‘Tis The Season For Law School Exam Screw Ups

Episode Notes

Transcript

Above the Law: Thinking Like a Lawyer

Tis The Season For Law School Exam Screw Ups

12/12/2020

[Music]

Joe Patrice: Hello. Welcome to another edition of Thinking Like a Lawyer. I’m Joe Patrice from Above the Law. Hello, Catherine.

Catherine Rubino: Hi.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. Catherine Rubino. Also, a senior editor here at Above the Law is with us as always to talk about legal news, legal thoughts, you know. This is your respite from having to bill hours to spend a few minutes with us.

Catherine Rubino: But I mean, it’s still legally news if —

Joe Patrice: Sure.

Catherine Rubino: I’m taking a respite from billable hours. I’m not doing anything having to do with the law. Like the closest law thing I’m doing in my non-billable time is care about Kim Kardashian.

Joe Patrice: Right, yeah. But I mean, this like we’re — I don’t think anybody views us as like you know the hardcore serious.

Catherine Rubino: Sure. No, but like you know people are still paying attention to their industry if they’re listening to this. I mean, this is still like you know reading legal publications point two on your you know.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. It’s professional development and if you have a billing code for that you should absolutely, by the way, I don’t know if anybody does this, but you absolutely should be putting in your billing this as professional development.

Catherine Rubino: Yeah, keeping up on legal publications as is all of your ATL reading time as well.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, it’s not billable but it does show that you’re doing legal work while you’re you know employed.

Catherine Rubino: Yeah, in some places depending on the firm when it comes if some, not every firm has hours requirement but firms that do often have a certain percentage or a hard number that counts towards non-billable legal activities like listening to this podcast.

Joe Patrice: Listening to legal industry podcasts.

Catherine Rubino: I mean, that’s what it is.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, so –

Catherine Rubino: So you were not slacking off right now?

Joe Patrice: Correct. You are hard at work if you are listening to this.

Catherine Rubino: You are working. This goes on the time sheets and put it in right now.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, absolutely.

Catherine Rubino: Point five done.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, point five. I mean, unless you’re hitting that button to hear us at two times speed and then but whatever.

Catherine Rubino: Of course, you listen to it at two times speed, don’t you?

Joe Patrice: Oh yeah. I mean, I actually think that they slow it down. I feel like at the one speed it’s actually slower than we talk. I don’t know. Maybe that’s just me.

Catherine Rubino: I think that might be in your head. I don’t think that they slow this to or any podcast.

Joe Patrice: I don’t know. Well, we’ll see.

Catherine Rubino: See, this is why you should listen to us rather than your college football podcast because it goes on the time sheet.

Joe Patrice: That’s true. Well, you should also listen to college football podcasts.

Catherine Rubino: Sure.

Joe Patrice: I listen to both.

Catherine Rubino: Well, you don’t have to fill out a time sheet do you friend?

Joe Patrice: It’s true.

Catherine Rubino: That is like top five reasons to no longer –

Joe Patrice: Get out of –

Catherine Rubino: Yeah, yeah.

Joe Patrice: Well, so we got some stuff to talk about, but first, we actually have a new sponsor this week. So, thanks to Lexicon for joining the Thinking Like a Lawyer cavalcade here and we’ll hear from them for a second and be right back.

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Joe Patrice: Well, so welcome back. So, what’s up in the news this week? I thought maybe we should start with the big news for law school people. So, we’re going to start in the law

school universe. So you talked about there was a law school that had a bit of a snafu this last week.

Catherine Rubino: Oh, it was a Cornell situation.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Catherine Rubino: It’s pretty, I mean, I feel terrible for the people who had to deal with it. But it also makes me giggle a little bit.

Joe Patrice: Because you’re a horrible person who laughs at others misfortunes. But I’m not judging you there that’s actually I’m just pointing it out. Go on.

Catherine Rubino: So for those of you who may not have heard the story, last week was contracts finals at Cornell T14 Law School and the night before the exam, the administration sent out an email with the instructions on how to log into their platform and various details that you need before you take an online exam. But there was a problem.

Joe Patrice: Dun, dun, dun.

Catherine Rubino: In addition to the instructions to the exam, they also included the questions.

Joe Patrice: So wait, what?

Catherine Rubino: They sent out a copy of the exam the night before the exam to everyone in this section.

Joe Patrice: Right, oh, so in addition to like a study guide as opposed –

Catherine Rubino: It was no. It was like, here are your instructions. Log in at this time.

This is what you need to know about the new software. Make sure you have a download.

(00:05:02)

Joe Patrice: And here’s all the questions.

Catherine Rubino: And here’s all the questions.

Joe Patrice: I see.

Catherine Rubino: Which they were not supposed to do.

Joe Patrice: It just threw me off when you said they also sent out the questions. I was thinking like is it like friggin jeopardy like the questions aren’t but, yeah, okay, I see.

Catherine Rubino: Questions are the point.

Joe Patrice: I see.

Catherine Rubino: Yeah, so, it was not intended to be any sort of a take-home. I mean they’re all from home but you know kind of an open book longer format test. It was meant to

be like a timed closed-booked exam and they sent out the questions the night before. And listen, once that happens, I think that a school has several options to deal with it, right? What I would’ve suggested no one asked me, but what I would have said, okay, everyone has it. It’s equal, it’s fair. Let’s just say, okay, then it’s an open book, give it back to us by whatever time at the end of the exam period. You can start it early, you cannot start it early, your choice. The questions are fine, just do it. That is not what they chose. They decided to push the exam back from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. and they had the professor rewrite the exam, which seems — I mean, people spend a very long time writing questions for a law school final exam and to say, oh, actually you have 12 hours and go.

Joe Patrice: To make a whole new thing.

Catherine Rubino: Yeah. Seems like you’re not going to get the best quality questions as a result.

Joe Patrice: Although this professor doesn’t necessarily spend a lot of time writing questions, right?

Catherine Rubino: Okey. One of the professors that this happened to, it was actually in the pages of Above the Law last year because they reused their questions on previous exams.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Catherine Rubino: But in fairness and you wrote about this in 2019 and if you –

Joe Patrice: Oh, did I?

Catherine Rubino: Yeah. It was your story. I don’t know if you remember, but it was a little bit better than just pure recycling situation because it was the professor’s first year at Cornell

and they reused their exam questions.

Joe Patrice: Something from another —

Catherine Rubino: From another school.

Joe Patrice: Oh, yeah. The internet these days.

Catherine Rubino: The internet’s a bitch you guys.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Catherine Rubino: Everything is on the internet.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. That’s fair.

Catherine Rubino: So they had to go ahead and rewrite the exam, which I mean, to me

also makes a lot of presumptions about their law students, right? That presumes no one has

a different – okay, they maybe know that they don’t have exam schedule for 3:00 p.m. because they theoretically know when all their exams are, but they don’t know if they have child care obligations and 3:00 p.m. is when school ends for a lot of folks who are able to still have in-person schooling. They might have sick family members at home that they’re taking care of. There’s a whole host of things that people are doing in addition to just going to law school and this solution seems to say I don’t really care about any of the other things you might be doing with your life.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, no. That’s true.

Catherine Rubino: So that’s one of the reasons why I would not have recommended it but again, no one asks me. But here’s the thing, so they send out the email I think it was around 10:00 p.m. saying, okay, we messed up. Here’s the plan, 3:00 p.m. new questions, go. Right after that, the same thing happened to another section of (00:08:12). They did it they did it twice. They did it twice. They did it twice.

[Laughter]

Joe Patrice: I’m just seeing them like, oh, no, no. We got this handled. Watch this.

Catherine Rubino: One tipster at the school said something throughout these numbers,

something like 120 out of 180 1L had questions that were written the night before the exam.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, that’s not good.

Catherine Rubino: That can’t be good. They can’t be good for business.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. So at least they had stuff on the subjects they actually covered, meanwhile

down at NYU, they had a because of a variety of issues they have a 1L section that’s been

taught by three different professors.

Catherine Rubino: That doesn’t seem great.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. And instead of making it –

Catherine Rubino: Well, was it planned ahead of time like –

Joe Patrice: No. So Arthur Miller suffered an injury and he’s on the mend and wish him well obviously but because he wasn’t able to teach, they decided to assign the course to somebody

else but they didn’t have one other person who could just take over and be the new person, so instead, they split the class so that the class has some lessons that overlaps with another section and another meeting with somebody else and they then changed around their whole schedule. They ended up not realizing that they didn’t have enough hours of class to meet the ABA requirements, so then they did like double duty for one week to catch up and all of this is going on and there’s a lot of folks asking for a pass fail option on this which makes tons of sense. I mean, I had the same thing happen to me when I was a 1L at NYU. There was a

family emergency, the professor couldn’t be there and so we got a new professor and they made a pass fail. Makes sense. I actually heard from an old school graduate of NYU that apparently back in the 70s this happened and they gave a pass fail for that too.

(00:10:08)

Catherine Rubino: It seems like pass fail in these sorts of situations is exactly –

Joe Patrice: Exactly what it’s built for. This is why we have this as an option. Anyway, meanwhile, I have now been informed that the latest is they received their study guide for the final and there’s material on it that was not covered by any of the three professors. It just slipped through the cracks.

Catherine Rubino: Isn’t there something like three strikes you’re out, like three chances.

Joe Patrice: And apparently, it’s like collateral estoppel or something like that. Like something that should clearly have been covered but it was one of those situations when there’s three different people working and nobody knows the – yeah, so there’s a whole material that’s apparently going to be on the final that no one actually ever covered. The

students are being told to brush up on it themselves. So, yeah, I mean well –

Catherine Rubino: Figure it out yourself is the answer?

Joe Patrice: I mean, the TAs are going to be involved in helping them cover it, but it’s an emergency last minute material. It’s just problematic and look, it’s something they do need to know. I feel like if you went to civ pro and didn’t learn collateral estoppel something went wrong but –

Catherine Rubino: It’s true.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Catherine Rubino: You really do need to know it and you can’t just depend on Barbary or APPL or whatever.

Joe Patrice: Like imagine if you’re a lawyer who doesn’t understand the very basics of how procedure works, you’d end up being like Sidney Powell one of these days.

Catherine Rubino: I was going to say I feel like you’re setting yourself up there.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, I know. Yeah, that’s what it was.

Catherine Rubino: I thought it might be an ad read but it wasn’t. It was better. It was a Sidney

Powell joke.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Catherine Rubino: Good job.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, that was it. So anyway, that’s what’s going on there. So we’re in finals meltdown season apparently.

Catherine Rubino: And you know, I mean, I referred to it earlier when I said that you wrote about the professor earlier last year. This happens every year.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. Every year. So if this is happening to you at your law school, well, first of all, you should tell Above the Law. We’ll get some attention to it.

Catherine Rubino: Please, please.

Joe Patrice: But secondly, you know just –

Catherine Rubino: [email protected].

Joe Patrice: Yeah. But just understand it’s awful but it’s bound to happen. This wheel will always land on somebody and it’s too bad it’s happening to you but it will be a funny story someday. My pass fail certainly, I joke about it now years after the fact, but at the time it was super stressful because it wasn’t clear we were going to get past fail despite the fact that we have a new professor who had a very different philosophy on how the subject should be taught and then we were told, but don’t worry the finals going to be done by the first professor and it’s like no, no, no, no, no. So yeah, it’s a funny story now but at the time it was super stressful. Hopefully that will end up that way for everybody else. Yeah, we have (00:13:00) going on at NYU. What courses were –

Catherine Rubino: Contracts.

Joe Patrice: Contracts, yeah. I mean for me, it was my contracts class that was pass fail and if you work with contracts and don’t use contract tools, you’re missing a lot. Save time, make more money and do a better job for your clients with contract tools by Paper Software. Contract tools is the most powerful word add-in for working with contracts. Thousands of lawyers all over the world rely on contract tools every day for every kind of deal. Visit papersoftware.com to watch a demo and get a free trial. As a special offer to podcast listeners,

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So transitioning from law school though it has law school tentacles to it, so as someone who graduated from law school what title do you like to give yourself?

Catherine Rubino: Esquire, I guess.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, yeah.

Catherine Rubino: I mean, I don’t really give myself a title.

Joe Patrice: And technically that’s not even and that’s not even from law school. That’s technically from being licensed. But you don’t call yourself a doctor.

Catherine Rubino: No because I’m not a –

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Catherine Rubino: I don’t think that I’m that important.

Joe Patrice: You know who does call themselves doctor is Jenna Ellis. One of Trump’s

elite strike team lawyers who had came out that she has a bio page at one of the schools that she teaches at and it says Dr. Jenna Ellis which made me think, so she must have some joint PHD or something. Friends, she does not. She is just a lawyer who is – see, you don’t even need to make sound anymore. We have it. There we go. So yeah. So she calls herself doctor. This is obviously something that we don’t do. It’s technically though, it is legal for us to call ourselves doctor apparently.

Catherine Rubino: Yeah, well, sure.

Joe Patrice: But the ABA issued a resolution several years ago saying that

people with JDs are technically doctors, so we can call ourselves doctor.

Catherine Rubino: But you shouldn’t.

Joe Patrice: But no, obviously not. It’s dumb. And it’s not to say that we don’t do work that is as important as PHD work coming out of law school. That said, we didn’t have to write a book.

Catherine Rubino: I should say it’s a lot shorter is what it is.

Joe Patrice: Well, the course work is it works out to be basically the same in some ways, so this is part of the argument.

Catherine Rubino: You had a much different 3L year than I did.

Joe Patrice: Fair enough. Well, that’s a good point. Assuming 3L is a real year, which I don’t

think we should.

Catherine Rubino: I mean, I don’t know why we would do that.

Joe Patrice: If you assume 3L is a real year, the argument that the ABA made was that

the coursework for a PHD is shorter, but then there’s the dissertation writing. Meanwhile law school is longer but no dissertation and it all evens out. I don’t know as though that’s true or

fair but even if it were.

Catherine Rubino: I mean here’s the thing though, you don’t want to be the person on the vanguard of being like let’s call lawyers doctors when you’re a lawyer being called doctor, right?

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Catherine Rubino: Calling yourself doctor, right? That’s not the appropriate place to do it. You just look like an ass.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Catherine Rubino: Right? Like who the hell do you — you know how many lawyers there are in this country? A shit ton. Almost all of them don’t do call themselves doctor unless they have a PHD or an MD as well as a JD.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, exactly.

Catherine Rubino: Those are the folks that do it.

Joe Patrice: Well, and then Jenna, she calls herself doctor. We also received this week a delightful New York Times article digging into her legal career and her actual qualifications. So she according to publicly released documents has made something like 160 grand in billables just for Trump over the last couple of weeks. The New York Times asked some folks

who’d worked with her in the past, hey, how did she become an expert?

Catherine Rubino: Did they say all these wonderful things about her?

Joe Patrice: They did not. They in fact say that they’re as shocked as anyone that anyone would ever hire this person, that she has no qualifications as far as anyone can tell, that her one job in the past she got let go from, didn’t go into a lot of details that we have heard from some tipsters that it was not a happy ending for her at that job, that in fact, she was fired for screwing up something fairly badly. Now, that’s just that’s just rumor mongering, although one does wonder how you get fired from a job like that that quickly. If it’s not something like that, anyway, point is everybody had a very very dim view of her who had worked with her in the past and her position at this religious school where she was calling herself doctor, she was said that she’s a constitutional scholar or whatever at this school, but do you know what she was actually doing? Because it’s not a law school. It was a she was teaching an undergrad class. She was the mock trial coach at the school. So she was described as like assistant director of forensics or something like that, but she was like the mock trial coach and that’s how she became a “doctor.”

Catherine Rubino: And that’s not how she became a doctor. Let’s be very clear about this. If we think it’s okay to call her a doctor and to be clear we do not, she became one by getting a JD, right?

Joe Patrice: Well, I guess fair enough. But that’s how she decided it was — that’s the thing though. She starts working at a school where all the professors are doctors and I think she –

Catherine Rubino: And she feels inferior and she’s like well, I have something that’s just as

good and the spoiler alert, you don’t.

Joe Patrice: Put aside — so I’m going to go slightly differently. I don’t know as though it’s not just as good at least compared to some. There are PHDs in economics who obviously have done a lot more work than we did. They become lawyers. I think there are also PHDs in basket

weaving that probably did do less work than we did. The point is it doesn’t matter. You’re a lawyer, that’s a thing. You don’t need to make up new titles.

Catherine Rubino: Yeah. Also, if you are a PHD in basket weaving, you’ve also written a dissertation about basket weaving which actually could be incredibly interesting and academic.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, it could be, it could be.

Catherine Rubino: Right? And I think that you are disparaging.

Joe Patrice: That’s fair. There are some new post-modern schools of basket weaving.

Catherine Rubino: No, but there could be ethnographies about history.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, yeah. No, I hear you.

Catherine Rubino: you just threw that out there as like, oh, this is a bullshit thing and I’m like it’s not. It’s not. You don’t know it could it easily be a lot harder than anyone’s 3L year.

Joe Patrice: Right. Yes. I mean that’s fair. I mean, but people who do clinics in their 3L year and stuff are actually doing –

Catherine Rubino: Sure, they’re working.

Joe Patrice: — real hard work. Right.

Catherine Rubino: Yes, they are working. They are not doing academic work. They are literally doing practical work and that is actually the most valuable part potentially of a 3L year is doing something like clinic work, but it’s the exact opposite of academic work.

Joe Patrice: True, true. I’m just saying like if you’re –

Catherine Rubino: Which is important.

Joe Patrice: — carrying workloads, so I think that the amount of work you do in a clinic could

easily be similar.

Catherine Rubino: Sure. Somebody could be working lots of hours at McDonald’s but that

doesn’t make them a doctor of McDonald’s.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Catherine Rubino: Right?

Joe Patrice:  I mean, there is a hamburger university that McDonald’s runs but still, yeah, go on.

(00:20:04)

Catherine Rubino: And I don’t think they’re giving out PHDs.

Joe Patrice:  My guess is there’s some pun-filled actual thing they give out and I don’t

know what it is.

Catherine Rubino: The point remains, calling yourself doctor has a very specific connotation about a certain amount of academic work and working in a clinic your 3L year while incredibly important, very valuable, probably makes you a better lawyer doesn’t make you a doctor.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. I’m trying to see right now what the actual –

Catherine Rubino: You’re researching like hamburger u?

Joe Patrice: Yeah, they get degrees in restaurant management from there, although I don’t know what level it is.

Catherine Rubino: Okay. It’s not really.

Joe Patrice: Fair enough. The point is, don’t call yourself doctor. I don’t think we need to belabor it too much more, but anyway. Here’s a question.

Catherine Rubino: Yeah?

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[Music]

Catherine Rubino: Oh, Christmas.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, I learned how to add sounds, yeah. So we’re entering holiday season, which I thought an interesting thing that we do every year at Above the Law is put out a gift guide, which is not just for you lawyers who have to buy gifts for your fellow lawyers but also if you know somebody who is a non-lawyer and has a lawyer in their life they need to get gifts for. We have you covered with some suggestions for stuff to get. So the job of shopping for a lawyer. Do you have some thoughts on like how to go about buying for lawyers?

Catherine Rubino: Well, I mean, I think that this year, it’s a real different ball of wax. Don’t buy balls of wax but I do think that 2020, the pandemic, working from home has fundamentally changed what is important and what is relevant for folks. And I think that for lawyers making working from home more palatable is really the best gift you can give any lawyer in your life, right? Because hours by and large have not decreased significantly as a result from working from home and a lot of cases, what we’re hearing is even if billables aren’t the amount of hours you’re expected to be ready and available has definitely increased because everyone’s like well, it doesn’t matter what are you doing anyway? So, I think that trying to make that work from home experience better is something that’s going to help you out. I’ll tell you what my favorite gift on the gift guide is. It’s one of the things I suggested it to you. Jot.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah. You’re addicted to this stuff.

Catherine Rubino: I am.

Joe Patrice: We needed them as a sponsor.

Catherine Rubino: We should reach out to them because I proselytize about the power and benefit of Jot constantly.

Joe Patrice: So, it’s to let people know. So, it’s an ultra-concentrated coffee.

Catherine Rubino: Made in I believe Brooklyn. Made in the U.S. but like very ultra-concentrated. It’s comes into your house very well packaged, very cutely packaged in these little glass bottles. You put a tablespoon of it in with eight ounces of milk or water or whatever and then you can make your coffee to your heart’s content. It is by far the best, easiest way to make iced coffee in particular. You can also heat it up if you have hot water, hot milk or whatever, but I personally love iced coffee. All the people in my life that I have made one for or suggested it to you, they have gone on to buy it are now on the subscription plan where I get two bottles sent to my house every month. I’ve told my circle of friends repeatedly that this is one of those things that really increased my quality of life in 2020. Going to the coffee shop is not as viable as an everyday sort of a thing anymore just because I was trying to reduce my contacts whatever, but the flavor of this really feels like you’ve gone — I know I

sound like an ad. I promise you I just like it.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. So on that note, I’m not as huge a coffee person as you are, but my favorite thing on the gift guide are these mugs that you can control from your phone. Ember.

They’re called they’re mugs that heat the stuff in them and keep it at a certain temperature.

Compromise and Release Oh, that’s cool.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Catherine Rubino: Yeah, I like iced coffee.

Joe Patrice: So it never cools down and you can use your phone. It’s connected like a Bluetooth thing. You can use your phone to be like I want the drink to be at 100 and whatever

and it will just hold at that.

Catherine Rubino: Oh, that’s a great idea.

Joe Patrice: So I think that’s a nice one especially if you’re sitting around. Another one that we added to the list were this kind of mini fridge. It’s about the size of a lunchbox sort of a little bit bigger than a lunchbox. You can carry it around easily but it plugs in and can both – it can actually heat or cool so it can keep like warm things warm.

(00:26:07)

Catherine Rubino: Soup, yeah.

Joe Patrice: But yeah. No, like assuming you’re not in a tiny enough place that your kitchen is your office. If you’re in a home office sort of situation, it’s nice. You can have drinks and stuff like sitting right next to you kept cold. Yeah, I thought it was a really really cool idea.

Catherine Rubino: I think that it is too and I will say when I worked at a big law office, my officemate and I each had our own personal fridges that we kept in the office because well, we used to get like Seamless like if you were working late, you could you know order Seamless and we’d get extra drinks and keep them cold in our office without having to worry about anybody else drinking them and I just think that’s like a really great thing and I will also say their mini fridges are also experiencing a surge of popularity at the moment as beauty fridges. Spoiler alert, they’re the same thing as any kind of a portable little mini fridge, but to keep certain –

Joe Patrice: Only to put the makeup in and stuff?

Catherine Rubino: Skin care.

Joe Patrice: Okay.

Catherine Rubino: So like certain serums.

Joe Patrice: You said that so condescendingly like there’s some different thing like –

Catherine Rubino: Well, like serums and stuff like that, that maybe should be cold to help like reduce puffiness or that kind of – sorry, I was like touching my face but that kind of thing,

they’re also experiencing a resurgence for that purpose and they come in a ton of cute colors. You can get them in like aqua or pink. It’s really cute.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Catherine Rubino: I’m actually thinking about buying a couple of those.

Joe Patrice: No, no, no.

Catherine Rubino: No, not for my house. My nieces are really kind — they’re that kind of pre-teenie almost a teenager-e sort of worldview and I feel like that’s like a make your room your castle kind of a I don’t know. It’s like a ball or ant move.

Joe Patrice: That’s fair but when you said buying a couple, I was like or just use your regular refrigerators so you don’t need to keep buying a bunch of these. I mean, now it sounds like I’m dissing on a thing I put myself on the gift guide. It is good, but I think people only need one.

Catherine Rubino: Well, I mean, it would also depend I guess what you’re using them for right? If you use them as a makeup fridge, you have one in your bathroom so that you do it like as you’re doing your nightly or morning routine so that you can use it.

Joe Patrice: And I guess if you want something hot and cold.

Catherine Rubino: Right. Those are the different purposes.

Joe Patrice: Then, yeah.

Catherine Rubino: I’ll tell you the other thing that I’m on this kind of self-care kind of tip that I think is also super useful for any lawyer in your life, our sister site Fashionista did a publication of the best working from home outfits and I think that doing like luxury loungewear is a great idea because –

Joe Patrice: Oh, yeah, I didn’t see this.

Catherine Rubino: Yeah, we posted it at Above the Law but there’s a couple of brands that have really kind of come up. They’re sustainably made, they’re made in the U.S.A., Sloan is one of them. Ileana and I can’t remember the other one. Anyway, the point is that luxury work from home stuff, the kind of stuff where you can appear on a last-minute Zoom if you need to, but also maybe –

Joe Patrice: Be comfortable?

Catherine Rubino: Yeah, you don’t have like a button digging into your waist and it’s made out of high quality soft materials.

Joe Patrice: And so if people need to find this, we’ll put this in the gift guide too like a link to the original Fashionista piece, yeah.

Catherine Rubino: Yeah, Everlane is another one of those. Yeah.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, people have suggestions also. Always feel free to email us at [email protected]. We can’t necessarily get everything into the gift guide every year, but throughout the year send the stuff so that it’s on our radar at least, so we’ll try and get stuff in because people have to buy for lawyers and this is –

Catherine Rubino: Backbeat Rags is the other one.

Joe Patrice: Okay.

Catherine Rubino: And they’re really cute. I will if you’re looking for other, for co-hosts in your life.

Joe Patrice: Hm.

Catherine Rubino: Backbeat Rags. I’m just saying.

Joe Patrice: I’m not. No, actually, that’s not true. I do need to get Ellie something.

So with all that said –

Catherine Rubino: I’m not sure it’s his style.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, with all that said, I think we’re done. So, thanks everybody for listening. I hope you’re all subscribed to the show. That certainly helps us out and also give us some reviews. Write something instead of just giving stars because that helps. Recently I’ve learned that we’ve been getting bad reviews because we talk about the bar exam too much and I’m like, look I would be happy to talk about anything else but 2020 has been a non-stop car crash of –

Catherine Rubino: I mean, lots of really bad things have happened with the bar exam this year.

Joe Patrice: I mean, look. Let’s just all hope that in 2021 we don’t have to talk about the bar exam as much but I’m afraid we might still.

Catherine Rubino: Most years it’s just like the bar exam happened, here’s the pass fail rate.

Joe Patrice: Anyway, so if you’re out there and you appreciated our bar exam coverage, feel free to definitely log on and write us some reviews about how awesome that was. So you should be reading Above the Law obviously. You should follow us on social media. I’m

@josephpatrice, she’s @catherine1, the numeral 1 on Twitter. You should be listening to the Jabot, which is Catherine’s show. You should also listen to the Legal Tech Week Roundtable of Legal Tech Reporters, which I participate in.

(00:30:05)

You should listen to the other offerings from the Legal Talk Network. Thank you to our new sponsor Lexicon and also to of course Lexisnexis and Paper Software. Check those out and with all of that said, I think we are done. I think I’ve said everything normally. Yeah, there you go. Okay, cool. Talk to everybody later.

[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 the Legal Talk Network, it’s officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders, or subsidiaries. None of the content should be considered legal advice. As always consult a lawyer.

(00:30:43)

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