Overpaid Partners, Nikki Haley Lashes Out, And Judge Might Want To Chill

Episode Notes

Transcript

Joe Patrice:

Welcome Back.

Chris Williams:

Hello. Welcome to this week’s episode of Thinking Like A Lawyer.

Joe Patrice:

Yay.

Chris Williams:

This is Chris Williams are joined by Joe Patrice. He was talking.

Joe Patrice:

I Was

Chris Williams:

You took Kathryn’s job and joined by Kathryn. Rubino. Yeah. All of Above the Wall. Talk about the week that was,

Joe Patrice:

That’s

Kathryn Rubino:

Right now in the legal world.

Joe Patrice:

Right. So that’s great. I didn’t have to do anything. That’s perfect. So I am super happy that you all know what show you’re listening to and who we all are. We will, of course, get to the big stories of the week, but first we’re going to have a little chat,

Kathryn Rubino:

Small Talk,

Joe Patrice:

a little small talk. How’s everybody doing this morning?

Kathryn Rubino:

I am doing pretty well. It was an A plus sports weekend. Obviously we have the Olympics starting. That was some Wow. Opening ceremonies, just real conversation starters, whether it was the like, Hey beheadings, remember those? Yeah.

Joe Patrice:

It was quite the flex for the French to be like, you know what makes us so great? We behead the people that we don’t like.

Kathryn Rubino:

Watch your back.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, watch your back. Germans, Austrian.

Kathryn Rubino:

I think she was Austrian.

Joe Patrice:

Okay. Which Was she? Yeah,

Kathryn Rubino:

But also Queen. Watch out Macron. Right. Don’t get out of line. We take this shit serious

Joe Patrice:

And then some weird Assassin’s Creed thing was going on for the whole time and was a mask. He was the masked person. And then the answer was, wait,

Chris Williams:

Wait, wait. What?

Joe Patrice:

Nobody. Yeah. Oh yeah. There

Kathryn Rubino:

Were two masked people, as I recall.

Joe Patrice:

Right. The torch was being carried by a masked park artist.

Kathryn Rubino:

Flag was carried by a masked person in Chrome with who was

Joe Patrice:

Riding a mechanical horse. Yes.

Kathryn Rubino:

It was wild. It was worth the price of admission. I hope you had an adult beverage or other inebriating substance with you when you watched it and it was a good time was had by

Chris Williams:

All My thing is I saw the religious flag that they were getting. It was apparently, it was so disrespectful to Christians that the Muslims were mad about it because picture of the, I think they were like desecrated the last supper, the way that they

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah, but it wasn’t Right. So

Joe Patrice:

That’s the thing. It wasn’t,

Chris Williams:

It wasn’t, yes, but still that’s the discourse surrounding it

Joe Patrice:

Apparently. Oh no. Apparently, to let listeners know what’s going on. Apparently Christians in the US primarily decided that when anytime a group of people sit at a table in a row that that’s the last supper. In this instance, it was apparently a depiction of a painting. Of a Dionysian. Yeah,

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah. There was even a character or person dressed as Ionis diocese.

Chris Williams:

I do hear you. But two things. I was going to get to a point beyond that. I do hear you, Joe, but also if there’s ever a picture of a mother holding their child at about shoulder height, that’s the Madonna. There’s some iconography that kind of just determines whatever it is. But the second thing is this is France. This is like where the Marqui side is from. This is what you should be expecting. I don’t get people’s outrage around the blasphemy. They’re kind of known for that and white flags, despite they’re actually pretty good military history.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. The 20th century was not a great run for them military history wise.

Chris Williams:

But Prior,

Joe Patrice:

But before that,

Kathryn Rubino:

The way back machine.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. They had a few good years

Chris Williams:

Before it was, oh no, the French are coming now it’s back at,

Joe Patrice:

So yeah. No, I actually watched some, I watched that and I’ve been taking advantage of the gold zone, which is take off on the NFL Red zone, where they just are jumping around and whipping around to events live, which is great.

Kathryn Rubino:

I love that. As a society, we’ve leaned into the fact that we all have a DHD.

Joe Patrice:

Well, okay, I don’t know about that. I feel like in past years, Olympic coverage as the sort of thing where I wouldn’t have necessarily known that I thought the deep seven person rugby is a sport. I didn’t even know that was a separate sport from regular rugby, and now I’m absolutely all in on this sport. It’s the

Kathryn Rubino:

Best. Listen, I’m a big fan of the Gold Zone coverage myself. I’m here for it. But that wasn’t the only crazy sporting thing. Obviously lawyer racing is what happened because we had a winner of the Spa Grand Prix, but then after the fact, the regulations got involved and the winner George Russell was declared disqualified.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. So you’re excited that you got to have a sporting event determined by lawyers after the fact.

Kathryn Rubino:

I’m just saying it’s related. Why was Louis Hamilton? Because his car was 1.5 kilos. Kilos underweight.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. His car was Too light.

Kathryn Rubino:

Too light. So it goes faster. So that’s against the regulations. So our hero, Louis Hamilton got to win, although it was a crappy way to win. I’ll take the points.

Joe Patrice:

Sure. Okay. So that all happened. Yeah, no, otherwise, pretty good. Nice warm weekend. Now it’s a little drizzly, but it’s been, it was a lovely

Kathryn Rubino:

Summertime

Joe Patrice:

Summer weekend. It wasn’t too hot. It wasn’t too cold. It was perfect before we

Kathryn Rubino:

April 23rd. Yeah.

Joe Patrice:

I don’t think that’s it. I think it’s the 25th or whatever from the I get it. I know the reference you’re making. There you go. Alright, well, with that said, maybe we will jump into this unless there’s more Olympic discourse. Anyone has,

Kathryn Rubino:

I always want to talk about the Olympics. Simone Biles is having the redemption arc she has written for herself. We’re halfway through. Well, I guess the qualifiers have happened. None of the finals, whether it be team or event have happened yet, but I am here for it. I watched it twice yesterday and that was not enough.

Joe Patrice:

Alright, well, with the closing out Olympic discourse correctly with trumpets, we’ll move on to our actual subjects to talk about what do we want us to talk about this week. But I guess let’s start with the big law conversation, just because I thought this was an interesting story. It’s an offhand remark, but it’s one that I think is worth some conversation. A general counsel for a mining company was chatted up by another legal publication and over the course of talking about the future of the legal industry, this general counsel said, yeah, I think partners should be paid less and associates paid more instantly becoming the most popular client

Kathryn Rubino:

For associates. Anyway. No, I mean I think it’s interesting because we’ve been talking a lot about these sort of skyrocketing paydays for partners that we’re talking $20 million is the number that’s been thrown around, and that’s very much the high end, but it’s because they bring business with them. It’s great to, hardworking associates are certainly vital to the matters that they are specifically working on, but the reason why you’re seeing these crazy partner paydays is because they don’t just work on the, they’re not responsible. They’re not bringing the money just because of the hours that they bill, but for the relationships that they are also bringing with them that allow other people to bill their hours. So there’s a real value towards this kind of a rainmaking partner being able to bring, not just work to keep themselves busy, but to keep other people busy.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, I mean, I get that. So what I thought was interesting about it is I hear what you’re saying about partners and obviously partners do a lot of things that deserve compensation. That said the model, I think for an entity, this large Anglo-American company that he was faking for, to what extent there is some mercenary level of partners moving around and bringing their business with them, but this is a big entity that has a shortlist of firms. It’s an entity that has relationships at a firm based level, and they might have relationship partners, but those relationship partners aren’t necessarily running a lot of the business that they have. They go to ex firm because somebody’s there, but the origination credit and stuff like that, most of it’s going to different folks. And it struck me, if you are one of these clients whose relationship is firm based rather than necessarily matter to matter with one individual partner, then the associates really are the people that you’re choosing to do your business with.

They are the people who are grinding out the work for you. And so the idea that the leverage be, I mean there’s going to be a lot of money. It’s probably going to be the same amount of money, but that the leverage be pushed towards the top end and not the folks at the bottom can be problematic. It leads to higher turnover at those ranks, which is something that as a client who relies on those folks you might not be happy with, it leads to a bunch of wasted money because you have new people coming in who need to be trained on the matter, and they’re billing a bunch of hours doing stuff that actually has advancing the ball. It was an interesting take, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought I could see how a large institutional client might think that this is useful.

Kathryn Rubino:

I see what you’re saying, but I also wonder if the term associate is a little bit too broad because I am incredulous at the notion that any client cares which first year associate gets thrown on a matter, or even second, potentially even third. But I think there’s probably a very big difference between an eighth year associate or an income partner or of counsel depending on the firm. I think a lot of those Nate titles are similar across different firms, and I think that that is true, but I’m not sure about that grind level. It doesn’t matter who is double checking the priv log kind of hours. I don’t think that most partners could point out a first year associate that’s working on their matter out of a lineup,

Joe Patrice:

But I don’t think they need to. I think the concern is an operational concern, right? Like you are trying to get the most efficient and lowest bill if you’re the client, and if your argument is that the model has gotten so skewed that even with the modest raises we’ve been seeing for associates, the model is skewed in a way where partners are taking a lot more than the associates and the associates feel burnt out, leave high turnover. Those are issues that you don’t necessarily, they may be faceless to you, but those are issues that are driving your bill. I think it’s an interesting thing that might require more scientific study amongst, I would be very interested to ask more law department heads about this and whether or not they have ever tried to really get to the quantify this.

Kathryn Rubino:

I also wonder if it matters what kind of, you’re talking about a litigation, are you where there’s maybe more strategy involved? Are you talking about an m and a deal? You’re talking about some other kind. I think I wonder if that also matters to a client’s perception of where the real value is.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, I think fair. Okay. Well, big story we had last week as far as readers go was one that asked the question, how much does a politician really own their name? In this instance, it was Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who served in the Trump administration, but then ran a never Trump campaign during the primaries. She ultimately decided that she was going to say, just kidding, after calling Trump mentally unfit and unhinged, she has endorsed him. That said, a lot of her voters who were Republicans who voted for her specifically because they refused to support Trump, have gone ahead and created a little political, they have a political action committee, and they named it Haley voters for Harris. In fact, they had it before. This is a fact of the letter that not a lot of it technically isn’t long enough that there’s latches or anything, but it’s somewhat damning that this organization was called Haley Voters for Biden for a long time, and Nikki Haley thought nothing of it. It became Haley voters for Harris, and now she writes a cease and desist saying that her name, image and likeness cannot be used in this way because she doesn’t believe in any of this. Now, obviously, SEC cares a lot about their NIL, but it got you thing the organization replied with basically get bent. Yeah. Their take on it was, that’s not how election law works, and there’s nothing in what we’re doing that suggests you’ve endorsed Harris. We are saying we are Haley voters, not that Nikki Haley has done this.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah. I mean, I think it’s interesting also, not the only person who has endorsed Harris, whose name is being used in all sorts of organizations. There’s a bunch of swifties for Harris or for Kamala. Not that she is not for Harris. Taylor Swift has not endorsed any candidate as of yet. She said some damning things about Donald Trump in previous elections, but that’s just a way that people organize and a way that people feel like there is something in common in that way. These are people who voted against a seemingly overwhelmingly popular within their GOP primary candidate for somebody else, and that’s the way that they find kinship amongst each other.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. It just strikes me that if you got into a world where you got to as a public figure politician, you got to own the name of anybody, not just your name, but anybody evoking your name for things that you get involved with that seems like a slope that would be quite slippery and prevent us from having any sort of honest communication. The other thing, if they change their name to something incredibly generic like dirt pack or something, then it doesn’t communicate what they’re trying to communicate, which is, Hey, those of you who like us, were Republicans who didn’t buy into this nominee, come to us. And that’s a political message that you should have the right to convey clearly,

Kathryn Rubino:

And it is part of someone’s at least political identity to say that I voted for Nikki Haley. I mean, I didn’t, but that one voted for Nikki Haley. That is a part of, that’s a relevant bit of information that as a political statement means something very specific. Yeah.

Joe Patrice:

Anyway, it was an interesting back and forth, the cease and desist look. One thing that some folks mentioned, and I also put this in my article, it did somewhat seem that this might not be a serious cease and desist. It might well be that she’s

Kathryn Rubino:

Fully a safe face kind of.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. She’s fully aware of this being useless, but she wants to make sure that the audience of

Kathryn Rubino:

One wanting a political career in the future of a party that may or may not still be run by Donald Trump, therefore.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, exactly. So it seemed like that might have been a little bit of that, and hey, that’s what cease and desist letters are for. Right. They’re often for,

Kathryn Rubino:

They’re not filed with any court. It’s not.

Joe Patrice:

Sometimes it’s fair warning to avoid things, but a lot of the time just, I know I don’t have any actual legal claim. Let me,

Kathryn Rubino:

Well, there’s also I think a range for sure of cease and desist and the whole category that is, I can’t possibly make this argument in front of a judge with a straight face, but here we go is that’s not a zero number. Yeah,

Joe Patrice:

No, it’s fair. And that’s why responses to cease and desist are subtypes the most entertaining

Kathryn Rubino:

Get bent. I liked

Joe Patrice:

It. Well, they didn’t say that. No, I know. They were much more polite. They wished her well in the future and said that they greatly respected her, which is why they were her voters in the first place. But also,

Kathryn Rubino:

I mean, it’s also interesting as a political move because again, I mean, I sort of understand the notion that if Donald Trump continues to dominate the Republican party, she needed to maintain that access to those levers of power, but also she’s alienating people who’ve gone to a voting booth and voted for her. So I think that that is also an interesting dynamic as a politician. It’s really throwing up your middle finger to

Joe Patrice:

Threatening to sue the people who voted for you is a choice.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah, it’s a choice.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. That’s a line I should have had in the article, but that’s good. Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:

We’ll workshop it in the future. Yeah,

Joe Patrice:

We get it

Chris Williams:

Here. That counts.

Joe Patrice:

All right. We’re back. Chris. There’s a judge who is a little trigger happy,

Chris Williams:

And for some reason it’s surprised that she got in trouble for it. It starts off normal enough. There’s just a judge who was at a friend’s party, don’t have the exact details on what started the Rowdiness, but there was some rowdiness. There was a group of, I think four black teenagers or what have you. At some point, they’re trying to get their car keys off the property, which to me sounds like something somebody trying to leave might be doing. She then threatens to shoot them. No. She then says, invokes her job as a judge, demands that they get off the property. Eventually the police come. She’s like, oh, if they’ll come back, I’ll shoot them. She’s trying to get the police to do her bidding. The police are like, we can’t do that. She’s like, I have your back in court. Don’t worry about it. So all these things are just egregious abuses of authority. There was a committee that was like, she shouldn’t be sitting as a judge, and she’s like, but what did I think?

Kathryn Rubino:

For a bunch of different reasons, there is different facts I can pull out and be like, that was it,

Chris Williams:

And it was weird to write it in triage, which of the bad things was the worst? I ended on her functionally pledging fidelity to the police is the worst thing because I generally do think it is a separation of powers issue and a judicial legitimacy issue, and that affects everybody’s likely situated as her threatening to shoot kids is also bad. If I was a more sanctity of Life day, then maybe that would’ve been the biggest issue, but the fact that I had to do that calculus, it’s something a judge should have factored in. It’s a party, but you’re never not wearing robes.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. Well, and that’s really the issue is that we live in a world where we’re supposed to anyway, where appearance of impropriety is the standard, and if you are going around saying, I’m a judge and here’s me throwing my authority, then you’ve blown past that,

Chris Williams:

And especially at a time where we are seeing a clear broadening of executive authority. There are growing numbers of cop cities throughout the United States, and we didn’t even mention this in small talk, but recently Donald Trump was like, Hey, vote for me. It’ll be the last time you have to do it. So in between the Supreme Court saying Presidents have criminal immunity,

Kathryn Rubino:

Immunity,

Chris Williams:

And him being like, I’m not saying dictatorship, but come on, this is a

Kathryn Rubino:

Really weird, but I’m not saying it. I’m not

Chris Williams:

Saying it. You can’t not see that coming, but it’s a weird time for anybody down in robes to play handmaiden to the cops, be they top cop of the country. In the case of Alito and Thomas or the little blue folks running around shooting kids.

Joe Patrice:

It’s interesting you mentioned the, you don’t have to vote again. I think a lot of folks did read that as a dictatorship moment. I actually think that

Kathryn Rubino:

He’s like, I’ll be dead next time.

Joe Patrice:

Well, no, I actually read it slightly different. I mean, I read it that way, but I also think it speaks to something slightly different that is more innocent, but also somewhat more damning of him speaking to the voters that he was talking to. It was basically, look, I really don’t care about how this country operates. I just need you to vote for me so I can get out of all these criminal things and then I don’t care anymore. You don’t have to care about me anymore. I just need to get myself out. From my perspective, the innocent read of it was so deeply cynical about how I really don’t care about any of this policy stuff. I’m just here in it for myself. You don’t have to care after me.

Chris Williams:

I hear you, Joe. I respect your good faith interpretation of Donald Trump. I’m not sure how, oh,

Joe Patrice:

He’s not good.

Chris Williams:

But yeah, this is also the guy who was like, I’m going to be dictator from it for it just a day. So just dictator for a day guy saying, this is the last time. Never again. I’m going to have to weigh that in favor of maybe it’s dictatorial.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. Again, it’s not a good thing to say that I don’t care about it except for my own personal gain, but very interesting times of what else is going on.

Kathryn Rubino:

I think that might be it. I don’t know. There’s too much, we can’t get into all of it, right? I mean,

Joe Patrice:

Right. Well, we have recording.

Kathryn Rubino:

We talked about the election there at the end, and finally the last horse has crossed the finish line, Biden’s finally talking seriously about court

Joe Patrice:

Reform. Well, and that’s what I was about to say. We can’t really talk about that because the details of it are being released later as we are recording before they have been released. So that will probably, depending on what it is, factor big into next week.

Kathryn Rubino:

But I think that sort of as a baseline, something that you, I think had put on social media is really relevant, that it changes the baseline going forward for the Democrats. I think that Joe Biden was so hesitant to even consider court reform that coming out with some specific proposal, even mere months before he stops having the job, a little late friend. But I think it does sort of set theBar that if Democrats win 2024, that has to be one of the top priorities and something that’s on a lot of people’s sort of top of mind. It’s interesting to have the court in a really real way beyond the ballot.

Chris Williams:

Yeah. I don’t think this is properly legal, but we are talking about Biden’s remaining term. One thing I saw recently that I thought was stupid, but they were saying that, oh, Biden’s not going to run for the next election. Why does he still have the nuclear codes? And it’s not like he’s not still president. He still has his term. Have you seen any, even if they are fringe, any whisperings of legal suits that might happen with Biden?

Joe Patrice:

No. There’s no legal argument for this. It is just complete gibberish the argument to the extent the argument exists, and people like Jonathan Turley have raised it. So as I said, gibberish Turley’s argument is, well, if he’s incompetent to run again, then therefore he can’t continue to serve. Except he didn’t say, I’m not running because I’m not competent. He said, I’m not running because, well, I’m not going to win. Internal polling suggests I’m not going to win. Whether that’s whatever the reason, maybe that actually is because some voters think he might not be competent, but that doesn’t change that he in fact believes he is, which means there’s no 25th amendment problem. But look, Turley has to come up with something to say to the audiences to get on the news, which is the way in which he makes most decisions. Law

Kathryn Rubino:

Professor Jonathan Charlie, for those who may aren’t as in the weeds about this kind of stuff.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, he’s somebody that I find particularly fascinating because he’s somebody who I presume knows better, but chooses to make arguments seemingly tailored toward how can I find myself on TV soon? Which I find fascinating from an outsider perspective that a person would craft their arguments that way. So there’s a lot of coverage of him

Chris Williams:

Over above law. At what point does it begin to look bad for the people that host his nonsense?

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. Well, that’s a good question. New York Post, he wrote an article for the post bit ago, year or two ago, which was a smoking gun article where he’d found the email that proves that Joe Biden was illegally using the vice presidency to do blah, blah, blah. But the email was from 2018, which was famously when Joe Biden was not the vice president because Mike Pence was, Hey,

Chris Williams:

Don’t let time get in the way of alternative facts.

Kathryn Rubino:

Well, mediocre legal take, so

Joe Patrice:

Time is a relative thing, but it’s not that relative. It turns out, as it turns out. But it took, speaking of time, it took the New York post 24 hours, all 23 and a half hours to figure out that this had happened, at which point they removed the reference. Unfortunately, without that reference, the whole articles comes apart, became gibberish to use the term again. But that’s kind of what I mean, where he just is kind of coming up with things that are provocative. But as you pointed out, Chris, at what point do the outlets that he deals with have concerns like the post about having that cabin or the hill where he writes a lot of his stuff. Very interesting. Yeah. He had another easily verifiable false claim in the Hill just last week, which seems like a

Kathryn Rubino:

Problem. Yeah, yeah. Stop giving him a platform.

Joe Patrice:

Seems like that would be a smart thing to do. But here we are.

Kathryn Rubino:

Here we are.

Joe Patrice:

Well, with that thing said, you should be listening to the show. Get new episodes when they come out. You should be giving reviews, stars writing things. You should listen to the Jabot Kathryn Show. I’m a guest on the Legal Tech Week journalist round table every week. You should listen to the other shows on Legal Talk Network. Read Above the Law. Send us tips at tips at Above the Law dot com as you have them. You should be following us on social media at ATL blog at Joseph Patrice, at Kathryn one at Writes for rent. Also Blue Sky. I’m Joe Patrice over there. Otherwise, everybody’s the same, and that I think brings us to the end. Peace. Peace.

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