At a certain point, you have to wonder why he's willing to keep charging up this hill.
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Joe Patrice is an Editor at Above the Law. For over a decade, he practiced as a...
Kathryn Rubino is a member of the editorial staff at Above the Law. She has a degree...
| Published: | May 12, 2021 |
| Podcast: | Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer |
| Category: | Legal Entertainment , News & Current Events |
Eugene Volokh used his blog to whine some more about how his constant demands to be respected for throwing around racial epithets in class keep getting him clowned. This time he tries to pull a “gotcha” that two years ago, a single Above the Law article had an unedited slur in a block quote… which is so unhelpful to his argument that you have to wonder if he’s suffered a concussion or something. We also talk about Judge Lynn Hughes finding himself the subject of another benchslap and revisit the old Above the Law story that has taken center stage in the Philadelphia DA race.
Special thanks to our sponsors, LexisNexis® InterAction®, Lexicon and Nota.
[Music]
Joe Patrice: Hello. Welcome to another edition of Thinking Like A Lawyer.
Kathryn Rubino: Hello.
Joe Patrice: We’re just going to ignore that you keep interrupting like that. I’m Joe Patrice from Above The Law. That was Kathryn Rubino, also of that August publication, and we’re here to chat about the week’s legal news, you know, with some degree of seriousness I guess.
Kathryn Rubino: Yeah. I mean, hopefully not too much seriousness.
Joe Patrice: Yeah.
Kathryn Rubino: That’d be weird.
Joe Patrice: Yeah. No, so we actually have a few things to go over but before we get to that, yeah.
Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, how have you been?
Joe Patrice: Not bad.
Kathryn Rubino: Spring has sprung. What are you up to these days?
Joe Patrice: A little bit, although some parts of the country I see are getting snow in the next couple of days. So, that’s not great for them.
Kathryn Rubino: That’s not fun.
Joe Patrice: In May.
Kathryn Rubino: May snow is not okay.
Joe Patrice: I mean, I guess I shouldn’t say that that’s not good for them. I think there’s a mega drought going on in this country so perhaps it’s good.
Kathryn Rubino: Is there? Am I like a terrible person for not even realizing that there’s like a mega drought?
Joe Patrice: Yeah, no you are.
Kathryn Rubino: Cool.
Joe Patrice: Yeah.
Kathryn Rubino: Cool, cool.
Joe Patrice: Yeah.
Kathryn Rubino: Cool, cool, cool, cool.
Joe Patrice: I mean, if it makes you feel any better this wasn’t the thing that put me over the top on knowing that. Yeah. So, we’ve got the Law Revue contest going over at Above The Law.
Kathryn Rubino: Yes.
Joe Patrice: And for those, we spell review R-E-V-U-E.
Kathryn Rubino: It’s not we who do it, right? That’s the longstanding tradition of law school talent shows basically, to spell it that way, and it’s good to have it back. Historically, at Above The Law, we do an annual competition. We have schools send in their best video of any performances from the law review show, and then we have folks vote on them and it’s every year, it’s sort of a highlight of the ATL calendar. We get a ton of traffic. People seem really into it, and we didn’t have one last year because there was a global pandemic and no one knew what the hell was going on. So, even then, like some of the performances that already happened and you know, it was during lockdown, no one knew. So, we took a pause last year and maybe this is — I mean, listen, it was always an online event, right? but it still didn’t happen last year, but it’s good to see that — good to have it back, a little return to normalcy. Yeah.
Joe Patrice: A little comedy sketch, singing, it’s all of this fun.
Kathryn Rubino: Yeah. We have three finalists this year. If you go to abovethelaw.com you can see commentary that Joe, myself, and our other co-editor, Staci Zaretsky, have about them and we’ll see. I haven’t voted yet.
Joe Patrice: Yeah, me neither.
Kathryn Rubino: I don’t have any — I think I have a favorite but there are two of the finalists who used Megan Thee Stallion songs. And so, WAP and Savage are the two songs. They do parody stuff, that I quite enjoy both of them, Joanna’s and the other finalist’s is a Hamilton song which is also, you know, pretty classic.
Joe Patrice: Yeah, yeah. Well, great. Before we get going too far into talking about, you know, down this law school rabbit hole. So, go there, vote, whatever, we’re not going to talk about — well, we are going to talk a little bit about law school still but, you know, law school is the place that you go to be a lawyer not an accountant.
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Kathryn Rubino: Thievery?
Joe Patrice: Small law, you know, almost exclusively small lawyers dipping into client escrow funds and converting them
Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, and I remember when you had to take the ethics portion of the bar exam. I was panicking because, you know, that’s pretty much what I did before every test.
Joe Patrice: Yeah.
Kathryn Rubino: But I was like, “I’m going to fail,” and somebody told me like, “Listen, there’s only one thing you have to remember. Just don’t mix your money with theirs.”
Joe Patrice: Yeah.
Kathryn Rubino: “And you’re probably going to pass,” and yeah.
Joe Patrice: It’s unreal with people. Yeah, and obviously a lot of these people in this report, which in the last year was the most New York has had of these problems ever.
Kathryn Rubino: So, like the most people?
Joe Patrice: Which is terrifying?
Kathryn Rubino: Because of COVID, so many more people were doing it?
Joe Patrice: It was fewer people, but more money, but anyway.
Kathryn Rubino: But the dollars values.
Joe Patrice: Yeah. Yeah, those folks are trying to be bad actors but don’t let yourself accidentally be in that position by not keeping good track of where your money is, and that’s why you use a product like Nota.
Kathryn Rubino: Wow, I didn’t realize this was all part of the ad read.
Joe Patrice: It really wasn’t. It was just a new story that came up today but it struck me.
Kathryn Rubino: Right.
Joe Patrice: It’s particularly relevant to our friends at Nota. So, I thought I’d expound a little bit.
Kathryn Rubino: I see there. I see, I see.
Joe Patrice: No, the conversation we wanted to have, folks may have seen especially if you read other legal publications, I don’t know why you would do such a thing but if you did read the Volokh Conspiracy over at Reason Mag, you might have seen us become a bit of the news.
(00:05:05)
Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, yeah.
Joe Patrice: We have over, and Above The Law had a lot of coverage recently, unfortunately, of law professors who believe that the most — White law professors I think I need to clarify.
Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, to be very clear.
Joe Patrice: Who believe that the best part of law school is them hurling around racial epithets as much as they can.
Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, yeah.
Joe Patrice: You know, for the kids, for education.
Kathryn Rubino: Well, they have to. How else are people going to learn?
Joe Patrice: Yeah.
Kathryn Rubino: We’ve got to learn them good.
Joe Patrice: Yeah, how could you possibly understand what racial epithets are if you don’t actually always articulate that?
Kathryn Rubino: The uneuphemized version.
Joe Patrice: Yeah.
Kathryn Rubino: Yeah.
Joe Patrice: Yeah. So, Professor Volokh wrote an article.
Kathryn Rubino: Right.
Joe Patrice: In a law review.
Kathryn Rubino: With Randall Kennedy, right?
Joe Patrice: With Randall Kennedy, yeah. Wrote an article in a law review about how great it is for White people to use the N-word as much as they can. Our columnist of ours, a law professor columnist of ours wrote a reaction to this on Above The Law about how this is one of the laziest pieces of scholarship he’s ever seen.
Kathryn Rubino: Sure.
Joe Patrice: And is just all around embarrassing and they should feel embarrassed.
Kathryn Rubino: Well, I mean, not that this was gone into initially but it’s also very self-serving, right? Like I’ve written, you’ve written about Professor Volokh in the past using racial slurs in class.
Joe Patrice: Yeah, yes.
Kathryn Rubino: Of the uneuphemized version, full N-word, you know, and in particular when they were asked not to. So, I mean, this is also very self-serving in the sense that creating some sort of an academic or, you know, scholarly reason for doing the problematic behavior that they are engaged in, it becomes justified then, right? Because look at their scholarship about it, okay they wrote it.
Joe Patrice: Yeah, and then the real nonsense of the whole thing is after our anonymous law professor makes fun of them, Volokh comes at us demanding a reaction publication where we would apparently give him space in our pages to react to somebody, despite the fact that he has a law review in which he’s expounded upon this, as well as his own relatively successful blog affiliated with a major magazine where he could respond to this, but no–
Kathryn Rubino: And also, we don’t do one-off publications.
Joe Patrice: And we don’t.
Kathryn Rubino: It’s just our policy.
Joe Patrice: But no, he feels it’s really important that we have his voice heard in response to this, you know, because–
Kathryn Rubino: That’s not how any of this works.
Joe Patrice: Because, you know, when other people feel as though, you know, their feelings are being ignored or their concerns are not being heard by a law professor, that’s because they’re weak and don’t understand but when somebody makes a joke about him, the presses need to stop and allow him to speak, because it’s all about listening to White people speak whenever they get a chance to complain.
Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, that is kind of in the history of this country.
Joe Patrice: It was so — anyway, we brought Ellie Stolbach to respond to it and he responded to it substantively.
Kathryn Rubino: Right, because the piece that they did publish in the Volokh conspiracy, was about a second columnist at Above The Law which a couple of years ago had used a block quote that had an unedited version of the racial slur in question.
Joe Patrice: Right. And they tried to make this as though this is analogous, which frankly I don’t think this is because the analogy to the earlier article which just had a quote from a book that did that, which probably shouldn’t have happened but to the extent it did, that’s analogous to saying, you know, you have to read a case that has that in there. Nobody’s really arguing that, you know, especially when we’re talking about, you know, Nazi cases and stuff like that, nobody’s arguing that this law ceases to exist but people understand it needs to be dealt with and read whatever the problem is by after reading this case, Volokh wants to turn the conversation for the next hour into him throwing out his own personal hypotheticals about things.
Kathryn Rubino: Right.
Joe Patrice: That’s the part that crosses the line into gratuitous, just being gratuitous with your use of racial epithets for the hell of it, and that’s why the analogy to an earlier article of ours having a quote from a book talking about the–
Kathryn Rubino: And again it was a columnist, not one of the editorial voices.
Joe Patrice: And look, if that columnist had felt the need to utilize that sort of rhetoric in commentary, that would be analogous to this and be problematic, but he didn’t. He absolutely–
Kathryn Rubino: It’s a poor analogy, you know, and now which is actually an entire section of standardized testing. Like, I don’t understand how.
Joe Patrice: Yeah, how law professor, okay, are so bad at them.
Kathryn Rubino: These so bad analogies. So, I think you’re right. I think the analogy is wrong. I think that also we publish a tremendous volume of articles at Above The Law, and I mean, how do they even find the article? Do they actually go into the search engine and like type in the full epithet?
Joe Patrice: That’s weird because our search engine is terrible
(00:10:00)
It’s, I don’t know, like it really was just a poor analogy, even to the extent that it wasn’t like–
Kathryn Rubino: And I mean, I think you’re right, and I think that the other thing is that in Volokh and Kennedy’s article, they try to make a distinction between use versus insult, right, in that like merely saying the epithet is different than using the insults, and of course they’re different in kind. Of course it’s worse if a professor uses an epithet as, you know, “You terrible–,” you know, slur, right? Of course that is worse than if you’re just, you’re mentioning the word of course, but that doesn’t make it okay, right? We can hold multiple complicated ideas in our head at the same time both saying that using it as an insult is worse but it’s still not okay to just use it, and I think another point that Ellie makes I think quite eloquently is that there’s no reason not to change it to a euphemized version. Everyone knows if you say they used the N-word, everyone knows what it is.
Joe Patrice: Yeah, well, and that was Ellie’s point that (Voice Overlap 00:11:01).
Kathryn Rubino: Yes, yeah. And so, I’m reiterating his point here.
Joe Patrice: Well, yeah. Well, and that’s the issue with this use insult distinction that people try to claim to justify their own bad behavior. Sure, there’s a difference with use, but there also has to be a use that is required basically. Look, if you’re putting somebody in, you know, you’re writing an opinion about like what somebody did that might be criminal behavior or whatever, the record has to be accurate, sure. Transcript has to be accurate. That’s a place where it has to be. The law classroom where you’re like, “So, this person used a racial epithet. What should happen to them?” You don’t need to do that.
Kathryn Rubino: Right.
Joe Patrice: I mean, I’ve already used the word gratuitous but that’s what it is. It’s an attempt to bootstrap on to the case to.
Kathryn Rubino: And I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again because it comes up entirely too often, you know, not just Volokh. There are too many law professors who feel like it’s okay to use the N-word in the classroom.
Joe Patrice: It happens way, way too often.
Kathryn Rubino: I basically have a cottage industry about writing how, “Why are we still having this conversation? Why are you doing this,” and I think having written about it so many times, and so many different professors, I just think that there’s this sort of prurient thrill, like you know some, the, “Oh, I’m transgressing acceptable norms,” and say, “I get to say it even though I’m White because I’m in the classroom and this is education,” and it’s bullshit. It’s utter bullshit and I do not even recognize that there’s this sort of transgressive thrill that they’re getting in trying to capitalize and trying to use — without even recognizing that, I just think it’s entirely dishonest, whether it’s they’re not even admitting it to themselves or, you know, it’s more obvious to them, but it is so clear to me that there’s something deeper going on psychologically because there’s no practical reason in order to use any racial slur in class.
Joe Patrice: Yeah. Yeah.
Kathryn Rubino: I mean, listen, law school students are not kids, right?
Joe Patrice: Right.
Kathryn Rubino: They’re freaking adults. These are all grown-ass people.
Joe Patrice: Who fully can comprehend the entire discussion without having to go through that, yeah.
Kathryn Rubino: Right. It is completely gratuitous, unnecessary, and really demonstrates your lack of respect for people who are not White.
Joe Patrice: Yeah. I should have had a counter going with like a ding or whatever for the use of the word gratuitous. I think we got it in there a bit, but I mean, yeah, it fits.
Kathryn Rubino: If the gratuitous shoe fits.
Joe Patrice: Yeah. And you know, I have a question.
Kathryn Rubino: Okay?
Joe Patrice: How have law firms weathered previous economic downturns that come out stronger on the other side? LexisNexis InterAction has released an in-depth global research report confronting the 2020 downturn, lessons learned during previous economic crises. Download your free copy at interaction.com/likealawyer to see tips, strategies, plans, and statistics from leaders who have been through this before and how they’ve reached success again. So, if you were running for office — have you ever run for office?
Kathryn Rubino: I have not. Have you?
Joe Patrice: Okay. I have actually.
Kathryn Rubino: Interesting. Did you win?
Joe Patrice: I did. I was on a post. I was on the Kings County New York of Brooklyn – I was a Brooklyn delegate to the party committee.
Kathryn Rubino: Fancy.
Joe Patrice: Yeah. Yeah.
Kathryn Rubino: So, did you have a campaign website?
Joe Patrice: I did not. But you know why I might have wanted one, to dispel the conversation about the girl in my bathtub.
Kathryn Rubino: What girl?
Joe Patrice: Yeah. So, this doesn’t actually apply to me as far as we all know.
Kathryn Rubino: Obviously, yeah, as far as anyone’s able to prove.
Joe Patrice: And Charles Peruto Jr. is running for district attorney in Philadelphia and he has a campaign website, and one of the subject headings is, “The Girl In My Bathtub,” and the first sentences there shouldn’t be a section for this on anyone’s campaign site but because some people will not let this go away, I must address it.
(00:15:01)
Kathryn Rubino: But there was a girl in his bathtub.
Joe Patrice: There was.
Kathryn Rubino: But a dead one.
Joe Patrice: Yes, and that’s the old Louisiana thing. Yes, a dead girl was in his bathtub. It was a paralegal that he employed as far as I could tell at that time, or at least had at some point he was dating her, and she died in his bathtub.
Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, that’s going to come up. It should come up.
Joe Patrice: Yes.
Kathryn Rubino: Like as a matter of like due diligence, right, the press should continue to bring this up. People who are voting on this should be aware that there was a — they should have questions. If someone went to the district attorney where I lived and there was a dead girl in their bathtub, I would have questions. I think that’s reasonable.
Joe Patrice: It would come up.
Kathryn Rubino: I think it’s reasonable.
Joe Patrice: I think that’s very reasonable.
Kathryn Rubino: I think it’s reasonable to have questions with a dead girl.
Joe Patrice: A tweet by Michael Whitney, who was where I first noticed the story going down. It makes a good point which he tags with, “When you definitely know math and the law,” the section from the campaign website is, “In short, the best way to start with this is the medical examiner’s report. She was a .45 BAC. That means that 45 percent of her blood was alcohol,” three exclamation points.
Kathryn Rubino: (00:16:15) what any of that means.
Joe Patrice: That is not how blood alcohol content works. Another thing that I feel is though, the district attorney should be on top of–
Kathryn Rubino: It is disturbing that a potential district attorney does not understand that, but okay. So, the person who died, it actually happened a while back, right? Above The Law covered I think before either of us was at the publication in 2013, 2014, something like that?
Joe Patrice: I was here.
Kathryn Rubino: Okay.
Joe Patrice: But because I remember this story.
Kathryn Rubino: Okay, okay fair enough. I was not.
Joe Patrice: Because when I saw a tweet saying something about a guy running for office about a dead girl in the bathtub I went, “Oh, I know this story,” because I was here when we covered it. I didn’t write that story but–
Kathryn Rubino: Yeah. So, okay I’ve got some bones to pick with this situation here. Obviously, you know, it is hilarious. I will say that, that like the dead girl in your bathtub.
Joe Patrice: Right, it’s not hilarious that there’s someone who died, but–
Kathryn Rubino: And that is kind of my point. And that is my point, like he put it on his website as, “The Girl In My Bathtub,” right? Like that was the heading that he put there, but in coverage from 2013 to 2014, he describes the girl as this, his soulmate, someone that he loved, right? She was in a relationship with him and, okay, you know, there’s questions obviously about, you know, somebody that you were close to died in your home, right? Then why don’t you have a section that is like that person’s — I don’t actually know the person’s name, but why not have like so-and-so’s name or in memoriam, or like the tragic circumstances regarding the death of so-and-so? Those are all ways that also address these questions that don’t make a caricature of someone that you said that you loved, right? Someone who is a person that should be respected as, you know, she had hopes and dreams and was a real person and he has, by trying to minimize its import in the race for his own kind of, you know, benefit he’s trying to minimize who she was as a person and make it just a joke.
Joe Patrice: Yeah.
Kathryn Rubino: Right? Because, “Oh–,” and I get it, the way he says it makes it seem that way but he’s the one who called her a soulmate.
Joe Patrice: Yeah.
Kathryn Rubino: And now he wants to write it off as, “She was a terrible — she died in my presence but,” you know, and make her the butt of a joke as opposed to, you know, something that was tragic, a very tragic — I would be like, “This was a tragic thing that happened in my life.”
Joe Patrice: Yeah.
Kathryn Rubino: That, you know, if you were — if I was running for office and this happened to me. “Because I understand these sorts of tragedies, I can better serve you.”
Joe Patrice: You do under – Yeah.
Kathryn Rubino: Right? Like this is a way to actually talk about it in a way that’s productive and relevant to the race that he’s running as opposed to just make it a joke.
Joe Patrice: Yeah, the whole thing feels almost like a Lifetime Movie of the Week.
Kathryn Rubino: It was, wasn’t it?
Joe Patrice: It was a Lifetime Movie of the Week in 2018 called The Girl in the Bathtub. So, yes, Lifetime has already made this story into a movie. Yeah, it seems like maybe–
Kathryn Rubino: The sequel is coming I’m guessing.
Joe Patrice: Look, this guy has relatively no chance of winning this election.
Kathryn Rubino: I would hope so.
Joe Patrice: So, I mean–
Kathryn Rubino: It’s still going to make me salty.
Joe Patrice: The newspapers that have always endorsed not the incumbent have all endorsed the incumbent this time. So, I feel as though there’s very little chance, but we’ll see. You know, crazier things can happen.
Let’s take a break to hear from our friends from Lexicon.
[Music]
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(00:20:00)
Joe Patrice: And let’s talk about – are you familiar with Judge Lynn Hughes?
Kathryn Rubino: I believe I’ve written about him.
Joe Patrice: Yeah, Judge Lynn Hughes–
Kathryn Rubino: Everybody I think at Above The Law writes about him at some point, because he’s an interesting character in the federal judiciary.
Joe Patrice: Legal-wise.
Kathryn Rubino: Yeah.
Joe Patrice: Judge Hughes, a federal judge down in Texas, he is by his peers rated as the worst judge in the U.S. system. I don’t know whether or not that’s fair, but that is certainly what people say of him. He is known for being very mean-spirited and harsh with his benchslaps which, you know, goes around comes around he is also on–
Kathryn Rubino: Fifth Circuit as well, yeah.
Joe Patrice: The Fifth Circuit also treats him to a number of benchslaps for his behavior. So, he has a new one out which, I read it, I’m going to say something that I’m not totally comfortable with. I kind of think he’s got a point.
Kathryn Rubino: You mean like a broken clock situation?
Joe Patrice: Yeah, I feel like he might be right about this one. Judge Hughes put out this opinion about a young man who had tried to join ISIS several years ago, ultimately did not but his friend who he was going to join with did, and he gave his friend like all the money he had on him when they separated, like handed him a couple hundred bucks or whatever it was. It’s telling that this opinion doesn’t even say how much money it was because it’s such an insignificant amount, and he pleaded guilty to this. He actually had renounced all of his leanings to the terrorist organization before he was even arrested, and the federal government wants to put him away for 15 years.
Kathryn Rubino: That seems like a wild misuse of federal funds.
Joe Patrice: Yeah, that seems like that might be a little extreme and Judge Hughes agrees. Judge Hughes thought 18 months was right. The government appealed. It was kicked back to Judge Hughes, and at this point the guy’s been in prison pending appeal for several months, has racked up a great disciplinary record there is, you know, on the mend, he’s like pursuing a degree. Judge Hughes says, the scoreboard basically, and we now have proof that this kid is on a good way.
Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, making changes. Yeah.
Joe Patrice: So, we’re going to stick with 18 months, and the Fifth Circuit then took the case away from Judge Hughes and is sending it back to somebody else to make sure the government gets the 15 years that they want, and look, Judge Hughes’s reason for all of this is — it’s a little sus, and reading through the footnotes it appears as though his big problem is that this case was brought by the Obama Justice Department and he doesn’t trust the Obama people. So, you know, not probably the right reason to be opposed to this.
Kathryn Rubino: Amazing.
Joe Patrice: But I mean, when you read the bio of this kid and frankly taking the government’s position at its most, you know — giving them the benefit of the doubt on everything they say, I read their petition and thought, “Yeah, 18 months sounds about right.” So, I don’t know.
Kathryn Rubino: 15 years seems absurd. That seems absurd for, you know — this is someone who’s renounced.
Joe Patrice: Yeah, who’s not a threat at this point.
Kathryn Rubino: Not a threat at this point.
Joe Patrice: And he didn’t do anything ultimately and, B, is not a threat at this point.
Kathryn Rubino: Yeah.
Joe Patrice: Yeah. Anyway, there we go.
Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, I mean, listen. Let’s be clear, all right. Back in the day, like Irish folks in Brooklyn gave a lot more money to the IRA.
Joe Patrice: Yeah, that one, that was pretty directly terrorist back then.
Kathryn Rubino: Yeah.
Joe Patrice: Yeah, no but Judge Hughes, criminal justice reform warrior all of a sudden.
Kathryn Rubino: Weird, weird.
Joe Patrice: Yeah, I know. Weird. Yeah. So, I think that brings us around to the end point, you know.
Kathryn Rubino: Parting is such sweet sorrow.
Joe Patrice: Yeah, it is, but we will be back. You can check us out in other places too. We have abovethelaw.com where we write every day. We also have other shows Kathryn hosts The Jabot. Yeah. What are we going to say?
Kathryn Rubino: I was just going to say I host The Jabot.
Joe Patrice: Okay.
Kathryn Rubino: Yeah.
Joe Patrice: You want to take that part?
Kathryn Rubino: I host the Jabot!
Joe Patrice: Okay. That was worth it.
Kathryn Rubino: Do you even know the names of the other shows besides Thinking Like A Lawyer that you’re on?
Joe Patrice: Yeah. Well, I’m on Legaltech Week’s Journalists’ Roundtable. Well, no, it’s Legaltech Week is how you would get the podcast, but I think he uses that to talk to do some other things, but there’s also a weekly Journalists’ Roundtable that I am a participant in.
Kathryn Rubino: Fair enough.
Joe Patrice: Yeah, this week we talked about legal conferences and some mistakes.
Kathryn Rubino: You were salty about it is what I know.
Joe Patrice: Well, yeah.
Kathryn Rubino: You were salty.
Joe Patrice: I had been a defender of these people and it turns out they were–
Kathryn Rubino: Which people?
Joe Patrice: The ILTACON people. Yeah.
Kathryn Rubino: That’s the first in-person conference, right, that you were talking about earlier?
Joe Patrice: You would think that, yeah, and it is an in-person conference. They just decided not to — well, originally, we found out, all of us in this legal Journalists’ Roundtable, we were all sent documents saying that we weren’t invited that, you know, because of COVID and even though it’s in-person, you have to log in and watch, which I defended them and said, “Look, I’m sure this is capacity limits right now. I’m sure they’ll get around to inviting us,” but what we learned mid-roundtable was that some of us had actually been invited.
(00:25:12)
Kathryn Rubino: So, they have a list of like their preferred legal journalists to deal with.
Joe Patrice: Yeah – no, and it was great, the journalists, we all kind of banded together and announced this as a kind of egregious attack on the legal journalism world. Yeah, we’ll see. I mean, look, those of us not invited resolved this that we’re all going to go anyway and hold an alternative.
Kathryn Rubino: Was it the first people, like the first in like we have 20 passes available for journalists, the first 20 get them? Was that the situation?
Joe Patrice: No, no, no. They just — they invited.
Kathryn Rubino: So, it’s a preferred list.
Joe Patrice: They invited Bob, who makes sense as kind of the dean of this (Voice Overlap 00:25:48).
Kathryn Rubino: Bob (Voice Overlap 00:25:48).
Joe Patrice: Yeah. And then they gave another publication, not one but two passes to cover it, which instead of inviting other people–
Kathryn Rubino: Additional publications.
Joe Patrice: Yeah, no it’s–
Kathryn Rubino: This doesn’t seem great.
Joe Patrice: Yeah.
Kathryn Rubino: This doesn’t seem great. Yeah, well you’re going to — it’ll be an interesting story to write from the lobby of the hotel.
Joe Patrice: Look, I fully expect to be invited before this is all over, but if I’m not I actually think this is going to be a lot of fun.
Kathryn Rubino: This just sounds like terrible PR too, like how do you not know — first of all, in the Legaltech world, the fact that you have multiple weekly wrap-up shows is known.
Joe Patrice: Yeah, I mean, it’s a very small pool. We all talk together.
Kathryn Rubino: So, you talk. You talk, right?
Joe Patrice: Yeah.
Kathryn Rubino: And to not know or get out ahead of it and be like, “Hey, listen, this is the situation. You know, we have a limited number.” Get out ahead of it and don’t just like let people find out on the air, because I guarantee their unfiltered reactions are always going to be worse.
Joe Patrice: But it made for great radio sure.
Kathryn Rubino: Sure. Yes. Sure.
Joe Patrice: So, finding out live was great.
Kathryn Rubino: But I’m saying is, you’re talking as a journalist which I think is correct, but I’m saying it’s a particularly bad PR move.
Joe Patrice: As an organization, yeah.
Kathryn Rubino: And whoever is in charge of media for ILTA, this was a trip.
Joe Patrice: It seems like an unforced error.
Kathryn Rubino: This is a trip.
Joe Patrice: It seems like an unforced error. Yeah. So, that was a long way of saying that I’m on that show.
Kathryn Rubino: That’s actually fun though.
Joe Patrice: And yeah, I know.
Kathryn Rubino: I don’t think you get salty about things.
Joe Patrice: Yeah, and I’m @JosephPatrice. She’s at @Kathryn1, which is that numeral one on Twitter. You can check out the other shows by the Legal Talk Network.
[Music]
Thanks again to Lexicon, Nota powered by M&T Bank, and LexisNexis InterAction. And, yeah, that’s everything. So, we will check in with you again next week.
Kathryn Rubino: Peace!
[Music]
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Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer |
Above the Law's Joe Patrice, Kathryn Rubino and Chris Williams examine everyday topics through the prism of a legal framework.
