The Drumbeat Of Layoffs Getting Louder

Episode Notes

Transcript

Katherine Rubino: Okay. I just thought when you took that deep breath, you were signaling, you’re ready to talk.

Joe Patrice: I was not.  But you’re over here being all. [Explosion SFX]

[Music]

Joe Patrice: Welcome back everybody.

Katherine Rubino: Hey.

Joe Patrice: I really thought I could speak–

Katherine Rubino: Are you trying to spread there, Joe Patrice.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.  Welcome back to Thinking Like a Lawyer.  This is your weekly Above the Law podcast where we go through some of the major legal stories of the week.  That is, well, you’ve heard from everybody kind of a little bit.  I’m Joe Patrice from Above the Law and I’m joined by some of my colleagues.  I’ve got Katherine Rubino here.

Katherine Rubino: Yeah, I’m here.

Joe Patrice: And I’ve got Chris Williams here.

Chris Williams: It is I.

Joe Patrice: So, we are going to talk a little bit about the week.  As I said there’s been–

Katherine Rubino: Legal stories that are happening.

Joe Patrice: There have been things happening across our legal industry that we know and love so well that we think we should talk about.  First, I think we should have some, not talk about the big issues yet.

Katherine Rubino: Okay.  Maybe small issues.

Joe Patrice: Wait really?  So, like, is there a term for that?

Chris Williams: I think it’s called tiny communications.

[Music]

Joe Patrice: We’re going to have small talks.

Katherine Rubino: Small talk.

Joe Patrice: So, wait, what’s up everybody?

Katherine Rubino: Well, I spent not in substantial amount of my weekend putting up some Christmas decor.

Joe Patrice: Oh, you are definitely–

Chris Williams: It is November.  It is November’s week.

Katherine Rubino: Sure is.  I waited until November 1st and I should be congratulated for that.

Chris Williams: You are the reason Mariah Carrie is wealthy.

Katherine Rubino: No, Mariah Carrie is the reason why Mariah Carrie — it has to be very clear.  I’m not taking anything away from that woman.

Joe Patrice: So, you’re going full Auntie Mame here that we got a–

Katherine Rubino: We need a little Christmas right this very minute, yeah.  No, listen, I also love Thanksgiving.  I don’t think a pro Christmas stance is necessarily neutrally exclusive with a celebration of Thanksgiving.  But here’s the thing, Thanksgiving doesn’t have a ton of carols or music generally associated with it.  The decorations are a little bit lack lesser, though I will say, it does not mean that I don’t also have my sort of fall décor, but I have the pallet of my fall decorations that kind of blends with my Christmas stuff, and it’s not all up yet.  But you know, if you’re going to put up five Christmas trees, you can’t do that in one day.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.  No, I think that’s fair.

Katherine Rubino: So, I have two of the five up currently.

Joe Patrice: It’s like an advent calendar, like as we count down to the day after the Black Friday.

Katherine Rubino: Yeah.  Then we’ll go have all them.  Yeah, it’s going to be great.  Yeah.  So, I have my turquoise tree up and I have my pastel tree up currently.

Chris Williams: Why?

Katherine Rubino: Why five trees?  Why turquoise trees?

Chris Williams: No, let me repeat.  Why, out of all of this?  All of these needs explanation.

Joe Patrice: I think she’s already — I mean, there’s a ton of explanation already on the flow.

Chris Williams: Why turquoise?

Katherine Rubino: I love the color.  It’s very pretty.  It matches my house and my décor.  And as I was saying, I have things that go with both the November kind of Thanksgiving decor.  I also have a lot of turquoise pumpkins, a lot of black and white stuff that kind of blends in that.

Chris Williams: Pumpkins come in turquoise?

Katherine Rubino: Yeah, you can get anything in turquoise these days.

Joe Patrice: To be clear, I don’t think she’s talking about a real pumpkin.

Katherine Rubino: Well, there are blue pumpkins you can buy.  I’ve had them in the past.

Joe Patrice: Really?

Katherine Rubino: Yeah.

Chris Williams: Take that Joe.

Katherine Rubino: But they’re harder to come by.

Chris Williams: I’m suspicious.

Katherine Rubino: Okay.  And yet, they exist.  But there’s a ton of decor, I’m currently have a dining room table that has a tablecloth that has lovely turquoise, blue pumpkins printed all over it.  So, I think turquoise is a great color.  A lot of my house is decorated in turquoise and it makes me super happy every time I turn on my turquoise tree with its turquoise lights and its turquoise ornaments.

Joe Patrice: Okay.  So, I think that concludes our session on turquoise talk.

Katherine Rubino: We are brought to you by the color turquoise.  But that’s what I did this weekend.

Joe Patrice: Those dead beats haven’t paid their bill yet.

Katherine Rubino: We’re now going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsor, turquoise.

So, what did you do Joe?  Quick tip poo-poo by Christmas décor, did you have something better on your agenda?

Joe Patrice: Not really.  Yeah, no, I think all three of us did debate stuff this weekend a little bit so that was–

Chris Williams: Wait, still my shine.

Joe Patrice: I know, right.

Chris Williams: Leave a bit of mystery.  I could have been fighting fires or some shit.

(00:05:00)

Joe Patrice: When we all do the same things.

Katherine Rubino: Did you have any fires in your home this week.

Chris Williams: That’ the least of the thing, Joe.  They only know we did the same things if you say it.  Like you say mystery.

Joe Patrice: Right.  I mean, okay.  You actually had some folks actually address the fact that your house catches fire.

Chris Williams: I did?  Oh, yeah.  That was this weekend.  So, anyway, enough about Joe’s weekend.  Mine was great.  It was electrifying for two reasons.  One, the study that I’m doing my, the podcast and there was only one working outlet in the entire room and the overhead light did not work.  Now, I have four working outlets and an overhead light that works which gives me the opportunity to study my students, to grade my student’s papers late into the night.  I will not take it but I like knowing that the option is there.

Joe Patrice: Nice.

Katherine Rubino: Was this related to your electrical fire that you had or is this separate?

Chris Williams: With the grading?

Katherine Rubino: The lack of power in your side.

Chris Williams: Oh no, my house is just, it’s been broken for several years.  But now that I’m making the big bucks, judging debate tournaments, I can afford to do some repairs.  Speaking of, it was nice to do, judging this debate tournament because it scratches the teacherly itch, that teaching at my actual college doesn’t scratch.  I don’t know.  Because I don’t know what it is but it seems like the students who are doing debate actually maybe halfway want to be there and are interested in learning, which is different from the collegiate experience.  There was one part where there was a debater, they were arguing over definitions and they had to give reasons why you should prefer one set of definitions over another one and I gave them a reason that was anchored in the Constitution.  So, I got to wear my lawyer hat and it was really —

Katherine Rubino: There you go.

Chris Williams: It was a good weekend.  I’ve been poo-pooing any involvement with debate for like the last two or three years or so, memory serves, but it’s nice to be back.  It’s nice to be back and interact with folks.

Katherine Rubino: Nice.  Good.

Joe Patrice: All right.  Well, with that said, I think we have reached the conclusion of our–

Katherine Rubino: Small talk.

Joe Patrice: Small talk time.  So, okay we’ll close it off of that.

Katherine Rubino: Amazing.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. All right, so let’s talk about legal stuff.  Hey?

Katherine Rubino: Hey.

Joe Patrice: Do you have a legal job?  You might not for long.  Go on.

Katherine Rubino: Maybe.  Yeah.  We got some reports last week that the world’s richest law firm is conducting some stealth layoffs.  Booooo!

Joe Patrice: Let’s, real quick to this extent, anybody is unfamiliar with the phrase, what is a stealth layoff?

Katherine Rubino: They are evil. They are some toxic corporate bullshit right there.  That is when a firm in the midst of an economic or an anticipated economic downturn decide that during their review process, they decide that all of a sudden folks do not meet the standards that the firm has, whether it’s number of hours that they’ve built or some other kind of more nebulous standard.  And say, “Oh, you know, you’re no longer qualified to work here.  You’re not meeting our standards”.  Usually give them a couple of months of severance, give an opportunity to find a new job and then they’re able to say that they have not conducted economic based layoffs.

So, people who were from the outside, who may not be familiar with this process, think that it’s the attorney’s fault.  Think that, oh, well if only you’d build more hours, you’d still have a job.  Never mind that there were not matters for them to be staffed on which is very much not a junior associate’s role, right?  To bring new matters into the firm.  But they still get laid off and they still are made to feel like it is something that they did as oppose to the fact if it was a great economy, they likely would’ve gotten a full bonus, great review all the way across the board and done literally nothing different.

Joe Patrice: Okay, so with that description now, so we now know what stuff layoffs are.  So, now what’s going on over at Kirkland.

Katherine Rubino: Yeah, they’re letting go folks after a series.  They normally have their review period in the fall and they’re letting bunches of folks off.  Again, because of the nature of stealth layoffs, the exact numbers are super hard to confirm.  I think we’ve confirmed at least 25 folks but likely significantly more, we’ve heard rumors of many, many times more than 25.

Joe Patrice: And given the size of the firm that would track.  They’re like many, many more would seem likely.  Also given the nature of Kirkland’s business portfolio which is historically been very corporate and transactional.  Heavy to the extent things slow down, that is where a lot of that work is going to happen.  It’s not going to, like other firms may have a mix that deals with, that has more weight on bankruptcy or litigation that could pick up.  And it’s not that they don’t have those folks but they rely a lot on the transactional side.  So, this doesn’t shock a lot that they would be one of the early movers in the layoff world.

(00:10:05)

Katherine Rubino: I mean, I also think it’s because they were very aggressive during the 2021 kind of corporate boom, right?  We talked extensively on this podcast about all the lateral moves that were happening in corporate last year, end of 2020.  The market was super hot.  Literally, firms were saying, “If you have a pulse and are able to do even a little bit of deal work, we will hire you.”  We are hearing stories of without an interview, they were hiring new corporate folks because there were so many deals, they didn’t have enough bodies to staff the deals.

Joe Patrice: We got tips that Kirkland was paying almost double in signing bonuses to get people too.  Like they were so–

Katherine Rubino: They were super aggressive during the good times which means that they’re super aggressive in the back and we’re hearing a lot of corporate based folks.  So, they’ll find themselves out of work and to the years, I mean, it’s never a good time to lose your job but that’s particularly awful.  It’s a time that a lot of these things happen not surprised, but once again, we’re seeing very similar patterns happen that we saw in 2008, 2009, where firms are letting folks go pretending like it’s their fault through no actual quality problems.

Joe Patrice: I’d also add that we are — so you mentioned the 2008, 2009, I actually think it strikes me as a little more similar to the, in retrospect, more minor recession that took place like in the 2001, 2002 kind of area of which was driven by tech.  That little dump began kind of in the tech world which was really out kicking its coverage.  And we saw that firms that were very tech based were the kind of canaries in that layoff mine, that we’re also seeing because we’ve got, we’re hearing reports now that the bay area market in particular is having some layoff issues not only do we have companies like Facebook going into the absolute toilet, but we have an idiot running Twitter firing people.  And that spills over to the outside council for these sorts of places too.  So, I think we’ve already seen, delays and new attorney start dates coming out of firms that are based in that area.  So, whether or not this gets isolated to the bay area and the rest of the market pushes forward, we’ll see.  It is a tenuous time whether or not this spiral into mass layoffs across the board.  Who knows?

Katherine Rubino: I think the differences between now and 08 or 09 are worth talking about because a lot of firms did massive cuts in 08, 09, and most associate particular class years.  And what we end up happening is once the market started picking up, they had holes in their staffing.  They no longer had mid-levels able to lead teams.  They no longer had senior associates that they could start to groom for partnership.  So, I think that firms are a little, well, I think very conscientious firms are concerned that they don’t overcut because they don’t want to be put in that position that they were in 2010, 2011, 2013 when they didn’t have the mid-levels that they needed to really function properly.

Joe Patrice: Well, I also think there’s something to be said for like, as bad as things may look right now.  This is not 2008, 2009 because as I said the bay areas are having some issues with the tech sector but the problem with 2008, 2009 is that banks literally disappeared.  When Lehman Brothers disappears, that’s going to cause much bigger problems than meta being in the tech.

Katherine Rubino: Yes, Lehman Brothers is a much bigger provider of legal work.

Joe Patrice: And other banks who did survive also suffered big there.  So, I feel like the odds that this passes into the New York market are a little bit muted from what had happened in that run.  But that said, we can’t really predict where things are going to go but it seems like that with–

Katherine Rubino: And we are hearing some folks in bigger markets, not just in sort of the California tech-based world that are impacted by these as well, but perhaps at firms that are more heavily invested in the tech space and corporate space as well.

Joe Patrice: Right.  And the transactional side stuff.  I think that that said, I mean, I have heard some firms say that they’re going to try to be counter cyclical and try to invest in basically getting the rebound of these transactional lawyers coming out of these firms because even though they may not have the work now, they foresee a more rapid turnaround like the problems that they we’re facing are a little bit more transitory, so they think that they can score by picking up these folks on the rebound, which would be in a real win.

(00:15:11)

Katherine Rubino: If you find yourself out of work, you want to tell your story above the law, you can always reach out to us tips at Above the Law and we wish you the best of luck finding your next legal job.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.  Well, the sound effects aren’t working.

Katherine Rubino: We can pretend.

Joe Patrice: We could pretend

Katherine Rubino: Bring, bring.  Bring, bring.  Have you heard about the whole thing about how like kids nowadays don’t use their hand to simulate a telephone the same way that like Gen X used to.  You know how, like for Gen X used to use your pointer finger and your pinky to be like, that’s the telephone.  Now, they just hold it because it’s like a phone is a brick in their minds.

Joe Patrice: That’s actually fascinating.  And that makes sense.

Katherine Rubino: Yeah.  Well, you know, if you’ve stopped thinking about telephones in general, it might be because you need a service for someone to take care of the–

Joe Patrice: Oh, like a virtual receptionist.

Katherine Rubino: That’s what I was going with.

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Craig Williams: Today’s legal news is rarely as straight forward as the headlines that accompany them.  On Lawyer to Lawyer, we provide the legal perspective you need to better understand the current events that shape our society.  Join me, Craig Williams, and a wide variety of industry experts as we break down the top stories.  Follow Lawyer to Lawyer on the Legal Talk Network or wherever you subscribe to Podcasts.

Joe Patrice: All right, so, speaking of things that are shitty, let’s talk about Jones Day.  What are we doing?  Is that right?

Katherine Rubino: They have not learned from the great Barbra Streisand.  It is what I’m going to say.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.  You know that’s an excellent point.  Let’s bring this back–

Chris Williams: To the younger people, who definitely know what reference you’re making, what reference are you making?

Katherine Rubino: To Barbra Streisand?  You don’t know who Barbra Streisand is?

Chris Williams: I’m a 28-year-old black man.  I know by name but I don’t follow her catalog.

Joe Patrice: So, Barbra Streisand was a singer.

Katherine Rubino: Is.

Joe Patrice: Is. Anyway, very famous singer, got into acting.  Did a lot of acting.

Katherine Rubino: Lot of broadway stuff.

Joe Patrice: Lots of broadway.  Not really the issue though.  The issue as far as this topic is concerned is about the internet which I don’t know if you know that, that’s this thing that is out there where all these computers are and there’s a series of two–

Chris Williams: (00:18:00)

Katherine Rubino: Yes.

Joe Patrice: And on that, there is an internet phenomenon known as the Streisand effect which is the–

Chris Williams: Oh, got you. Barbra.

Joe Patrice: Which is named after her.  Yeah.

Katherine Rubino: It all comes together like that.

Joe Patrice: That was perfect.  Anyway, that is named after Barbra Streisand because at one point she complained about something that was on the internet that basically nobody had paid attention to, but her complaining about it meant that now everyone’s paying attention to it.  The Streisand effect is about backfiring.

Anyway, what we have here is a situation where Jones Day, a well-known right-leaning law firm got very mad.  And what made them very mad and very sad was that ostensibly was that a law professor had written an article talking about what are the ethical, moral, professional standard scope of shaming lawyers.  And we’ve talked about this a lot on this show over the years, at what point is it acceptable to say, to blame a lawyer for defending clients that are problematic and at what point is that a lawyer’s duty?  And obviously it depends on the situation, it depends on business interest.  We’ve gone through that ground a lot.

Anyway, this article actually is very good, that Brad Wendell from Cornell Law has written is very good on this point.  Talking about shaming lawyers and how that works, and what standards we should have, and one of the examples he uses to frame it is the backlash that Jones Day faced in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

Katherine Rubino: Something we wrote a lot about at the time.

Joe Patrice: Right.  The professor was also about to host a talk at Cardozo featuring David (00:19:49) who wrote the book, Servants of the Dam which I recommend people go out and get.  It’s a book from New York Times.  Reporter about just Big Law and how Big Law has done some suspicious things.

(00:20:02)

Anyway, in a letter ostensibly complaining about the law review article but seemingly complaining about both that and the fact that this talk was going to happen at Cardozo, Kevin or who you may remember as Detroit’s emergency manager is now–

Katherine Rubino: It didn’t work out well.

Joe Patrice: It didn’t.  Well, I mean, yeah.

Katherine Rubino: Not for Detroit.

Joe Patrice: Well, not for Detroit, but it is now at the head of US offices for Jones Day.  He wrote a letter complaining about this article and saying, “Well, you need to make some corrections and I’m very upset that you would, I’m very surprised.”  I mean, that’s the more big law term, right?  That’s more passive aggressive.  I’m very surprised that you would have this conversation about all these things about Jones Day.  All of which of course I nonsense.  Like the claims that these folks made actually within the context and as very clearly signaled were true.  You have to have a very disingenuous read of what these folks wrote to suggest that it wasn’t true.  But what really, and how this gets all back to Streisand is–

Katherine Rubino: Bringing it all back together again.

Joe Patrice: Look, and I will say like this law review article did win scholarly prizes that said, law review articles, I don’t think it’s unfair to say or not something that a lot of us just, we don’t really sit home and say like, “Oh, the new issue of the Illinois law review is out.”

Katherine Rubino: Listen, these hours are not going to build themselves.  People don’t always have the time to take, unless you’re working corporate apparently.  But you don’t necessarily have the time to sit down and read long review articles.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, nobody really sits down and reads it.  They’re written in kind of an ivory tower circle and whatever.  So, people aren’t really reading these things but then Jones Day decided to complain about it and this letter then got out in all its petty glory.  And now I think everybody’s reading this article.

Katherine Rubino: Or at the very least, it is talking about what it says.

Joe Patrice: Exactly.  So, yes.  So once again, Jones Day has decided to–

Katherine Rubino: Bit of a self-own there.

Joe Patrice: Self-own, yeah.

Chris Williams: You know what, this reminds me of something.  It’s called the strides and effect.

Joe Patrice: It does.

Katherine Rubino: There you go.

Joe Patrice: You know, that’s very interesting.  I think that’s a good way of framing it.

Chris Williams: You should have said this earlier.

Katherine Rubino: Makes so much sense now.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.  Your clients are expecting you to know a lot of things about a lot of things, even topics like domain names.

Kathryn Rubino: Domains are definitely not covered in my law school classes.

Joe Patrice: Worse yet, your client might want a domain name to protect their brand or support a product launch that’s already taken.

Kathryn Rubino: Fortunately, GoDaddy’s Domain Broker Service can help.  Expert brokers will help you securely and confidentially get that perfect domain.

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All right, we’re back for our final explosive segment of the show.  And what do we want to talk about?  I don’t even know.

Chris Williams: I mean, when you lead in like that, you usually have to carry the weight yourself.

Joe Patrice: There isn’t really much.  We didn’t really have another segment planned out here.  I guess the big issue though is I think, Chris you’re working on something, I think.  What’s going on with Twitter?  Is that you?

Chris Williams: Talk about a Streisand effect.  You know, the thing when the billionaire trying to stroke his ego bought the Blue Bird app, right?  One of the big–

Joe Patrice: I’ve heard about that.  Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: I’ve heard, yeah.  And now wants to charge me money.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.  One of the big things he was saying was like comedy is free again.  It’s legal again.  But I think it was like Kathy Griffin.

Kathryn Rubino: No, it was Valerie Burnley.

Joe Patrice: Well, no, it’s Kathy Griffin.

Kathryn Rubino: But Valerie Burnley is what you started.

Joe Patrice: I don’t know as though that’s true, but people–

Chris Williams: They started to tame with, well what happened was people, he was trying to get 20 bucks for people that wanted blue checks and people were like, “Why are you monetizing this?”  This is a function that shows that a person is verified.  They’re who they are.  He was like, “Oh, that’s goofy.”  I need the money.  So, then people did what people do on the internet.  They prove he’s wrong by example.  So, then the bunch of people with check marks started to change their name to Elon Musk, and then they said things at his expense.  And then of course, because he cares about liberty and freedom of speech, he then suspended everyone who did that.  And he was like, “Oh, if you do parody, you now have to specify that you’re doing parody.”  He should have read the onion brief–

Joe Patrice: The onion brief is very clear on that.

Kathryn Rubino: The answers are pretty clearly.

Chris Williams: Yeah.  And it’s funny because you know, that’s actually a free speech issue.  Like the fact that the private ownership, Twitter, this is getting spun as being a free speech thing is already itself a loss, right.  If you’re going to inject yourself in legal conversations, be on the cutting edge, that is the onion.  They have layers.

(00:25:00)

Joe Patrice: Oh nice.  I like that.  The whole charging for a verified thing is so dumb and you know it’s dumb because Jonathan Turley wrote about it last week.  Which is usually your side.  He wrote a big thing explaining how happy he will be to pay $8 for it, because it’s all about supporting free speech.  That said, if you read his piece on this and or read my piece talking about it, it’s really useful because you can see between the lines how real mad he is that no one gave him a blue check mark before.

Chris Williams: With who?

Joe Patrice: Jonathan Turley, exactly.  Well, Jonathan Turley takes long asides to be like, “No, I never got one in the old days.”  Despite being the most important person in the world and it’s like, ah, honey.  It’s just so embarrassing.  But the real issue of course is that these blue check marks, these dumb people think that this is like some kind of birthright that they have instead of what it actually is, which is a way in which Twitter can marketize the fact that it has real people who are saying things of note.  Because it’s basically using the free content that all of us blue check marks create as a way of advertising.  That’s why it’s free because we are giving them free content and so they want to make us happy.  That’s not like, I don’t feel like I deserve it as much as I understand but that’s what I’m doing for that platform.  At the point that they start charging, that’s going to be a problem.

Chris Williams: Also, I’d just like to point out that if this occurred in a book where people determined that a billionaire was going to be the only way that they were going to get free speech, and then a week later found out that they have to pay for it, people will think this was hand fisted.  Can we not be in capitalist dystopia for a month.

Joe Patrice: The best analogy I saw on Twitter, and I can’t remember who said it, but somebody on Twitter said that, watching Elon’s first couple weeks of running Twitter is like watching a substitute teacher lose control of the classroom.  It’s just one after another.  Everything’s gone wrong for him and largely of his own creation.  I know that now he’s talking about tortuous interference claims.  He’s laid people off seeming violation of California labor laws.

Chris Williams: Oh, one other thing, that’s another a strong, deeply steeped flavor of stupid.  One of the other justifications people are giving for this, for him suspending accounts, the parody accounts, they’re saying, “Oh, impersonation is illegal”.  Like they’re saying it’s in the legal thing to make your handle.  So, if your name is at (00:27:51) Sniff McGee, they think it should be illegal for you to, if you have a check mark you change your little thingy to Elon Musk.  Like they’re equating that with crime.

Joe Patrice: Yes.  It’s obvious that that person is not Elon Musk because again, at But Sniff McGee, is a good sign that it’s not.  And I actually noticed that Elon’s now ranting earlier this morning about how any blue check mark who changes their name to anything will now get their blue check mark temporarily suspended until they can check out whether or not that’s accurate.

Chris Williams: And like one of those things where people make, “Oh, capitalism breathe innovation arguments”.  Checkmark system was great for the last few of couple years.  If you try to monetize it, it gets fucked.  Come on.

Joe Patrice: So, that’s actually an interesting point.  So, actually, as it turns out, you all know me, I don’t like to pat myself on the back.

Kathryn Rubino: Yes, you do.

Chris Williams: For those who can’t see the video, he’s actually patting himself on the back with both hands, and he has a third person cheering him on in the background.

Joe Patrice: But as it turns out, I didn’t even remember this, but apparently, I predicted the course Twitter was going to take a couple, over two years ago.  I tweeted something out in response to something that Willamette Law, Professor David Friedman had said, and I had completely forgotten about it.  But he resurfaced it over the weekend and I was like, “Wow”.  He said back in 2020 that someday there will be a final tweet on Twitter and what will it say?  And I said jokingly that it would be somebody complaining that they didn’t get a blue check mark.  Which apparently, I had my finger on the pulse of exactly how this thing was going to go downhill, everybody gets a check mark and everybody gets a cookie unless they make fun of Elon.

Chris Williams: Because you mentioned it, I just have to say I’ve seen the future.  I don’t know how Bitcoin will level out but I do know that the final tweet will be because apocalypse will come.  And the last person with internet access will Photoshop a picture of Michael Jordan’s crying face on the earth.  That will be the last tweet.

(00:30:00)

Joe Patrice: Oh, you think it is.  I don’t know.  I feel like there’s so many more memes that are going to available or whatever.

Kathryn Rubino: Man inspiring a note.

Joe Patrice: Legal mean time.  Okay.  So, with that, yeah, let’s move on to conclude here, I guess.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah.  Hope you all have a great week.  Talk to you again next week.  And then you should also do the things that Joe’s going to say.

Joe Patrice: Which is subscribe to the show so you get new episodes when they come out.  Give reviews to the show, write something, give stars.  It always helps out the algorithms that show it to other people as a law podcast they might want to listen to.  You can follow all of us on the Twitters.

Kathryn Rubino: For now.

Chris Williams: For now.

Joe Patrice: Above the Law @atlblog.  I am at @josephpatrice.  She is at @kathryn1, you got to clarify always.  Chris is @rightsforrent.  You should be listening to The Jabot which is a podcast that Kathryn hosts.  I’m a panelist on the Legal Tech Week journalist round table.  You should be listening to the other offerings of the Legal Talk Network.

Yeah, I think that now brings us to a conclusion.  All right, let’s get out of here.

Chris Williams: Thanks.  That was a good one.

Kathryn Rubino: Thank you so much.

[Music]

Joe Patrice: And thank you, as always, to Posh and GoDaddy Domain Broker Service for sponsoring the show.

Kathryn Rubino: Thanks.

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