Maternity Leave Scandal A Reminder That Lawyers Still Don’t Understand ‘Benefits’

Episode Notes

Transcript

[Music]

Joe Patrice: Welcome back to another edition of Thinking Like a Lawyer. I’m Joe Patrice.

Kathryn Rubino: Hi, Joe Patrice.

Joe Patrice: Hi.

Kathryn Rubino: I’m Kathryn Rubino.

Joe Patrice: You are.

Kathryn Rubino: I am.

Joe Patrice: You are.

Kathryn Rubino: I am. Nice to meet you.

Joe Patrice: Are we the only —

Chris Williams: Nice to meet you.

Joe Patrice: Oh, we aren’t the only people here.

Kathryn Rubino: Look at that.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. Chris Williams is here.

Chris Williams: I’m also Joe Patrice.

Joe Patrice: Oh, no.

Chris Williams: I forget sometimes, you know.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. We are all of Above the Law and we are here on Thinking Like a Lawyer to give our weekly conversation about the big stories in the legal landscape of the week. But obviously, that’s not how we begin our show.

Kathryn Rubino: That’s not usually how we start it.

Joe Patrice: We don’t. We don’t jump right in.

Kathryn Rubino: No, it’s slow playing.

Joe Patrice: It’s difficult to mainline legal news just like Cole.

Kathryn Rubino: Jump right in. We got a slow pace.

Joe Patrice: You’ve got to slowly get involved and you can do that with a little bit of small talk.

[Music]

Kathryn Rubino: Small talk.

Joe Patrice: Yes.

Chris Williams: Now, speaking of mainlining legal news. What do you all think Supreme Court justice clerks do when they’re not at work? How do you think that works?

Joe Patrice: One, they are at work. I mean, that’s what they do.

Kathryn Rubino: It’s a relatively short-term gigs so I think you kind of dedicate your all for that year or two.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Chris Williams: I just imagine like it’ll be hard to not LOLLY. It will be the pressure to not LOLLYGAG because you know Clarence Thomas is down the hall. It has to be immense. But like, what’s the —

Kathryn Rubino: I mean, these are very, I think, go getters by nature.

Joe Patrice: Right.

Kathryn Rubino: I don’t think enough.

Chris Williams: That sounds sufferable. You know, shout out to Sotomayor.

Kathryn Rubino: It’s a small group of folks for a reason.

Chris Williams: I know, but I wonder. I just imagine her being annoyed at some of her colleagues, clerks, like, “Ugh! Why do Leto pick that guy,” you know.

Joe Patrice: Obviously, as far as their work schedule, I know from a previous episode of this show, our episode that we did is the immediate aftermath of Justice Ginsberg dying. I interviewed Neal Katyal and he was telling stories about how they would leave the office and Ginsberg’s clerks would still be there till three or four in the morning. That’s the kind of life that they have, but that’s that. Hey, what’s up with Kathryn?

Kathryn Rubino: Not too much. I think as regular listeners of our podcast, in my spare time, I am a debate coach for a policy debate team and I had an interesting experience —

Chris Williams: Go records.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, we all have a policy debate background and it was interesting because this weekend, one of my Above the Law articles played a role in adversity debate ground.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, I was judging said debate and there was a claim made that the shadow docket has, and shadow docket decisions that have grown in frequency has destroyed the Supreme Court’s legitimacy, a claim that I pretty much agree in.

Kathryn Rubino: Yes.

Joe Patrice: But as I as I heard it at rapid pace, that piece of evidence get read, I thought, “That sounds a lot like something I might say.” I was worried that it might be something that I had said though it was not, but it was in fact Kathryn Rubino evidence.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah.

Chris Williams: By the way, for those who aren’t in the know, the reason Joe said at a rapid pace is because if you were to imagine an auctioneer’s voice sped up by like 1.5, that’s what debate round sound like.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Chris Williams: It’s like really fast talk and a lot of —

Joe Patrice: Yeah. It went by —

Kathryn Rubino: That was not an audio glitch. That was trying to replicate audio’s policy debate and that’s accurate.

Chris Williams: What do you call it? We call clutching?

Joe Patrice: Yeah. Yeah, it was going really quickly. I heard it and it’s like a record. In fact, the article that this had come from, in fact I even quoted in that article like two paragraphs after the evidence. It was a claim that I think they were right about as it turns out at the end of the debate. At the end of the debate, both teams conceded that that particular point was true.

Kathryn Rubino: Because it is. Good news you guys.

Joe Patrice: Good news, you did not — you were not the reason anybody lost the debate.

Kathryn Rubino: Were won it, but yeah.

Joe Patrice: Were won, yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: It was still kind of an interesting turn of events.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, so congratulations on becoming an author. I will say that at one point —

Kathryn Rubino: I mean, in fairness, I’ve been writing for a very long time.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. There we go. That was a fun weekend for you.

Kathryn Rubino: Mm-hmm.

Joe Patrice: Cool.

Chris Williams: One thing. Oddly enough, I was at a tournament too.

Joe Patrice: Well, there you go.

Chris Williams: I got an email invitation to judge at a mock trial and that was interesting. It was cool because, you know — okay, we all have debate backgrounds, not in mock trial but I do have some experience in both rhetoric and bullshitting. You should see my writing at Above the Law.

(00:05:00)

It was a nice experience to see totally different ways of assessing the round, like grading the round. And I messed on all the round I was in, started with the debaters, but I apparently gave some good feedback. So, it’s good to know that we all did a tournament one way or another.

Kathryn Rubino: That’s fun.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. I always make the analogy that mock trial was obviously a great way to practice and hone trial advocacy skills. Whereas I feel as though policy debate is much more of appellate skills to the extent that it’s lots of research and distinguishing pieces of evidence. Yes, you went to trial side and we were at the more appellate side argument. Anyway, that seems like enough small talk for now. All right, so let’s get into the topics at hand.

Kathryn Rubino: Let’s do it.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. I think the biggest story of the week last week was a story in three acts that exploded over the course of three days. There was a came to light over the previous weekend and then accelerated Monday through Wednesday. A female attorney in Ohio had gotten an email from, not partner, but senior lawyer at a law firm. They didn’t have the title partner per se, but functioning as a partner. Got a text from that person after they announced that they were lateralling that was, well, let’s say harsh.

Kathryn Rubino: It was a text message, right?

Joe Patrice: It was a text message blaming the woman for leaving for another job, saying that she had been sitting on her ass. And by sitting on her ass, he meant she was on maternity leave.

Kathryn Rubino: Yikes!

Joe Patrice: She had taken her maternity leave and then during that time —

Kathryn Rubino: I mean, that’s really wildly inappropriate way to refer to maternity leave besides which it’s a benefit that you’ve already accrued by working there and using it. It does not, in any way, implicate your ability or your desire to stay any longer than you have to.

Joe Patrice: Well, that’s a really good point. I think one that was coming out of this or one of the important points, which is maternity leave is not something that you have to pay back. It is a benefit you’ve already earned. You don’t take maternity leave and then owe the firm more time. You have already put in your time to get that maternity leave, so you can do whatever you want with it.

Chris Williams: For those of you who didn’t read the article, the text message reads like one of those hypos you can tell the employment law professor was having fun with while they crap at it. It was so hard, two-inch of a violation of not only law, but common decency. They’re like, this is just exaggerated to test if issue spotting is a thing. No lawyer would actually do this.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. I guess at this point —

Chris Williams: But here we are.

Joe Patrice: I think at this point we should share exactly what was said. What was said in this text is, “I had suspicions you were interviewing two months ago and I told Steven then to ask you about it.  I also told him to cut you loose at that time if confirmed.”

Chris Williams: If she wants it though.

Joe Patrice: “He was too nice of a guy to do so. What you did collecting salary from the firm while sitting on your ass except to find time to interview for another job, says everything one needs to know about your character. Karma’s a bitch. Rest assured, regarding anyone who inquires, they will hear the truth from me about what a soulless and morally bankrupt person you are.”

Kathryn Rubino: Wow!

Joe Patrice: Yeah. This came from Senior Lawyer Jon Delano who also represents the City of Cleveland in a lot of matters. He’s a labor attorney. Guess which side.

Kathryn Rubino: No. The thing that really gets me is, okay, sure, even on management side, labor attorney, really ought to know better.

Joe Patrice: Right.

Kathryn Rubino: It’s not like you’re doing tax law where these issues never come across your desk. This is something you really regularly deal in. What would happen if you were defending management and you saw a copy of that in discovery? You wouldn’t be pleased with your client. You wouldn’t be like, “Oh, this is great news for us.” Certainly, he knew better.

Joe Patrice: While I was reading it, Chris flagged issue one and I think let’s go back to that issue one, which was the part of the — put aside everything else which is also bad. The part of the text, assuming it’s true where he says he advocated that the firm cut the woman loose if she was in fact interviewing while on maternity leave is admitting that you had thought. At some point, did it cross your mind of making a retaliatory firing of somebody while on their maternity leave? Once that happens, how does this go forward? And that really became the second part of this act, which is the firm itself, the managing partner, the aforementioned Steven.

(00:10:02)

This is the aforementioned Steven and that text puts out a statement saying, you know, this was unacceptable and all but it was done in the heat of the moment and we’re going to try to do better and make some corrective actions. This went over poorly as it did not include, say, an apology for this and seemed to downplay the whole thing as a heat-of-the-moment issue.

Kathryn Rubino: It was clearly just an attempt to get rid of the the hot glare of the media and the local community, legal community was really, really bearing down quite a bit on the firm during the heat of this.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: The height of this.

Joe Patrice: Because the idea that this was heat of the moment which, when it’s a voicemail, maybe you can get away with. But with a text, somebody had to sit there, type it out, edit it, whatever.

Kathryn Rubino: It’s a lot of thumb time. It’s a lot of thumb time.

Joe Patrice: But also, this goes back to the flagged issue. If that was heat of the moment, maybe you could get away with it. But when you’re admitting that there was a prior conversation in which you had suggested to management firing some — a retaliatory firing, this becomes more moments, a lot more moments.

Chris Williams: I also think it’s important to think about what this means for what constitutes heat. Because like, when I really think of heat of the moment, I think of, “Oh my god. I walked in, I find my wife cheating on me with my best friend and my mom’s recording it saying, ‘yeah, cheat on my son.’” That’s a clear heat-of-the-moment scenario. But he was like, “Oh my god! Not only is she pregnant, but she’s looking for a job elsewhere,” like heat is so different now.

Joe Patrice: Anyway, so that happened, not great. That statement comes out. It does not go over well. Later in the evening, the Firm announces that the offending partner is no longer with the firm. It’s not —

Joe Patrice: There we go. They are the consequences of my own actions.

Joe Patrice: And an apology and all that. It seems like it was finally a response to what had happened. Now, that said, this is still not a great place for anyone to be. Obviously, you’re in a situation where you need to do some training, have some concrete steps. We don’t know necessarily what those are. Obviously, a situation where this happens is bad enough reflection on the culture, but a situation which you had been assuming this person was making this statement against their interests accurately.

You’re in a situation where you, as a manager, have heard that some senior person wants to make a retaliatory firing. That should be a red flag that you respond to and it’s a sign of a broken culture, sort of, if that isn’t something that triggers, “Oh, wait a minute. I need to do something about this.” Hopefully, this will be a light bulb moment where the firm can move forward and learn those sorts of lessons. I will say a lovely coda to the story is the Ohio State Bar put out a statement about it and specifically thanked me for helping to bring this to their attention, so that was lovely. We make a lot of jokes in this job. It’s nice when sometimes we have done something serious, so that was nice. It’s been a busy time.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah. You know how I know it’s busy?

Joe Patrice: How?

Kathryn Rubino: Because we’ve had the phone ringing off the hook.

Joe Patrice: Off the hook. Is it really on a hook?

Kathryn Rubino: I think that it’s one of those phraseologies that —

Joe Patrice: The idioms that you’re just not going to let go of?

Kathryn Rubino: I’m not going to. But you know what I will let go of? My need to actually answer the telephone.

Joe Patrice: Okay.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah.

Joe Patrice: Okay. How would you do that?

Kathryn Rubino: Virtual receptionist services.

Joe Patrice: All right. That makes some sense.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, it really does.

Joe Patrice: Let’s hear from Posh.

[Music]

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Joe Patrice: All right. we’re back. What do we want to talk about next?

Kathryn Rubino: Dealer’s choice, friend.

Joe Patrice: All right, so the other issue that was big last week is obviously a special counsel who has been appointed to investigate the Joe Biden classified documents issue.

Kathryn Rubino: Right.

Joe Patrice: If you’ve been tracking, obviously you’re aware of the special counsel looking into Trump’s top-secret documents that he was holding in a pool locker at Mar-A-Lago apparently. There had now been a few documents found at the office of the Biden Center at Penn, which is a center that he had set up, part of his time as Vice President. He had received classified documents. Some of them are found among the effects that were kept in that office. This has been reported to the government that they found these classified documents.

(00:15:01)

They found a few more after that. Ultimately, Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to look into this issue, specifically Robert Hur, speaking of Supreme Court clerks, a former one, and a former Trump era US Attorney who is going to be looking into this. So, the first impulse everybody had was see Biden did the same thing Trump did. This has been largely the argument of the Trump administration Hagger’s on.

Kathryn Rubino: So, Biden lied about having —

Joe Patrice: Well, see, that’s kind of the issue, isn’t it? Yeah.  They are similar to the extent that both of them had classified documents in places they shouldn’t have been. That’s where that —

Kathryn Rubino: Everything after that.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, everything after that juncture is where things start to separate. I actually saw one of the various right-wing legal Twitters out there, had Twitted something about how — I can’t believe they were just letting the Bidens say, “Oh, we’re looking on our own to find and documents and we’ll get back to you.” I’m like, “That is exactly what they did with Trump,” which is the whole problem for him because he then came back and had his lawyers there to the federal government. We’ve looked and found everything and they hadn’t. Because see, the lying is the part that makes this a problem.

Chris Williams: Wait, are you implying like the facts of the case make a difference?

Joe Patrice: Yeah. You know, the facts seem to make a difference. Actually, the National Security lawyer, Mark Zaid, who is kind of the expert in this. This is actually the kind of stuff he does all the time. He Twitted out as soon as the story broke about how this happens constantly in his life, like government officials misplaced classified documents all the time which is somewhat scary but also a reflection of how we probably overclassified things. But whatever it is, he says, “Look it happens all the time and it’s almost always handled with some administrative non-serious slap on the wrist because people, when they find out that they’ve done something — done this wrong, immediately turn around and go, ‘hey, our bad. Handle this for us.’” And he’s like, “That’s the difference.” If you had acted and he’s like in Trump would be facing exactly the same non-consequential slap on the wrist, had it not been for the lying about the documents and forcing the government to execute a warrant to get them.

Kathryn Rubino: Right. And then proceeding to attack the FBI that executed the warrant.

Joe Patrice: Right. Well, that’s the weird thing about this special counsel idea because Republicans started calling for a special counsel as soon as the story broke, Lindsey Graham on TV. Everyone’s going on TV and saying there should be a special — if there’s one against Trump, there definitely has to be one here. And this was a poor strategic decision, I think.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah. I mean, I think that they must have assumed, “Well, we would never respond in kind, so I assume the Democrats won’t.”

Joe Patrice: I guess, but the Democrats did appoint a special counsel and while that is inevitably annoying that it escalates what should be a fairly routine and an important matter to a higher level, this really burns Trump in my mind. Now, the argument that this was some partisan witch hunt, really falls apart when the same Democrats are like, “Yeah and we appointed another special counsel, indeed a Republican lawyer to look into what Biden did here.”

Kathryn Rubino: This implies a lot of logic, Joe.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Chris Williams: Yeah. Consistency isn’t really a major point here.

Kathryn Rubino: Well, that’s the hallmark of the modern conservative movement.

Chris Williams: Yeah.

Joe Patrice: Well, that’s fair. But see, this is the problem. I understand that there will always be people who are dyed-in-the-wool Maga folks who are not going to care one way or the other about this. That’s fine. Granted. But there is some dwindling set of moderate independent folks who are out there who might have been persuadable that the Trump investigation was a witch hunt before this happened. And now, what they’re going to see is, “Oh yeah, everybody got treated the same.”

Chris Williams: I feel like whenever people talk about these like unspecified far-right potentially leading moderates, it sounds to me the same like when we talk about the middle class. I’m like, citation need it. Like, “Who are these people? Do they have names? Do they have addresses we could send mail to like me?”

Joe Patrice: Well, that’s the thing. We know they exist. They are a very small group. They’re far smaller than people like to pretend, but we know they exist because we see elections in some areas go different ways between a couple of years. I think there’s some —

Kathryn Rubino: Sure, like a plus Trump district when, during the midterms, elected Democratic senator, congressperson.

Joe Patrice: Right. There’s something there’s some population that’s doing this.

(00:20:00)

Now, I don’t know who these people are and I think they may be crazy, but they exist.

Chris Williams: That would explain why all the signs at the rallies, they have that silent majority sign. The people with the silent majority sign are the people that can be swayed.

Joe Patrice: Anyway, this seems like a really bad idea, a bad strategic turn for the Trump world. Obviously, we’ll see how this all plays out, but it doesn’t look good. It is one of those careful what you wish for sorts of moments, I think, for them. They would have been much better off just not calling for special events, special counsel and instead saying, “See, this proves that everyone does it. Don’t worry about it,” or something like that. But now, they’ve just given a rubber stamp to the idea that this is — that what special counsel do is legitimate which is going to become a problem for them, I think.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah. I mean, I do think you’re sort of hope for what happens at the end of this falls apart when there are two different recommendations by the different special counsel because there are differences in fact as we’ve discussed.

Joe Patrice: Sure.

Kathryn Rubino: And I think that while it’s not the same because it’s what the right jumps on.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. True, but it’s going to look a little bit better coming from a Republican lawyer, I think.

Kathryn Rubino: For sure.

Joe Patrice: But any less. I said this was the special counsel, is a former Supreme Court Clerk, also an appellate clerk for Alex Kaczynski when it comes to lawyers. So, there’s that too. Yeah. And there’s other reasons why Alex Kaczynski’s an issue.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, I’ve read a lot about Judge Kaczynski.

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 potentially 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.

Joe Patrice: To learn more, visit godaddy.com/dbs. All right. Now, we’re back.

Kathryn Rubino: Mm-hmm. We’re back with some Elon Musk news as I recall.

Joe Patrice: All right. You want to talk about that?

Kathryn Rubino: I mean, he has been great for traffic, I tell you that.

Joe Patrice: Go for it.

Kathryn Rubino: As some of you may recall, Elon Musk likes to hold grudges.

Joe Patrice: Yes.

Kathryn Rubino: One of the people or firms, specifically that he has talked about on Twitter is Perkins Coie, saying that they must — no one should use them as a firm because of Michael Sussman, a partner at the firm who was exonerated after a trial for lying to the — he was accused of lying to the FBI because he spoke to the FBI, but didn’t reveal at the time that he also had a Hillary Clinton as a client, and whatever. He was found not guilty after a trial but because of this, Elon went on a bit of a rant saying that no one should use Perkins Coie until they apologize for trying to sway elections.

Joe Patrice: And then he hired Perkins Coie.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah. He turned around and hired Perkins Coie.

Joe Patrice: Well, he didn’t. The company did.

Kathryn Rubino: Twitter did.

Joe Patrice: Yes.

Kathryn Rubino: Yes. But again, because he has decimated the legal department as we’ve covered extensively in the pages of Above the Law. Somehow, the firm, which had previously worked for Twitter before Elon Musk blew up at the firm on Twitter, but had previously represented them, entered an appearance defending the company against some allegations. And when asked about why that happened or, you know, have you forgiven the firm, Elon was just like, “Oh, it was done in error.”

Chris Williams: One of things that gets me like talking about how clearly Elon has decimated the legal team, yes, but folks at Twitter are selling chairs. I think there was one point they were like, they didn’t have toilet paper in the office. He is decimating everything. You got the respect.

Kathryn Rubino: He’s also not paying his bills in order to try to make it a renegotiation tactic with some vendors. There’s lots of bad stuff going on.

Chris Williams: His level of failure is mythological. If there was a reverse Midas touch, it would be the head of Tesla.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. The not paying bills part, obviously he’s trying to renegotiate commercial leases and I —

Chris Williams: And he’s fucking rich, that’s the thing.

Kathryn Rubino: Not anymore.

Joe Patrice: Well, not anymore. but

Chris Williams: Not anymore.

Joe Patrice: Not so much anymore, but —

Chris Williams: Again, reverse Midas.

Joe Patrice: He’s still doing okay, but he’s trying to do that with the company. Fine, that is a tactic one could employ. He’s not going to work in most times. I guess his theory is that the commercial real estate market is in trouble with lots of hybrid and work-from-home situations.

(00:25:02)

But in San Francisco, there’s’ going to be a home for that office. They are going to find a tenant. I don’t understand what leverage he thinks he has here. I don’t think he understands how leverage works in any way as far as I can tell.

Chris Williams: It’s like he’s playing 5D chess in a checkers game.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. It’s so unreal. Yeah, this is why you have lawyers, kids. What really gets me is all of these cuts kind of feel like when a private equity organization buys an entity then guts it and tries to flip it saying, “Look at profitability, it’s up,” not because they’ve actually done anything other than cut all of the headcount.

Kathryn Rubino: But because they cut the headcount, yeah.

Joe Patrice: But there’s no indication he’s intending to sell, which means that none of this makes any sense, i.e., just do while.

Kathryn Rubino: Baffling but very entertaining to watch.

Joe Patrice: It is. It is. Well, yeah. I mean, we got a little bit of extra time, I suppose. I may as well talk of Marjorie Taylor Greene, are from crazy town. She got a sternly-worded letter from a lawyer, Howard E. King, who represents Dr. Dre and, you know, she was using — she had some videos up celebrating Kevin McCarthy becoming speaker and by extension, her role in that using some Dre songs, and that did not go over well with the Dre team.

Kathryn Rubino: No, it didn’t.

Joe Patrice: Specifically, the letter reads, “One might expect that as a member of Congress, you would have a passing familiarity with the laws of our country. It’s possible though that law is governing intellectual property are a little too arcane and insufficiently populous for you to really have spent much time on.”

Chris Williams: Real earn. We don’t understand it, but that is a burn.

Joe Patrice: We are writing because we think an actual lawmaker should be making laws, not breaking laws, especially those embodied in the Constitution by the founding fathers.

Kathryn Rubino: Boom!

Joe Patrice: Yeah, brutal diss track coming from the Dre lawyers.

Kathryn Rubino: Much appreciate it.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Chris Williams: Also, another one of my favorite hot takes that I think is just spot-on in the same way that, civil procedure is just spicy con law so as IP.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. As I point out, she really should have known better about this. I mean, this is —

Kathryn Rubino: She’s not the first politician who’s gotten in trouble for playing a song that did not previously get approval by the artist.

Joe Patrice: Absolutely, absolutely.

Kathryn Rubino: This is a thing that happens.

Chris Williams: I mean, when you forget about Dre.

Kathryn Rubino: You don’t.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: She forgot about IP.

Joe Patrice: She did not forget about Dre, she forgot about Copyright Act.

Chris Williams: Yeah.

Joe Patrice: Maybe, I was trying to think of how she might have justified this and I was wondering if she thought that Dr. Dre was dead and locked in a basement. But see, that wouldn’t even cover her because copyright extends another 70 years after the death of the author and that’s only been 23 since that album came out.

Kathryn Rubino: Hasn’t been 23 years.

Joe Patrice: It has been 23 years since Eminem.

Kathryn Rubino: That actually makes me feel worse than anything else that we’ve talked about today.

Joe Patrice: You’re welcome. You’re welcome.

Chris Williams: The good thing about this is it really is a gift that keeps on giving, so you can probably also talk about the developments of this legal scenario on the next episode.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. That’s pretty much everything that’s going on.

Kathryn Rubino: It’s a pretty busy week.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: Well, I hope you’re listening to the Above the Law, Thinking Like a Lawyer podcast.

Joe Patrice: I mean, if they weren’t, they wouldn’t hear this anyway.

Kathryn Rubino: Well, right, but I hope that you’re also subscribed so you always get the episodes.

Joe Patrice: Oh, so you get it every week.

Kathryn Rubino: Right.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, that makes sense.

Kathryn Rubino: It comes right to your phone. You don’t have to worry about, “Oh, what was it? Was there a thing I wanted to do?”

Joe Patrice: Yeah, so you —

Kathryn Rubino: It just automatically comes to your phone.

Joe Patrice: No, that’s fair. You can do that. And actually, you can make sure then help out that other people get it recommended to their phone if you left a review.

Kathryn Rubino: Right, then stars. Obviously, the great reviews are extra special.

Joe Patrice: Exactly.

Chris Williams: What makes it so special?

Kathryn Rubino: It helps us move up the algorithm and helps other people find us as the legal podcast.

Joe Patrice: Oh, those damn algorithms.

Kathryn Rubino: They’re dictating our life. It’s good times.

Joe Patrice: Anyway, if people wanted to hear more from us —

Kathryn Rubino: You can always read us at abovethelaw.com.

Joe Patrice: That’s true. That’s true, you could. But that’s more of a reading thing. I was saying if they wanted to hear more from us.

Kathryn Rubino: Yes, there is the JABO podcast that I’m a host of.

Joe Patrice: Oh, there is?

Kathryn Rubino: Mm-hmm.

Joe Patrice: There you go.

Kathryn Rubino: And you are on some sort of legal tech roundtable.

Joe Patrice: I am on LegalTech Week Journalist Roundtable every week, which is —

Chris Williams: They want me to mention this. We also have a large catalog of episodes from years going back. So, if you want to hear us talking about things from like 2019, when — would that be accurate? How long?

Joe Patrice: Yeah. This has been going on, the old episodes with Elie Mystal and I go back a long, long way back to probably 2013 or so.

(00:30:05)

Chris Williams: Man, so there’s a lot of content you all can catch up on.

Joe Patrice: There is. She actually already cited one. We cited one in this episode. I brought up the RBG episode.

Kathryn Rubino: That’s right.

Joe Patrice: Anyway, you can check out the other shows from the Legal Talk Network that were not on —

Chris Williams: Catch them on the lore. You’re not a good constitutional scholar if you don’t know the lore.

Joe Patrice: That’s right. That’s true. Okay. And you can read Above the Law. You can follow it. We will talk about Twitter for now because it’s still the standard at this point.

Kathryn Rubino: It’s at ATL blog if you want to follow the ATL account. Me, personally, I’m @Kathryn1, Joe’s at Joseph Patrice and Chris is at Rights for Rent.

Joe Patrice: Right.

Chris Williams: And we do not have a BeReal because that wouldn’t make sense, but what we do have an Instagram, ATL blog.

Joe Patrice: Again, literally, I think the reason we don’t have a BeReal is literally no one has ever heard of that until you started talking about it, but that’s one of the alternatives.

Chris Williams: Because it’s what the young people do.

Kathryn Rubino: It’s like alpha generationship. They haven’t gone to law school yet. Give us some time.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. I don’t even know if that’s true, but man, while moving along, we have all of those options for you to keep up with us. We also have — yeah, stuff like.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, and have a great week and peace out.

Joe Patrice: I thinkthat’s right.

Chris Williams: See you next one.

[Music]

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