Well, The Jerk Store Called…

Episode Notes

Transcript

[Music]

Joe Patrice: Greetings.

Kathryn Rubino: Hi.

Joe Patrice: This is Thinking Like a Lawyer.

Kathryn Rubino: It sure is.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, the weekly podcast that we put on here at Above the Law. I’m Joe Patrice.

Kathryn Rubino: Hi, Joe Patrice.

Joe Patrice: Hi. That’s Kathryn Rubino.

Kathryn Rubino: Also of Above the Law.

Joe Patrice: Right. Yeah. I think at this point, that’s kind of assumed. Chris Williams is here, too. He’s just not said anything yet.

Chris Williams: You know, manners. Just kidding.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. Exactly. Right? Thank you.

Chris Williams: I’m fully on Kathryn’s side. I did it just for the reaction.

Joe Patrice: Somebody had to say it.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah. I’m glad it wasn’t you though.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. So we’re going to have a little bit of small talk here before we get into the real —

Kathryn Rubino: Small talk.

Joe Patrice: Okay, before we get into the real subject matter of oh, the week, which was a busy week, what all are people up to of interest to them.

Kathryn Rubino: I went swimming this weekend. It was actually nice. The rain, there was still rain, but it didn’t dominate the weekends the way I feel like it has tended to in the northeast, so that was exciting for me. I actually got to use my pool. That was good times.

Joe Patrice: I was going to say that the exciting thing was last week, we had — from a business perspective, we had a little quasi editorial retreat where we all got together for the day. So we were all in one room, which increasingly —

Kathryn Rubino: You don’t understand the point of small talk. It’s not to talk about work. It’s to talk about personal issues.

Joe Patrice: I’m not talking about legal stories. I’m talking about our lives.

Chris Williams: Work, yeah. I will say — I will say —

Joe Patrice: Work is distinct from the —

Chris Williams: I’m glad somebody else said it.

Joe Patrice: Work is distinct from the — is absolutely distinct from the subject matter of this show. This show is not a behind-the-scenes look at how we do our jobs. It’s about the law and we —

Chris Williams: Okay. So I’m just waiting for the small talk section where it’s like, yeah, you know, on the weekend, I just had lunch with Clarence Thomas. No, that’s not — that’s not work-related.

Joe Patrice: And again, I don’t have enough money for that.

Chris Williams: You have at least 13 bucks. The price is going down.

Joe Patrice: Is it? Either way, but yeah, so it was nice. We all were able to get together for something increasingly less happening in the post-pandemic world, so —

Chris Williams: It’s the first time actually that we all got together, for me.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, for the first time, I think, all of us, yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah.

Chris Williams: Yeah. It has been two years. I can’t believe we’ve been on air for two years already.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, probably, close to —

Chris Williams: Yeah, first time in two years.

Kathryn Rubino: It is 2023, so, wild.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. So —

Kathryn Rubino: How about you, Chris?

Chris Williams: Oh, well, I went to Jamaica for the first time. It wasn’t the best occasion. It was for a funeral. There was a death in the family.

Kathryn Rubino: I’m so sorry.

Chris Williams: But all places considering, this is a good place to go, you know. The views were beautiful. The water was the color I didn’t know water could be. You could barely tell pollution because of globalization or whatever. I had some jerk chicken in Jamaica for the first time. I realized that I’ve been lied to. Every other jerk I’ve had has been a pale imitation. It was beautiful, expensive as hell, very expensive, just like — just a couple — I was there for maybe really three days. I spent like 300 bucks just going to and fro and getting food, but —

Joe Patrice: Well, that’s part of the problem with doing it at the last minute, too. Those are the sorts of places where if you’ve bought your tickets long in advance, it’s a little bit easier.

Chris Williams: I’m not talking about the flight. I’m talking about the cost of food. I’m talking about the cost of travel, the things that — you know. Like I said, in those three days, I was talking about, you know, it’s okay. But yeah, the flight was expensive but it was — we had a little bit of time to plan out. It wasn’t a last minute flight like super last minute, but the jerk cost some money.

Kathryn Rubino: Well, at least it was worth it.

Chris Williams: Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: It’s worse when you spend the money and it’s mediocre food.

Chris Williams: I also got repeatedly mistaken for a Rastafarian, which was interesting. For those who don’t know who’s listening to the podcast, I’m Black. No, no, I’ve dreads. I have dreads, so that’s the reason. And a couple of people were like, Ras, respect. I’m like, oh, okay, these are just kind people. No. I was like I’m not nearly as religious as you think I am, but that was a fun experience.

Joe Patrice: Well, it seems like jerk is going to come up a lot during this podcast —

Kathryn Rubino: Oh.

Joe Patrice: — because different kind of jerks would come up. So let’s conclude our small talk and go on to a conversation of a big story of last week, a pair of big stories, two high traffic stories here at Above the Law. Both involved the same person. And Kathryn, you were you on our Aileen Cannon beat.

Kathryn Rubino: I was, I was. She’s — listen, the spotlight has turned pretty sharply on her. It started when she inserted herself into the Mar-a-Lago search warrant case. And even though she got bench slapped pretty severely by the 11th Circuit, she’s also the judge that is handling the document indictment that Donald Trump is facing.

(00:05:09)

So there’s a lot — there’s a lot to think — there’s a lot of reasons to think that she is going to continue to be in the spotlight. And a bunch of intrepid reporters have found out other mistakes that she’s made.

Joe Patrice: Oops.

Kathryn Rubino: It’s not just this 11th Circuit bench slap that’s kind of out there, hanging out there. And they’re all problematically, I think, for what’s about to happen, all in criminal cases.

Chris Williams: Oh no.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah. I’m like, oh, if only —

Joe Patrice: All right. So what’d she do?

Kathryn Rubino: Well, in one of the cases, she, in the jury instruction form, she didn’t write — she didn’t ask the jury whether or not the defendant was guilty or not guilty. There are a series of yes —

Joe Patrice: That seems like a pretty fundamental one.

Chris Williams: Isn’t that kind of like a basic thing?

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is the problem. There is a series of yes or no questions, did the defendant do this act, which is part of the predicate, whatever, but never fundamentally asked is this person guilty or are they not guilty. The lawyer in the case is appealing and says I’ve never seen such an easy technical error kind of thing. And it was a contested — the jury form was contested it. And she went ahead with her version of the verdict form despite the fact that there are professors who are opining up like I’ve never seen something quite like this where we don’t actually ask whether or not the defendant is guilty or not guilty. So, you know, that’s not great.

Joe Patrice: No.

Kathryn Rubino: That’s not great. She’s also neglected to swear in a prospective jury pool, you know, not great. She also in a case closed the courtroom to the family and general public and is now under appeal before violating the defendant’s Constitutional Sixth Amendment Right to a public trial.

Joe Patrice: Right.

Chris Williams: You know, these are the types of things you wouldn’t expect from a person with her vast jury experience, which is why she was recruited, right? Because she’s been doing it for a very long time.

Joe Patrice: So it’s like — yeah. I mean, look, we’re talking about judges who don’t have a lot of experience, which is what happened towards the end of the Trump administration. There was a lot of bottom of the barrel to try and get people who could quickly get on the bench. The Sixth Amendment one’s actually weirdly, while it might be the most significant in substance, it’s also the one that worries me the least just because —

Kathryn Rubino: There’s no Sixth Amendment issue in the Trump case?

Joe Patrice: No, no, just because that’s a contestable issue like that happens from time to time. There’s case law on when it is and isn’t acceptable to close a courtroom and it’s a mistake that a judge could make — or not make. It may not be a mistake depending on the standards that apply in the context, whatever —

Kathryn Rubino: Well, she didn’t even let the defendant’s family in the courtroom, which I think is, you know — people are saying she at least could have made some overtures, and in fact seem to operate as if she was unaware that the Sixth Amendment provides a right for a public trial.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, it’s possible that she just has no clue what the case law surrounding this is. But the issue is that that is a contested — an issue that is colorable argument and this could be had on all sides. The other two, while they seem way more technical, I mean I think my assumption is we figured out who was guilty and who wasn’t whether or not it was on the form. And I figure everybody knew they were supposed to tell the truth even if they weren’t sworn in. But even though those substantively don’t seem as big a deal, they speak to a laziness —

Kathryn Rubino: Yes.

Joe Patrice: — that is a little more disconcerting and possibly more disconcerting than anything else. This is somebody who is new on the job, knows they’re new on the job. You almost expect something like that to happen more for somebody who’s been doing it so long that they kind of forget to follow procedure. When you’re new, if you as a new person are ignoring basics like this and showing kind of a lazy disinterest in learning the basics, that’s a way more damning thing in my mind.

Kathryn Rubino: It also just — it strikes me also, particularly, I think, the jury instruction, the verdict form issue, more also just that she has a very — she’s very confident in her wrongness, right? Because this was a contested issue, the defense counsel had asked for the question of guilt to be put on the —

Joe Patrice: Of course.

Kathryn Rubino: — jury form. And she was like I’m happy with the jury instructions or the jury verdict form as I’ve written it, and why not? I mean that seems to be a lot of sort of the legal academic response to — what is the downside to asking that additional question? The risk is that this is overturned albeit potentially just on a technicality, but it’s potentially overturned by appellate courts because you never asked the jury that had been impaneled whether or not this person was guilty.

(00:10:05)

Joe Patrice: Yes.

Kathryn Rubino: You put it on the question, on the form. It’s not like it was a guilty verdict and whether — it wasn’t like they would’ve been somehow confused if it’s like is this person guilty as well as the sort of predicate elements of the crime. That wouldn’t have increased the difficulty at all. It was like she’s so competent in the way that she’s done it that she refuses to sort of dot the i’s and cross the t’s.

Joe Patrice: Yeah and it’s really weird with jury forms like that because you’re getting them from all the sides. You’re getting proposed ones. And if you’re a judge, probably most of these judges just take whatever the prosecution says. But if you’re being a conscientious judge, you’re blending the two and untaking stuff here and there. It seems as though she just kind of said I have my own, which is bold. As you put it, confident for somebody who doesn’t have any clue what they’re doing.

Kathryn Rubino: And who got the raw end — well, not the raw end, but got told the business by the 11th Circuit, you know. You’d think that she might be a little bit more circumspect in realizing what she doesn’t know at this point especially — I mean that particular case, I guess no one — there’s not a ton of public publicity about it until she became the story.

Joe Patrice: Right.

Kathryn Rubino: She is the story. Everything now becomes reviewable and everything becomes of interest now.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Chris Williams: And my thing is I think this is really a good hats-off moment to Trump because this is at least the second time that he’s had a high profile judge that didn’t know their amendments. I think of this with her not being familiar with the Sixth and Amy Coney Barrett not knowing all the parts of the First.

Joe Patrice: All the First, yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: Oh yeah.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. Also, he put multiple people on the bench who the ABA ruled were not qualified. And to be fair, the ABA’s qualification provisions are as close to a rubber stamp as you can get.

Kathryn Rubino: I mean the bar’s on the floor here and half of these people are not —

Chris Williams: And they brought shovels.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: Yes.

Joe Patrice: Not to diss the ABA. And people point out that judges like Cannon were qualified. And it’s like, yeah, but the problem is the ABA for so many years operated on this qualified-well qualified-not qualified trio. And well qualified meant you’re actually good at this job. But qualified was very much the bare minimum like you’ve seen a case, you understand a case, I guess you can run this thing. But multiple people were ending up not qualified in that last administration and got put on the bench anyway.

Chris Williams: So the ABA adopted the Harvard grading model?

Joe Patrice: Well, it was the Yale model. It was like, not pass and they got in anyway. But Yeah and that also sparked a political movement of senators saying that we should get rid of the ABA’s role entirely because they got upset that the ABA kept pointing out these judges weren’t qualified.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. Anyhow —

Kathryn Rubino: I mean Cannon did have I think it was four criminal trials experience in the DOJ’s office, local office before being appointed to the bench. But if you’re not involved in all the aspects and haven’t run the cases from different perspectives, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you know all the ins and outs of all this.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, very true.

Chris Williams: I mean fifth time’s a charm. If she doesn’t get it now —

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Joe Patrice: So the next — well, I guess we’ve talked a little — we’ve kind of made mention of Clarence Thomas and lunches and stuff. So Clarence Thomas, there’s been more —

Kathryn Rubino: Honk-honk.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, there’s more that’s come out. The slow burn of Clarence Thomas’ finances continues. There’s multiple billionaires involved, multiple vacations.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, I think he’s gotten 38 paid for vacations by billionaires which were not reported on any disclosure form.

(00:15:02)

Joe Patrice: Right, but the one that seemed the most interesting is, speaking of honk-honk, Clarence Thomas has very famously touted his everyman status by saying that he doesn’t take these luxury vacations. It turns out he does. He instead every summer hops in the RV and trucks across the US, seeing America from the road like the open road. It’s his like American dream.

Kathryn Rubino: RVs are wildly expensive. The average American cannot afford one.

Joe Patrice: Well, as it turns out, the average Supreme Court justice can’t afford an RV because the revelation is that Clarence Thomas did not actually buy this RV himself. He —

Kathryn Rubino: Of course he didn’t.

Joe Patrice: — bought it — he had at least at some point a very, very wealthy friend of his who is a healthcare executive finance this for him. The report claims — all that we really have is that they managed to get a hold of the wealthy executive who said that the loan was — it was just a loan and the loan was satisfied. That is pointedly not saying it was paid off. It could mean that but —

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, it could be forgiven(ph).

Joe Patrice: This is like the Aaron Rodgers “I’m immunized” rather than saying “I got the vaccine” kind of moment, right? We all know how that one turned out.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah.

Joe Patrice: This is — saying it was satisfied leaves open very much the possibility that a year later, he said, hey, you know what, don’t worry about it, and then functionally bought an RV for Clarence Thomas. So regardless of whether it was paid off or not, none of this was disclosed.

Kathryn Rubino: That’s a problem.

Joe Patrice: This is something that was only discovered by people running title searches on the house, on the mobile home, and there we are.

Kathryn Rubino: I think I’d be more surprised if we went two weeks in a row without an update to the Clarence Thomas ethics scandal, and I kind of am of two minds of it. One, are people just getting so kind of immunized to the notion of the ethics problems on the court that it no longer matters, or is this sort of the slow snowball running down the hill as it picks up more and more steam? And are we actually going to get some sort of impact whether it’s ethics provisions with teeth? Obviously, Democrats are calling for Thomas’ resignation, not that that will happen because it’s not going to happen.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, because corruption —

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah. That’s not how corrupt people act.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. Corruption usually doesn’t self-police.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah.

Chris Williams: This is a weird sentence to say, but I’m just very thankful that Clarence Thomas is a Republican judge. I just imagine if a Black Democrat judge got caught doing an eighth of this. That’ll be the end. That’ll be the end like —

Joe Patrice: They would’ve banned the Supreme Court, not just —

Chris Williams: They would’ve banned Pepsi. They would’ve banned soft drinks off of Anita Hill straight up if he like — uh-uh.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah and I think that we have to get a little more time to discover whether or not it kind of goes which way it goes, but it could get worse. The results of this could be that ethics on the court gets worse because if none of this is actionable, what is there to stop any justice in the future from doing anything?

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Chris Williams: Right.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. It’s pretty clear that Alito’s been involved in shady stuff already. He’s admitted to it in his insane rambling op-ed. With that said, you’ve got to think that he’s more emboldened now than ever —

Kathryn Rubino: Absolutely.

Joe Patrice: — to keep doing it. Yeah, it’s not of great times, but — yeah. So the RV, it turns out it wasn’t the Horatio Alger success story that Thomas kind of plays it up to be.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah and that organization actually is where he met a number of the billionaire buddies that are buying him all sorts of trips.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. It’s almost like that society doesn’t — its name doesn’t really reflect the kind of absurdist —

Kathryn Rubino: I think that’s fair.

Joe Patrice: — Horatio Alger spirit. Well, so, anymore on Clarence’s misadventures?

Kathryn Rubino: I don’t know —

Chris Williams: We’ll be back in a week with more stuff.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah. If we think of something, we can definitely bring it up in the future. But what else is there to say?

Joe Patrice: Yeah. I just — what gets me about it all is how — I just don’t understand why the disclosure was such a high bar for the sky like “I took a loan from a guy I’m willing to call a personal friend” is pretty easy one to disclose. It’s the cover-up is worse than the crime moment. I don’t know if that’s true here because the crime looks pretty bad. But the cover-up on some of these — that’s what gets me about this because this one could have been defended pretty easily because this isn’t a billionaire who’s likely to have a bunch of business before the court.

(00:20:03)

This is somebody whose relationship with him predates him joining the bench. This is something he could have said — and it’s characterized as a loan. He could have pretty easily said, “I took a loan from my buddy” and shown that he paid it off and nobody would’ve cared.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah. I think that for a long time, the court operated in relative anonymity. I think that most justices — for the majority of our lives, most justices would not be recognized except for legal nerds, you know. And I don’t think the average American would have recognized a lot of them. And I think that they kind of, well, who’s going to find out if they only will know if I tell them? And there were stories when Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg had disclosed various trips that they had taken that were paid for by — I think RBG took a trip to Israel and it was paid for by some group there. And she disclosed it and there was a bunch of articles written at the time and uproar about she’s taking this trip, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that probably seemed worse than just pretending like it didn’t happen.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. Oh well, I assume Clarence Thomas is on the road right now in that pod — listening to podcasts in his RV. So if he’s listening —

Kathryn Rubino: Honk-honk.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Conrad Saam: Hey Gyi, what’s up?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Just having some lunch, Conrad.

Conrad Saam: Hey, Gyi, do you see that billboard out there?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Oh, you mean that guy out there in the gray suit?

Conrad Saam: Yeah, the gray suit guy.

Gyi Tsakalakis: There’s all those beautiful, rich, leatherbound books in the background?

Conrad Saam: That is exactly the one. That’s JD McGuffin at law. He’ll fight for you.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I bet you he has got so many years of experience.

Conrad Saam: Like decades and decades. And I bet, Gyi, I bet he even went to a law school.

Male: Are you a lawyer? Do you suffer from dull marketing and a lack of positioning in a crowded legal marketplace? Sit down with Gyi and Conrad for Lunch Hour Legal Marketing on the Legal Talk Network available wherever podcasts are found.

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Joe Patrice: All right. So finally, it is an annual tradition around these parts. Alan Dershowitz wants you to know that no one likes him on Martha’s Vineyard.

Kathryn Rubino: So sad.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: So sad. Where is my —

Joe Patrice: Yet again, this is a trend. He’s been doing this set now basically every summer. He goes on some willing network whether it’s Fox or Newsmax in this instance to share that no one likes him on Martha’s Vineyard —

Kathryn Rubino: Don’t go back then.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. I mean, yeah, there’s a simple solution to this.

Kathryn Rubino: You don’t have to go to Martha’s Vineyard. It’s not actually required. I don’t know if that Harvard law professor is aware that the majority of people don’t go to Martha’s Vineyard.

Joe Patrice: Well, so at first, it was that because he blames being involved in the first Trump impeachment for this, seemingly glossing over the whole thinking Jeffrey Epstein didn’t deserve to have the plea deal he had, the sweetheart one, or the stuff that he’s been doing with the MyPillow guy, so whatever. Whatever it is, he first blamed that for why he wasn’t going to the good parties on Martha’s Vineyard anymore. The next year, he complained that the library did not invite him to give a speech.

Kathryn Rubino: People don’t like what you stand for, dude.

Joe Patrice: Well, it’s also why would the library be obligated to give you a platform like —

Kathryn Rubino: Of course they’re not.

Joe Patrice: — they’ve done it in the past. They chose not to this time. Who cares? Now, his latest complaint is the local book fair did not have any of his books.

Kathryn Rubino: Are you kidding me?

Joe Patrice: No, that is actually the complaint this time. The local Martha’s Vineyard Book Fair does not have any books even though, Dershowitz says, he’s written more books than any of these people probably. He has no real basis for that. He just says that.

Kathryn Rubino: Because of capitalism, they don’t sell well in Martha’s Vineyard.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. It is very difficult to sell somebody on the idea of a legal analysis book from somebody who just got sanctioned way to the Stone Ages by a court in Arizona. So maybe there’s a reason other than they just don’t like you that this is happening. But my takeaway on it was more — put aside the hubris at all of the typical Dershowitz nonsense, it just was the — it speaks on a more fundamental and serious way to what I think is a pernicious problem, and that is these people who think that what free speech means is everyone’s obligated to indulge your opinion.

(00:25:07)

It is not — you know, no one is putting him in jail or persecuting him for his opinions, but they also don’t invite him to their personal parties anymore, and that’s —

Kathryn Rubino: People don’t have to like you. The First Amendment does not guarantee that you have friends.

Joe Patrice: Yeah and this is the thing and I think it speaks — this is his take here but it’s happening elsewhere. I think it is at the root of a lot of these “free speech” arguments we’ve been having on law school campuses where the complaint seems to be protesters. First they started saying like they were shouting down folks, which would be the sort of thing that you can have regulations against.

But then when it starts coming out that the complaint is they had a protest outside the building and all, now at that point you start running into this is not — these kind of “free speech” complaints are we think you should have to sit quietly and listen to us, and that is not how the amendment works. And it is really dangerous in the long term for a society to think that everyone’s obligated to indulge everyone’s opinion because indulging everyone’s opinion by definition means stifling the opposite opinion. And at a certain point, that becomes the actual violation of free speech. So, no, all you get to do is have your opinion. You don’t get to be liked for it. You don’t get to be indulged with it. You don’t get a platform automatically given to you. That’s just not how any of this works.

Kathryn Rubino: That’s not how this works at all.

Joe Patrice: The most annoying thing is there’s this school of them, mostly not people like Dershowitz who I assume would know better than this. There’s a school of —

Kathryn Rubino: Mole(ph).

Joe Patrice: — armchair lawyers on social medias who always point out, well, actually giving people platforms is part of the First Amendment. And they cite this one case for it, which is worth talking about because it says like — it has language in it like a freedom to speak also implies a freedom to be listened to. But the issue in that case was about whether or not the federal government could deny visas to academics from Europe who had said socialist things. And the argument was, no, you can’t do that. And the government’s take was, oh, well, they can say whatever they want, but we don’t have an obligation to give them a platform here. And in that instance, they said, well, yes, you do. That wasn’t to say that the federal government has an obligation to order schools to invite those academics. It was just you can’t turn away their visas, but this line gets cropped out of context in all of these social media fights that I keep having. It’s worth discussing like that little common(ph) law lesson for people.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, you don’t have to listen.

Chris Williams: Yeah. Personal advice, use your block button. I wouldn’t entertain them.

Joe Patrice: I mean I tend not to block people.

Chris Williams: Or stop billing(ph) them because that’s just a dumb conversation to be locked in.

Joe Patrice: I don’t block people. I actually follow a bunch of radical right wing accounts even largely because I like to see what they’re all saying. I feel like as awful as it is sometimes, I feel like I need to know what the fringe Nazis are saying just so that I’m prepared for it, you know.

Chris Williams: Just read Alito’s Wall Street Journal articles.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, that’s true. Well, thanks, everybody for listening. You should subscribe to the show so you get new episodes when they come out. You should leave reviews, write something. It all helps. Stars, it’s great. You should be listening to The Jabot, Kathryn’s other show. I’m a guest on the Legaltech Week Journalists Roundtable. Listen to all the other shows that we aren’t on on the Legal Talk Network. You should be reading Above the Law so that you read these and other stories before they find their way onto this show. Follow us on the various social medias, at X, I guess.

Kathryn Rubino: Oh, stop. It’s awful.

Joe Patrice: I’m @JosephPatrice. She’s @Kathryn1. Chris is @WritesForRent. Above the Law is @atlblog. At Bluesky, I’m @JoePatrice. Kathryn is also @Kathryn1.

Kathryn Rubino: Mm-hmm.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. I just got a chance to be less formal so I got to be just Joe Patrice —

Kathryn Rubino: Just Joe.

Joe Patrice: — instead of Joseph, yeah.

Chris Williams: You can find me on Bluesky at Joseph Patrice.

Joe Patrice: Right, right, right. Yeah. Are you on that yet, Chris?

Chris Williams: No. I don’t know if I have an invite.

Joe Patrice: All right. Okay. I’ll work on that for you. All right. And with that, we’re —

Kathryn Rubino: Peace.

Joe Patrice: We’re good. All right. Bye.

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