On Sunday, ahead of the new Term, the justice sat down with Shannon Bream on Fox News Sunday, and the conversation turned, as it so often does with Alito, to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Alito said he “anticipated” the ruling would “anger a great many...

Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day! What year did the Supreme Court begin its tradition of starting the Term on the first Monday in October? Hint: Before that, the Court would meet Februarys and Augusts. See the answer on the next page....

Jack Smith Takes Selfies With Fans At Power To The People Fest While Foo Fighters Roast Eric Schmitt: Fans of his legal stylings lined up for selfies. First Monday In October, Same Old Alito Leak Bullsh*t: The new Term is here, and so is Alito’s favorite grievance....

Former special counsel Jack Smith spent Saturday at the Power to the People festival at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland. That’s the Tom Morello-organized mega-concert raising money for the voting rights groups VoteRiders and HeadCount, and Smith wore...

Ed. note: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day. At the top end of the market, among the largest and most profitable law firms, some of the compensation that’s reportedly being paid is unlike anything legal has ever seen. It sounds more like professional...

Last August, the FBI reinstated agent Stephen Friend, who left the bureau in 2023, and awarded him a lump sum settlement of $61,430, plus “hundreds of thousands of dollars in back pay.” In December, FBI Director Kash Patel personally fired him for “unprofessional...

Ed. note: Please welcome Renee Knake Jefferson back topages of Above the Law. Subscribe to her Substack, Legal Ethics Roundup, here. Hello First Monday! What is a “First Monday” edition? Every Monday here at the LER you receive a summary of the top ten legal ethics...

According to the Wall Street Journal, a senior Justice Department official invited an 81-year-old Dick Nixon deadender to headquarters to spend two hours walking the Office of Professional Responsibility through a lengthy slidedeck he created called “Watergate As...

Last August, the FBI reinstated agent Stephen Friend, who left the bureau in 2023, and awarded him a lump sum settlement of $61,430, plus “hundreds of thousands of dollars in back pay.” In December, FBI Director Kash Patel personally fired him for “unprofessional...

The post DoD Demo Contract Takes A Step Closer To Beaming Solar Power From Space appeared first on Above the Law.WASHINGTON — Virginia-based startup Overview Energy has been contracted by the Pentagon’s Operational Energy Capability Improvement Fund (OECIF) to...

* Justice Alito went public with vague plan to retire in the near future, which is surely genuine and not at all an instance of a deeply cynical actor making a last ditch bid to rally Republican midterm hopes. [Law360] * Supreme Court opens its new Term. Here’s a...

Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day! What attorney was crowned “the King of Torts” by Life magazine in 1954, this flamboyant San Francisco trial lawyer transformed personal-injury law by wheeling scale models, films, and even a client’s...

And You Get $180K! And You Get $180K! Another litigation powerhouse is offering market-leading clerkship bonuses. So What Is White & Case Planning, Exactly? The firm’s new job posting is telling a tale. Schrödinger’s U.S. Attorney: The Trump administration and the...

I am currently writing this column from Europe, where I am spending some time on vacation. Lawyers deserve to take vacations like everyone else, but business operations may require lawyers to complete tasks while they are away. Attorneys should take a few steps to...

Evergreen content is the foundation of a strong law firm website because it provides information that remains relevant and useful to potential clients over time. The most effective resource libraries are organized around content hubs or pillars that connect related...

White & Case has not announced a match to the new Milbank salary scale. That’s been true for lots of firms, as the broader Biglaw world has moved at a glacial pace while litigation boutiques sprint up the compensation scorecard. And yet. A current (at least for...

Ed. note: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day. It’s not new rocket science by any means. It’s the fact that they cannot prove probable cause. — Kevin Reddington, an attorney for Lindsay Clancy, arguing that prosecutors failed to establish that his client...

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 spotlights fight against climate action in term opener;...

One of the many benefits of having a federal clerkship is the extra bonus you’ll receive if you decide to head to a Biglaw firm post-clerkship. Many elite firms really want people with highly demanding clerkship experience to work for them, and that’s why the high end...

The problem with breaking the same law over and over in different jurisdictions is that lots of judges wind up taking a swing at you. After the first couple of them punch all the obvious holes in your goofy argument, the others start feeling the need to get creative....

Another week, another legal tech conference. ‘Tis the season for the next four to six weeks. This week it was Relativity’s turn: its conference, RelFest (formerly known as Relativity Fest), kicked off in Chicago. Relativity is the well-known e-discovery and data...

There are certain legal business development and marketing clichés that lawyers hear so often that they eventually accept them as fact. Do great work and the business will follow. It is all about who you know. Networking is a numbers game. Give first and the business...

Professor Tracy Thomas, the CyberLink Chair of Constitutional Law at the University of Akron and author of The First Woman Judge: The Life and Legacy of Florence Allen, joins me to tell the story of Florence Allen, the first woman on a federal appellate court, a state...

The bulk of Biglaw firm Wiley Rein’s insurance coverage practice has said adieu to Biglaw. On Thursday, 12 partners and nine other lawyers left the Am Law 200 firm to launch Tyka, a Washington, D.C. boutique that will represent insurers and only insurers in their big...

When a job does not fit, we tend to assume we are the problem. Everyone else seems comfortable. They understand the partners, enjoy the work, and know how to get through the day. We sit in the same meetings and wonder what we are missing. We worked hard to get here....

The post AMA: PBM Market Concentration Is On The Rise appeared first on Above the Law.The top four PBMs controlled 75% of the national PBM market in 2024, up from 70% in 2022, according to a new analysis from the American Medical Association.The analysis is based on...

Corporations have long enjoyed creating toothless “self-regulatory” regimes that exist primarily to pre-empt real government oversight. While the quality of these orgs can vary somewhat, generally they’re just a toothless pantomime designed to pretend that corporate...

If you’ve been paying attention, you know that AI is impacting litigation at a record pace. No stage of court proceedings has been immune from the sometimes careless — and very rapid rate of — AI adoption in our profession. From the initial pleadings to trial and...

Ed. note: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day. Yeah. Yeah. What can I do? I put them in. ​They voted against me too often. I was very — I gave them ​the position of a lifetime, and they vote against me often. — President Donald Trump, telling Time that he...

Despite bigger budgets, in-house legal departments are being squeezed from every angle — by rising talent costs, ballooning law firm fees, and an AI bill nobody budgeted for — and a workload that’s outrunning all of it. Download the 2027 In-House Legal Budget Report,...

Are law firms seeing value from AI adoption? As ILTACON speakers have noted, firms face big challenges in quantifying this metric.  “It’s hard to come up with the return on investment for efficiency gains when you’re based on the billable hour. You almost have to go...

The administration is trying to sell early access to the president’s thoughts, and DLA Piper is the Biglaw firm defending it. Freedom of the Press Foundation and The Intercept Media sued the president and White House officials last month, saying efforts to charge for...