Foley & Lardner’s Wild Week

Episode Notes

Transcript

Thinking Like a Lawyer – Above the Law

Foley & Lardner’s Wild Week

01/06/2021

[Music]

Joe Patrice: Hello! Welcome to a new year here at Thinking Like a Lawyer. I’m Joe Patrice from Above The Law joined by fellow senior editor Kathryn Rubino, how are you?

Kathryn Rubino: I’m doing well. How about yourself?

Joe Patrice: You know —

Kathryn Rubino: New year, new you?

Joe Patrice: Yeah, no. It’s actually new year and just the same me, I think. I mean —

Kathryn Rubino: You’ve got no bionic parts for Christmas?

Joe Patrice: I did not. No, just the same me, a grand disappointment to the listeners out there I’m sure but no, so you? Are you a new?

Kathryn Rubino: Always, I guess.

Joe Patrice: Oh, see. That’s very esoteric.

Kathryn Rubino: I’m ever evolving.

Joe Patrice: Oh yeah, like —

Kathryn Rubino: Every version of myself is slightly different than the previous one.

Joe Patrice: Okay.

Kathryn Rubino: I’ve been reading a lot of inspirational Instagram accounts over the last few days and it’s rubbed off slightly.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. I have not.

Kathryn Rubino: No kidding.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: It would be very off-brand if you suddenly became inspirational.

Joe Patrice: I mean I think I’m inspirational in a certain sense, just not — I’m not —

Kathryn Rubino: Aspirational?

Joe Patrice: No, I’m not going to quote like “live, laugh, love” stuff, but I think that I inspire people in other ways.

Kathryn Rubino: Sure. I mean, I know that you’re probably quoting that new progressive commercial.

Joe Patrice: I totally am.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, don’t become your parent just because you own a house.

Joe Patrice: That’s the best campaign going right now.

Kathryn Rubino: It is one of my favorites. Every time I see it, I’m like “shh.” I might get a new line out of it. But no, seriously though, it is a new year. Do you have any resolutions for 2021?

Joe Patrice: I had not really thought of them but now that you bring it up, maybe that is an interesting discussion to have, legal new year’s resolutions, yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: Maybe people should stop undermining democracy in the new year.

Joe Patrice: See, I don’t know why you’re getting so aspirational. Yeah, so that’s certainly one thing and I think a thing we’ll probably talk about. I guess one thing that I might do as a resolution is try to figure out how to streamline the administrative tasks that my firm does.

Kathryn Rubino: Oh!

Joe Patrice: And with that note, let’s thank one of our sponsors, Lexicon and we have more sponsors too, but for now, let’s hear from them.

[Music]

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[Music]

Joe Patrice: Well, so, we’re back and yeah, so undermining democracy seems to be a — it’s been a problem over the last few months. We’ve talked a lot about Jones Day and their role as well as some of the less than BigLaw lawyers out there who are involved in this. But the most interesting development over the weekend was this release of a tape given to the Washington Post and the Atlanta Journal Constitution of the President appearing, not even appearing, pretty explicitly leaning on the Georgia Secretary of State to, well, I leave it to a Georgia state law professor who was interviewed by Politico who pointed out that the Georgia Code makes everything about that conversation pretty explicitly voter fraud.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, I saw some Twitter — there’s a ton of Twitter action obviously about it but somebody added Rick Hasen, former guest of the show. How is this not voter fraud and he just responded, “It is.”

Joe Patrice: Right, yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: Full stop.

Joe Patrice: Pretty bad. A lot of people are talking about that. You don’t come to Above The Law to hear us do the dunking on the same thing all the major media news does.

Kathryn Rubino: Sure.

Joe Patrice: What you do come here for is us to have legal industry insights into it and let’s talk about Cleta Mitchell.

Kathryn Rubino: Oh, shall we? I’ve written about her earlier this year but it was at 2020.  She’s a partner at Foley & Lardner.

Joe Patrice: Yes.

Kathryn Rubino: And yeah.

Joe Patrice: And she was on this call. A BigLaw partner, so which — so I think I guess the first thing that’s worth noting is this marks something of a break, because yes, we have talked about Jones Day’s involvement in voter suppression efforts but always through working for intermediaries like the Pennsylvania GOP stuff like that. And also —

Kathryn Rubino: Or the campaigns.

Joe Patrice: Oh right. And also, they have historically done what I’d like to call the polite form of disenfranchisement. It’s still insidious and awful, but actually what kind of makes it most insidious is that it is stuff that they can kind of public relations spin as, “Oh no, no, no. We’re not trying to take away people’s votes, we’re requiring them to have ID.” This sort of garbage.

(00:05:14)

What is new about this is that once the President started going down the road of this kind of conspiracy mongering dominion voting machines run by Hugo Chavez, this sort of mindset, the big firms stayed out of that and it was your Giulianis, your Dr. Jenna Ellis, your Sidney Powells, Lin Wood, these were the people who got involved in those cases because they are —

Kathryn Rubino: Bottom feeders.

Joe Patrice: That is a term for it. It is a term I’m not going to shy away from necessarily, but it’s also that they’re free agents. Like these are people who don’t have to answer to either partners or clients that would be concerned about this.

Kathryn Rubino: Well, I mean a couple things. I think the fact that this became public was not intended by Cleta Mitchell, by the firm and while there is definitely an incorrect right-wing conspiracy saying that this was somehow illegal, but it’s not. Georgia’s a one-consent state, this is totally fine to have recorded and released.

Joe Patrice: Totally agree with that. Let’s step back and let’s focus on that for a second or so.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, so the phone call was recorded. It was released but Georgia only requires one party to a conversation to consent to the recording.

Joe Patrice: Right. Basically, in a one-party state, if you are on a call, you can record it and do whatever you want with it.

Kathryn Rubino: Correct.

Joe Patrice: And if it’s a two-party state, then everybody involved in the call has to agree basically and this was a situation where it was no question a one party.

Kathryn Rubino: Correct. And there’s also a bunch of rumors that we’ve heard about that this was part of some sort of settlement negotiations and therefore, should be confidential.

Joe Patrice: Right. And I think it’s fair to say it probably would count as a settlement negotiation. I think that there are lawsuits against the state to get access to stuff that these folks are party to. I mean that does seem like this would be —

Kathryn Rubino: Although, I think it’s pretty clear that in the full recording, in one of our footnotes that no one ever says, this is a part of a settlement negotiation which you most likely would, if it were.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. So, I wanted to get to that in a second. Let’s dispense with the settlement negotiation idea first and then let’s turn back.

Kathryn Rubino: Yes, I know you have.

Joe Patrice: So, the settlement negotiation idea, I actually got a question about this from somebody who’s not a lawyer earlier today, like, “Isn’t that what this is?” Now, I said, “Yeah, probably is. However, there’s no privilege attached to a settlement negotiation.”

Kathryn Rubino: In fact, it’s the opposite because it’s opposing parties.

Joe Patrice: Yes. You’re telling the opposing party things. But what there is, what we do have are in the federal rules of evidence and accompanying state rules do the same thing, we do make it such that a settlement negotiation can’t be used against you in court.

Kathryn Rubino: Correct.

Joe Patrice: The logic to this — there are exceptions as there are to everything. But the logic to it is the justice system is better off people come to agreements amongst themselves rather than having the courts involved. So, we want to encourage settlement negotiations and if you could use everything in a negotiation, turn around and use it against somebody, nobody would ever do it so we don’t like that, so we don’t let them do that.

That said, that means that potentially depending on all the exceptions and so on, if someone were to charge Trump with voter fraud based on this call, maybe elements of this call would not be able to be admitted in front of a jury. But that has nothing to do with giving it to the post.

Kathryn Rubino: Sure.

Joe Patrice: And that’s the real issue here.

Kathryn Rubino: I just kind of always think when this sort of thing catches fire amongst kind of the general public imagination, it’s like a little bit of information is a very dangerous thing, right? Like they know just enough to say, “Well, there’s something about settlement in some evidence thing, so I’m sure it applies.”

Joe Patrice: As somebody who enjoyed evidence, this was my moment. This is our moment evidence heads, but I wanted to jump off of that though into obviously I think these are like random people on Twitter trying to make this settlement negotiation argument. But if you’re — let’s take a step back and think about if you’re a BigLaw partner involved in this conversation, how do you let it get to this point? Like how do you engage in a conversation like this knowing you’re dealing with somebody in a one-party state? How do you engage in a conversation like this knowing that a settlement negotiation isn’t in any way confidential? How do you not before having the conversation say we need you to stipulate that this will be confidential?

Like it’s basic stuff and like some people are like, “Oh, you’re overthinking it.” I’m just saying from my experience in BigLaw —

Kathryn Rubino: As a lawyer.

Joe Patrice: In my experience in BigLaw, you don’t do any of this sort of stuff without all of these —

Kathryn Rubino: Nothing happens off the cuff in BigLaw.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, no. Not at all.

Kathryn Rubino: I mean, listen, I don’t know Cleta Mitchell but she appears to be a true believer even before her direct involvement, she was on Fox News peddling a bunch of wild stories about voter fraud and she’s been involved in the extreme right wing of the Republican Party for a very long time.

(00:10:12)

I don’t know her. I don’t know why she allowed these things to go on while she was a party to the conversation, but it appears that she’s a true believer.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, okay. I’m still just stuck on the —

Kathryn Rubino: It’s bad lawyering.

Joe Patrice: The base bad lawyering of this. And that’s the thing, and all these Twitter heads trying to like concoct a theory in which this was inappropriate to be released and it’s like, “No,” but it should have been because she should have been on top of this.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah and I mean, here’s a question as a — let’s have a hypothetical. You’re a partner at Foley, are you more mad that she was so demonstrably a bad lawyer or that she seems to believe these conspiracy theories?

Joe Patrice: That’s a great question. I think I’m more concerned about the conspiracy theories if I’m a partner. Maybe as an associate, I’m more embarrassed for the bad lawyer, but as a partner, I have a different concern, which is part of the reason why the bottom feeder brigade is who does a lot of these cases is they don’t have other interests that they are putting at jeopardy to do this. Foley & Lardner now has to turn to — I don’t know their client profile, but let’s just assume AT&T or something like that.

Kathryn Rubino: There are definitely some big companies, some Fortune 100s sorts of —

Joe Patrice: Yeah, you have to turn to these public-facing corporations who are trying to I think say, “Yeah, you still need to do business with us even though we’re doing all this garbage over here.” Like there’s a point where and I make this point a lot and unfortunately, I’ve had to make it several times in several different contexts over the last year. This whole canard about like, “Well, everyone deserves a lawyer. You can’t question lawyers because of what the cases they take on.” We actually did a whole podcast on this once, Eli and I did back in the day, but yeah, there’s something to be said for not judging lawyers as professionals for doing that, but you can absolutely judge them as a business and as a brand for that.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, and there’s also the flip side to that branding that BigLaw does, right, is it’s not just trying to get the clients that’s obviously a big part of what they do but they’re also trying to market themselves to associates to the best and the brightest. Like the whole thing about big law is that it’s the smartest people every year joining the firm, right? And if you are unable to pull in the top folks, listen you’ll always be able to fill out your class if you have a certain number of associates you want to hire. There are too many law school graduates who are desperate for BigLaw money. That is true. They will always be able to have a class, but who are they getting, right?

If you have multiple offers, why are you going to Foley? Why are you going to Jones Day when you have firms that aren’t an embarrassment? You’re not going to be put in a situation as a young lawyer being like, oh, you’re getting ribbed by your friends theoretically in a world where we can go to a bar again, right? Like you know we’ll be like, “Oh, I can’t believe you’re working at that firm.” Why are you putting yourself in that situation when you can just as easily go to literally 200 law firms?

Joe Patrice: No, I think that’s very right.

Kathryn Rubino: And I know you pointed to a couple of Tweets out there of people who are actually clients of Foley & Lardner being like, “We’re out!”

Joe Patrice: Yeah. I did in fact see an in-house counsel that I follow on Twitter make the public announcement that my firm does business with Foley & Lardner attorneys and we are terminating our business. And I think more of that is going to happen. I thought more of that would happen with Jones Day. Jones Day seemed to have taken the — batten down the hatches approach and I don’t know how much that’s panned out that they’ve lost business and hey, at this point, now they can be excited that they’re —

Kathryn Rubino: They’re no longer public enemy number one?

Joe Patrice: Yeah, exactly.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, and I think it’s only going to get worse for Foley unless they make some sort of a public statement disavowing, not just the lawyering right, but the kind of the statement. They’ve seen, MeidasTouch one of the super PACs that did that video about Jones Day saying how terrible they were. We know that Cleta Mitchell’s already on their radar. They’re already tweeting about it, that Foley is the next folks to get the Jones Day treatment.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: And so, I don’t expect this to get better for them. I expect it to get worse.

Joe Patrice: Oh yeah, no, I remember what it was. I was talking about the lawyers as professionals versus as business and there’s obviously caveat if a lawyer is actively encouraging their client to do criminal stuff. That’s a whole different problem but the idea of you taking on these cases that are troubling plays into the brand and to that end, I can represent a lot of murderers if I run a criminal defense firm. People know that’s what I do and that’s okay.

Kathryn Rubino: And in fact, if they find themselves accused of murder, that might actually be a good thing.

Joe Patrice: And that’s okay, right.

(00:15:02)

If that’s what you do, then you can do it. But if I run like — and this was Lisa Bloom got in this trouble with trying to represent Harvey Weinstein for a while. If you build your business off of I represent victims and then you represent an accused victimizer, that’s not bad for —

Kathryn Rubino: That was against your brand.

Joe Patrice: That’s not bad for you as a professional. That’s bad for you as a business.

Kathryn Rubino: Right, like that is literally against the brand that you’ve spent time and money developing.

Joe Patrice: Right, which is why when I hear this argument, this stupid canard that always gets pulled out about like, “Everyone deserves a client, so you can’t judge people.” It’s like, “No, we can’t judge them for their being a lawyer but we can absolutely judge them as a business and they can face business consequences.” I’m not going to take away her law license for doing this putting aside whether or not evidence comes out that she was encouraging criminal or whatever. But I’m not going to take away somebody’s law license over this, but I absolutely can say that the people who work with them should no longer work with them.

Kathryn Rubino: Sure. Boycotts and refusing to do business is absolutely the public’s right.

Joe Patrice: Business repercussions for business actions. Not professional repercussions, it’s business.

Kathryn Rubino: This is not hard.

Joe Patrice: I feel like that canard gets taught — and I’ve used that word three times now, it gets tossed around.

Kathryn Rubino: Was it like your word of the day? Did you get a word of the day calendar?

Joe Patrice: I didn’t. I don’t know but it gets tossed around to extend what is I think a very important aspect of the profession to protect you from professional repercussions for doing unpopular things and tries to expand it as a shield for everything.

Kathryn Rubino: It’s that whole, “A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing,” right?

Joe Patrice: Unfortunately, it’s tossed around by the people with all the knowledge. They know this. I guess they’re trying to convince people — anyway, they’re not great. But yeah, no if I ran a transactional business within Foley, I would be very concerned right now about going back to my clients who I just want — I’m just running some like random secured transaction with them but now I have to carry around my neck all of this sort of stuff.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, the election bullshit.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, because I mean it’s going to end up in their filings that they hired the firm and they’ve got to worry about that and what — it’s just if I cared about transactions, I would be concerned. If I cared about transactions and was a transactional lawyer, you know what else I’d think?

Kathryn Rubino: What would you think, Joe?

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Kathryn Rubino: So, speaking of people who should know better, another kind of election bullshit that we’re dealing with is Josh Hawley and his merry band of senators deciding that they’re going to object to the certification of the election results this week.

Joe Patrice: Hold on. So I just opened up a thing that I was just sent because we’re busy.

Kathryn Rubino: You’re multitasking.

Joe Patrice: We’re doing business, we do we never stop for you, listeners. We are always working. I was just informed that one of the guys on that call, the other, I guess Kurt Hilbert was on that call, I’ve just been sent a page from a pleading that he submitted which he ends with “respectfully submitted” and “God Bless America” like in all caps and I’m like this sentiment is lovely, that is not how I would view a professional signing complaint or anything but —

Kathryn Rubino: That is not in the default —

Joe Patrice: The idiom or whatever, yeah, no.

Kathryn Rubino: But anyway, to talk more about people who should know better, Josh Hawley is leading the charge to object and Ted Cruz as well and the thing about those two in particular, although there are I think a dozen other Senators who are on board with this.

Joe Patrice: I think it’s 11 total including them at this point. I know Tom Cotton’s out.

Kathryn Rubino: He’s out?

Joe Patrice: Tom cotton looked at the situation and went, “Oh, ah, oh.”

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, I know like Lindsey Graham’s like, “Uh-uh, uh-uh.”

But the whole thing about Hawley and Cruz is that they are lawyers.

Joe Patrice: Hawley, yeah. Yeah, no, they are. They’re not only lawyers, they’re Supreme Court clerks.

Kathryn Rubino: And they went to some pretty prestigious institutions–Yale and Harvard respectively.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: I mean, the reason why I bring that up is that folks associated with Yale and Harvard are starting petitions that have signatures in the hundreds already objecting saying, “You need to do better. We’re disavowing your efforts to undermine the free and fair elections, et cetera.”

Joe Patrice: Yeah, no. I mean, that’s a natural and logical consequence as you like to say of taking these sorts of actions. So, the argument is to delve into that because I think a lot of people have heard about this effort and not a lot of people understand it, certainly it seems as though the President doesn’t. The electors have voted, we had an election, those election results got certified, the electors who were chosen by those states then cast their ballots, those are now going to be in the hands of Congress, they are going to open them and then have a vote on certifying those results. It is a rubber stamp process.

(00:20:29)

That said, there is a law that says that Senators can object to the idea of it which triggers a two-hour session where they debate whether or not they’re going to count these votes basically. It has been invoked before relatively recently. It was invoked for instance in the 2004 election between Bush and Kerry the Democrats invoked it. Difference there of course is the Democrats explicitly said, “We aren’t trying to overturn the election but we are invoking this to force a two-hour time limit,” because they didn’t control the docket — because they weren’t in the majority at this point, they didn’t have the ability to set the topic for conversation but by triggering this law, they could force a conversation on the issue of voter fraud and voter suppression whatever because that’s attendant and germane to that conversation and then they used that two hours to just outline problems with voter suppression.

So it was a symbolic gesture to have that discussion, not an attempt to overturn the election. Hawley and Cruz, these folks seem to think that what this is about is in fact not counting six states worth of electoral votes, which they can make it about that but there’s no basis for that. We’ve had multiple lawsuits all tossed.

Kathryn Rubino: And it’s not going to be successful either. It’s just an opportunity to talk about it for two hours.

Joe Patrice: Right, well they will have a vote. That vote won’t accomplish what they want it to and what’s worse is it will continue ratcheting up the pressure because it feels like this is a runaway train at this point, right? Like they keep saying, “Oh, this stuff doesn’t count. We have a way not to count it. We’ll take them to court. We’ll go directly to the Supreme Court.” Whatever it is and every one of these keeps losing and that just ups the pressure on them to do the next stupid thing and at a certain point, you’ve got to get off the tracks.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, well, the other thing I think is that the purpose of this is to prevent primary challenges, right? If you’re a Senator who’s taking this stance, you’re less likely to get an extreme right person that is backed by lots of money and institutional support against you in the primary season.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. I think it’s a lot of the logic. I just don’t see these guys getting that —

Kathryn Rubino: But I mean, that’s the kind of like difference between like when we’re talking in the other conversation about the difference between a business decision and a legal decision, there’s a difference between a political decision and a legal decision and I think that this has a sort of political logic to it but I think when it’s so off the rails, you have other — there are other consequences to it where you know.

Joe Patrice: My favorite part about this is now they — well not my favorite, my least favorite followed by my favorite. My least favorite is that Cruz is now making the explicit connection that this could be handled the same way we handled the election of 1876 because there was some issues with certain states there. What he’s leaving out of that is the issues in those states were that the clan actually terrorized people to prevent them from voting, which then led to wrong results and the end result of this discussion was making Rutherford B. Hayes president with the caveat that he would end reconstruction and allow Jim Crow to exist.

Kathryn Rubino: It’s not really a shining moment in US history.

Joe Patrice: It’s not one of those moments from history you bring up again.

Kathryn Rubino: It’s not something we need to go back to.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, you don’t use it as an example all that often.

Kathryn Rubino: Or ever maybe.

Joe Patrice: Well I mean I would have thought ever but here we are. But my favorite part about this is that the end game of this let’s not count this and whatever is dependent on the Senate — that doing this and all of these they think kind of end in a world where Trump stays President except by doing the things they’re talking about, the result would be Pelosi becomes President. There are there are machinations where they can do that could result in something else but the ones they’re actually talking about, the through line of the logic is that there’s a vacant President and Vice President and the Speaker of The House takes over.

Kathryn Rubino: Okay.

Joe Patrice: That’s what they’re actually aiming for.

Kathryn Rubino: I mean if there’s somebody who is hated more by the far right than Joe Biden, it’s Nancy Pelosi.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, you’d think but here we are.

Kathryn Rubino: Here we are. Well, because I just don’t think that the follow through and also, I think because there’s not an expectation that it’s going to work. Like I think that they do know enough to know that this actually doesn’t change what happens on January 20th. they’re smart enough to know that.

(00:25:14)

Joe Patrice: Some of them are, I’m sure.

Kathryn Rubino: Sure, yeah.

Joe Patrice: I’m not sure Ron Johnson is.

Kathryn Rubino: The leaders. Tommy Tuberville.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, Tommy Tuberville is involved and I’ve watched enough football to know he in fact does not understand what’s happening.

Kathryn Rubino: I mean, one of the craziest parts about the elections of 2020 is that we’ve barely even scratched the surface of talking about Tommy Tuberville winning and becoming a US Senator.

Joe Patrice: Let’s go back and we’ll go back a couple of days. So, Georgia did end up crawling back barely and beating Cincinnati in the bowl game but let’s take a moment. Cincinnati, great mid-major program Brian Kelly ends up leaving to take the job at Notre Dame where he still made the playoffs.

Kathryn Rubino: Lost but yeah.

Joe Patrice: He’s replaced by Butch Jones who moves on to an SEC job because he’s so successful. Tommy Tuberville takes over this program, drives it into the mantle of the earth bad. He leaves almost immediately. Turns around and becomes a top 10 team again. This is how bad this guy is that the only thing that’s actually his job yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: At the job that he was qualified for.

Joe Patrice: At the job he’s good at, he’s bad at.

Kathryn Rubino: Yes.

Joe Patrice: Well, it just shows how important it is to understand the industry that you’re in is so that you can excel at it.

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So, I guess in the last little moments here, I know we did it kind of as a joke too seriously to set up some of these topics but did you have any resolutions, legal-oriented or otherwise?

Kathryn Rubino: I mean, I’m continuing to take my coffee game seriously.

Joe Patrice: Interesting, okay. I’ve never been much for coffee. I know people think that I’m weird but —

Kathryn Rubino: I’ve always been an iced coffee fan and I continue to be. Obviously, we had a previous conversation on the podcast about my love of Jot, which I continue to enjoy. By the way, they have a seasonal brew like a winter wonderland brew and it is so good. But I’m trying to also get into my warm coffees. I get cold all the time and I know it’s in the middle of like winter and the wind is howling out the window, I don’t know I want like a nice or maybe tea, my warm beverage game I think needs to be improved.

Joe Patrice: Oh yeah, that’s fair. My new year’s resolution I suppose if I have one, it’s the same one I’ve had the last two years, which is figure out what Instagram is. I still don’t know.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, I think I want to take Twitter a little bit more seriously. That was my other thing I was thinking about.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, see. I understand Twitter. I could totally help with that. I just need to figure out — I just don’t understand why I would take a picture of myself.

Kathryn Rubino: Well, you don’t have to take it of yourself. I mean, I like to take pictures of myself because I’m vain and very pretty.

Joe Patrice: Fair enough.

Kathryn Rubino: But you can take pictures of things, sunsets, oh you should do sunrises or something. And then it’ll also get you up early. Isn’t that a new year’s resolution too?

Joe Patrice: No, that is absolutely the opposite of a new year’s resolution. No, I don’t know.

Kathryn Rubino: See, I mean I understand Twitter. It just seems like it takes a lot of effort and people who are always on Twitter are just angry. I mean I know you spend a lot of time on Twitter but it just seems like it negatively impacts folks’ well-being and I’m not really excited about that but I do feel like it’s probably a part of my job that I should get better at.

Joe Patrice: Fair enough. Well, with all that said.

Kathryn Rubino: Follow me on Twitter.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: I will try to take it more seriously you guys.

Joe Patrice: There we go. We’re going to do that for sure. So follow, she’s @kathryn. I’m @josephpatrice. You should be reading Above The Law as always. We have some exciting stuff this week. The Lawyer of the Year winner just came out. We got all kinds of fun things like we didn’t even talk about that. That’s how crazy this is. We did not talk about what —

Kathryn Rubino: An election specialist also.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, right.

Kathryn Rubino: Easily could have —

Joe Patrice: Anyway.

Kathryn Rubino: Maybe next week.

Joe Patrice: We’ll squeeze that in next week. So, read Above The Law as always. You should be listening to this show, which you are now but you should listen to it regularly. You should continue. You should give it reviews, stars, write some commentary because just the act of engaging in writing even if it’s just a simple, “love the conversation” sort of statement, even that act of writing tells Apple and other services but obviously a lot of it is Apple Podcast, tells them, “Hey, people care enough to be engaged. That means this must be something people listen to.” And that’s useful for all of us.

You should always check out our other shows, Kathryn hosts a show called The Jabot. I’m on the Legal Tech Week Roundup about legal technology. You should be checking out the other shows from the Legal Talk Network. There’s just too many legal like all of them right in a row. I get all the names messed up but I think I got that right.

(00:30:15)

Thanks as always to Lexicon and LexisNexis Interaction and Contract Tools by Paper Software and yeah, I’m all flustered because I had to move the Twitter stuff out of its usual place in my head.

Kathryn Rubino: Sorry, well, because it had like a natural and logical kind of flow to it.

Joe Patrice: Totally. Understood. I mean I didn’t argue with you, did I? But it did throw me off there, anyway. So, with that said, I think I’ve said everything I’m supposed to say and we will check in next week.

[Music]

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