Bonus Season Stumbles Off The Line

Episode Notes

Transcript

[Music]

Joe Patrice:  Hello, welcome to — Hi.

Kathryn Rubino:  Hello, how are you?

Joe Patrice:  Okay. I’m Joe Patrice from Above the Law, that’s Kathryn Rubino. You have stumbled into an episode of Thinking Like a Lawyer. We are joined as always by Chris Williams, you know?  We’re all from Above the Law and we’re all here to talk about some of the big stories of the week to catch you up on fun and interesting legal happenings that have been out there. We’ve already heard from Kathryn. Hello, Chris. 

Chris Williams:  Hello. 

Joe Patrice:  So without getting too bogged down in unimportant stuff. It’s time for small talk.

Kathryn Rubino:  That’s really annoying. 

Joe Patrice:  I know.

Chris Williams:  It’s good to have you back, Kathryn? 

Joe Patrice:  Yeah. Yeah. We didn’t need to —

Kathryn Rubino:  Fair amount of shit is given to Joe when I’m here which obviously is my number one job here.

Chris Williams:  As it ought to be.

Joe Patrice:  We didn’t even use the sound effect last week. I don’t think because, you know, you weren’t here.

Kathryn Rubino:  Are you serious?

Joe Patrice:  I don’t think so. Didn’t you listen to it?  

Kathryn Rubino:  Oh my God. No.

Joe Patrice:  Okay, fair enough. 

Kathryn Rubino:  I was here. I don’t need to listen to the podcast. I was here. 

Joe Patrice:  You weren’t here that’s the point.

Kathryn Rubino:  Well yeah, but my point is I don’t listen to Thinking Like a Lawyer on — 

Joe Patrice:  You should.

Kathryn Rubino:  How is your holiday, Joe? 

Joe Patrice:  It’s great. How about you?

Kathryn Rubino:  Anything else but digging on me, I appreciate, how about you Chris was your holiday? 

Chris Williams:  It was great until I realized that I work with a heathen. So, I found out — and this is news to — hopefully everybody listening to this. 

Joe Patrice:  Yeah.

Chris Williams:  Hot takes about AirPods aside, Joe Patrice apparently was not raised in a tradition of food Christmas that involves macaroni and cheese. 

Joe Patrice:  Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:  We never had mac and cheese growing up on — 

Joe Patrice:  No, because you don’t put macaroni and cheese with turkey. It’s a wonderful side dish, I love it but it goes with things like brisket or pork or something like that.

Kathryn Rubino:  Well, I also grew up in a very Italian family and household and neighborhood. And so, it was much more likely to see things like a lasagna or — 

Joe Patrice:  See, that’s weird too.

Kathryn Rubino:  I get that it’s not a Thanksgiving food. I’m just saying it was very common to have your Thanksgiving lasagna on the table or meatballs or something like that? 

Joe Patrice:  Okay. Well, that’s crazy. 

Kathryn Rubino:  I agree. I don’t currently make it. 

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, fair enough.

Chris Williams:  Now just to be clear before Joe makes the full pause(ph) alienating all six of our black listeners, the reason this is notable is because everybody knows, everybody who’s relevant knows mac and cheese is not just a great side. It is the reason for the season over the bird-like and here is another thing that like — I think a great writer, Seth McFarland(ph) says really grinds my gears. In addition to being just categorically wrong about mac and cheese. In light of that of course I mean baked. If it has — or cheese, it looks like it’s melted crayons, don’t add me on LinkedIn ever. But turkey is not even that good of a bird and one of the other hot takes Joe had – was that.  Yeah, ham has no place in Thanksgiving because turkey should be the only protein.

Kathryn Rubino:  I’ve never had ham on Thanksgiving.

Joe Patrice:  Correct, yes, it does not belong there. To quote another — to rehabilitate myself with black listeners to quote another prominent black podcaster.

Chris Williams:  If you don’t agree, your black and not white.

Joe Patrice:  No, Michael Felder was talking about this on a podcast recently. While he also did give some credence to the mac and cheese thing. He went on a real tirade about people who don’t have turkeys and the idea that you are trying to put anything else as the star, other than the turkey is just absurd to him. I think that’s true, like ham has a place; it is often at Christmas, definitely an Easter thing. It is not, however, a Thanksgiving thing because that’s a turkey and yes, turkeys are difficult birds to make. Obviously, if you’re able(ph) to make good — that said, it takes a modicum of effort to learn how to make a turkey that tastes good. It’s not that hard, it’s just you have to devote a little bit to learning the process of brining and seasoning and cooking methods.

Kathryn Rubino:  Well, a perfectly done turkey is beautiful and is absolutely the star. However, it is very difficult, and a poorly done turkey is terrible. 

Joe Patrice:  Poorly done, turkey is terrible. 

Chris Williams:  Poorly done turkey is the reason why I truly believe, the reason that God has not returned is because she lives in fear of her own creation. We also have to acknowledge that most turkeys on Thanksgiving are not the good ones that you’re probably thinking of is like, “Oh, this is the reason why it’s sacrosanct” and third, good Turkeys are never good turkeys. They’re usually good for a turkey. And like you said, it requires like a strange tradition of brining and looks like somebody’s about to get vaccinated or like injections. 

(00:05:02)

Joe Patrice:  Well, injections are important. 

Chris Williams:  You know what you don’t need that for? Ham because it’s just good.

Kathryn Rubino:  Well because it’s already been done, it’s already been cured, right?  Which is why it’s delicious.

Chris Williams:  You don’t need it for roast beef.

Joe Patrice:  Oh yes, you do. If you’re making — well, you don’t need it for every roast beef, but if I’m making like a brisket or something like that, I’m going to be injecting — putting an injection in there. Like, I would put injection in most big meats that I would use. Yeah. 

Chris Williams:  The fat content in Turkey is far too low. Once you get past the wings and like maybe the breast; the rest is like, “Damn am I really doing this for tradition?”

Joe Patrice:  Oh see, the breasts are the best part if you do it right.

Chris Williams:  No, I’m saying the turkey breast and the wings like those are the saving graces. Especially like a good smothered wing like that’s why – I’m pretty sure when Prince is writing when Doves Cry, he was thinking of turkey wings. I’m not sure if he was eating meat at the time, maybe bot but there is something magical about those. But the whole bird? No.

Kathryn Rubino:  Growing up, the turkey neck was always the fought over body part in my family.

Chris Williams:  Turkey neck is a seasoning and probably for greens.

Kathryn Rubino:  People in my family would just split it up and just eat it whole. Well not whole because it’s got a lot of bones. But you know, they would definitely eat it. Because you know why? It was done first before the rest of the bird so then they would take it out and it was like a snack for the cook. I think that’s why it really kind of developed this prestige.

Chris Williams:  Yes, because cooking turkey takes three business days. And when you’re cooking something from that long, you say ridiculous things, like, “Oh I want to eat the neck.

Joe Patrice:  It’s not a lot of work. 

Kathryn Rubino:  It should take longer than three business days.

Joe Patrice:  Well, it should take longer in preparation but you don’t have to — there’s not a lot of effort involved in those four days.

Kathryn Rubino:  False.

Chris Williams:  Okay, there are a lot of people with burn-down homes that would contest that because one of the main causes of like house fires is frying turkeys around Christmas and Thanksgiving. And the reason you’re doing that is because this bird is so bland. Somebody is like I’m going to risk my familial home to make this foul bird worthy of my family’s time. 

Joe Patrice:  Well, I would go the opposite. I would say that when you talk about the amount of time, the reason people go with frying is it’s faster than these other methods which is a mistake. That said I mean frying birds is perfectly fine too, but people don’t know how to do that, bringing me back to — 

Chris Williams:  No, not birds. I know many people who don’t have to get increased home insurance payments because they fried a chicken or Cornish hen. This is specifically a turkey problem.

Kathryn Rubino:  Because it’s so big and frozen.

Joe Patrice:  Well, it’s big. Well, the frozen is the biggest part. Because the key to frying is you have to make sure all the moisture is out of it or else it’s going to cause a fire. So, you need to not have a frozen bird. You got to get it fresh if you’re going to try and fry because that’s the only way you can ensure you’re going to get all of the moisture out of it. But these people buy them and immediately throw them in frying oil which is no, you’ve got to have that in the fridge drying out, which is the whole part about how it takes a few days but you don’t do a lot of effort in those few days. You just need to have it sitting there being dehydrated a little bit. So that’ll be good when you put it into the fryer after you inject it with the marinades and stuff that you need, dry brine, it courses and then you’re good.

Kathryn Rubino:  Dry brine? 

Chris Williams:  This advertisement was brought to you by big turkey.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah. It feels to me that like it is an American holiday and quintessentially most American thing would be to do one of two things screw up something by not taking the time to learn how to do it right or giving up and getting a ham which is already done. It’s like, just put the time and effort into learning how to make a bird, it’s not that hard.

Chris Williams:  Look, every time I’ve had good turkey. I’ve never been like, “This is good for turkey.” You feel the distinction, like there’s a difference there.

Joe Patrice:  I do.

Kathryn Rubino:  I understand.

(Voice Overlap)

Chris Williams:  Like, really, really good turkey. Tastes like a nice Cornish hen or some chicken, that’s what I’m saying. 

Joe Patrice:  Oh, no, no. It’s distinctly turkey and frankly my favorite barbecue is smoked turkey. 

Kathryn Rubino:  Yeah. 

Joe Patrice:  Like I feel like a good smoked turkey is —

Kathryn Rubino:  Rudy’s smoked turkey for those — for our Texas listeners or Oklahoma but yeah, that is my go-to.

Chris Williams:  Is that the argument you really want to go for in defending the Thanksgiving orthodoxy?  Smoked turkey?  Is that with the pilgrims were eating on?

Joe Patrice:  I mean, well — 

(Voice Overlap)

They probably weren’t having turkey. They probably weren’t having turkey.

Kathryn Rubino:  They’re probably having a trout.

Chris Williams:  Listen, turkey is so bad as a bird even the pilgrims didn’t have it for Thanksgiving, come on now.

Joe Patrice:  But you know what they definitely weren’t having? Macaroni and cheese and this bring us to the conclusion of small talk. So anyway, I control the sound effects. So, there we go, so we should get into conversation and — 

Kathryn Rubino:  So, you know what else besides Thanksgiving, it’s that time of year. 

Joe Patrice:  It is. 

Kathryn Rubino:  Bonus season has arrived. 

(00:10:03)

Kathryn Rubino:  Big law bonus season is here. That means the major law firms are starting to hand out their annual bonuses and you may be confused about this because you may be thinking, “hey, that’s happened all year.”

Kathryn Rubino:  Like, three times.

Joe Patrice:  And that’s true because this year bonus had been cropping up all over the place, but the big bonuses, the annual — expected to be part of your paycheck style bonuses come out, usually right around Thanksgiving and they have. 

Kathryn Rubino:  Yeah, and I am the first to admit I was wrong about my prediction. I thought that firms would use — Wow.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah. 

Kathryn Rubino:  Wow, I think we need to take away your rights for the sound effects. Now that you’ve burned Chris with them too, I got an extra vote on my side that you were no longer allowed to have access to the sound board. Anyway — 

Chris Williams:  I think you all should just fight 

(Voice Overlap)

– capability.

Joe Patrice:  Fight, fight, fight!

Kathryn Rubino:  That implies we haven’t. So, but I said my prediction was that would be the same scale as last year and particularly valuable groups whether they be by seniority or M&A associate would get sort of discretionary extra money and that is true to a certain extent. We’ve seen a lot of firms offering high biller bonuses on top of their sort of year-end numbers or some other discretionary component. Which inevitably be used to keep the very valuable associates exactly where they are. But is a larger number, is it’s approximately 15% more year over last year’s numbers, which is pretty remarkable. The reason to why I think it’s noteworthy is because these numbers will form the basis, not only of this year’s year-end numbers but going forward. If there is a number that is less than these numbers, that what we see it as a sign of weakness in the industry. So, I think it’s a pretty big deal.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, no, I agreed with you. I didn’t think they would go higher. I thought what they would do is have more of these non-annual bonuses to up the pot for the reason that you mentioned because once you’ve set a standard, I mean we had this several years ago, when they went back from where they had been sitting for a while, it was a mutiny.

Kathryn Rubino:  It was also — they were also laying people off so there wasn’t a lot of option for the said mutiny. But it was a bad look for the industry, certainly.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah. So, the benchmarking point is one of those things that people don’t mention and haven’t mentioned much of but is true. You set a standard and then you kind of have to live by it for the next few years.

Kathryn Rubino:  it is also true that majority of the players don’t have a lot of say on where the market settles, right?  Once (00:12:47) publishes its numbers, there’s a couple of other folks who may go over the top of that number. But once all those kinds of — movers have settled on a number. If you go under that, then you are below market and that’s noteworthy in and of itself. Even if a lot of people get more money, but in the non-year-end numbers that’s still seen as distinction that reflects poorly on the firm. At least on the financial health of the firm. Maybe it’s a great law firm, just you know, it doesn’t have much money. 

Joe Patrice:  Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:  That’s a good reason to go to law school, that was all this money that’s coming in.

Joe Patrice:  That was what I was about to say.

Kathryn Rubino:  Yeah. It’s a really good reason.

Joe Patrice:  You went to law school to be a lawyer, not an accountant. It’s actually isn’t true.

Kathryn Rubino:  You could use it to count all that money. 

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, you would. So actually, you probably did go to become — but only an accountant for your own money.

Kathryn Rubino:  Right.

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The next topic we wanted to cover just because it was big in the news, you know, we talked about the Rittenhouse verdict last week. We got the Arbery verdict which fairly or unfairly these two were very intertwined verdicts.

Kathryn Rubino:   It’s been popular.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, but that one came in. 

Chris Williams:  And it’s great. I’m a big fan of lynchers not seeing the outside. But the thing is, it’s also weird because I’m like, I’m also not a big fan of slavery and oddly enough. So, this might have been a — this could have been a small talk conversation. If not for Joe’s bad taste, culinarily speaking. I went to an event in Philly. It’s called Liberty on the Rocks(ph). And I was at like this Board, I’m not a Libertarian. But I had some drinks with a bunch of Libertarians and I was like, “Oh, I hope I don’t get sold,” but if contract overall is — but one of the things I was saying, is that that just like — I’m pointing conversation because if I was like I was there when I actually see what these people are thinking. 

(00:15:03)

I was like “Oh, everybody knows that America is a slave state, right?” Like we’re one of the biggest slave state in history of humanity. We gave a while amendment to the constitution dedicate to it. Like — Amendment 13 is just like if you commit felony, bye-bye freedom.

And then I got a whole bunch of responses like what about China? They have slaves. I was like, “Okay, one, that’s what about (00:15:28) but two, we still outnumber them vastly. But yeah, we still have slavery and we still have mentioning. But the thing that makes the Ahmaud Arbery ruling surprising is that apparently, you can’t just lynch in broad daylight anymore. I thought this is a new historical revelation. It might be an anomaly. I mean, because I even these three lynchers initially weren’t going to be charged and even after there was a video of it, people were still wondering what would happen.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah.

Chris Williams:  But you know maybe, I just field it as a Thanksgiving miracle. About as wide as a jury you can get 15 of the 16 jurors. Like four of those — 12 jurors, the four alternates were white. A ruling happened that seemed to be in quarters with the rule of law and that was surprising and I think that is — it says a lot about contemporary race relations. As far as like, people that talk about color blindness and law being a neutral thing. The fact that this is newsworthy(ph) is something that should be shocking, and I might be veering away from like the discussion of like what this means in terms of abolitionism but I think they’re intertwined. 

Joe Patrice:  Well, it’s interesting. You mentioned what I felt was the big story was that these folks weren’t going to be charged initially. It was one of these situations where it was absolutely going to be ignored and then the video came out and it’s not that the video came out; they release the video basically. So, because they thought this was going to be a good thing for them, as opposed to absolutely the reason why they were convicted and under those circumstances. But you know, I think about it as it plays into the complicated topic we talked about last week, which was the way in which law enforcement and prosecutors have so much latitude under the system to choose what they do and do not go after. And that there are reasons why that’s good because we over-criminalize things in this country and having prosecutors and law enforcement having discretion to not go after every single thing to the hilt is good. 

Probably, it would be better if we didn’t over criminalize but whatever, but given that we like that — we also have this counter where we have sheriffs going and not enforcing public health mandates, and we have in this case a situation where prosecutors and law enforcement were willing to allow a lynching in broad daylight to be ignored. But for the public pressure that came on them — 

(Voice Overlap)

Chris Williams:  Even further than that, didn’t one of the Eds(ph) also helped to cover it up?

Joe Patrice:  I mean they were up and like — they were all involved in just like pushing it aside and downplaying it until pressure got placed on them. That’s that balance. Taking away discretion from those folks entirely would not necessarily be good either. How do you strike that balance?  Yeah, plays into our combo from last week, this is a plug for people to listen to last week’s episode like Kathryn apparently didn’t. 

Kathryn Rubino:  I mean, I’m not going to, I think you caught me up.

Joe Patrice:  See, but you weren’t here. That’s a thing — 

(Voice Overlap)

Kathryn Rubino:  I wasn’t, I was on vacation.

Joe Patrice:  When I’m on a show, I don’t necessarily listen to everyone. But if I’m not there, then I’d definitely do to keep up.

Kathryn Rubino:  It was a holiday week man; I had a lot of going on. I had a lot going on.

Joe Patrice:  You could have missed a key twist or something.

Chris Williams:  Okay, so speaking of discretion, Kathryn gets some gives some not watched last week but you loyal listeners who missed out for whatever reason, you all have to.

Joe Patrice:  There you go.

Chris Williams:  The rule of podcast, it has to be — 

(Voice Overlap)

Kathryn Rubino:  Sure. It has been decided.

Joe Patrice:  All right. Let’s hear from our friends at Lexicon.

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Joe Patrice:  All right. So final topic of the week, this is one that we haven’t really written about at least not yet and may not. But is worth some degree of conversation. There are now some lawsuits cropping up, there’s one at Columbia in particular that crossed our radar about Zoom U you or Zoom School of Law for those of us who are on the legal side. 

(00:20:03)

Basically, arguing about we had a situation for at least a year, if not a year and a half in some of these school’s cases where education was taken off campus from the comfort of your home doing Zoom conversations and lectures. But the school’s continued to charge the same tuition and there’s now lawsuits questioning whether or not that was fair appropriate, yada, yada, yada.

Kathryn Rubino:  I mean it seems to me that most of these schools’ costs were fixed, right?  They weren’t going to pay professors less because they we’re doing it online. I guess, there are some folks that were — facilities that got — in some places got furloughed, although other schools they continued to pay even their sort of facilities teams. So, I’m not sure where the savings is supposed to come from.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah. I mean, that’s my thing. Well, Columbia fell over this lawsuit that was dangerous enough that they gave them 12.5 million. So, they felt like they were — had some degree of exposure or — 

(Voice Overlap)

Kathryn Rubino:  Or just a public relations risk. Yeah.

Joe Patrice:  Moral right, public relations, whatever. But I mean, you raise a good point, the overhead is still there. If anything, it may even be higher because on top of maintaining a bunch of buildings, you now need to maintain and build out a secure online infrastructure

Kathryn Rubino:  Right, if you haven’t done it already, if you hadn’t done it and I don’t think anyone had really thought through doing it at this scale already. So, there is that aspect of whether — and on the other side, your degree is still worth the same, no one’s going to look at a Columbia degree and say – –

Kathryn Rubino:  Oh, but it was 2021, that means — no, no one cares.

Joe Patrice:  Right. So, on that side, I think I side with the schools in continuing to charge that way. On the flip side though, doing things over Zoom is probably a lower quality experience for people.

Chris Williams:  I’ll go on the flipside. So, I went to Washington University in St. Louis and yes, it was great to not be in St. Louis, I will claim not being in St. Louis was the death of me. But for whatever reason, why should school of law from my living room cost $3,000 more?

Joe Patrice:  It went up.

Chris Williams:  It went up and I could not afford. I had some scholarship money but I didn’t have a full ride(ph) so that came out of my pocket at a time where I’m not — I can rely on my parents. That was on me to pay so I ended up having to work full-time at an Amazon warehouse while I was doing my 3L. So I was an essential worker paying an extra $3,000 for the semester for functionally spicy YouTube lectures. And you know, I paid that ticket price for the things that come with being there in person to be in — I don’t know, criminal procedure and see my teachers belt and shoes not matching or I don’t know, seeing the FED socket(ph) squirm when somebody says something ridiculous, like maybe women should have rights. That’s part of the experience and you don’t get that when in the first three minutes, you see a blank screen that has your name in the bottom-left title of it. I was embarking for — like jumped the tuition for what is the worst experience. And those professors, part of it being because it was a new train for them and they weren’t trained to do that. There are better Khan Academy than listening some of my professors talk about — I don’t know, the intricacies of section 1983, even if they’ve been doing that for years, they’re not used to Zoom. I paid extra for somebody who has been teaching it for 40 years is fumbling over how to mute the third student that day. You usually get paid or discounted for participating in trial processes. You don’t have to pay a premium on them. 

Kathryn Rubino:  I mean, I don’t doubt that the experience was markedly worse but all of 2020 was markedly worse than an average year. And I mean, I don’t know the specifics of Waukesha’s tuition schedule but I imagine it was planned to go up regardless of whether or not there was the Zoom or in-person. That was probably just an anticipated tuition hike.

Joe Patrice:  But to Kathryn’s point, I think so as I did put out and I agreed with you on the point though, like overhead is still the same, yada, yada. But your point of 2020 sucked for everybody which is true, but the question of who pays the price for it sucking, why is it always the student?  Like somebody had to suck up the money for everything being screwed and why was it the student and not to use the Columbia example, the institution with a giant endowment. 

Kathryn Rubino:  Sure.

Chris Williams:  Waukesha has about $8 billion endowment. 

(00:25:03)

I’m $213,000 in debt, why am I covering that cost?

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, exactly. 

Chris Williams:  They could have bought some GME stock, that’s not on me.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, that’s the problem for me is I took the stance early on of maybe, we don’t need to start massively discounting folks because I said the school degree is still worth the same and whatever. But I’ve kind of softened on that for the reasons that we just talked about, and I definitely would have softened on any plan to increases share because you know, this is ridiculous.

Kathryn Rubino:  I think 3K(ph) for a couple of years if you’re at the school, right? 

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, like it’s just so little out of them. 

Kathryn Rubino:  And you’d probably wind up having a much worse impact that probably stings a lot worse to students who lived through it and their desire long-term to make donations to their alma mater is probably going to be permanently impacted by in the middle of a pandemic like sticking a stick in their eye, right?  By increasing tuition. That’s a fair point that I’m not sure people were really thinking through. 

Chris Williams:  Like why should you — and I could be wrong. Maybe it wasn’t 3,000. Maybe it was only a mere two thousand dollars that increased tuition by. But at some point, in the middle of the air being spicy, they decided to give us a rebate to account for classes being online of like, 250 bucks, it was very specific. You had to say which you wanted to buy and it had to be class-related. I was like, can I just get the money? And they’re like, “No, it has to be something for school.”  So, I ended up getting a — I think I got a better camera or what have you. but they call it – -for the auto-rebate – it could be a 2750 or a 1750 tuition hike — to like — I was — 

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, and the annoying costs of going to school these days, 250. I mean that’s 8 classes textbooks of somebody’s classes.

Chris Williams:  Well, three-fourths maybe, depends on the class.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah. Fair enough.

Chris Williams:  They might be a little different from when you went back in. We also have this thing called high-speed internet.

Joe Patrice:  No, I mean, we definitely didn’t have that but yeah, I mean like in my era, if there had been a pandemic, I don’t know what they would have done. We just wouldn’t have been able to do school.

Kathryn Rubino:  They were like good luck with all that. 

Joe Patrice:  I mean, the internet existed and we had ethernet connections and everything in the dorms. But I mean you had to physically be plugged in and the whole problem was being in a dorm which, you know, if you weren’t there, then you wouldn’t have been able to do it anyway. 

Chris Williams:  I will say shout-out to my negotiation professor, he assigned this book, like 3D negotiation and something else, altogether came to be like 40 bucks that semester. So, power to him, that was a godsend. I used the rest of the money to buy food and whatnot.

Joe Patrice:  I feel like negotiation professors probably had a real time with this whole Zoom thing because I think that given that we now think that the online world, or at least a hybrid working model is going to become more de rigueur going forward. I got to imagine if I were teaching negotiation, I would have loved the pandemic at least as far as my job goes, because teaching the dynamics of doing online negotiation which is not anything anybody done before but it’s probably something that’s going to be huge going forward. That would’ve been really interesting. I don’t know, I would have seen it as opportunity in a way that Crim Pro probably wouldn’t, you know?

Chris Williams:  Negotiators tend to do that, so there was also a lot of discussion like incorporating the fact that we were doing it on Zoom into I said, “Oh, usually you read body language. How do you do that when you’re talking to a talking head?” just unaware of the conditions of negotiation and communication, which I thought was useful. It was one of the useful classes I had as a law student.

Joe Patrice:  I feel like that’s — we often talk about how often talk about how 3L is basically useless. That’s exactly the sort of class to take and exactly the sort of class to take in the middle of a pandemic. Like it would be so much more interesting than taking it in normal times.

Chris Williams:  way better than incorporations(ph).

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, I think corporations are a very important.

Kathryn Rubino:  Less on the bar exam, I imagine.

Joe Patrice:  A very important class but not one that’s particularly interesting to do over Zoom. All right, well we should probably wrap this show up, right? 

Kathryn Rubino:  Sure. 

Joe Patrice:  Yeah. So, thanks everybody for coming and listening. You should be listening to the show as always, and you should subscribe. In that way, you get the new episodes when they come out. You should give a review —

Kathryn Rubino:  Fine, I’ll subscribe. 

Joe Patrice:  You don’t even subscribe? What’s wrong with you?

Kathryn Rubino:  I do.

Joe Patrice:  Okay, should give reviews, stars are the easy way of doing it. But if you want extra credit, go ahead and write something because that shows engagement, which helps the algorithm understand that we’re out there and recommends us to other people. You should be reading about the law so you can read these and more stories as they come out throughout the week. 

(00:30:02)

If you’re more of a podcast person well, good news, we have more of those. Kathryn’s the host of the Jabot where she talks about diversity issues in law and law school. I am a panelist on the LegalTech Week Journalist roundtable. LegalTech, is that right?

Kathryn Rubino:  It’s just surprising because you actually got the name of your secondary podcast correct at the source — 

Joe Patrice:  See, I’m now doubting myself whether I got it correct. 

Kathryn Rubino:  I think that that’s really what’s throwing you off in your rhythm here at the end is that you actually — 

Joe Patrice:  That I got it right?

Kathryn Rubino:  Correct, yeah. So, I mean it’s weird when you’re right. 

Joe Patrice:  Check out the other shows by the Legal Talk Network. You should follow us on social media, I’m @josephpatrice she is @kathryn1, he’s @rightsforrentis. Also check out @atlblog which is of course the official account of the whole shebang. Thanks to Nota, powered by M&T Bank and Lexicon for sponsoring. With all of that said, we will talk to you next week.

Kathryn Rubino:  Peace.

Chris Williams:  See you next week.

[Music]

The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of, nor are they endorsed by Legal Talk Network, its officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders, and subsidiaries. None of the content should be considered legal advice. As always, consult a lawyer.

 

Podcast transcription by Tech-Synergy.com

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