Trump’s Lawyers Somehow Doing A Worse Job On TV Than In Court

Episode Notes

Transcript

Joe Patrice:

Welcome to another edition of Thinking Like A Lawyer. I’m Joe Patrice from Above. the Law interrupting me as is her

Kathryn Rubino:

Interrupting Cow Moo. Don’t you remember that joke when you were third grade? I do. Yeah.

Joe Patrice:

I don’t really remember it from third grade, but

Chris Williams:

I do remember, no, actually that I wasn’t here yet.

Joe Patrice:

You Don’t? Oh, no, no, no. I wasn’t alive. Yeah, it’s knock, knock, knock, knock.

Chris Williams:

Who’s there? Oh,

Joe Patrice:

Gotcha. The interrupting cow.

Kathryn Rubino:

The interrupting cow Moo

Joe Patrice:

There you go.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah,

Joe Patrice:

There. Got you, got you.

Chris Williams:

That’s the thing. I just remember good jokes from my,

Joe Patrice:

No, I mean, that is an absolute banger.

Remember it from an episode of Dr. Katz. If anybody remembers that show.

Chris Williams:

Nope. Interrupting cow on Dr. Katz. What is this? Over episode?

Joe Patrice:

Dr. Katz was a genius old comedy central show where they animated standup comics doing their routines, but as psychiatry patients, because most standup actually sounds like you’re talking to your shrink. Amazing. When you adapted a little bit. It was a fun show.

Chris Williams:

Reminds me of either Crank anchors or Shortys watching shorty’s.

Joe Patrice:

It was a contemporary of all those. It was back then. Anyway, yeah, so with all that, you’re Joe Patrice. I’m Joe Patrice from Above, the Law that you’ve heard, the voices of the Dulce tones of Kathryn Rubino and Chris Williams. So far. We are here as usual to go over some of the biggest legal stories of the week.

Kathryn Rubino:

That was

Joe Patrice:

Yes, but first we have some small talk, which I guess we already kind of technically had

Kathryn Rubino:

Small

Joe Patrice:

Talk. Yeah. So I think our Dr. Kat’s routine was probably small talk already, but if there’s anything else anyone has worth conversation about.

Kathryn Rubino:

Well, I’m really excited that the weather, at least where I live, has taken a turn for the positively spring, if not quite summer yet, and I am in,

Chris Williams:

I have roses in the front and they’re blooming, so that’s nice. I also have ants, so they’re in the roses. That’s not as nice, but you take the good and the bad.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah. I’d rather have the ants in the flowers than in my home. So

Chris Williams:

That’s the thing. I have both. They’re also in my house that also swing in a miss swing

Kathryn Rubino:

In a miss.

Joe Patrice:

So from my small talk thing, I learned, and there’s apparently some dispute about it, but I stand by it. So our former co-host, Ellie Maal, posted a thing on the Twitters over the weekend about, there’s apparently some zoologists who believe that foxes are trying to domesticate themselves, that they’ve kind of gotten either arguably fed up with the wild or probably more accurately realizing that nature is being systematically taken away, destroyed. And so it’s probably the smart move to domesticate yourself anyway, they think that that’s what might be happening with Fox’s starting to demonstrate more cat-like behavior where they’re starting to do some stuff. This tweet got hit with a community note where people were like, no, that’s just folks who’ve fed them, and then they get habituated, which is not necessarily true because I will say of my experience, I had a fox situation and the fox kept killing things and leaving them on my doorstep, which is very much a catlike behavior. And when I told animal control about this, how do I keep foxes away? They were like, why would you need to? And I said, well, it’s eating, it’s killing things and leaving them on my doorstep. And they said, well, that’s just not a thing foxes do. But it is something that

Kathryn Rubino:

Cats do,

Joe Patrice:

Cats do, and it’s a thing that animals trying to domesticate themselves do. So I’m a believer with these. So you have a

Kathryn Rubino:

Pet

Joe Patrice:

Box. I’m a believer with these zoologists that that’s a thing that’s happening and no, I do not have a pet box. I didn’t indulge this animal. In fact, I used you can use ammonia to make them feel like a bigger predator is around and then they stay away. Whatever point is, I tried to dissuade this, but I am a firm believer that Ellie’s tweet is correct. I think that this is happening.

Kathryn Rubino:

I mean, foxes are pretty

Joe Patrice:

Cute. They are adorable. If they could be potty trained or something, that’d be great, but they seem to be real messes otherwise.

Chris Williams:

So just as a recap, everybody listening, a self domesticating fox, a Doctor Katz and an interrupting cow walking to living like a lawyer. The jokes write themselves. They’re not good, but they do right themselves.

Joe Patrice:

All right. Well, I think that more or less puts a capper on our talk that is on the smaller side.

Kathryn Rubino:

Well, I mean it does.

Joe Patrice:

It did. Sorry,

Kathryn Rubino:

Interrupting Joe. Patrice right there.

Joe Patrice:

That was not me. That was the trumpet. That was the official trumpet. But

Kathryn Rubino:

You press, you pressed the button, you’re in charge of the

Joe Patrice:

Button. Oh, if only I controlled.

Chris Williams:

I think we should just blame Alitos wife.

Kathryn Rubino:

It’s Martha Ann’s fault.

Joe Patrice:

There’s no no soundtrack for an upside down flag. Sorry, I

Chris Williams:

Tried. It’s just

Joe Patrice:

A

Chris Williams:

Small talk Sound backward.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. Anyway, so we mercifully don’t have to talk about them directly this week. We can talk though a story that we covered, but obviously most people didn’t really read it through us. It was a little bit bigger and people read it through other outlets, but you might’ve noticed that Donald Trump is

Kathryn Rubino:

Convicted. Felon

Joe Patrice:

Is a convicted felon. Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:

I’m actually excited just for that intro sentence for the rest of his days because I personally take a lot of pleasure in writing the phrase former president. Every time I’m talking about Donald Trump, I’m like former president all the time and it gives me a little bit of personal joy, but now I’m going to be like convicted felon said blah.

Joe Patrice:

I mean, what is it? That newspaper that’s based out in Queens put a headline like Queen Man convicted of felony.

Kathryn Rubino:

I love that. I love

Joe Patrice:

That. Yeah. So I was on CNN max to talk about this. I was going to be on to talk about the trial anyway, when we did not think the verdict was going to happen, and then the verdict kind of blindsided us as we were going on. So that

Kathryn Rubino:

Was think it interesting too that as you people may be aware, or maybe if you didn’t follow the details, that it came kind of right almost at the bell on Thursday, on last Thursday, it was after 4:00 PM Everyone was basically like, okay, we’re going to pack it in for the day. We’ll see everyone tomorrow. And the jury’s like, hold that thought.

Joe Patrice:

I mean, the official note saying that they had, it was signed at four 20 due with that information, what you will. But yeah, no, the parties all believed that the jury was going to go another day. They did not need to, and they found Trump guilty on all 34 of the counts. They were asked to assess. So what do we take away from this? What stories do we want to deal with? Have I have a suggestion? If no one else has go

Kathryn Rubino:

For it.

Chris Williams:

It’s a rough time for prison abolitionists because I was like, Ooh, felon shoe salesman and Bible

Joe Patrice:

Seller like

Chris Williams:

This who have his own Bible in prison. But

Joe Patrice:

It’s, it’s been a tough time for prison abolitionists always since that position is incredibly fringe and has never taken on much popularity. But nonetheless, it gets a little bit harder I guess with this.

Chris Williams:

Actually, I’m thinking this might be a good resurgence error. That’ll be a whole bunch of MAGA people talking about how the injustice of the prison industrial system,

Joe Patrice:

Well, he’s not going to jail,

Kathryn Rubino:

But I will say Donald Trump did talk about prison abolitionists in terms of him being a felon over the weekend. So that is happening.

Joe Patrice:

Okay, so this is one of the things we talked about on my tv. Hit no, he is not probably going to jail. This is a class E felony jail. Time is obviously an option at sentencing, but it is not by any means a guarantee. This is a financial crime. It is a crime committed by a 77-year-old guy, although he wasn’t at the time, but is now a 77-year-old guy. It is. There’s also the logistical issues with the people who are running for office being involved

Kathryn Rubino:

For sure. But I mean, I will say the fact that he was playing fast and loose with the gaggle order that the judge put on him and has already been threatened with jail as a result of that behavior doesn’t bode well for him.

Joe Patrice:

Well, certainly. So I think the prosecution’s argument, if they do argue for jail time, will be lean heavily into that. This is somebody who’s completely unrepentant, somebody who violated the gag order repeatedly, whatever. I still think that, look, a point that was made on that hit actually by the host was that he violated that gag order repeatedly and was threatened with jail time, and the judge made clear, I don’t want to put you in jail. He kept finding him a thousand dollars each time because he knew the logistical problems that would go along with putting somebody in that position in jail. He’s already exhibited an unwillingness to put him in jail over his flouting of the system. So the argument, you should overlook all of these other mitigating factors to put him in jail because he floated the system, is probably not going to get over the hump. This is probably going to be a massive series of fines. This may well be some sort of probation. It’ll be an interesting probation to the extent that in some ways probation is almost more comically worse. You have a former president who has to turn in his drug test to the state of New York every month. That’s a more interesting take. There’ll be so much ivermectin in that pee. Yeah, right. Horse dewormer everywhere.

Kathryn Rubino:

Amazing.

Joe Patrice:

So one big story that kind of broke out quickly was the idea that he couldn’t run for office anymore or vote for himself taking the second one first. Florida obviously passed a law recently allowing convicted felons to vote. The administration of Ron DeSantis has pushed back on that and made it so that those convicted felons. Well, sure, the law says that they should be able to vote, but they can only really vote if they’ve served their sentence and paid back all their fines, which is not at all what the voters voted for, but whatever. So that led some people to think that Trump as a Florida resident would not be able to vote in this election. That’s not actually probably true. While this hasn’t been tested, it seems to me, at least from the various competing interpretations I’ve read, it seems to me as though Florida’s law accepts the definition of what a felony convicted felons voting rights are based on the jurisdiction where they were convicted, got convicted and New York would allow him to continue to vote. So Florida should theoretically continue to allow him to vote. I did, however, see that the state of Washington has an election provision that says convicted felons can’t be on ballots. Who knows what that does? We’ll see if anybody even tries to push that issue, but that’s one take that floated around for a while.

Kathryn Rubino:

Interesting. I think that he probably will be allowed to vote. I don’t think it’s in Rhonda DeSantis interest to push it on this particular one.

Joe Patrice:

These already, what about the irony of rhon DeSantis could actually screw this up,

Kathryn Rubino:

Would, I mean that would be delightful, but it’s not what’s going to happen, right? Yeah.

Joe Patrice:

So then the one story that we wrote about this that you might’ve seen a day two story if you will, that we read about this is Todd Blanche, his attorney who is the high in the running for worst career moves of all time. I mean, there’s leaving mash after season one move and then there’s, oh yeah, that’s an old one. And then there’s what Todd Blanche did. Todd Blanche was sitting on millions of dollars a year as a partner at CAD Waller and decided give that all up to work for a former president who is notorious for not paying his legal bills in this instance. But he did go on TV and was asked why they didn’t call. Well, it didn’t really mount much of a defense. Obviously defendants aren’t forced to testify in their own defense and juries can’t take that into account, but they didn’t really try much of anything. They put Bob Costello on the stand who was a terrible witness, got in a fight with the judge and that didn’t go

Kathryn Rubino:

Well. That’s what you want for a really upstanding witness, the kind of witness that really sways jury’s minds.

Joe Patrice:

Well, so ultimately, but this interview was interesting because Blanche is asked this question and gets all sanctimonious about how, because we live in America and the defense doesn’t have to put up a case because we don’t have the burden of proof. And it’s like, sure, but once the burden of proof is arguably met, you’re your obligation to your client is to try

Kathryn Rubino:

Make an effort, do

Joe Patrice:

Something

Kathryn Rubino:

Of some variety.

Joe Patrice:

Yes, and just none. And I mean, look, what he didn’t say and probably should have said is ultimately the factual stage of this case was more or less cooked and that we believe this is a legal issue and we always knew this was going to be settled on appeal and yada yada yada, which is not even an insane take and probably an accurate one. I mean, I’ve been one of those folks on record not necessarily believing in this prosecution as fully justified. Now, I want to be clear. That doesn’t mean Trump, he’s

Kathryn Rubino:

In this. Trump

Joe Patrice:

Didn’t commit crimes. He did. He absolutely committed crimes. The question is were the crimes that he committed, stuff that survives the statute of limitations and whatever, and I think the government’s theory on why it does is not great, and that’s a very lawyer ball technicality reason why he shouldn’t necessarily be convicted. But make no mistake, he committed all these crimes. We now have that factually established. The only question is was given those facts, does the law support a conviction? And that’s a fight that will happen at the appellate level and hopefully we’ll, well, not hopefully. I mean, we will see that and we’ll see that play out I think relatively quickly as appeals go. Appeals are slow,

Kathryn Rubino:

But yeah, I mean, right. Harvey Weinstein’s appeal finally made it to the top court of New York earlier this year, and that was several years ago,

Joe Patrice:

And I think getting all the way through the system will take a long time, but I do, I feel that Marsha’s approach to this case of basically clearing the decks to get this case through because it’s of such importance is a move that will not be lost on the rest of the New York judiciary. I think that the rest of the court system seem to agree with his decision to do that, and I think we’re going to see these get fast tracked as they move through the appeals process. That will still be slow and deliberate because appeals are slow and deliberate. But I think you’re going to see a relative rocket docket of this appellate process.

Kathryn Rubino:

It’ll be worth watching for sure throughout the summer.

Joe Patrice:

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Kathryn Rubino:

A little bit slower. It’s the exact opposite of the New York case in terms of docketing.

Joe Patrice:

It’s also kind of the opposite of the case in terms of the strength of the legal case. Donald Trump took a budget top secret documents to started hand handing ’em around to people not great.

Kathryn Rubino:

That’s not great. We

Joe Patrice:

Got a specific law about that even seems like that’s the sort of thing that you don’t do,

Kathryn Rubino:

And it applies directly to the president because it’s about the presidential records. Yeah.

Joe Patrice:

Yep, yep, yep.

Kathryn Rubino:

It’s very clear here. Don’t tell Eileen Cannon though.

Joe Patrice:

Well, right. Yeah. Well, I mean the presidential records saying is slightly, but yes, so this is pretty clear. Nonetheless, Eileen Cannon has determined that this is way too difficult for her and she’s got to slow it way down. So she had a couple of turns toward the absurd last week, the first of which was a conferral motion issue. The Trump had started to talk about how the FBI tried to murder him. I don’t know if anybody remembered that.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah, yeah. I mean it was gibberish to be clear, it was taken from boilerplate language in the what do you The warrant? Yeah, the warrant. The arrest warrant, not the arrest warrant, the search warrant. It’s pure gibberish put together. Not really. Not real.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. So the standard language on one of these warrants is that the use of deadly force is only justified if the person starts shooting at you about blah, blah, blah. Right. The FBI isn’t allowed to kill you unless you try to kill them, essentially. That language is good

Kathryn Rubino:

Standard though, by

Joe Patrice:

The way. Way. It’s not a bad one. Great. Not a bad language. It’s how it got in there actually. Yeah, because it’s a good language. Yeah. It’s how it got into the boilerplate. That’s why we use that as a model. Anyway, somehow this fell into Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene’s wheelhouse, and they started ranting about how the FBI intended to kill him because the document says the use of deadly force is justified. They ignore the only if part and just say it’s justified, and they think that this means that he somehow was singled out to be murdered query if the FBI intended to do that. I don’t understand why they didn’t, wouldn’t have. It’s not,

Kathryn Rubino:

But you’re alive friend.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, they’re pretty good at that sort of job. Law enforcement killing people during search warrants is something they’re good at, that they’re really good at doing. So the fact that they didn’t is pretty good sign. That wasn’t what this language was intended to convey. Anyway, the special prosecutor has asked that we tamped down on Trump telling the world that the FBI was trying to murder him because they

Kathryn Rubino:

Weren’t. Yeah.

Joe Patrice:

Well, no, because that has the risk of intimidating witnesses, jurors poisoning the pool, et cetera, because it’s all lie. Judge Cannon did not stop this instantly despite the fact that this is what a real judge would do, and instead scolded the special counsel for not meeting and conferring to discuss this longer.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah. I mean, because another way that she feels she’s justified in delaying the trial,

Joe Patrice:

She’s now apparently given Trump a couple of weeks to respond to the question of whether or not it’s okay that he lie about the FBI trying to murder him.

Kathryn Rubino:

It’s not even the only dumb thing she has done.

Joe Patrice:

I will go further. I will say it’s not the stupidest thing she did last week.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah, yeah. I do think the other one is stupider. Yeah, which

Joe Patrice:

Is stupid. Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:

Stupid. Yeah. No, she also eye I did.

Joe Patrice:

That’s good.

Kathryn Rubino:

She also asked for both sides to brief out the question of how the recent Supreme Court CFPB case applies to.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:

I mean, it’s so disingenuous and so dumb. You’ll recall, of course, the Supreme Court, the majority written by Clarence Thomas, bastion of liberal thought over there wrote that the CFP B’S funding was constitutional, which means nothing. Right. It means the status quo, everything gets to continue the way it always has. But Eileen Cannon decides that she wants it briefed because Trump’s lawyers have made an argument that the way that this special counsel has been funded is illegitimate unconstitutional, and as a result, the case against Trump should be dismissed. But Samuel Alito lost that case, right? He wrote the dissent. Maybe if that had been the majority, there’s an argument probably not even still right? Because the way the CFPB was funded, is funded, is distinct from how special councils are funded, but there’s at least a colorable argument. If Alito had been in the majority, but he lost, that’s the dissent, which means that the status quo prevails.

Joe Patrice:

Right? Well, the argument of the CFPB case is Congress to the argument was Congress has to put out every year a law that says we want to give X amount of money to the CFPB, and they don’t do that. Instead, what the law says is CFPB, your authorized to ask the Fed for money and the Fed gives you that money. So the argument was that’s unconstitutional because the Constitution says all the money has to be earmarked by Congress and Thomas and the rest of the court who wasn’t crazy went, that’s obviously not how that works. How this would potentially apply, as Kathryn just said, is if Alito was right, you could argue that the Department of Justice budget exists in a closed hermetically sealed vacuum, and when you appoint a special counsel, unless Congress votes on money for that special counsel, the DOJ shouldn’t be allowed to use any of its money for it. But as you point out, that is not what happened.

Kathryn Rubino:

That’s not happened. I mean, it’s the

Joe Patrice:

Opposite happened.

Kathryn Rubino:

Could you imagine the way their entire government would grind to a halt if just because the Supreme Court said, Hey, how you are funded is constitutional meant that presumptively the rest of every other funding mechanism was unconstitutional

Joe Patrice:

Or even still up for debate at the point that they determined that was constitutional, this becomes presumptively constitutional done. We

Kathryn Rubino:

Done, we done.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. No, it was so out of left field. It was the part where you had to kind of appreciate cannon’s, gusto for this job. A lot of ways you can delay this case that make you seem not absolutely fucking stupid, and she’s decided to give up on all of them and just go straight for the dumbest shit. But

Kathryn Rubino:

Here’s the thing, us calling her stupid is the only impact that she will ever, ever have to doing this. Right. She has a lifetime appointment. There’s certainly not 67 senators who are going to vote for her impeachment. She has a job for the rest of her life. She done. It doesn’t matter. We can call her stupid all we want and

Joe Patrice:

We’ll,

Kathryn Rubino:

Especially when she makes stupid decisions.

Joe Patrice:

But that’s an interesting take and one of the ones where I thought that maybe she wouldn’t be nearly as off the rails as she’s proven to be in this case, I really did think that there is something to be said for when you get a lifetime job. I think of academics in this way too because tenure more or less, it’s that situation. You no longer are motivated by the things that motivate everybody else, career striving wise and money and whatever. You’re motivated by moving up within that structure, becoming an appellate judge at Supreme Court, justice, yada, yada, yada. Or you’re motivated by just reputational stuff, being able to go give talks and book tours or whatever. She’s blowing up all of those things. Now there’s an argument, go on. I know

Kathryn Rubino:

You can go with it. I disagree with that. She’s blowing up either of those things. I think that she’s an incredibly mediocre, even without this, she was an incredibly mediocre candidate to be a judge, a federal judge. She’s messed up other cases that have gotten a bunch of publicity as well. She’s not going to get promoted, at least in the short, medium to short term, unless Donald Trump wins and doing this is the only way that she gets the attention of Donald Trump enough to be like, yes, for sure. I want to promote her to the appellate level and in terms of reputational book tours, whatever, she can write her own ticket on the right wing speaking tour right now if that’s what she wanted.

Joe Patrice:

Maybe, I don’t know. I feel like people oversimplify the far right as just like you get away with saying the stupidest thing ever. The people who really make money on that side of the game, there’s a savvy to the dumb. They pick and choose their targets. They also posture themselves as though they’re super smart when they aren’t. This is the Alito thing. Oh, well, I discovered this sort of obscure thing and that justifies it. They do what they can to make themselves seem smart doing it. She’s proving herself valuable by looking like she’s fallen off a turnip truck on her way to the courthouse. And I think that’s, if that’s how she’s trying to prove her value, I don’t think that works. You’re saying she needs a better marketing team? I do. I think she needs a better right-wing marketing team. She needs to be making calls that are way more justifiable here. The

Kathryn Rubino:

Thing, she wrote a book tomorrow. You don’t think that it would be a bestseller in right wing circles? I do.

Joe Patrice:

I think it’d be a bestseller period because I would want to read it. I would want to read, well just to see how an editor took crayon and turned it into a book.

Kathryn Rubino:

Again, she’s still going to cash that royalty check, right? Yeah. This, she is not sacrificing her

Joe Patrice:

Future, but it’s a one time book. That’s the thing. She’s giving it up for a 15 minute of fame situation and that’s the issue. And I feel like people in those sorts of jobs usually orient themselves around having senses of shame and caring about how their reputation works because money is no longer the thing they’re driven by. And she seems to not do that. And that’s what,

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah. Well, I mean I think that that’s probably also a symptom of our society in the year 2024. She’s a younger judge as these things go, she probably is more familiar with things like social media and people selling a lot more of their dignity just to get 15 one viral TikTok. So this probably doesn’t strike her as that. Strange.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, maybe

Chris Williams:

I’m also not really sure there’s that much of a conscience to where shame matters.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, I dunno. I do. I think of some of the right-wing appellate judges, and there are obviously some who have no shame, but there are others who have really done a good job of walking a line of seeming quasi respectable. And I feel like that’s a gift that they have, that they have utilized and she doesn’t seem to have it. Alright, let’s talk real quick. Law school rankings, we always talk about ’em. They’re always a big deal on the website. Turns out it’s very probable that nobody cares more accurate, more accurately. The law schools seem to care a little bit more than students currently do, and we’re talking not about rankings as a whole, but we’re talking specifically about the US News and World Report rankings.

Kathryn Rubino:

First of all, they’ve been dragged to Helen back over the last couple of years, so probably not surprising that that rhetoric is making its way to prospective law students. But I think it’s interesting, and I don’t know how smart that is. When people ask us all the time about what law should we go to, we used to do a series on the decision weighing various options for law school, and I don’t think that ranking is necessarily it, but I do think that there’s nuggets inside of the US news ranking that are very important. What is the average law firm partner going to think of your law school when they see it at the top of your resume? I think as a proxy for that, I think the US news rankings have been useful and I think that you ignore that in the short term potentially to your peril,

Joe Patrice:

But that’s sort of the thing that this study tries to get to the law school that a partner is going to care about at the top of the rankings. The T 14 are just fine, but also the T 14 are calcified and have been for a long time, and that’s not like where the rankings get judged a lot, where the rankings are getting judged. And what this study endeavored to find out is if a school works its way from 55 to 30 or something like that, you would expect that that school would then start having a carry on effect of drawing in better classes of students because they see it as more prestigious. And what this study determined is that those sorts of swings have almost no effect. Same going the other direction. If the school plummets a lot, they still keep getting the same students.

And the conjecture was the reasons why weren’t necessarily there. But some of the hypothesis were that the rankings have lost a lot of their credibility as they’ve attempted to change their model a little bit, and that they basically maxed out their model of people who were just prestige hounds. And now that they’re trying to be a little bit more dynamic and do things that say the Above, the Law rankings had done before them and reflect costs and outcomes, they’re falling behind a little bit because now it’s not as good as it needed to be for their prestige people. And everybody else already were reading us, so they’re kind of in a middle zone. Just as a quick follow up, one of the authors of that first study also was in the news with another fun experiment, which was the New York Times Law School ranking, which was just going through and seeing how many times each law school was mentioned in a New York Times story.

Kathryn Rubino:

I mean, plus it’s the Thirstiest ranking that there is.

Joe Patrice:

Well, but the argument of course is if the idea of US News and its only value was to gauge the prestige of a school, then what more prestigious gauge could you have then it being the school that the New York Times calls up when they need a quote about something, lawlike, some law talking person.

Kathryn Rubino:

I mean, that is not necessarily what the hiring partner at big law firms think, right? Because the New York Times is writing for everybody, or at least who they think their everybody is versus a very specific subset of those people, which is what I think,

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, I don’t know. I think it makes a lot of sense as a concept because yes, you’re right that there’s kind of a whatever, but it’s not Liz though. They would necessarily go to different, it’s not like as though they aren’t drawn by the same sorts of impulses. I will say, I should say there are some interesting takeaways from it, which are Harvard and Yale are at the top, obviously with Stanford and Columbia I should say. But then you start entering an area where the rankings have to be given a little bit of a grain of salt. New York Law School is next on the list,

Kathryn Rubino:

Right? It’s just in New York,

Joe Patrice:

Right? And so you got to give it a grain of salt for that. And Cardozo and Brooklyn also in there in the top 10 for that reason. And you also have South Texas College in there,

Kathryn Rubino:

Which is just that Josh Blackman talks

Joe Patrice:

A lot. It’s just Josh Blackman, he just talks a lot. Just a New York native who happens to be a law professor there and has a million dollar chair that was funded by Dark Money by Leonard Leo. That’s a story you wrote, isn’t it? Yeah. So there’s that, but otherwise you do get a good sense of schools that have the ability to opine on law.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah, I think it’s an easy, mindless, worthless ranking personally, but interesting, I guess,

Joe Patrice:

I don’t know. I was interested in it in the way at which, if it’s supposed to be about prestige, does this help you gauge prestige in a way that’s any different than just looking at US news? And to the extent that it is different, they’re just things that are easily distinguishable to use legal jargon. You can say, oh, a lawyer, oh, that one’s from New York, so that’s why it’s there, but otherwise blah, blah, blah. And if you just went off of this and you were able to make those caveats in your head, is this all that far off from making your decision off of the US News rankings? I don’t know. Harvard and Yale and Stanford at the top. Columbia’s pretty good. Mostly it’s top tier schools. I don’t know. There’s an argument that this actually reflects that reality and not so much that it should be the replacement, but that it’s further evidence of why you wouldn’t necessarily need to look to the US News Report.

Kathryn Rubino:

Well, I mean, yes, but the people who have options at those top four or five schools are pretty small and the number of people who have those as they can get into those schools. And so I think that what’s also useful is knowing the difference between the 13th Best School and the 20th Best school. And I think that US News does a great job of making that distinction that I think lawyers care about, which I think goes to the hiring. Does it matter what’s on your resume for the rest of your life level? But that’s just what I’m thinking.

Joe Patrice:

Alright, well, okay, that’s all for now. Thanks everyone for listening. You should subscribe to the show, get new episodes when they come out. You should give us reviews, stars write things. You should be listening to the OT Kathryn’s other show. I’m a guest on Legal Tech Week Journalist Roundtable. You should be following us all reading Above the Law, following us all on social medias at ATL blog, at Joseph Patrice or at Joe Patrice at Blue Sky, at Kathryn one at writes for rent. You should be listening to the other shows on the Legal Talk Network. And with that, we will let you go. Peace.

Chris Williams:

Peace.

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