2023 Year In Review

Episode Notes

Transcript

Joe Patrice:

Happy New Year. Hey. Yeah, no, we are

Kathryn Rubino:

New Year’s. Same bit.

Joe Patrice:

Yes. I was really hoping that it wouldn’t be, but here we are.

Kathryn Rubino:

Did you think I’d make some sort of New Year’s resolution to annoy you less?

Joe Patrice:

I thought just in more interesting and creative ways, but I mean, if you’re going to stick with this stick,

Kathryn Rubino:

I mean being broken, why fix it?

Joe Patrice:

It’s broken. Welcome to another edition of Thinking Like A Lawyer. I’m Joe Patrice from Above the Law. I’m joined by Kathryn Rubino here and Chris Williams is here somewhere.

Chris Williams:

I know you’re from Above the Law. Where is Kathryn and I from

Joe Patrice:

For now? Above the Law. Let’s see how you,

Kathryn Rubino:

Oh

Joe Patrice:

No. Let’s see if you, how much when you annoy me, but

Chris Williams:

You think

Kathryn Rubino:

You have some power over me That is high comedy.

Joe Patrice:

We are your hosts and we are usually doing a chat about the legal stories. Oh, the week that was, but this week, since we we’re starting things off this year, we’re going to have a look back at 2023, the year that was, yeah,

Chris Williams:

I think we should do a year. That was small talk. It’s like a year in review.

Joe Patrice:

I heard the word small talk. So small talk. Yeah. Alright, so yeah. Hey everybody. How was holiday time? Everything.

Kathryn Rubino:

Well, Chris might be interested to hear that I am currently in the midst of a vendetta with Taylor Swift’s official store.

Joe Patrice:

Oh no.

Kathryn Rubino:

Placed an order on December 1st. Did not indicate that there was any delay in the stuff that I purchased. Did not receive it in time for the holidays.

Joe Patrice:

Oh no.

Chris Williams:

Oh no.

Kathryn Rubino:

Come on, come on. Not only did I not receive it in time, they never told me it was going to be delayed. I had to reach out through their helpline and be like, Hey, what’s going on with my shit? And then they came on being like, oh, it looks like there might be some delays. I’m like, well, will I get it in time for the holidays? And no one can answer my question. You know what? I appreciate the hustle and I want to support Taylor Swift and all that kind of stuff. But when something like this happens on Etsy, Etsy gives you a full refunds and then in enough time that you’re able to place another orders that you have something to open up on Christmas Day.

Joe Patrice:

So did you get it in time for the holiday? No.

Chris Williams:

Was it a ww TSD bracelet?

Kathryn Rubino:

No. See, the thing is I already, I bought other stuff from Taylor Swift official store as well. I actually received this Speak Now bracelet I bought for my niece, but did not receive the T-shirt or sweatshirt that I bought for her. And it’s just a real irritant. And listen, as I was saying, I had a similar issue on Etsy. There was something I had purchased for one of my nieces and this shop went out of business after it took my money, basically. And Etsy immediately is like, Hey, did you get this? We don’t think you got it. I was like, I did not get it. They’re like, okay, immediately here’s a refund. So such a delight to deal with. Whereas you think when you’re dealing with the official store, you’re going to get a better customer experience and that is not always accurate.

Chris Williams:

Well, I’m sure you’ll still find it in your heart some way to shake it off.

Joe Patrice:

Okay. No, she put in an order and all she got was a blank space.

Kathryn Rubino:

Okay. Okay. Half credit there, half credit there.

Joe Patrice:

Are you going to hate her ever more? Now

Chris Williams:

All I got to say is Beyonce would never do this.

Kathryn Rubino:

How was your holiday season? Well,

Chris Williams:

My holiday season’s pretty good. So this year my baby made rum cake for the first time. So I got to see the whole process and I had to finish product. And it was rummy. It was rummy and it was cakey.

Kathryn Rubino:

It’s in the title.

Chris Williams:

Listen, I can be misleading. I’ve had some, what is it? What is it? Is fruitcake. I feel like fruitcake is more like heart attack. There’s nothing cakey about it.

Kathryn Rubino:

Is that true? Nor Alcoholy, you remind me of, do you watch a lot of holiday baking championship with Nancy Fuller? No. Really?

Chris Williams:

I would be offended if you thought I did

Kathryn Rubino:

Carla Hall. Anyway, Nancy Fuller is a big fan of alcohol in her cakes and sweets, and so this is what this is reminding me of.

Chris Williams:

It was good though. It had a nice little mix of Taylor Port Andre nephew, the traditional ways that you would make a rum cake and there was so much, I don’t know if start is the right word, it makes me feel more like sourdough, but there was so much of it, so much of the raw material that there’s room for a whole bunch more. So I’m very happy and once the back of my mouth heal up, I recently had my wisdom teeth removed be very inebriated off of cake alone, which I’m looking forward to. It’s always cool to have a new route of entry for

Kathryn Rubino:

A

Chris Williams:

Traditional standby.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, that wisdom teeth thing is not fun at

Chris Williams:

All. No at all.

Kathryn Rubino:

How about your holidays, Joe?

Joe Patrice:

Oh good. I made some of my classic fudge. That was my biggest

Kathryn Rubino:

Is fudge a holiday classic?

Joe Patrice:

Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:

I don’t

Chris Williams:

Know. We’re having dejavu it. This was a small talk of last week, wasn’t it?

Joe Patrice:

Or a couple of weeks ago. I

Kathryn Rubino:

Still don’t think that fudge. Well then you brought it up a second time. It’s not my fault. I have the same reaction.

Chris Williams:

My standby is what would will Ferrell and Elf think?

Joe Patrice:

And again, so this is Joe and Chris from Above the Law and Kathryn. Oh,

Kathryn Rubino:

Hilarious that you think you’re in charge. Hilarious. I know you’re a white guy.

Joe Patrice:

Okay. Playing around with the Say.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah. That was uncalled for, and I’m sure our listeners are quite displeased that they had to rip their headphones out of their ears to deal with your,

Joe Patrice:

We’ll adjust the level

Kathryn Rubino:

Post sound effects.

Joe Patrice:

We’ll adjust the love and post

Kathryn Rubino:

It is very

Chris Williams:

Humbug, Joe.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:

So what else did you do besides make fudge?

Joe Patrice:

I mean, that’s a lot of it. Drink. There’s nothing really festive to just kind of, you had no

Kathryn Rubino:

Festive times

Joe Patrice:

To eat, drink and eat and enjoy having a little bit of time to collect my thoughts and prep for this show. What I do with my time off is get a

Chris Williams:

Life,

Joe Patrice:

Get more work in,

Chris Williams:

Do more living.

Joe Patrice:

Okay. I guess that ends small talk.

Kathryn Rubino:

Get a life.

Joe Patrice:

Fantastic. I’m Joe from Above the Law, and I’m joined by other people. So yeah, let’s talk about the year. Let’s talk about 20, 23 now that we’ve got it kind of in the rear view mirror. It was an interesting year. I think the best way to kind of break this down I thought was to talk about some of the biggest stories of the year, and I grouped them somewhat by category. So let’s talk about courts. I think the biggest stories of the year in courts. What do you think we got here?

Kathryn Rubino:

Everything to do with Supreme Court ethics. What up with that? Oh, we don’t have any. What are they? Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.

Chris Williams:

This is a great year to not Clarence Thomas. It seemed like every couple of weeks ProPublica had a new banger. If these were songs they won’t repeat.

Kathryn Rubino:

There’s some good tracks out there. Yeah, yeah.

Joe Patrice:

Well, let’s take ProPublica, talk about people who really kicked it

Kathryn Rubino:

Out the park doing the Lord’s work.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, they did a fantastic job this year. They initially found, so the first thing they found was roughly half a million dollars that people billionaires have been giving Clarence Thomas in the form of free vacations and stuff like that, that he never disclosed despite being legally required to do so. He responded that there was no ethical standards for the Supreme Court, and so he didn’t have to do

Kathryn Rubino:

Any of this. I do what I want.

Joe Patrice:

He thought that this was all okay and there’s nothing wrong. It almost seemed like the ProPublica was slow playing this because as soon as he went with the argument, well, there’s nothing about this that would rise to the level of not just being personal hospitality. They immediately turn around and drop all the allegations that aren’t about personal hospitality. It’s like they were saving it, waiting for him to lock into that answer. That’s when we started learning that billionaire Harlan Crow whose brother just got nabbed in a giant sex trafficking ring case, which by the way, I think it’s really important that this is a side part of the Supreme Court this year is some kind of weird giant sex trafficking ring, and it’s like, it doesn’t even make it to the top of our list of things to talk about that is corrupt here. So this is when we learned that Thomas was taking money to pay for his quote son, not really his son, but who he raises

Kathryn Rubino:

As his nephew son. His nephew who raised as a

Joe Patrice:

Son, right? Yeah. Paying for his private school tuition with billionaire dollars. Mom’s House was owned and lived in rent free by billionaires. We learned that he got an RV that was paid for by a pharma executive. It was a loan quote, which he said, well, it’s a loan. Ultimately it was a loan that was satisfied. People who are familiar with how Aaron Rogers talks about immunizations pushed a little bit further and figured out what does satisfied mean? And it turns out what that means is forgiven without having been paid back. So he got a free RV out of this deal. It just was week after week, more stuff. And then the last thing that came out of the year was when we learned that this was all due. Oh yeah. And Ginny got paid a bunch of money under the table

Kathryn Rubino:

Too. I was going to say that wasn’t ProPublica. I think that was the Washington Post that found out that Leonard Leo of Fed soc fame wrote down in documentation that they were trying to funnel money to Ginny Thomas without documenting it. Of course, the irony of documenting your attempts to not document something is not really lost on me for her advocacy work because they wanted to avoid uncomfortable questions.

Joe Patrice:

And then the last revelation on Thomas of the year was, right as the year is coming and close, ProPublica busts out that there was a pattern in the nineties of him talking to wealthy people in the conservative movement and claiming that, well, I may have to leave the court if I don’t start getting more money. At which point they started this scheme to funnel lots of free stuff to him, just brazen. And it’s the sort of thing that in past years, bipartisan folks would be up in arms about this, but that’s no longer the world we live in.

Kathryn Rubino:

That is accurate.

Joe Patrice:

And it wasn’t like he was alone either. Yes, because we eventually learned that Saam Alito was getting free stuff too. Now, Saam Alito tried to pre, but the story by going to the Wall Street Journal first, this of course low key was an admission that he was the leak of the Dobbs decision to the extent that before it came out in Politico was originally foreshadowed by the Wall Street Journal, which the fact that Alito is able to get them to publish his essay is circumstantial. Of course. But anyway, so Oh, we know. So he goes to the Wall Street Journal and tries to pre butt this with a series of really tortured dictionary definitions trying to claim that it’s okay that he took a private jet paid for by a billionaire two, a luxury resort that he hung out where he got to hang out with folks like Leonard Leo and other folks.

And the person who paid for it all, of course was this billionaire singer who ultimately was a litigant before the court who was a litigant at the time, if I recall. And he was hanging out with him. Now, he claimed he barely knew the guy, but this is where it came back to classic Above, the Law, because years and years and years ago, former editor of Above, the Law, David Latt, used to go to all the conservative shindigs and went to an awards show where Singer and Alito gave speeches talking about how close they were, something that clearly he’d forgotten he’d done, and probably could have slid under the radar except that Lat was there and documented it in the pages of Above, the Law like a decade over a decade ago.

Kathryn Rubino:

And I think that the Alito scandal shows I think how widespread and how problematic the lack of an enforceable ethics code has been. But I think one of the other interesting thing is that a lot of other publications tried to get in on the ethical problems on the Supreme Court action, and all of it has quite the punch of the ones that we have talked about with Thomas and Alito in 2023. It came out that Jane Roberts wife of John Roberts is a big law recruiter. I mean, that’s the story. There’s nothing actually scandalous about it. They try to make it that way, but yeah, she gets paychecks because she places partners, candidates, candidates at different law firms, so she gets paid. The business model.

Joe Patrice:

There was an attempt to make this seem like the millions she gets from that job is somehow shady.

Kathryn Rubino:

It reeks the people who just don’t understand the industry.

Chris Williams:

Another one that felt wonky was, oh, one of Clarence Thomas’s former clerks had their Venmo information visible.

Kathryn Rubino:

Right, okay. Yeah. Because there was some sort of a party and they all paid each other back for their Christmas party or something like

Joe Patrice:

They paid for that.

Chris Williams:

And that was one of the things where I was like, like it hurts to write this because as much as I love dunking on Uncle Thomas, this isn’t the time.

Kathryn Rubino:

Wow. I think that ultimately I appreciate the renewed vigor with which people are approaching court ethics, but not everything is actually a scandal.

Joe Patrice:

The fact that Sotomayor had clerks with her while she was selling books, which is part of what the Supreme Court’s supposed to do, it’s part of the civil outreach is to,

Kathryn Rubino:

And also the money she got from her book sales, she was all disclosed on her forms, which is unlike

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, disclosure. Yeah, it’s amazing, huh?

Chris Williams:

Yes, yes. Also, what I think in the year was one of the funnest disclosure things. Actually, this is an example of a Supreme Court judge actually doing her job, and it was kind of cute, Kaji Brown Jackson disclosing that Oprah gifted her a $1,200 bouquet, or there was, what was it? Kagan who refused bagels.

Joe Patrice:

Bagels from her friend, her high school friends or something like that, because she is worried about it.

Chris Williams:

Yeah. So it is nice to see amongst so much of the, well, you on the left did this, you on the right, did this. No, it’s very clear. It’s just the Republican leaning judges that have an issue with truth and transparency.

Joe Patrice:

Well, and this goes back to that final revelation about Thomas too, which was that it became clear based on the documents that ProPublica was able to come up with there, that what was going on is that Thomas and Alito seems to have jumped on board, had really set the stage for, hey, conservative legal movement. If you want us to not resign under Democrats and change this court, daddy needs a new pair of shoes. Yeah,

Kathryn Rubino:

Give me money and I’ll stay on the court and make the kinds of decisions you enjoy. Yeah.

Chris Williams:

Well to that, and this might be the nitpick a little bit, I don’t know if it’s fair to start with Clarence, because this was the thing that was happening with Scalia for many years, so chances are when Clarence was like, oh, my friend said it was okay, it was probably Scalia.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, well, definitely the disclosure stuff, I do think that it might well be based on what we’ve seen from ProPublica. I think it may well be that he was the one who started the, Thomas took it new. You could funnel us money here, but interesting stuff, just the timeline wise, because Scalia would’ve only been on the court for a few years at that point. We didn’t know necessarily of things that he was doing prior to the nineties. Obviously ProPublica found that he went on this same Alaska junket that Alito did ultimately, but that was in the two thousands anyway. Well, so Supreme Court’s a mess, but thankfully that’s not the end of court disasters. One story that Chris, you’ve been specifically on top of all year is the Pauline Newman efforts.

Chris Williams:

It’s the Pettiest work dispute I’ve ever been aware of. Like, oh my

Joe Patrice:

God, and he knows of Kathryn interrupting me at the beginning of this show, which that’s usually delightful,

Chris Williams:

Is the pettiest. That’s not a work that’s dispute. That is divine justice. This is something different. Let’s not mince our terms here, Joe. But yeah, one of the funnier things, as I spent more time covering the story, at first my thought was she’s 96, but then as time went on, I was like, it wouldn’t really matter if this happened to a judge that was fresh out. To have this be the coworkers you’re dealing with is maddening. So

Joe Patrice:

Judge Newman is 96. She’s literally the first judge on the federal circuit. I think when it was created. The argument of her colleagues is that she, well, they made a few arguments. One was that she was behind in her workload because she’s going slow, which anybody who has dealt with federal judges knows that that’s not a unique issue. But then they escalated this to claiming that she is losing her mental faculties. She brought an expert, which was an expert in neuroscience from a university who said, actually, no, she’s great. And the judges said, we’ve decided we disagree with the science and they sidelined her. Now, as you might remember from the constitution, the other judges on the court don’t get to kick a judge off the court. That’s kind of a roll of Congress

Kathryn Rubino:

Stuff. There’s only one way off the federal. Well, there’s two ways. You decide,

Joe Patrice:

Well, there’s three, you can resign, you can die, or you can be convicted by the Senate. None of those seem to have happened here, but they tried to get her off. Now she challenged this in court. The most egregious answer where we kind of left it as we ended the year was that her colleagues said the case was moot because they had decided she had caught up on all of her work, and that’s really the sanction. And so there’s no more need for this case because it’s not going to repeat itself because we’ve taken her off of hearing more cases, which is like that’s actually the thing she’s challenging. So really aside from everything else, they just seem like they’re kind of bad at this judging thing.

Chris Williams:

And that’s also, I mean, one thing you mentioned was the arguments being made, but the part that blew my mind was just the straight up accusations that were proven false and there were no consequences because at one point they said, oh, she had a heart attack and there are a stents in her heart survey says that never happened, went to the doctor, never had a heart attack. There were no stents, and it feels like lying under oath, but that’s not technically what happened because they weren’t nobody. Money

Joe Patrice:

Oath. Yeah. Mean they’re putting it in. It’s

Chris Williams:

Close. Right, but it feels,

Joe Patrice:

If you put it in a declaration that’s lying under oath, I mean you have to, when you put in an affidavit or a declaration, I mean you are doing that under penalty of perjury, so they put it in a document. Yeah,

Chris Williams:

That’s the case. There was no follow-up on being like, oh, by the way, this is not true. There’s no other shoe dropped, and they just know your coworkers relying on you and you got it on record and you just got to, oh, guess we got to get heavy hand in this decision today. Like, no, wait, you’re a dick. Can we talk about what just happened?

Joe Patrice:

Let’s finish this off the court situation with the biggest story of the year by pure traffic at Above. the Law this year was Judge Roger Bonita of the Southern District of California handcuffing, a 13-year-old girl who was watching a hearing. He handcuffed her to the jury box in some sort of weird, scared, straight nonsense. Then he sentenced her father to who had to watch the traumatization of this crying child. He sentenced the father. This was then correctly by his attorneys elevated to higher powers, who then got a new judge who let, the guy felt that the guy had been punished enough by watching all of this. But what happened after that is that this got elevated to the ninth circuit for a review by the judicial council, which obviously the appellate court can look at what district courts are doing. They were going to keep this quiet apparently and not publicize that they were going to do this. However, Above, the Law had knowledge that it was going on and we put it out there, which forced the ninth Circuit to admit because of media coverage that they were looking into the situation and well, it is 2024 and we’ve not gotten any resolution. So we’ve gone almost an entire year with nothing.

Kathryn Rubino:

This seems particularly egregious. No. Yeah.

Joe Patrice:

This guy’s a chump that a technical term. Yeah. This guy’s a chump and he’s always been a chump. That’s a technical term for this kind of judge. He’s also the guy who’s running around saying that the Second Amendment specifically doesn’t allow you to have any regulations at all in California. He’s an outlier, even amongst conservatives on the positions he takes, the fact that he does this sort of thing to a child, speaks to the level of the mindset that’s required to think these sorts of things. Anyway, so that’s it for our court side stuff. I think McDermott will and Emory is Vault’s number one law firm for associate satisfaction three years running. Why? Because they’re doing big law better. At McDermott, you define what your success looks like, they help you achieve it. Award-winning professional development program and hands-on mentorship propel you toward your goals while the industry leading wellness benefits help you feel your best. So you can do your best. Want to see how your life could be better at McDermott? Head to mw.com/ Above, the Law. Now we are back to talk a little bit about big law. As I see it, big law this year was a tale of two economies.

Kathryn Rubino:

Sure, sure. It was either cuts and layoffs even that it impacted these

Joe Patrice:

Layoffs. Don’t talk about layoffs. You kidding me?

Joe Patrice:

Layoffs. Yeah, layoffs.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williams:

Moment of silence for everybody that had to endure that. Sorry.

Joe Patrice:

Oh, the Jim Morris sound effect is one of my favorites. Go,

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah. Layoffs, which included in the associate ranks, and on the other hand, we had a series of raises that was initiated by Millbank, and Cravath came over the top for mid-level and senior associates that said, actually, we’ve got plenty of money and we’re going to increase the amount that we’re paying our associates. So I think that we’ve talked about this, I think throughout the course of the year as these stories came to light and not all big law firms are the same. We have not seen the sort of universal acceptance of the new Milbank Cravath pace scale that we have in other years when there were in other years where there are raises. They tends to be kind of almost universally accepted by the entirety of the sort of am law 200, but that’s not what we’re seeing. It’s still ongoing, right? Because they only made the raises in November is when the beginning of November is when Millbank acted and then cravat at the end of the month. So where January, the raises are effective only this month. So we’ll see. Other people can always make them retroactive or still do them, but I think we are really seeing a bifurcation in the top of big law between the money law firms that can afford the top salaries and those that cannot.

Joe Patrice:

It’s interesting. We really speculated early on that there was going to be a dividing line that showed up, and there has been, but it’s been a haphazard one. It’s not like you can easily say, oh, firms with X amount of revenue are the ones who above this line, they’re matching and below this line aren’t. There’s tons of people below that the line we would’ve speculated that are matching and tons of people above it who

Kathryn Rubino:

Haven’t. Well, I think also, I think that’s also because we have a delay in the data information. That’s true. Which I would, I’ll be interested to see once the 2023 numbers are fully out, which they aren’t yet to see whether or not the folks, the firms that are sort of below the publicly available information that we have from 2021 is lower than we would’ve thought. They would be easily matching if they have these big increases, which may be part of the reason why they’re comfortable doing that, and if some of the folks that are notably quiet during race season that you would be like, I really thought X firm would’ve done something if when the numbers all shake out, they’ve had a particularly bad 2023.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. It is interesting, and obviously this is going along with raises. We’ve had the standard anonymous folks hand ringing claiming that the world is going to end if they have to give a raise. We’ll have to lay people off. We’ll have to increase the hours that the associates have to work to match this. And all of it’s fairly pretty much hooey looking back over the history, you have to go clear back to the eighties to find a point where this isn’t really in line with how inflation has operated. You should not have to work harder as an associate to make this extra money. You’re working the same amount as somebody who made 125,000 did in 2001 because it’s the same amount of

Kathryn Rubino:

Money I think to track inflation that is accurate, but whether or not they shouldn’t have to work any harder and whether they actually have to work any harder to make this money are two very different questions. I think we are seeing firms that are increasing the requirements, not as much on base salary, but certainly on bonus bonuses you have to either increasing the number of hours you have to bill decreasing the number of sort of firm hours that count towards your billable requirement. Also, we’re seeing firms looking very closely at how many days you’re in the office and whether or not you’re meeting their firm’s standard for whatever they think their hybrid workforce looks like. And if you don’t meet that, they’re going to use their discretion because bonuses are fundamentally discretionary to potentially dock. Some folks, and we talked about this at this time last year, where it was the first time there was rumblings that in office showing your face literally is going to matter. And a lot of firms have said that it will matter in their decisions, and we haven’t really heard from a ton of people who were negatively impacted by this, maybe because people are actually showing up to the office scared of getting it docked or because it was just bluster from firms. Who knows? Maybe a combination of those factors, but I think there’s a lot more requirements on associates to make their full bonuses.

Joe Patrice:

Well, and that’s why I went, oh yeah. This was also what I was going to transition. What are the big themes of this year in big law is wither the hybrid work situation. We had gotten used to the idea the associates had gotten used to the idea of they didn’t have to Gogo in every day. There’s been pushback on that. There’s been people who had changed their lives during the hybrid era, moved to further away, willing to do the commute a few days a week, but not every, what’s going to happen with these folks and what about the firms that will stick with hybrid? Are they in a position to really reap the benefits in the talent war by doing that? It’s,

Kathryn Rubino:

I think how the talent war shakes out is very much an open question, and I guess we’ll see. A couple things I wanted to point out though is that even the firms that are being the most draconian about it are not talking about five days in the office. They’re talking about four days in the office, which if you told me in 2018 that big law firms are only going to require you to be in the office four days a week, every single person would’ve 100%. That was a massive victory for work-life balances do not lose sight of that fact. That’s, and the other thing, which good, bad or indifferent, what we’re seeing and what big law leaders are saying on record is that junior associates that, or solely that were onboarded during Covid or shortly after Covid when it was hybrid and there were not any required days or specifically required time in the office, are not at the level that their counterparts in a fully in-person world we’re at. They’re saying that their skill level is not where it needs to be and they’re being paid the same accounting for, and that is a problem. I don’t know that the only way to solve it is in person. There may be other solutions, but we are hearing very clearly from big law that there is a problem.

Joe Patrice:

What people don’t quite understand about the in-office thing is that a lot of the actual training that makes you good at this job is not stuff that’s formal. We have gotten by for years with bad formal training and picking this stuff up by standing at a assistance desk screwing something up and the assistant going, yeah, you don’t do it that way. Or walking by a 50 years office and them telling you, no, that’s not how you do this. Like those,

Kathryn Rubino:

Or walking by not only just negative feedback, but sometimes walking by someone’s office that you’re on a case with and think, oh, I’m about to call so-and-so come in and listen. Don’t bill for this, but come in and listen.

Joe Patrice:

Right? And I said it there, but I want to stress what I said there. We’ve seen above and beyond the layoffs that we’ve seen in the associate ranks, we continue to see tons of layoffs at the staff level, which is a sign of the fact that these firms are starting to find ways and efficiencies there. But the unfortunate part about that is that the staff often plays a unheralded role in that sort of soft learning. You want to know why there might be some training issues? Well look no further than there’s not

Kathryn Rubino:

You. You’ve also

Joe Patrice:

Your legal secretary

Kathryn Rubino:

There. Yeah. You’ve cut your staff and you now have a quarter of the staff and they’re not able to actually tell associates what they have to do. Yeah.

Joe Patrice:

Alright. I think that’s our big law roundup. Alright. Finally, it’s kind of quick wild card stuff. We managed to get through all of this without even talking about Donald Trump. It’s interesting to look at it weird than was That’s, yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:

Where’s the soundboard when you need it?

Joe Patrice:

Oh, well, I mean,

Kathryn Rubino:

There you

Joe Patrice:

Go. That’s the sound of every filing they made this year. Listen, the former president of the United States is involved in multiple criminal cases, and that is something that we kind of get to at the end as an afterthought, which is wild. We’ve had some real humdingers of legal arguments coming out of his team. Alina Hava remains one of the most bizarre legal stories ever. She has been part of that sanction for a million dollars for filing the Rico against everybody, which is not a thing, and so she got sanctioned for that. She’s bragging about that in places. I don’t quite know how that plays, but whatever. We’ll see how this goes.

Kathryn Rubino:

Not only is the former president facing a bunch of criminal charges, a bunch of his lawyers or lawyers that are maybe not his lawyers, but certainly in his orbit, certainly his orbit are also facing charges. A bunch of them have pled guilty. Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, Chesboro, all have pled guilty to criminal acts related to their attempts to overturn the 2020 election, and these are people who are sworn to uphold the constitution. Let’s not forget, one would think Well, they were all admitted. They were all barred.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. Well, the other quick story, I think we’re just doing wild card favorite stories, things that we haven’t talked about hit

Kathryn Rubino:

Me that we didn’t already cover because Jenny Thomas continues to be a constant thorn in my side. Oh yeah. The fact that she exists, the fact that her advocacy work isn’t even the most scandalous thing about her husband’s time on the court.

Chris Williams:

One second. I just want to loop back to you being pissed off that she’s breathing. The fact she exists.

Joe Patrice:

Let’s not put it that way.

Kathryn Rubino:

No, not like that. But the fact that someone who’s so involved in the political process is married to a Supreme Court justice and who continues to hear cases that is directly related to his wife’s advocacy work. I don’t like that that exists,

Joe Patrice:

Exists as in the circumstance of somebody doing that. No, I hear that.

Chris Williams:

Oh, also remember when they were just like, oh, we don’t talk about anything together. We’re just good friends.

Kathryn Rubino:

And then she turned around and was like, he’s my best friend. And then also said in Moni that her best friend helped her best friend, helped her keep the faith that Donald Trump would come to power again after the 2020 election. And then her best friend, who she has said is Clarence Thomas also hears cases related to January 6th, and that’s not even the most scandalous part of his tenure on the court.

Joe Patrice:

Ron DeSantis is trying to run for president, and he thought a good way of doing that was to piss off business Sue Disney. Yeah. That has been consistently not working out for him. The only win that he managed to get in his attempts to get Disney. Now as backup, one of my favorite stories of the year was all this Disney stuff, because it really was

Kathryn Rubino:

Great lawyering.

Joe Patrice:

It was one of those moments of great lawyering that makes you remember the rule against perpetuity and how fun that is.

Kathryn Rubino:

I don’t go that far, but it does make you think that, oh, in the face of evil, you could just be smarter. Yeah, because the whole Reedy Creek thing was definitely that moment.

Joe Patrice:

Florida had a unique relationship with Disney. Disney owns bunches of land, as you might imagine, way more than just the parks. They own a lot of the area around it. That area needs fire and security, garbage pickup and garbage pickup, and we yada, yada yada. Rather than have all this land, which is miles and square, miles and square miles worth of land, be chopped up into different municipalities. There was a separate government that just ran the Disney, the property that’s a hundred percent owned by Disney gets run by a board. Well, the residents there, which are Disney, that is what DeSantis decided to screw with. He tried to do it first in a way that would’ve cost taxpayers millions of dollars in bond, having to pay off bonds. So that didn’t work. So then he came up with the idea of replacing all the people on the board with new people that he handpicked, including the guy who thinks that fluoride makes people gay fluoride in the water.

So he tried to put those people on, which he did. What he did not understand is that the existing board still had power until that happened, and the existing board complied with all the rules of public notice, but none of DeSantis people bothered to pay attention to public notices, and they went ahead and entered a bunch of legal agreements with Disney that stripped the board of its power. Boom, just high comedy. This is being litigated on multiple levels by multiple people. So far, the only victory that DeSantis has managed to come up with is that the judge, it was originally assigned to self recused because it turned out his brother’s cousin’s former college roommate or something owned some Disney stock, and so they got a new judge, and that is literally the only victory they’ve managed to secure so far. That story has been just high comedy because it’s like DeSantis is just stepping on rakes back and forth. It’s high comedy. Is there other We have, there

Chris Williams:

Was another attempt at occurring favor that we need to mention so far. James Ho.

Joe Patrice:

Oh, well Ho kind of came last year. Although he continues to continues this, the song, the exciting this year was the Bible one this year. Yes, yes.

Kathryn Rubino:

That was one of my stories this year was James Ho was fighting with another Fifth Circuit judge about the definition in the Bible of various terms that was related somehow to the law. I think seeking, yeah,

Joe Patrice:

It’s super

Kathryn Rubino:

Original. Yeah. Seeking. Yeah, it was. Okay. There’s that. There’s also all of our Burning Man coverage.

Chris Williams:

Oh God, that was

Kathryn Rubino:

Ridiculous. That was this year. That was ridiculous. It was glorious. It was glorious.

Chris Williams:

Shouts out to the Halloween outfit contestant that wore the little goofy hat

Joe Patrice:

That dressed up like Neil’s picture from it. Yeah. That was

Chris Williams:

An ATL team

Joe Patrice:

Favorite. That was absolutely. I think that’s fair to say. That was our champion.

Kathryn Rubino:

But you’ll recall that Hogan love’s partner, Neil Kati attended Burning Man. Burning Man this year was a flood zone and required some extreme measures to leave before if you wanted to leave early, which as a big law partner, Neil needed to leave, and so he made a harrowing six mile hike in the middle of the night to exit Burning Man posted about it on, I think it might’ve been Twitter at the time, now is X, whatever it’s called.

Joe Patrice:

That’s a story we haven’t even dealt with every stupid Elon Musk decision this year. Go on.

Kathryn Rubino:

And so he posted about your ability to exit and wrapping your feet in plastic, and some people were like, actually, don’t do that. All calls trench foot. There was a whole trench foot, big law Burning Man story that is just as delightfully ridiculous as that sounds. This

Chris Williams:

Was a mad lib year.

Kathryn Rubino:

It really was.

Chris Williams:

Burning Man, trench foot, drawn DeSantis, Disney,

Joe Patrice:

Like a family guy aside. Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:

Seriously. Trench foot. Have you thought about that since you studied World War I?

Joe Patrice:

Since World War I? No,

Kathryn Rubino:

I mean, I don’t remember World War I as a lived experience, but I remember learning about it.

Joe Patrice:

I mean, it’s my Roman Empire, but no,

Kathryn Rubino:

You’re a guy. The Roman Empire is your Roman Empire.

Joe Patrice:

I do think of the Roman Empire all the time. Wild.

Kathryn Rubino:

Wild.

Joe Patrice:

I also work at Law, Latin’s a thing. Anyway, yeah, so it’s been quite the year. Hopefully this year is going to be a little bit better. Don’t

Chris Williams:

Say, damn, you jinxed it. You jinxed it. Oh my

Joe Patrice:

God.

Chris Williams:

I remember it was 2022. I thinking all the celebrities were dying, and then we were like, oh, hopefully 2023 will be better. And it was like, wait, world War iii, because that was this year, right? Yeah, with Ukraine and Russia. That was this year.

Joe Patrice:

Well, last year. Yeah. Alright, so listen. Yeah. Okay. So that’s the end I think of this show. We could go on and on and on. The ridiculous stuff that happened in 2023, but we don’t want to get that depressed. Let’s move to the end here. Thanks everybody for listening to the show. You should subscribe to the show so you get new episodes on whatever podcast service you listen to this through, you get them automatically. It’s great. You should be listening to other shows. Kathryn’s the host of a show called The Jabot. I am a panelist on the Legal Tech Week Journalist Round table for Legal Tech Heads. You can listen to other shows by the Legal Talk Network. You should be reading the Law as always, so you get these and more stories as they come out. And you can follow it on social media. It’s at ATL blog at the aforementioned Twitters Xers, whatever. I’m at Joseph Patrice Kathryn’s at Kathryn one. Chris is at Writes for Rent. Same thing holds for Blue Sky, except I’m at Joe. Patrice over there. You should be. What else did we have to say? I can’t even remember my own.

Kathryn Rubino:

I think you handled most of it.

Joe Patrice:

Should I tell you that’s all the address. Hope

Kathryn Rubino:

2024 treat you well, folks.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, thanks everybody. We will be back with regular episodes, weekly episodes nextWeek.

Joe Patrice:

Peace. Bye. Peace.

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