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...

The Supreme Court’s shadow-docket blessing of Donald Trump’s ballroom was always going to draw reviews. And y’all — Ty Cobb has THOUGHTS. The former Hogan & Lovells partner, who left Biglaw to serve as special counsel in the first Trump White House, has since made...

The paralegal with too many tabs open Walk into a busy personal injury firm on any Tuesday and look over a paralegal’s shoulder. Multiple tabs are open: intake, document management, a records portal, e-signature, the calendar, and a settlement spreadsheet. Ask what’s...

Getting off the plane at Nashville International Airport last week — an airport set to be renamed after Dolly Parton by the time I left — I saw 5 legal tech ads before making it to baggage claim. In fact the only ads I saw on the airport’s video boards were two Harvey...

The Financial Times just published an article titled “Wall Street banks push Big Law to cut fees because of AI.” Apparently the investment bankers have decided that paying legal bills doesn’t make sense now that ChatGPT can spit out answers. We’re mere months removed...

Law firms spend enormous amounts of money protecting their networks. They use firewalls, endpoint detection, multifactor authentication, security monitoring, and email filtering. The list of technologies designed to keep attackers out keeps growing. And yet, sometimes...

Yesterday, the Supreme Court once again exercised its shadow docket muscles to stay Judge Richard Leon’s injunction and allow Donald Trump to keep building his ballroom on top of the East Wing’s corpse. The eight-page per curiam went out of its way to explain that it...

The post House Passes Funding Stopgap, Averting Government Shutdown In October appeared first on Above the Law. WASHINGTON — The House has passed a funding stopgap bill that would extend federal funding to Dec. 11, preventing a government shutdown as Congress heads...

* When Scalia died, John Roberts decided to change the rules to keep the justices’ papers locked away for decades after they die. [NY Times] * House Republicans begin inquiry into the Eleventh Circuit’s probe of Judge Eleanor Ross. [Bloomberg Law News] * Lawyer...

Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day! In 1858, which Illinois trial lawyer defended a young man charged with murder and dismantled the prosecution’s case by producing an almanac? The government’s star witness swore he’d watched the fatal...

Dear Law Review editors: Over the weekend — a professor (no, I’m not going to share their name because this isn’t about that) posted something that suggested someone at an R1, T75 law school had submitted something to his school’s law review that was 79% AI generated...

Ed. note: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day. We recognize that parental leave is a significant time in a lawyer’s life, no matter your level of seniority. It’s a big deal to step away from practice, focus on your family, try to get some sleep and do all...

Erin Piacenti, a 2021 graduate of Fordham Law School and a vice president at Bank of America, was killed Monday afternoon in a knife attack in Times Square. She was 32. Piacenti, who lived in Chester, New Jersey, was one of two people stabbed near 42nd Street and...

Ed. note: This is the final article in a three-part series from Litera exploring how law firms can turn AI-driven efficiency into sustainable growth. The first installment made the case for unifying the practice and business of law. The second examined how trusted...

Legal sector office leasing jumped 17% year-over-year in the first half of 2026, climbing to nearly 12.2 million square feet, according to new figures from Cushman & Wakefield reported by Reuters. Law firms accounted for 14% of all office leasing across the 10...

While Biglaw continues to sit on the sidelines, yet another boutique has stepped up to match the Milbank salary scale. At this point, boutiques seem far more eager to pay associates the money they deserve than the country’s biggest and wealthiest firms. Biglaw may...

The post Have We Reached ‘Peak Legal Tech?’ Sure Felt That Way At ILTACON appeared first on Above the Law.“We’ve reached peak legal tech.”That was the takeaway of a veteran legal tech CEO while attending this week’s ILTACON, the annual conference of the International...

For prospective law students, employment outcomes are often the most important consideration when selecting a law school. After all, if you’re going to spend three years of your life and potentially take on six figures of debt to earn a law degree, you’d probably like...

Justice Samuel Alito’s annual financial disclosure was due on May 15. So, obviously, he posted it today. Federal judges can take up to 90 extra days to perform the barest of minimum acts of transparency, and Alito takes advantage of that almost every year. His eight...

The post Army Secretary Dan Driscoll Resigns appeared first on Above the Law.WASHINGTON — Dan Driscoll, the 26th secretary of the Army, has submitted his letter of resignation, after serving in his position for less than two years, two Army officials told Breaking...

* Supreme Court decides no one has standing to stop a president who wants to tear down a national monument and build on top of it all without congressional approval. [Balls and Strikes] * HSF Kramer named in billion-dollar malpractice suit. [Bloomberg Law News] * They...

Back in July, a University of Kentucky spokesperson offered a theory of why the school’s investigation of law professor Ramsi Woodcock had dragged on so long: if Woodcock “had spent his time responding to the serious allegations regarding his conduct in a timely...

Alito Is Still Loaded Up On Oil And Gas Stock Ahead Of The Big Climate Case: His long-withheld financials, posted this morning, confirm the holdings watchdogs say should have forced a recusal. Jim Clyburn’s Clarence Thomas Endorsement Has Not Aged Well, And He Knows...

Imagine an AI agent reviewing a supplier agreement. It reads the limitation of liability correctly, compares it with the company’s standard, concludes that the deviation is relatively minor, and accepts the agreement. The analysis may be flawless. The decision may...

Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day! Which Supreme Court justice survived a 1970 campaign to impeach him, led by a House minority leader who would later become president? Hint: That future president offered a memorably elastic definition...