round picks. Wachtell, according to The Athletic reporter Mike Vorkunov, charged $50 million for the investigation. [NY Times/The Athletic] * Judge blocks Trump’s...

Representation Fail: Bankruptcy filing accused firm of representing the estate while really working for the guy who put it in bankruptcy. Now the partner involved has vanished from the firm’s website. Finally, A Milbank Match! But of course, it’s coming from another...

This summer, Donald Trump hijacked the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence with a slate of events designed to celebrate himself. One of these, held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was what he called the Great American...

Ed. note: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day. [I] really missed the counselor side of being a lawyer. I think I could be a much better counselor now than I was ​before I went on the bench. — Former U.S. District Judge Alan Albright of the Western District...

Ever wonder how a MAGAland reality TV star turned prosecutor wound up running the Department of Transportation? Wonder no more. According to his own wife, it’s because that’s the one nobody else wanted. Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy sat down with her husband,...

Between now and when tax returns are due in the coming months, the IRS or the Department of Justice’s Tax Division often issue a press release about someone pleading guilty to or being convicted of a tax crime and facing jail time. If the story makes local news, then...

Who a lawyer actually represents is one of the most important facts to clear up for anyone hoping to avoid serious professional responsibility problems. It’s usually pretty straightforward, but when it’s at all muddy, the whole representation becomes an ethics CLE...

If you’ve ever dreamed of becoming a law professor, where you earn your J.D. may play a significant role in whether you ultimately make it into the legal academy. Professor Derek Muller of Notre Dame Law School recently took a look at which law schools produced the...

When the Florida Bar didn’t want to perform the most basic of its duties as the state’s designated professional licensing authority, it invented a new rule out of whole cloth to justify punting a detailed ethics complaint about then-Attorney General Pam Bondi. The...

At a recent conference at which I spoke, a member of the audience raised her hand and asked why law firms are having so much trouble determining the ROI of artificial intelligence tools that they are buying. I thought about it for a minute, and then it hit me: it’s...