Joe Patrice is an Editor at Above the Law. For over a decade, he practiced as a...
Kathryn Rubino is a member of the editorial staff at Above the Law. She has a degree...
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021....
Published: | July 24, 2024 |
Podcast: | Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer |
Category: | News & Current Events |
As soon as J.D. Vance found himself on the GOP ticket, everyone who remembered him from his Yale Law days shared their thoughts and brought out their receipts. “JD’s rise is a triumph for angry jerks everywhere,” isn’t a ringing endorsement. The campaign also tried to pull a fast one with some tricky phrasing about his time on the Yale Law Journal. Kirkland & Ellis adopts a carrot and stick approach — rewarding associates for recruiting and punishing partners for leaving. And we talk about the Baldwin case.
Special thanks to our sponsors Metwork and McDermott Will & Emery.
Joe Patrice:
Welcome to another edition of Thinking Like A Lawyer. I’m Joe Patrice and I’m joined.
Kathryn Rubino:
Hi Joe Patrice.
Joe Patrice:
I’m joined as per use by Kathryn Rubino and Chris Williams. We all are at Above the Law, and this is our weekly show where we go over the big stories from the week that was in legal. But first, as we always do, we begin with a little bit of small talk and then our little small talk segment, Let’s chat.
Kathryn Rubino:
Yeah. I feel like I’m very jazzed for the upcoming Olympic games and almost like on cue, all of the sports stories that I generally follow are getting pretty messy, which is the best, right? The WNBA team beating the Olympic team after some notable people were not placed on the Olympic team is Chef’s Kiss. Beautiful. Just the highlights from that game, everyone should watch just to see what happens when Petty becomes powerful.
Joe Patrice:
I thought, I mean South Sudan nearly knocking off the men. Yes, that was Wild. Vegas had that game. The spread in that game closed at something like 43 and a half. So South Sudan beat that by losing by one.
Kathryn Rubino:
Yeah, yeah. It was 1 0 1 to a hundred I believe was the Final Score. Wild.
Joe Patrice:
And even so, only 42 and a half points off,
Kathryn Rubino:
And even non-Olympic Sports over the weekend, the F1, the Hungarian Grand Prix got very messy and you don’t even have to care about any of the individuals and who won, although Oscar Ptri did win his first Grand Prix, but you just have to know that during the course of the race, everyone is micd up and we have access to those radio conversations as do the rest of everyone else’s competitors too. And to just know that both the current champion as well as the points leader Max for Stepin and Orlando Norris, who came in second controversially their conversations with their teams on the radio were so bitchy. It was wonderful. I mean, max was just complaining at the strategists on his team at everybody. Louis Lewis Hamilton, who he passed and then crashed into. It was a whole thing, and Lando Norris’s Radio was basically his team trying to guilt trip him. It was very entertaining. It really has me hyped for the upcoming Olympics. Plus I watched the Simone Biles documentary, which also all on high
Chris Williams:
very sporty Weekend.
Joe Patrice:
Yeah, that’s sport.
Kathryn Rubino:
I feel like it was a whole, it’s a vibe.
Joe Patrice:
I had a quasi sport weekend college football. The video game is back, which is a quasi-legal story. Obviously this is a game that was very popular and ceased production 10, 11 years ago because ultimately someone realized, Hey, you can’t steal stuff. I think I mentioned this the last time we talked, but now I’ve had an opportunity to play it a bit in my, I’m one of those folks. I think this is a popular way of playing this game. I don’t necessarily pick my favorite team to coach out of the gate. I pick somebody who’s in dire straits and try to build them up over a few years to right the ship. So I took on UMass, which is a very troubled program as success goes. So I’ve taken them on, we’re Bowl eligible, so it’s exciting. It’s been a rough year. We do have to play Georgia, but I’m helping them out. Hopefully this will get me a better job offer in a year or two of this game. And yeah,
Chris Williams:
Thank you for your virtual service.
Joe Patrice:
Listen, Spencer Hall, who covers college football as well as Formula One, I guess, but he was talking with Bomani Jones about this the other day, and as he said, somebody has to coach up those virtual men and it has to be, you make them succeed in the virtual classroom and on the field. So that’s what I’ve been doing.
Chris Williams:
I’ve realized just during small talk that I’m so out of the sports loop. When Kathryn said Grand Prix, I figured pri would be French, but to hear the word Grandin or French accent, I was like, oh shit. So in the culture, it never even crossed my mind if that wasn’t English. But yeah, speaking of culture, I had a good weekend, spent a lot of it resting, which I’m sure all of the big law attorneys listening can relate to. Watched a show called Solo Leveling. It came out with this. It’s an anime one season, completely different vibe from food wars, but still very good. So good. In fact, actually went on to do something I rarely do and read the, actually, I don’t think I’m saying it wrong, but it’s not the manga, it’s coming out of South Korea.
Joe Patrice:
So yeah,
Chris Williams:
There’s a difference. It’s like a champagne sparkling wine thing. Manga is a thing out of Japan, so it is different, but it’s a really good read. I’m on again. It started out the week and I’m on chapter one 40 out of 200, so I was in binging it, but it’s really nice.
Joe Patrice:
Yeah. Well good. Alright, so with all of that said, I think we can close out our small talk segment and get back to regular conversation. So things are, we didn’t talk about this things got a little wild in the political arena over the weekend. We lost a candidate, we got a new one. It seems, although not official yet, though it seems to be quickly coalescing around official who is a lawyer. But rather than talk about that because that’s new and we try as much as possible to talk about things that was, let’s talk about Trump’s running mate, who also is, he’s a product of Yale Law School because Yale Law School does nothing but produce troubling situations. What’s going on? What happened soon after he got named to this ticket?
Kathryn Rubino:
Well, I think it’s kind of interesting because Faithful Above, the Law readers certainly are familiar with JD Vance and his work, but I think that the Google searching for his name really kind of picked up and for example, the fact that he has a big law alumni was relevant. The fact that his wife resigned her position at MTO shortly, I think simultaneous with the announcement that he was officially the candidate that all was relevant, but also his law school roommate, well I won’t say came out of the woodwork because that implies that he’s not his own thing, which
Joe Patrice:
He’s state senator,
Kathryn Rubino:
He’s state senator, I believe, Senator Josh McLaurin, and he came and he’s talked about Vance previously as he started to mount his political career. I mean Vance of course, making public these private conversations that McLaurin and Vance had about Donald Trump in 2016. You might’ve heard that Vance privately referred to Trump as America’s Hitler, and those were the conversations he had with McLaurin and he immediately took, after it became public that JD Vance was officially the vice presidential candidate for the Republicans. Also came online and said that J d’s rise is a triumph for angry jerks everywhere that he’s angry and vindictive and a perfect fit for Trump’s revenge. So you know who Kanye is voting for?
Joe Patrice:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it seems as though the act of living with JD Vance, it sours people. So we’ll see how that affects OSHA’s decisions going forward. But at least for McLaurin, it seemed like it was a unfortunate experience. I assume he, well,
Kathryn Rubino:
Obviously
Joe Patrice:
Take milk.
Kathryn Rubino:
They actually kept in contact through Oh, I get your,
Joe Patrice:
Yeah, I was trying to say something there like, come on
Kathryn Rubino:
Man. Okay. Okay. Joe was funny, but they obviously kept in contact through 2016, which is why they have these private conversations that McLaurin can go ahead and make public. I think it is interesting, and also that’s not the only former Yale classmate that we now have more information about or it’s coming more tensions being paid to it. And I just don’t mean his wife, Usha Vance, who also was in Yale with all of these folks, but Jamila Giovanni, who is actually a Canadian politician as well. His comments, I think from a year or so ago that came out when he said that the reason why Vance got into politics, because remember he became famous because he wrote, he’s a writer, he wrote Hillbilly Elegy. Well, he’s
Joe Patrice:
A hedge fund guy is really what he is. He’s a financier.
Kathryn Rubino:
Sure. But there are plenty of hedge fund guys who toil away in obscurity and a lot of wealth.
Joe Patrice:
Oh, I what? I see what you mean.
Kathryn Rubino:
I see
Joe Patrice:
What you mean. Yes, go on.
Kathryn Rubino:
So the reason why I became known is he wrote Hillbilly Elegy, and according to Giovanni, the reason why he went and he made that switch from sort of writing and commentary to politics is because he was butt hurt over all of the bad press that the movie adaptation of Hillbilly Elegy got that the Rotten Tomato scores were what pushed was a straw that broke the camel’s back and made him sort of go into politics.
Chris Williams:
Wait, we have a double butt hurt ticket. Because I think one of the big reasons Trump run was because Obama was like, you’ll never be president.
Joe Patrice:
No, that’s true.
Chris Williams:
Oh, that’s great.
Kathryn Rubino:
I mean, as Mac Lauren said, this is perfect.
Chris Williams:
I love this season of downfall.
Joe Patrice:
Now of course, the point you raise Hillbilly Elegy a book that only ever got written because Yale law professor Amy Chu had decided to tell Vance that he could convert one of his papers into a book. So once again, we can blame her for something that went wrong with this country. Meanwhile, her husband is representing RFK Jr in his fight to say that it’s illegal for Facebook to censor him when he says that vaccines cause autism and stuff. So all around Yale law school really representing, if I could transition slightly on the Yale front, another aspect of the rollout advance that was interesting and caused a little bit of nerdy law school back and forth is that in the announcement that the campaign released, they pointed out that he was a lot of his accomplishments and noted that he was editor, he was editor of the Yale Law Journal, which is a little, there’s a red flag when there’s not articles in words when it’s not.
Kathryn Rubino:
Editor and editor are both very different,
Joe Patrice:
And I think what happened there is when they realized it was not accurate to say the editor, but just an editor, they balked and said, Me Tarzan, you editor, and just had no article, which was a clever ploy to try and deceive some people, but in reality he was, as people who worked on journals know he was one of the various staff editors because law journals have a hundred editors, bunches of them who just kind of check sites. Then there are higher levels where you move on to be like an articles editor, a notes editor, the editor in chief, the managing editor, all of those jobs, he didn’t have one of those jobs, but they kind of made it seem like he did. So this got reported that this was a little bit deceptive. I took the stance that this is a lot deceptive, but kind of in a goofy dumb way. They want to confuse people into thinking that giving him the stolen valor of a higher position. Wow.
Kathryn Rubino:
Okay.
Joe Patrice:
That said, there was some law professors on social media started saying, this is ridiculous. It’s all the same. And all I could think is, what are you talking about? Because I’ve done both jobs. I was a staff editor and then the next year I got promoted to articles editor, and those are very, very different jobs, one of which requires you to have distinguished yourself at the lower job because you’re going to take on a ton more responsibility in the second one. So no, I don’t think it’s the same to pretend they’re the same, but I don’t know, maybe things have changed, maybe different journals have different rules for how they operate, but I Certainly thought,
Kathryn Rubino:
I certainly think it’s possible that different schools or different journals, even within the same school operate slightly differently, and maybe this is only people in the who are not lawyers. This is targeted to and for those folks, I’m not sure it matters
Chris Williams:
Not lawyers Don’t care, not lawyers don’t give a damn.
Kathryn Rubino:
Well, I think it’s something that they’ve heard enough that makes them seem smart. You hear about Obama’s law school accomplishments that, oh, that means he was really smart at what he did and being on a law journal regardless, even if you haven’t risen to the top level, still a notable accomplishment in that sense.
Chris Williams:
I think the average person will hear Yale Law and think that’s impressive. All the other accolades, they’re not familiar enough with it to understand why it’s relevant.
Joe Patrice:
Sure. But I agree, but I
Chris Williams:
Think for example, if I was to tell some people that were involved in academia that I was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, they’d be like, okay, that’s an honors society. If I was to say to a random off street, they’d be like, oh, what frat is that?
Joe Patrice:
Right. The least fun one. But also I do think that they get the concept that being in charge of one of the journals is a big deal. Obvious
Kathryn Rubino:
They wouldn’t have put it out there too,
Joe Patrice:
Right? Obama was president of the Harvard Law View, and we all know that, so we’re just going to say he was editor of the Yale Law Journal and make it, leave it open enough that somebody who doesn’t know any better can say like, oh, that’s the same as what Obama did when it is not in any way the same as what Obama did. I think there’s an attempt to draw a parallel to the achievements of a very recent successful president that I don’t know, it’s a little shady. That is not to take away from, if you make the Yale Law Journal, that is a great accomplishment, don’t get me wrong, but it is an attempt to sort of mislead folks to include it in this way, in this statement.
Chris Williams:
The thing that I think is weird is that I think there’s been a trend of anti-intellectualism and wanting to drain the swamp, but there’s also this habit of wanting to color yourself with the distinctions of academia, and I’m like, I don’t think that the people that they’re appealing to care that you got a 3.9 instead of a 3.7, this is minutiae that isn’t for their wheelhouse audience.
Joe Patrice:
See, and again, here’s the thing, I’m going to go different. I think it is, I think that all of this populism and anti-intellectualism stuff is all just upfront, deep down. They know that the same people who complain about the horrible Ivy Leagues all desperately understand that being a Yale Law School grad with a blah blah blah is super important and good, and I think that’s
Chris Williams:
Why in a disavowed sense, I don’t think, that’s not the rhetoric facially.
Joe Patrice:
No. Well, right, but that’s the thing. They fully really understand that, and you can see that in the statement, putting aside this fact that they trumpet the being an editor part, they talk about his Yale law school background constantly throughout this statement announcing him that was mentioned during Trump’s speech. They do get it. There’s a reason why the people that they put on the Supreme Court are they talk a big game and then they put on a bunch of Yale and Harvard grads and a CB, but there were separate issues there. But yeah, no, I think they are prestige hounds. They still are. They just like to pretend they aren’t. But anywho, excellent point though. Alright, big law Kirkland and Ellis is the biggest of big law, not in headcount, but certainly in money, which seems like that might be more important in the long term. Anyway, what is going on over at Kirkland
Kathryn Rubino:
So much? So very, very much. Two stories that we had actually are related in the sense that they’re about laterals. We’ve talked on the show obviously about moving between big law firms and what that looks like and it looks like the lateral market for associates is really starting to heat up. This is the sort of market that goes cyclical, different times, different markets, and what Kirkland has done is extended their associate referral programs. So if you are currently a attorney at Kirkland and Ellis and you successfully recommend a candidate internally and they get hired, you’re going to get a $50,000 check, which is delightful. And what’s noteworthy is they have had this program at different points in the past, but the most recent iteration was only for litigation. Now it’s for everyone, which really shows market increase in the corporate market. 2023 was really plagued by all these stories and layoffs, including at Kirkland of, because there was this sort of corporate slowdown, all these different sectors, m and a was a real low and all this kind of stuff. And now I think it’s a really good sign and they’re not the only firm that’s kind of come out a Sherman, the recently merged firm also, it has a $50,000 referral bonus. It’s a good sign. Lots of positive things if you’re looking too lateral.
Joe Patrice:
Yeah, I guess let’s break this one down before going to the other half of this story. Yeah. Alright. I am a little bit biased. I have worked as a consultant with a recruiting firm. I see what they do every day. I understand how it operates and so I’m a little biased against this idea. It strikes me as though I get it, it’s probably a little cheaper and not necessarily cheaper, but probably slightly cheaper to pay your existing associates referral fee rather than paying the recruiter. But it’s close. I mean, unless you’re hiring of counsel or something, it’s probably going to work out to be about the same. But what are you doing here? You’re limiting yourself to the recommendations of people you already have and there is some cultural benefit to that. It’s somebody who will get along, have at least one friend in the firm and there is a value to that. That said, you’re limited to their circles as opposed to with the recruiters, they have catalogs of people, they have been going out and meeting folks and learning people with various backgrounds across various firms with various experiences and they’re able to recommend to the firm a good slate of candidates from across a series of experiences. That’s always going to get you in the end, a better candidate than just saying, Hey, what’s your cousin up to? Or something like that.
Kathryn Rubino:
But these are not mutually exclusive. Yeah,
Chris Williams:
It seems like you can do both and also
Joe Patrice:
Well,
Chris Williams:
Yeah, and also there are other intangibles. I’m pretty sure it’s a great moose boost to morale and loyalty. If you’re like, the company cares enough about my opinions that they’re not only willing to pay me for them, but I get to pick my friend group. There’s some value in that way that you wouldn’t get from a recruiter who’s presumably doesn’t really give a damn about who they’re as long as they get slotted in.
Joe Patrice:
So the problem is this usually doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is very rare for somebody at a firm to say, I’m not looking. But then my friend called me and said, Hey, let’s go to Kirkland together. What will usually happen is somebody who is already on the market, usually somebody who already has a recruiter relationship and this bonus is intended to shank that relationship and pay somebody inside so they can get around having to pay the recruiter usually, because I have definitely seen this over the years where people get into fee fights about whether or not, oh, my friend said they’re going to get whatever and it, it’s not great move as far as relationships with recruiting goes. It’s also not a great move for the candidate in my mind because the candidate themselves, what happens when you hit a snag in the negotiations to move over?
Right now, your friend is getting in trouble. If you’re the one who says, well, I can’t like this. I need X, Y, Z, now it’s your friend who’s like, what the hell is with your person? Whereas with a recruiter, it’s somebody outside who can take that flack, who can push back, who can say things like, we actually need you to, they’re going to lose out on their bonus if they move. So you need to prorate their bonus from what they would’ve gotten at the other. All of those negotiations, which can get very uncomfortable for the referrer, can now be an outsider as opposed to somebody inside.
Kathryn Rubino:
There’s a real benefit to using professionals and I think that it cannot be understated. And I think that’s also a word to the wise. If you are in the lateral market and you’re like, oh, well I have a friend at Kirkland, I’ll tell them to put my resume in versus using an outside firm. Be aware that if you do have to engage in any level of negotiation, it’s significantly better to have a professional on your side during that entire process. Also, if you decide that, oh, well it’s not actually Kirkland that’s right for me, but such and such is right for me, whatever,
Joe Patrice:
It’ll only quibble with on your side because more technically an intermediary because the recruiter’s kind of working for both folks, I think that’s fair. But an intermediary, they’re
Kathryn Rubino:
Also can provide advice about whether or not something isn’t reasonable to make this request or that request and that’s information that you’re friend who works at Kirkland is not going to have. But I will say the other benefit to what Kirkland is doing, especially the fact that there have been so many news stories written about it, is it makes it clear that they’re in the market. And maybe that means more people give their resumes to recruiters who put it in at Kirkland or something like that, but it makes a clear statement that they are looking to get bigger, that they feel very confident about that corporate market, and I think that’s noteworthy in and of itself, even if they wind up never paying any of their associates any money for referrals.
Joe Patrice:
Let’s talk about how they are very concerned about headcount and the flip side of their concern about
Kathryn Rubino:
Headcount. I kind of think of it like carrot and stick, right? On one end the side, they’re giving money in order to get the people that they want in-house on the other side, they’re threatening money in order to keep people. Story came out that the partnerships policy at Kirkland is changing. It used to be that folks could at Kirkland, when you’re a partner and you’re an equity partner, about 55% or up to 55% of your compensation is deferred into the following year. And it used to be when you left, you would get that money, which you would actually earned it the previous year. It was deferred compensation and the firm would pay it out to you now and what is likely a very clear effort to keep people where they are. They’re now saying that people will be forfeiting that deferred compensation if they leave.
Joe Patrice:
So partners who leave will all the billing, not all, but lots of the billing that they have already earned and done for the firm. The firm saying, if you leave us, we will keep it, not let you
Kathryn Rubino:
Have it. Correct. Have your share, which is if you are thinking about being an equity partner at Kirkland is certainly something you need to be aware of. There was kind of a little kind of footnote to that, the new policy, because they are shortening the amount of time at which they will pay back your capital contribution. Now, if you leave a firm, firms give you back your capital contribution and previously it could be up to a year, that’s not uncommon to take 12 months to get your capital contribution back and now they’re shortening that window to three months. So you will get the money quicker, which is very useful if you are trying to lateral and you need to put capital contributions in somewhere else, but it still means that there’s potentially millions of dollars that you were leaving on the table that either you personally or the firm that you’re lateral linked to will be making up.
Joe Patrice:
What gets me about this deal, and I haven’t read all of the details of it, it wasn’t my story, is this across the board with partners or are they being selective? And my question for that is if I’m
Kathryn Rubino:
A it’s discretionary,
Joe Patrice:
It is okay. If I’m a partner at Kirkland and I get named the head of the SEC, I don’t think Kirkland wants to piss me off. If I am at Kirkland and I’m moving to be the general counsel at BlackRock or something, I don’t think they want to piss me off, but if I’m moving to Latham, they’re going to try and screw okay.
Kathryn Rubino:
Yeah, it’s discretionary and it is interesting. I think that it definitely changes calculation if you are a partner. I think that that’s what they want to sort of shore up their equity talents. Listen, they have a large roster of income partners, which is a very different situation, et cetera, and they’re noted for laterally any one of a number of places. And I think that trying to shore up that equity talent that has access that are the rainmakers they have, the access to the client base and all that stuff is something that’s really important going forward.
Joe Patrice:
It doesn’t seem like a great policy, but here we are. It certainly would make me think twice if I were moving to Kirkland. I think
Kathryn Rubino:
That’s true for potential lateral, although the amount of money, as we said the start of this segment, they are in fact the richest law firm by several measures higher. It’s not even close. I think that the end of money they can throw around is the reason why it doesn’t really matter. And for the folks that are currently at Kirkland, they’re already kind of committed in the fact that they’ve changed. This doesn’t really change the number of years they’ve already kind of put in.
Chris Williams:
My question is why would they want to leave? You’re already at a top tier firm, they have locations, other places, what’s the appeal of going
Kathryn Rubino:
Elsewhere? I mean I think that if you have that brass ring of equity partnership, your calculus changes a little bit. It’s not just about the amount of money you can get in, but the sort of environment that you’re working in. And again, with such a big firm, sometimes there can be conflicts if you want to bring in new clients or if you want to do different sort of work. If you’re doing something that might be in conflict with some other giant firm client, that could be part of the reason why you want to leave. It could also just be the number of hours in environment as people already have that on their resume for forever are looking for somewhere where they like better.
Joe Patrice:
Yeah. There’s also situations with your deal, put aside conflicts like legal conflicted out. There’s conflicts with your colleagues too. You may have a good relationship with somebody, but there are people ahead of you in the feeding order who are going to take shares of that credit. If you move to a new firm, you now get the whole lion’s share of that that you’re getting from that client. There’s also different deals that people can operate under. Two, they get a base salary and then x percent of how much they and their team bills. Another firm might say, look, we can give you more guaranteed or we can give you the same guaranteed and a higher percentage of what your billing is. And that can be attractive too. And there’s also internal responsibilities. You can be the head of the department if you move over to white and Case or something like that. And so there are other factors. It is a good point though. It seems like this is the top place to be, but you also are dealing with a lot of other top people and so you might not be getting as much comp and accolades as you would if you became the bigger fish at a slightly different firm.
Kathryn Rubino:
Okay. Alec Baldwin is a free man.
Joe Patrice:
Yes, that is. No, real quick. We had a case where Alec Baldwin was on trial for involuntary manslaughter dealing with this situation where he had a prop gun that was a loaded gun and accidentally killed his cinematographer on this movie. This case was ultimately thrown out, which is rare for these sorts of situations to happen. But the abuse involved was pretty stark. This was a Brady violation, something that happens a lot in this world, but normally it’s something that ends up getting shrugged off and people say, ah, well they would’ve, it didn’t really impact the outcome, but in this instance, there was a box of ammunition that had been brought to law enforcement that theoretically could have supported if it was tested and turned out to be what it was purporting to be, yada, yada, yada. And at least if the defense had an opportunity to claim that that’s what it was, could have bolstered their theory.
And instead of turning it over as required by the constitution, the prosecutors just said, we have decided we don’t think it’s relevant. So we don’t want it to be even indexed as though it’s related to the case. You can’t do that. That is not how that works. While there are a lot of possible ways of dealing with this sort of situation for a judge, the judge found the given how far along in the case that word with jeopardy having attached obviously a mistrial and retrying, it was on the table, but the judge felt that the violation was so egregious that dismissal with prejudice was the only thing that was on the table, which is amazing. Just it is so rare to have something like
Chris Williams:
That happen. Did you get the white people were mad though?
Joe Patrice:
Sure
Chris Williams:
Technicality language.
Joe Patrice:
Yes. And so we got the usual cavalcade of people saying like, oh, he got off on a technicality. And by technicality they mean the constitution, which probably shouldn’t be referred to as a technicality, but yeah, that is the thing. And it’s classic bad legal take of people saying, well, this is just a technicality that prosecutors have to follow basic constitutional protections. And in this case, they decided not to.
Kathryn Rubino:
And I think it’s also important because you have to have prosecutors understanding that these violations are not minor, that won’t be fixed by a judge, that they actually have to follow the constitution. They are given a ton of power by our law and order system, and there are repercussions when you don’t.
Chris Williams:
Quick thing, and this is how it works in my mind, these people that are mad about the technicality being due process or whatever being violated, that’s the voter base. The people, to link it back to the JD V conversation, the same people on, I will not call it Twitter, that are saying how you cannot search my home because that’s a HIPAA violation. That’s the people voting. That’s the people that aren’t caught up on the distinctions of if you were an editor or chief editor at a law review.
Joe Patrice:
Sure, sure, sure. It’s a problem. And Kathryn’s right, the value of this in a large is setting a signal because if you think that this was wildly egregious in this high profile case where the world was actually watching, imagine how often this is happening to some poor public defender who’s struggling against a budget to try and handle a bunch of cases because overburdened, how many times are they getting screwed and unable to even find out that they’ve been screwed over and their client has been screwed over. So having these sorts of moments where they’re very public smack downs of offices is important.
Chris Williams:
It makes me think about the YSO Rico case. If this wasn’t as high a profile a defendant and there was a judge Glenville, you’d have been shit out of luck.
Joe Patrice:
Yeah. Honestly, we had more to tie into this prosecutor thing, but we are so over time, maybe we’ll have more prosecutorial fun next week baby. Sounds likely. Alright, so let’s close out. Thanks everybody for listening. You should subscribe to the show so you get new episodes when they come out. You should leave reviews stars, write things. Always helpful to get more people to see the show because that’s how those algorithms work. You should listen to the Jabot Kathryn’s other podcast. I’m also a guest on Legal Tech Week Journalist Round table. You should be listening to the other shows on the Legal Talk Network. With all of that, you should be reading Above the Law, that way you read these and more stories Before we chat about them here, you should be following it on social media. It’s at ATL blog. I’m at Joseph Patrice Kathryn’s at Kathryn one. Chris is at Writes for Rent. Same with Blue Sky, except I’m Joe Patrice over there. What else? Is there another one? I thought there was, but now I’m thinking
Chris Williams:
Send in Tips
Joe Patrice:
Announcement. Yes, always send tips to [email protected]. That way we can follow things. And yeah, we’ll talk later.
Kathryn Rubino:
Peace.
Chris Williams:
Peace.
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Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer |
Above the Law's Joe Patrice, Kathryn Rubino and Chris Williams examine everyday topics through the prism of a legal framework.