Alienating The Judge And Jury Seems Like A Bold Strategy For Trump

Episode Notes

Transcript

Joe Patrice:

Welcome back to another edition of Thinking Like. A Lawyer. I’m Joe Patrice from Above the Law. I’m joined by Kathryn Rubino.

Kathryn Rubino:

Hey,

Joe Patrice:

And Chris Williams. Yeah. We are all, you’re above law editors. We’d have this show every week to discuss the big stories from the week that was, or the week that’s to come in certain cases in the legal world. But first we begin as always with a little bit of small talk. Small talk.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah. I love that part. That might be my favorite part of our Podcast

Joe Patrice:

You know what my favorite part of podcast is?

Chris Williams:

It’s the Reason I show up. Yeah.

Joe Patrice:

My favorite part of the podcast is when I got through the introduction without being interrupted.

Kathryn Rubino:

Ever. I like that. You couldn’t even let it go. I was trying to give you a birthday present.

Joe Patrice:

Oh, thank you

Kathryn Rubino:

It is in fact your birthday week.

Joe Patrice:

It is. It is. Yep. Oh, look at that.

Chris Williams:

Look at that. Is that why you’re wearing new glasses?

Joe Patrice:

No, I’m wearing glasses so that I can read small print on my computer

Without the blue blocker thing. As somebody who lives his life in front of a computer screen, that whole blue blocker thing is real.

Chris Williams:

But yeah, it’s good to be back on the cast. Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:

How was your trip? Let’s

Chris Williams:

Wait a second. Let’s wait a second. I’m getting there. I just wanted to say thanks to everybody else trudging through the weeks without me. You are very loyal listeners. I don’t know how you did it without my sultry tones, but I’m back now, so was still writing, but I was in Greece physically for the last two weeks or so, and it was nice. It was nice. The water was beautiful. Nice. I bought a bracelet for 200 bucks that has it’s silver and has blue opal on it. Listeners can’t see at home, but probably neither can you all on the zoom screen, but whatever. And I got it for like 200 euro and then I went to a market the next day and saw something that had more silver, more opal for a third of the price. So I was like, oh, I got ripped off. Which I think is a fundamental tourist experience, but it was nice. It was the only one I saw of the trip. So even if it was a higher price than what I could have got elsewhere, it was the only one I could have bought like it. But yeah, it was nice. The food was great, came back, pants didn’t fit. I remember them worth it.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. Meanwhile, I did another CNN hit late last week, so that was nice. A little bit more television’s a thing that obviously I had done a little of 10 years ago, so it’s nice to kind of flex that muscle again. I had kind of forgotten how it worked.

Kathryn Rubino:

Oh, that’s awesome. Well, I celebrated a high Holy day. It’s the release of the Tortured Poets Department, the Taylor Swift double album. It was.

Joe Patrice:

And with that, thanks everybody for joining us for small

Chris Williams:

Time. Perfect.

Kathryn Rubino:

There you go.

Joe Patrice:

I did not actually play the sound if you wanted to say anything about

Kathryn Rubino:

It. What was a surprise double album? So I listened to the first one. I stayed up till midnight, even though I have a small child, I stayed up till midnight, listened to it once through, I was like, okay, I got some thoughts. I can go to sleep. And then at 2:00 AM she released another 15 tracks. So I felt like the whole weekend I was just playing catch, trying to get my bearings on all 31 songs. So it

Chris Williams:

Was a lot. Also to Kathryn’s credit, it dropped on a weekday. Right. So you were still

Kathryn Rubino:

Working. Well, Friday it was. Friday night still

Chris Williams:

Counts.

Kathryn Rubino:

Well, it’s Friday, so it was like Thursday night. So yes, all day Friday. Yeah. Yeah. It’s true. It’s true. By the way,

Chris Williams:

Hardest worker ATT l let it be known.

Kathryn Rubino:

Certainly the highest post count. That has been true for a number of years. That’s fair. That’s fair. But yeah, I’ve never actually wanted to be a West Coaster until we have midnight releases. I was like, if this was nine and the second album came out at 11, I would’ve been fine. But instead I dragged a little on Friday.

Joe Patrice:

Oh,

Chris Williams:

There we go.

Joe Patrice:

Oh, well, there we go. That brings us to the end of our small talk session. Let’s talk big news this week. The biggest news obviously is going to be that this is the beginning of the Trump Criminal

Kathryn Rubino:

Trial. Trump trial. You should have you not come up with a sound for Trump trial.

Joe Patrice:

We do not have a Trump trial song. Sorry.

Chris Williams:

There you

Kathryn Rubino:

Go. Especially if it’s like a generic just Trump trial. There’ll be four opportunities for you to use it within the next year or so. So we should think on that.

Joe Patrice:

Okay, I will definitely,

Kathryn Rubino:

It’s a little homework for you.

Joe Patrice:

I will definitely give that some time. This is the trial brought in New York about Trump making book entries that were misleading, allegedly making improper book entries, which is in fact a misdemeanor. However, it is not a misdemeanor according via

Kathryn Rubino:

Fraud of another crime,

Joe Patrice:

Furtherance of another crime, which is theoretically a law that’s supposed to be there to prevent people from money laundering. But in this instance, it’s being deployed as an argument why that he did this. He tried to pay off Stormy Daniels as a campaign, the Trump organization giving that money and hiding it. What it was for was an improper campaign contribution to the Trump campaign, which, and therefore that’s a crime and that makes this all a felony.

Kathryn Rubino:

I think we can kind of colloquially agree that the term for this trial is the hush money trial though, right?

Joe Patrice:

Yes, I agree. There is an argument out there that, don’t call it the hush money trial, call it the Election Interference trial. That

Kathryn Rubino:

Gets too confusing because we actually have a January 6th trial theoretically coming up. This

Joe Patrice:

One, the Georgia trial seems like actual election

Kathryn Rubino:

Interference trial, right? That’s what I’m saying. Yes. We have two of those. We have a federal one. We have a Georgia State one. This is the hush money trial. It’s okay. This is the 2016 race, not the 2020 race. Well,

Chris Williams:

I think one of the cases needs to be called interference to election Boogaloo

Kathryn Rubino:

Electric Boo boogaloo. That’s fair.

Chris Williams:

So one of ’em has to be called the electric trial just for that name.

Joe Patrice:

So I was going to say, not calling this an election interference trial. I’m on the side of occasional guest on the show, professor Rick Hassan, who wrote a really good piece. I thought about how this case, it kind of gives a bad name to election interference. There are actually serious election interference claims and calling this one election interference.

Kathryn Rubino:

It’s a financial crime. It’s a documents case, which is okay too.

Joe Patrice:

But the point is there’s going to be a jury. There is a jury and we have a jury. We have a jury. We are going to have a jury trial. It is, in my estimation, I don’t know, maybe I’ll ask others. I don’t think the jury barring some crazy jury nullification argument, and that was a wrinkle this week. But barring something like that, I don’t see a scenario where the jury doesn’t convict. And that’s not that it’s preordained, it’s just that the facts are pretty. Yeah,

Kathryn Rubino:

There’s a small chance that someone might say, well, he didn’t intend or didn’t know that the entries were being made the way that they were being made. I think that there’s probably plenty to suggest otherwise, but that’s kind of the only wrinkle.

Joe Patrice:

And I think that there are problems with this case, but Trump’s going to statute of limitation. Well, yeah, there are a lot of problems like that, but these are problems that Trump is going to have to win in an appeal before a judge. These are not fact finder problems and that’s why I think that probably goes that direction. That said, the lead up to the selection of the jury was exciting because Trump had some issues with sitting in court.

Kathryn Rubino:

Well, he fell asleep multiple times.

Joe Patrice:

Well, he did fall asleep a few times, which I will defend him on this. One thing that people don’t understand if they aren’t lawyers and all they do is court’s boring, if all they do is watch is law and order is the court is incredibly boring,

Kathryn Rubino:

Especially something like for dire, which is what it was. There’s a lot of downtime. There’s just a lot of things that have to happen that do not involve you personally if you are the defendant.

Joe Patrice:

Alright, so we had some jurors, the jurors, we lost a juror because the amount of information that the media decided to publish about her was enough to identify her.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah, I mean some of the early from day one of the jury selection included physical descriptions like their haircut, hairstyle,

Joe Patrice:

Their exact employer,

Kathryn Rubino:

Their exact employer. It was a lot of information out there.

Joe Patrice:

I mean, we are not the sort of people who engage in trying to out jury members, especially in a climate Trump creates for people through social media, which

Kathryn Rubino:

I think that Professor Vance at University of Alabama said it was like a mob trial

Joe Patrice:

That said the information was, it was not hard to figure out who some of the people

Kathryn Rubino:

Were. And one juror said that based on the information, or at the time, juror now former said that based on the information that was out about her, that members of her family in social circle were like, is that you? Is that, and it was enough to freak her out and the judge gladly took her off the case as a result. And then the judge put some restrictions on what the media is able to report anything that is not on the record. So anything they observe, the physical descriptions are no longer fair. And then the judge made some redactions to what was on the record and that folks would be allowed to report going forward,

Joe Patrice:

Other issues going on in addition to falling asleep. Trump complained that it was too cold.

Kathryn Rubino:

Chilly. As someone who has had many employers where I kept a space heater permanently under my desk, my advice to him is, why don’t you put a sweater on sweetie?

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. So he had that complaint. He did not stand up when the jury entered the room, which is a breach of decorum. But one that, I mean, I don’t know.

Kathryn Rubino:

I think that your take, and you wrote an article about that saying that at this point, I don’t think he’s going to go up or down in the estimation of the jury. And I think that’s probably fair. But it does show that he doesn’t think it’s very important the entire process. And I think that could have some long-term sort of slow deterioration on the jury.

Joe Patrice:

We have a word. So you’re suggesting that he shows some degree of contempt for the process Actually,

Kathryn Rubino:

And I think that these are the sort of small things where it doesn’t change. Oh, I think he’s guilty now because he didn’t stand up. But it informs the juror’s perspective of what he thinks about the alleged crimes. And I think that that does play a role into how they view his role in the payments that are the subject of the trial.

Joe Patrice:

I mean, I definitely saw the, I believe it was Andrew Weissman, the former general counsel of the FBI suggested that we’re approaching a point where the judge may have to order Trump to cool down in a holding cell for a little bit because we are approaching those sorts of levels of contempt.

Kathryn Rubino:

If it were any other defendant, I mean even a potential former vice president maybe, but I think that Judge Mechan probably accurately is trying to hold off on making Trump a martyr

Joe Patrice:

Right. Now the last issue that’s going on as part of this as we begin opening arguments this week is that there is still a gag order. Some of the things he has been, I won’t say tweeting, it’s truthing or whatever, some of

Kathryn Rubino:

Posting

Joe Patrice:

Some of things. He is retting.

Kathryn Rubino:

That’s exactly what it is though too. Right. It sounds like it’s making something that was false into a truth by some nefarious process.

Joe Patrice:

So the government has pointed out that several posts that he has made violate the gag order. His response to this as our colleague Liz Dye wrote was retweets aren’t endorsements saying that, well, I was just reposting other people,

Kathryn Rubino:

Bless his heart, that’s

Joe Patrice:

Other people breaching the gag order. So I technically haven’t done anything, and it’s kind of ambiguous if you think about it. We have not as of this recording, gotten a response to that. I don’t suspect that a judge is going to find it that ambiguous, but

Kathryn Rubino:

Here we are.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, in

Chris Williams:

His bio, did he have the retweets aren’t endorsements because then that absolves you of all responsibility.

Joe Patrice:

I mean it’s like saying with all due respect, it gets out everything.

Chris Williams:

No offense, exact offense.

Joe Patrice:

Well, so with all that said, I was working on a joke in my head that it’s not going to come

Kathryn Rubino:

To fruition. Don’t worry, this is not going to end this week. So you can work on it and come back next week. Yeah, that’s

Joe Patrice:

True. And meanwhile, of course there’s the question of whether the gag order itself is in any way constitutional, because Alan Dershowitz says that you can’t have gag orders because Alan Dershowitz is just saying things these days.

Kathryn Rubino:

Somebody puts a microphone in front of his face and he thinks of the most ridiculous, and he just,

Joe Patrice:

Whatever, not no

Kathryn Rubino:

Thought process, it doesn’t stop from appearing in his brain in his mouth opening up. It just is a direct shoot.

Joe Patrice:

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Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah. American lawyer put out the AM law 100 ranking. That is the ranking that’s done on gross revenue and based on the year before is financials. So this is 2023 reporting and overall the news is pretty good. Big law had tremendously great 2020s and 2020 ones by and large, the industry 2022. However, not great

Joe Patrice:

Lockdowns, lots of money, no lockdown money fell just so people are tracking.

Kathryn Rubino:

So this year is kind of very much a rebuilding year. There’s been pretty steady growth in revenue for the majority overall for sure for the industry. But certain firms have seen decreases. One of the firms have increases that offset that.

Joe Patrice:

Well, I was just going to say loyal readers and listeners probably, but definitely readers know that there are a few firms out there that have been either directly or kind of indirectly by leaking it to journalists, mostly over an American lawyer saying, oh, we’re going to have more layoffs. Layoffs are coming, times are tough, whatever. Those firms we always suspected were outliers. These numbers suggest they were in fact outliers. Most of these law firms are making money hand over fist, and the ones that had been whinging about money are probably firms that have some actual issues.

Kathryn Rubino:

Overall, gross revenue is up almost 7%. So that is a very healthy percentage. That is very much in line where kind of the pandemic had a high blip and then a low kind of correct it. But if you assume the 28, 20 19 line, I think we’re very close to where we should be. So that’s good news. All good news. Other interesting tidbits I guess is we have a firm that has crossed the 7 billion

Joe Patrice:

Mark. That’s a lot of money.

Kathryn Rubino:

That’s a shit ton of money. It is zero points to get this firm right, because it is incredibly obvious if you follow big law at all. It is obviously Kirkland who has taken over the number one spot in the gross revenue rankings pretty consistently over the last few years. The other, oh, there we go. I like that one. I like that

Joe Patrice:

One. I don’t know. It moved from where it usually is on my board. That’s why I didn’t have it as fast. Alright,

Kathryn Rubino:

Go on. But when you get into some of the other metrics, and this is not, I mean revenue is the overall how we rank the AMLO 100, but there’s other metrics that they put together over at a LM and one of them is people say perhaps the most indicative metric of whether or not a firm is doing well and how well they’re doing is revenue per lawyer. How much cash are they getting for every single associate that they have walk tells, usually at the top of this list, they are again with an increase of 20% over their already impressive 2023 numbers. That’s over $4 million per associate. But the thing that really surprised me, and a lot of these kind of other metrics, you’ll see a sudden increase by one player that’s Seman Godfrey,

Joe Patrice:

You saying they broke into the top.

Kathryn Rubino:

There you go. They’re the number two firm when you talk about revenue per lawyer. And number four when you’re talking about profits per equity partner, but their RPL increase is 82%.

Joe Patrice:

Something

Kathryn Rubino:

Big happened for them last year.

Joe Patrice:

So now of course they were involved in the Fox Dominion case.

Kathryn Rubino:

They sure were. Right.

Joe Patrice:

And the other firm that was very deeply involved in that was of course Claire Locke. Claire Locke though did not take it on contingency, made lots of money in

Kathryn Rubino:

Fees, but not abnormal gear for them

Joe Patrice:

Enough to move them clear up to the top of the rankings. This is very different. Also, if you’re interested, the New York Times has a fascinating breakdown of what happened,

Kathryn Rubino:

What’s going on behind the scenes there. Yeah.

Joe Patrice:

Which, yeah, wow. But let’s go back to C. This reminds me, I’m old enough to remember, I think it was Robins Kaplan was in the top 10 or something like that when I was in law school. It was like, why are they up here? And that was at the time

Kathryn Rubino:

Tobacco settlement.

Joe Patrice:

They had been involved in the major Minnesota tobacco settlement and that had thrust them very high. That said, so these things happened, especially for firms that do contingency

Kathryn Rubino:

One, and I think that if based on next year’s revenue, you start seeing Seman has tumbling down the rankings, I think that’s not fair either. I think don’t read it that way. This is the abnormal year and that’s okay, but when you do things on contingency, you are more prone to those sorts of rollercoaster ride ups and downs as opposed to stayed hourly fees.

Joe Patrice:

Well this is the argument that people have had about Schiller too, is that when there were some partner defections to go to big law firms, there was some talk that the firm, its succession plan was in a weird place because Bo was pushing back against moving it to be kind of a traditional big law firm because he still wanted to pursue these contingency cases. And you see that once again also had a good year, has a good year lined up for next year according to the firm because they still take these cases. They have a good mix of doing defense work and these sorts of big contingency cases, which is also Mann’s model there and it works if you have the stomach for it, you can actually build a mixed model firm, not just plaintiff’s work, which is obviously tons of risk with high upside, but also you can keep some of that consistent fee-based work too if you are willing to really, I mean it strikes me as though that’s a real skill for those firms to

Kathryn Rubino:

Balance that. And I think that it’s good that we have firms that are able to walk that line and not every big law firm is that same kind of white shoe quiet wealth kind of model as opposed to some the flashier big name big cases people want to talk about non-lawyers want to talk about. And I think that that’s kind of a weird distinction, but it’s true when you’re talking about the boys case back in the day and whatever, those are the cases that people just wanted to talk about generally. It wasn’t just for the industry publications. Yeah.

Joe Patrice:

Alright, so last week there was another story that is a follow-up of sorts. We had already talked about how the National Judicial Conference, which is headed up by the chief justice, but specifically in this instance, it was one of the committees headed up by yet another Republican judge from the sixth Circuit issued a rule saying that in the interest of promoting the random judge assignment, which is what all the federal courts agree, is the way in which they can avoid the appearance of impropriety when it comes to forum selection, forum shopping issues, that if a case is seeking a national or statewide injunction, it should not be able to go to just a single judge division and avoid and get a one out of one chance of who the judge is. Potentially somebody who exhibits bias because of that concern. They put out a rule saying that it should go, A case like that should go to a district-wide, random randomized wheel. Makes sense immediately. The district Texas, who’s the district that we’re all talking about specifically, it’s not the only one, but it is obviously the

Kathryn Rubino:

Most we’re talking about judge.

Joe Patrice:

It is obviously the most striking version where you have a person whose job was to be a evangelical Christian advocate lawyer.

Kathryn Rubino:

That was, that’s where the abortion pill case came from. And he relied on questionable science in order to make the determination that he knows more about science than the FDA.

Joe Patrice:

Right. But the northern district then said, well, we’re not going to follow that. Okay, so they’re just going to look

Kathryn Rubino:

Back. Right? Because I mean, when you think, listen, Kami Pinko liberals, I definitely think of the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Joe Patrice:

So anyway, so they did that. Now most advocates of this system have been smart enough just to say, we have the power to do this and we don’t care. But Judge Ho of the Fifth Circuit has continued to try to defend the decision to allow this sort of egregious forum shopping, and he is not particularly bright, which means that his defense of it has been something of a disaster. We wrote about this. Jay Willis over at Balls and Strikes also wrote about it, his story coming up like 30 minutes after mine or something like that. The speech that Ho gave is just, you should read the whole post about it because it is fascinating, but how somebody who is on the federal bench can be this bad at argument, but he tries to defend this with a series of just egregious dissembling, I think is the right answer.

I think that’s fair. Arguing that it’s an assault on the idea that poor local people in rural jurisdictions can get justice from a judge in their area. Does this overlook the fact that the plaintiffs in this case didn’t exist until they were incorporated in that district moments before they filed this lawsuit? Doesn’t really address that, which is a fairly glaring screw up and something that like somebody’s going to point out in this case me, he made the argument that supermarkets sometimes there’s only one supermarket in a town. Does that mean that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that? The answer of course is not necessarily, but

Kathryn Rubino:

Probably

Joe Patrice:

Not necessarily. Oh no, not necessarily. But we’re not talking about the fact that this case was merely brought before this judge. We’re talking about the case, the instance that multiple of these cases are being brought before the exact same person by people who are outside the district claiming to be in that specific division for the sole purpose of doing this. These are issues, but the real crux of the problem for him is that he goes on and on explaining this was an issue the week of the forum shopping rule. When it came out, he spoke then complaining about it, but he couldn’t stop himself from just saying it was wrong. He then would pivot to, well, bankruptcy and patent cases have forum shopping problems too. Which

Kathryn Rubino:

Okay,

Joe Patrice:

Is a non-sequitur to the extent that Okay, sure they do too. That does not in any way mean that this isn’t a problem. The idea that the judicial conference should be more aggressive about stopping these single judge divisions seems not to help his cause. If anything, and I point this out as a roundabout way, I was focusing on slightly different series of lies in the speech, but the balls and strikes piece hits on this. Exactly. His coverage of the bankruptcy and patent part makes a really good case for why we should have this rule.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah, just expand it. You could also bankruptcy and patent.

Joe Patrice:

He makes a really good argument. But I

Kathryn Rubino:

Will say patent has been changed a lot because of some of the issues that were involved in forum shopping for IP cases.

Joe Patrice:

So yes, but it has been changed at local levels. Yes. They did not need a national rule like the Western district of

Kathryn Rubino:

Texas because they were shamed into doing the right thing. Western District of Texas, which is not something heme is doing,

Joe Patrice:

The Western District of Texas internally proposed a rule to fix the problem. Interestingly, do you know what that rule was to make it a district wide randomness, this specific rule. But they did that for the purpose of getting around the patent problems that had developed in the Waco division. That said he would argue. So one, we have a practical example of how this specific solution works. So that’s problematic for ho’s argument. But also we have in that discussion a reason why the national conference does not necessarily go all the way to expanding this to bankruptcy and patent, which is they have some degree of faith that the local

Kathryn Rubino:

Actors fixing it Yeah. Can

Joe Patrice:

Do this themselves. What’s happening with this rule is they have lost faith in the idea that these judges at a local level are capable of attempting to preserve the credibility of the federal judiciary writ large, which is why they tried to take action. And the response of the Northern District suggests that the National Judicial Conference was correct. Correct. In its assessment

Kathryn Rubino:

That they really went out of their way to prove this. Correct.

Joe Patrice:

This is exactly why we do not have much, why people do not have much faith in the judiciary as a branch, which is probably bad. It seems like a problem that people just don’t trust, but

Kathryn Rubino:

Don’t care if you’re just trying to accumulate your own power. Right. Right.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. So anyway, ho has decided, rather than just shrug it off, which is the right answer here, he has decided to put himself front and center of trying to defend the indefensible. The problem with defending the indefensible is that it remains indefensible. Indefensible. And what you really end up doing is proving that you are very bright

Kathryn Rubino:

To quote our good friend Taylor Swift. You’re the problem.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, okay. I mean, I think other people use that phrase too. Yeah.

Chris Williams:

When the two quote phrase is longer than the thing you’re quoting, just say the thing.

Joe Patrice:

Well, no, I mean that’s like, as Benjamin Franklin once said, no, you can’t.

Kathryn Rubino:

You can’t. I’m the problem. It’s me.

Joe Patrice:

Okay. There. See, now there’s that I get. But yeah, one thing that I noted in the piece is it really reminds you of the shadow docket issues where the justices make all sorts of indefensible decisions all the time, and what they do is then just don’t write anything about it. They’re like,

Kathryn Rubino:

Mums the word we are doing shady shit.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. The whole point of having power and absolutely no accountability is to act that way.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah. Yeah. Why even try to defend it?

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. Anyway. That’s a great

Kathryn Rubino:

Point. Just be

Joe Patrice:

Quiet. All he has to do is be quiet. But I mean, he’s the thirstiest guy on the federal judiciary.

Kathryn Rubino:

He’s walked through this as a hara for 10 years

Joe Patrice:

Thirsty, and he thinks that by hitching his name to every insane right-wing argument, he’s bolstering a potential resume to replace Clarence Thomas or whoever the next opening is that is available to a potential Trump administration to respond. And to be honest, he’s probably succeeded in that. I know there has long been kind of a Trump list of people who could be put up. I think Ho has done everything. I mean,

Kathryn Rubino:

If there is another Trump presidency and there’s a Supreme Court vacancy during that time, for sure. Ho makes the shortlist zero doubt in

Joe Patrice:

My mind. Well, I mean, he’s already the shortlist. I don’t even see anybody as a close contender at this point. Like Rao. Not anymore.

Chris Williams:

I am assuming that Trump will respect loyalty.

Joe Patrice:

Well, yeah, I don’t think it’s about loyalty. I think it’s about being the most bombastic voice out there. And this is somebody who’s not only is Bombastically defending pure insanity, and that is something that he likes. I mean, KA Merrick is also somebody who could potentially get jumped up the chain, I suppose.

Kathryn Rubino:

No. Well then Kamarck can get hose job, right?

Joe Patrice:

Well, probably that’s more likely how that goes. But

Kathryn Rubino:

It’s like everyone wins

Joe Patrice:

That way. But Rao, no dunking, no Van Dyke. When you go down the list of loud mouth questionably sound, arguers on the circuit level or below was

Kathryn Rubino:

Taken over. Yeah. I also, and he’s

Joe Patrice:

Young enough,

Kathryn Rubino:

I agree. I think that he’s, but I don’t think it’s a guarantee because you never know who’s going to have Trump’s ear in that moment. Because I don’t think that Amy Coney Barrett exhibited any of those characteristics. She was just reliable on, I think particularly the abortion issue, which is what they wanted for that they wanted a woman to cast that vote and to replace Ruth Bader

Joe Patrice:

Ginsburg. No, she was a mortal lock for that job.

Kathryn Rubino:

Oh, I agree. I

Joe Patrice:

Agree. The moment she was appointed at the seventh Circuit, she was, if Republicans are in charge when Ginsburg dies, she gets that job. Nobody

Kathryn Rubino:

Forget. But she got that position without being that bombastic. People didn’t write about her before she was a nominee or under consideration for the nominee. Sure. Legal publications, but mainstream publications are writing about James Ho because he says ridiculous shit on the right. I

Joe Patrice:

Guess that’s fair. I guess that’s fair. But yeah, I think ho still probably flies largely under the radar of the mainstream. But the legal side, we’re all over this.

Chris Williams:

My money is on the judge that compliments his shoes the day that he gets to make the decision.

Kathryn Rubino:

That’s fair.

Joe Patrice:

Alright. I mean, you know what? I don’t know. Alright. I’m continuing. No, and we note, because he put up a bunch of people in his last administration that he probably didn’t have any necessary love for, but are just like Leonard Leo told. So

Kathryn Rubino:

Sure. I think Leo might have different goals than Trump. I think that Ho is definitely playing to Trump, not to Leo necessarily, because for a lot of years, literal Leo played a very long game to get where he is right now. Right. He doesn’t just want the most outlandish, loud spoken person to occupy all these positions. I don’t think

Joe Patrice:

That’s true. I think he absolutely does. Anyway. Well, with all that said, we won’t resolve that in this short period of time. Lets, I think we’ve covered everything we need

Chris Williams:

To for today. One comment on the article, the excerpt for it should have been the title, the excerpt is perfect. Judge Ho tries to explain why forum shopping is bad for patents and good for fourth birth fails. Mint. That was golden. That was so

Kathryn Rubino:

A little behind the scenes. So

Joe Patrice:

That was the title, but I determined that I didn’t think that that was going to have the

Kathryn Rubino:

Catching of SEO. Yeah.

Joe Patrice:

The SEO necessary to get it read, but yes. No, that was the initial title. Man, I, that’s good. Anyway, yeah, I mean I think it appeals to people who are looking for that content. The question is, does it get picked up by people who may not necessarily know that that dude,

Chris Williams:

Dude, the title you use, what is it Trying to attract cyclists. He delivers a tour de force and disingenuous bullshit. Come on. Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:

People who are interested in bullshit. Yeah, yeah.

Joe Patrice:

Yes. Primarily our audience. Our audience is something legal. Somebody’s

Kathryn Rubino:

Something weird going on legal. And I think that that gets that their attention, whether or not they are necessarily in the mood for this exact article.

Chris Williams:

I think the words judge and fails do that, but say Lavie.

Joe Patrice:

Alright. So with all that said, thanks for listening. You should be subscribed to show, get new episodes when they come out. You should leave reviews stars, write something. All of that is important. You should be reading Above the Law, so you get these and other stories as they come out. You should be listening to the Gibo Kathryn’s other podcast. I’m also a guest on the Legal Tech Week Journalist Roundtable. You can listen to the other shows in the Legal Talk Network on various social medias. We exist at ATL blog at Joseph Patrice, at Kathryn one, the Numer one at Writes for Rent as in writing, not human rights for rent, but writing for rent over at Blue Sky. It’s basically the same, except I’m Joe Patrice over there. And with all of that, we are now done. Talk to you later. Peace.

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