* New Mexico sued the Justice Department, accusing Todd Blanche of facilitating a cover-up of Epstein crimes in the state. [Courthouse News Service] * Trump attempts to block BBC access to his finances as he learns that “discovery” is a thing that happens. [New...

Milbank has once again decided its incoming associates shouldn’t have to wait around to get to work, offering the new class the option to start three weeks ahead of schedule, August 24, rather than the September 14 date on the calendar. It’s a nice gesture for those...

Susan Collins has made her decision. The Maine Republican announced Tuesday that she will vote against Todd Blanche’s confirmation as Attorney General, citing a list of concerns that reads like a greatest hits of everything we’ve been covering since the nomination...

Attend any business of law event in 2026, and you’ll hear about the increasing importance of “soft skills,” like managing interpersonal relationships or strategically thinking through ambiguity.  For large law firms, this emphasis is part of adapting to technology’s...

The profession yet again forced law school graduates to take a closed-book doctrinal memory test to earn the right to perform a job where answering questions from memory constitutes malpractice. And, yet again, the ritual came with a series of catastrophes and a fully...

If there was any doubt that group lateral moves are still having a moment, Brown Rudnick has put that to rest. The Biglaw firm announced today that it landed the largest group hire in its history, bringing aboard a 34-lawyer intellectual property litigation team from...

Many law schools have a disciplinary body of students, faculty, or a combination of the two, that determine violations of the law school’s “honor code.” These “honor courts” or “honor boards” are quasi-adjudicatory creatures. The purpose of these boards is a bit of...

(Photo by DON EMMERT/AFP via Getty Images)A number of people are wondering whether to hold off on any major purchases until Trump leaves office. While most will accept a tariff on a cheap good, they may contemplate delaying big-ticket items such as a computer, a...

Attend any business of law event in 2026, and you’ll hear about the increasing importance of “soft skills,” like managing interpersonal relationships or strategically thinking through ambiguity.  For large law firms, this emphasis is part of adapting to technology’s...

Ed. note: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day. If you’re a partner making $15 million a year, another firm paying you $17 million a year doesn’t necessarily move the dial for you. Firms understand that. The pay packages are very reflective right now of what...

This morning, LexisNexis announced its Customer Innovation Lab to rebuild “how legal AI gets shipped.” Lawyers from firms, corporate legal departments, the judiciary, and academia can walk into LexisNexis’s physical space with their specific pain points, and...

* Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office self-reports wrongdoing to DOJ watchdog… where almost certainly nothing will end up happening. [Chicago Tribune] * ABA House of Delegates refuses to junk diversity standard for accreditation. [JD Journal] * Anti-law enforcement license...

The post HHS Is Reviving Its 340B Rebate Push — And Providers Are None Too Pleased appeared first on Above the Law.HHS unveiled a plan to reintroduce a rebate program for 340B drug discounts last week. The department, through the Health Resources and Services...

The post New Site From Suffolk Law Dean Andrew Perlman Catalogs AI Policies At 128 Law Schools appeared first on Above the Law.When law school AI policies have made news, it has usually been because they were controversial. UC Berkeley School of Law’s restrictive...

Todd Blanche cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, which means the only thing standing between him and confirmation as the permanent Attorney General of the United States is a full Senate floor vote. Though it seems likely that step is but a formality, a...

Law firm mergers are supposed to create momentum. Sometimes they create recruiting opportunities for the competition instead. Barely a month after Hogan Lovells and Cadwalader officially combined, Sidley Austin has poached an 11-lawyer New York fund finance team from...

The big news last week was that Bob Savitt, co-chair and veteran litigator with Wachtell, left that firm for Gibson Dunn and took six others with him. (It was supposed to be seven, but that’s a whole other story.) Lots of speculation why, and most of it centered on...

It Looks Like The Jackson Walker/Federal Judge Scandal Is Officially Over: Some ~$20 million later… First Lateral Raid Just One Month After Mega-Merger: Sorry, Hogan Lovells Cadwalader, but Sidley really needed that fund finance team. Todd Blanche Is About To Be AG:...

Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day! Which future Supreme Court justice was, briefly, the best running back in professional football — a first-round draft pick who led the NFL in rushing as a rookie, did it again two years later, and was...

The Man Now Running Paul, Weiss Reportedly Didn’t Want A Trans Partner Working On His Clients: Before Scott Barshay took the corner office, he allegedly decided Lex Korberg was bad for business. Upon Further Reflection…: Jeanine Pirro declined to further imperil her...

Late Sunday night, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche posted a signed order to X rescinding the Anti-Weaponization Fund. The death of the Trump slush fund, that is, the fund personally created by Blanche earlier this year as part of a deal to drop Trump’s $10...

Ed. note: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day. There were absolutely no test-takers at the July 2026 Washington bar exam that were not impacted. Emergency diploma privilege is the only remedy for all impacted. Some test-takers have voluntarily shared their...

Better AI will not solve the hallucination problem. Today’s AI models are less prone to hallucinate than earlier models, and today’s well-known legal providers’ “grounding” of their AI responses has definitely cut down on obvious hallucinations. Don’t make the mistake...

We’ve spent well over a year now documenting Paul, Weiss’s descent from Biglaw’s self-appointed conscience to its most instructive cautionary tale — the craven deal with Trump, the litigation talent that bolted in response, the Epstein emails that ended Brad Karp’s...

Ed. note: Please welcome Renee Knake Jefferson back to the pages of Above the Law. Subscribe to her Substack, Legal Ethics Roundup, here. Welcome to what captivates, haunts, inspires, and surprises me every week in the world of legal ethics. Happy Monday! Today marks...

Moot court may not get the same attention as law review, but for students who actually want to litigate, it’s one of the closest things to the real job that they’ll experience in law school. It forces students to think on their feet, respond to relentless questioning,...

For years, legal departments hired for expertise. They still do, of course. But expertise is no longer the differentiator it once was. Today, AI can summarize a contract in seconds. It can draft a clause, compare agreements, identify missing provisions, and even...

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)Conservative commentators howled about the specter of Dr. Anthony Fauci invoking the Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself more than 100 times during his Congressional testimony last Wednesday. Disgraceful! And then I...

For 14 months, it didn’t seem as though there was a case too ridiculous for Jeanine Pirro to bring. Grand juries no-billed her office dozens of times. D.C. juries have acquitted her defendants at the drop of a sandwich. At one point, her office’s lack of faith in...

Since the day it became the first Biglaw firm to cut a deal with Donald Trump, Paul, Weiss has leaned on one talking point above all others: the deal changed nothing. Brad Karp assured the firm that the deal would have “no effect on our work.” Paul, Weiss has spent...

Yakima, We Have A Problem: Washington scrapped its entire July NextGen administration after a convention center hardware failure left roughly 645 applicants unable to log in, offering them a tentative September makeup date, a transfer to February 2027, or a refund....

If The Office Is A Rockin’: It seems as though everyone at Wachtell was hooking up. Anti-DEI Group Is Coming For The Biglaw Pipeline: They’ve filed suit against Sponsors for Educational Opportunity and 14 Biglaw firms. Broken Clocks: Elon Musk brings a valid challenge...

Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day! Who is the only Supreme Court justce to see two of his former SCOTUS clerks become justices? Hint: The future justices even clerked at One First Street during the same Term — they attended the same...

The 2026 Blickstein Group law firm COO survey recently came out, and it has some startling, interesting, and downright disheartening results. The survey, in its fifth year, was of 213 chief operating officers (COOs) or those with similar roles at North American law...

One of the biggest misconceptions in the legal profession is that wisdom flows in only one direction. Some believe that associates learn from partners, and junior lawyers absorb the judgment and experience of those who have spent decades practicing law. That dynamic...

There’s been a bunch of news this week regarding Minnesota’s new law that purports to prohibit “nudification” technology, and the fact that xAI has sued to have the law blocked as unconstitutional. A few things need to be said upfront, because it’s very, very easy to...

Americans for Equal Opportunity — the anti-DEI outfit run by board president Clegg Ivey — has filed a new charge with the EEOC against Sponsors for Educational Opportunity, the nonprofit behind the legal industry’s largest diversity pipeline program, along with 14 law...

Ed. note: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day. These Washington examinees need an immediate pathway to licensure that protects them from any additional costs and harms—financial, professional and emotional—that this failed exam has caused. Emergency diploma...

After a viral video caught a partner making out with an associate on a park bench, briefly thrusting Wachtell into the mainstream consciousness, we figured it would blow over quickly. But then Gibson Dunn moved forward with a splashy mass poaching event, adding the...

Courtney Teasley, a criminal trial attorney turned certified business coach, author, and speaker, joins me to talk about the case that shaped her career: her own mother’s, overcharged as a drug seller instead of a user. Courtney traces how that experience, and a...

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. “U.S. Revives Obscure Court in Bid to Deport Afghan Woman; The case is a...

Lawyers speak for a living. Whether addressing a judge, questioning a witness, negotiating with opposing counsel, presenting at a CLE, speaking to a client, or giving a keynote address, your ability to communicate verbally often determines your effectiveness more than...

Judge James Ho, the thirstiest weirdo on the federal bench, is at it again. Last month, Justice Sam Alito failed to exit stage right — rude! — but you never know what might happen, and so Judge Ho is heaving himself toward every open microphone to remind the powers...

We all know the drill. You walk into a presentation at a conference the title and summary of which looked really relevant and interesting. You find a table with a path to the exit just in case. One other person who you never met sits down at the same table. The...

Josh Hawley spent part of Wednesday morning asking Anthony Fauci to identify the color of his necktie and the carpet. Fauci declined both times, invoking his Fifth Amendment right not to give answers that might incriminate him. Hawley responded, “well, nothing says...

* Even if the Senate rejects Todd Blanche, he’s going to stay in the job indefinitely, no matter how questionably constitutional that may be. [Politico] * Judge seems to think Pentagon’s designation of Anthropic as a security risk is bogus. [Law360] * Lawyer seeks...