Law School Thought Pregnant Women Not Like Us

Episode Notes

Transcript

Joe Patrice:

Hello. Welcome to another edition. Thinking Like. A Lawyer. I’m Joe Patrice.

Kathryn Rubino:

Hi, Joe. Patrice.

Joe Patrice:

That’s Kathryn. Rubino.

Chris Williams:

I’m Chris.

Joe Patrice:

And that’s Chris. Williams. Yeah. We are editors at Above, the Law, and we meet every week to give you a quick rundown of the biggest stories of the week that was in legal. So while you should be reading Above the Law, some of you don’t have time to do that. So we give you our rundown as well as even if you do read them, we give some analysis and deeper cuts into the stories.

Kathryn Rubino:

Had some time to marinate on the stories. There might be updates, et cetera,

Joe Patrice:

Other people’s opinions. It’s not just the author of the piece. Right? Yeah. So while we begin each show, as always with a little bit of small talk, small talk

Kathryn Rubino:

Holiday edition.

Joe Patrice:

Ooh, holiday.

Kathryn Rubino:

Joe, how was your Thanksgiving?

Joe Patrice:

I survived.

Kathryn Rubino:

Sure. Yes. In a way that mattered.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, in a way that mattered. I was in the hospital from Wednesday until late yesterday. Oh shit. Yeah. So it was touch and go there for a bit, but I am okay now. I glad

Chris Williams:

That is a serious thing,

Joe Patrice:

Not okay. But I am stable now and we’ll figure out what to do with my heart condition and

Chris Williams:

Yeah. Well that’s good. I’m sorry, I thought it was like a, oh no, the holidays by Humbug,

Joe Patrice:

I mean that was how that was structured. Right? I did that on

Chris Williams:

Purpose. Oh, okay. Okay. So you’re the asshole here, obviously. Like I’m like, oh, I’m sorry for being, I’m sorry. I felt the empathy swelling, and I was like,

Joe Patrice:

Oh,

Chris Williams:

I need to explain this. Okay, we’re good. We’re good. No,

Joe Patrice:

No, no, no. That’s how we structured it. Yeah, no, I do have,

Kathryn Rubino:

Since you were in the hospital with a heart condition,

Joe Patrice:

I have a heart condition, a preexisting situation that I never really had symptoms for, but it does mean that I have some risky possible symptoms that all decided to manifest real strong on Wednesday, and the treatment that is supposed to protect me from them that failed. And so it was a little rough, but

Kathryn Rubino:

It’s not great.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, it’s not great. Shout out to everybody. I’m stable now, and they’re going to try and figure out why the device in my chest didn’t work. And yeah.

Chris Williams:

Now I’ve said this to you several times before on many a prior small talk, but Joe, this is at least medium talk. Fair enough,

Joe Patrice:

Fair enough. Yeah, no, so

Kathryn Rubino:

I mean, in fairness, I thought I was going to come in and here and kill with my story of oral surgery on Saturday, but I guess somebody has to steal all of the oomph from my story.

Joe Patrice:

You got oral surgery,

Kathryn Rubino:

I had wisdom teeth removed, but it doesn’t feel great.

Joe Patrice:

No. So

Kathryn Rubino:

I remember that’s heart thing. Yeah, man.

Chris Williams:

I’ll tell you, that really took the bite out of Kathryn’s story.

Kathryn Rubino:

I know. I had a whole little patter and now it’s gone.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. Well my problem was that patter was going way too fast.

Kathryn Rubino:

We have arrhythmia jokes.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. Thinking, Like, A. Lawyer your destination for the best.

Kathryn Rubino:

Did you stub your toe ventricle

Joe Patrice:

Tachycardia jokes?

Chris Williams:

No, actually I had a phenomenal weekend. I had a,

Kathryn Rubino:

At least one of us is winning.

Chris Williams:

Yeah. And I’m winning enough for the three of us. No. So the last three months have been, has it been three? Time is weird, but the last few months have been bad mentally. Over the weekend I had unexpected mental second wind, so I’m trying to make the most of it as I can. I’m doing stuff. I’ve been pushed off in the house for a year, so it’s nice. It’s nice. Recently cleaned out my closet, so now I have stuff that actually fits because the stuff that I had hung up was from, am near when Obama was president. So I finally have some things in my wardrobe that I can wear rather than just clutter. That looks nice. But yeah, it’s, it’s been nice so far.

Kathryn Rubino:

Well, I’m glad somebody’s having a good week. Yeah.

Joe Patrice:

Alright, well let’s move on with the show. Okay. So what do we want to talk about first here?

Kathryn Rubino:

Why don’t we talk about some law school finals?

Joe Patrice:

Okay. Law school finals time. That’s always a stressful time for people, but

Kathryn Rubino:

I mean, you would imagine it’s quadrupling, so if you were also not eight and a half, nine months pregnant.

Joe Patrice:

Well, that’s unfortunate timing, but

Chris Williams:

Well, the good news is even if that were to happen, usually the school is there to step in and accommodate to help you along there, right? Oh, sweet.

Kathryn Rubino:

This story comes to us from the Georgetown University Law Center. Brittany Lovely is a two L there and due this week, the first week of December, I think actually December 2nd is her official due date, but her first child, so can come early, can come late. Babies are notoriously on their own schedule, not ours. But the dates of the exams at Georgetown is between December 6th and 13th with potential makeup days between the 16th and the 18th of December. She spoke with the schools Title IX office. It was like, I don’t think this is going to work for me. Can either I take them earlier than the window sort of before her due date, or can I take them remotely from my home? And the Title IX office proposed these solutions to the law school and the law school was like, Nope, nope. They said, according to a petition that wound up going around complaining about this, that motherhood is not for the faint of heart and that she should instead, a few days, a few days after giving birth, come to the school with her newborn breastfeed during the exam and take her exams that way.

Joe Patrice:

See, that’s not even good for the other people taking the exams.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah, that’s a terrible idea. It’s a really awful, horrible, just really cruel and small-minded proposal all the way around. But sort of as I mentioned, there was a petition that got circulated by classmates of Lovely’s. I think over 7,000 people, alumni, faculty, students wound up signing it. And after this immense public pressure, the school’s like, ah, maybe there’s something we could do for you.

Joe Patrice:

I hear a lot of requests from people about stories of what’s going on between law schools and accommodations. And it’s kind of heartbreaking because a lot of times when people ask for accommodations, they don’t, the law school’s probably right. The accommodation they’re asking for is often much more than the school has to give. The school obviously is obligated to give some accommodations, but many of the stories we hear, the school has offered something that is very reasonable, but it’s not ideal. And there’s complaining about it. And those are sad stories often because many times the people involved in them waste a lot of money pursuing legal action against the schools and lose because they’re asking for too much. This is very much not too much. This was very, very much

Kathryn Rubino:

100%. And also she did unquote what you’re supposed to do. She worked through the school, the universities Title IX office, the Title IX office was like, these seemed like reasonable accommodations. And as part of the law school’s response and the initial denial of the accommodations we’re like, well, this is not fair to your fellow students. Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. If you are worried about the way that a either nine month pregnant end or brand new mom is going to skew the curve, you are wrong. You’ve messed up priorities Also, I mean, not for nothing, but I do want to point out, this is a two L and most of the true competition for grades is around your one L

Joe Patrice:

Classes, pairs about two L grades.

Kathryn Rubino:

You probably already know what you’re doing after graduation at this point,

Joe Patrice:

At least at a school like Georgetown. Obviously there are other schools where,

Chris Williams:

Let’s be honest, you guys about grades. You’re in Georgetown, you’re going to fail upward.

Kathryn Rubino:

Well,

Joe Patrice:

Sure. Your one L grades are going to those big law positions

Kathryn Rubino:

And all sorts of clerkships, et cetera, et cetera, which is another issue for another day. And I think the fact that the fellow students came out in force in support of lovely is really a great thing to see. And we don’t have actual details on what the accommodations that they agreed to are, but we do know that she’s content with them, which is great, which is great. But I think it’s really great that we know that this issue happens so that hopefully it doesn’t happen again that the law school, not the university. Be clear here that the law school sort of unnoticed that you can’t treat pregnant law students like shit and just go about your business and have no negative consequences. There’s at least a PR price to be paid.

Chris Williams:

The thing that I don’t get is, I mean, Georgetown’s been around for at least 10 years. It’s been around long enough to where this is likely not the first time that they’ve had a pregnant student who was about to give birth around exams. There should be some protocol or way that this is handled. So this feels like it’s part of the thing that makes this so bad in my mind is that they reinvented the wheel to be assholes.

Kathryn Rubino:

Well, again, yeah, we don’t know any of the details. And this is also, I think why it’s so important that we now know about this story and it’s kind of out there as part of what we are aware of. Because who knows what they might’ve told pregnant students five years ago, 10 years ago, et cetera, or maybe they had different accommodations available. Maybe somebody else was in charge of the office. Maybe that person was just like, oh, okay, I guess I can bring my newborn to the exam room.

Chris Williams:

Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:

I don’t know.

Chris Williams:

I think somebody would’ve mentioned that in tips,

Kathryn Rubino:

Or maybe they

Chris Williams:

Just a TO would be the place to know about that for the last decade or so.

Kathryn Rubino:

I will go into the exam the day after my due date and pray I don’t go into labor. Maybe that’s what they did

Joe Patrice:

For me. The issue is, aside from the accommodations that definitely should have been given, yada, yada, yada, the not for the faint of heart remark, just framed it in such a way, is to show that there was just open hostility, which seems like an odd thing for a school to be offering. But I mean, hey,

Kathryn Rubino:

I mean a Catholic school to boot, right?

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. I mean, Mary had to go into a manger. So why are you saying you’re

Kathryn Rubino:

Better when you compare this to a manger? Really? We’re helping you.

Joe Patrice:

And what is the little drummer boy in the three major, other than a study group getting you ready for your exam? They were going over outlines rumpa, bum bum.

Kathryn Rubino:

I do love me some Christmas music. This is really hitting me where I live.

Chris Williams:

Oh, no, no, no. The way to do this is be looking forward, be like, last Christmas I took the to exam. The very next day I gave birth to Jesus. There we

Joe Patrice:

Go. That’s a good one. All right. All she wanted for Christmas was an accommodation, and it seems like that happened.

Kathryn Rubino:

She eventually got it.

Joe Patrice:

Alright. Speaking of music as we were, no, no,

Chris Williams:

No. The transition there is, speaking of cry babies,

Joe Patrice:

Speaking of cry babies, I was going to say the greatest musician in his own mind is very upset.

Chris Williams:

So a widely popular musician, Drake, and drove himself to the Courtroom over getting his ass beat in a music battle. Talking about, of course, Drake and the Kendrick Lamar, you now have to say the in front of his name after this. This is one of, there’s been many a rap battle, but they very rarely end in lawsuits. So the amount of street cred Hedrick gets for this is phenomenal,

And it’s foil. The amount of shame that falls on the Drake household after this will be infamous. But anyway, details of the story, so not a lawsuit proper, but Drake and his lawyers served a petition alleging that UMGA Universal Music Group, Spotify at this point, probably Michelle Obama colluded or used algorithms or bots, what have you, to basically fake the numbers of times that the Kendrick song not like us, was played, nor to say that there were some market agreements, what have you, where there was a financial incentive for this to happen. So that’s what this lawsuit is primarily couched in. That was the first one. The next day there was also a lawsuit getting at UMG for allowing Kendrick to basically repeatedly call Drake a pedophile, but that was the second one that was not triaged as the priority, that defamation thing. And again, that’s not a suit proper, it’s just basically wanting to depose people, build a case. I

Joe Patrice:

Mean, that’s pretty much what it is. You don’t get those abilities without it.

Chris Williams:

But that’s like a nuanced, the thing, it’s a petition. He didn’t file suit proper.

Joe Patrice:

Yes. So sometimes what you can do, because actions don’t really trigger until you serve somebody, whatever, sometimes what you can do is send a letter along with a complaint and be like, just so you know, this is the complaint that it’s going to be unless you play ball. So as a way of trying to avoid it, but then you publicize it here, and so you aren’t avoid it. It is styled the first one as a RICO action, which as everybody knows as Pope Pat, Ken White always will talk about on social media, it’s never Rico. It is never really

Kathryn Rubino:

Rico. It’s never,

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, as Dr. House would say, it’s never lupus. It’s never Rico. The fact that he styled this as that was ridiculous. I thought Jason Kirk, who is a college football commentator, but I thought he had the best take on it, was the amazing thing about Drake is that he waited until Kendrick released 12 more songs to go back and say, you should remember he did beat my ass in this rap battle. Just a masterful move, friend. You could have let this go. We would’ve moved on to the new stuff.

Kathryn Rubino:

Also, if record companies had the ability to do this, they probably would’ve done it a bunch,

Joe Patrice:

Right?

Kathryn Rubino:

This would not be the first end or only time they had colluded to change the charts.

Chris Williams:

Yeah, there’s a bunch of explanatory theories out there. One, and I’m not sure how much weight this has, but it is out there, and it relates to the point that Joe made is that Drake actually just has a humiliation kink, and he was like, how can I have this happen at the worst time? Another theory is that Drake, no, Kendrick is going to be performing at the Super Bowl, and part of it is to have, there be some legal reasons why he wouldn’t perform not like us in front of millions of households.

Kathryn Rubino:

I mean, that’s probably the reason why, right?

Chris Williams:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:

Realistically,

Chris Williams:

Yeah. But another thing is to Joe’s point actually is if this thing is probably, if it is happening, it is ubiquitous in the art form or whatever, in the commercialization of pop music, part of the thing is like Drake has insider knowledge about this because UMG was doing that for his music. He was like, I know y’all are doing it because look at my sales eyeline wasn’t that popping. But the weird thing about it is, I feel like as soon as not like us dropped, it was on TV at baseball games. It was at football games. There was, oh, they played

Joe Patrice:

It at everything.

Chris Williams:

I feel like there were like Amish people listening to it. They were on the horses turning butter. It was everywhere. It was everywhere. It was musical covid. The way that spread was unnatural, but there was groundwork for it. But yeah, so as far as the legal merits of the case, there may actually be some, but as far as the cultural significance or the pr, I don’t see how even if Drake was to be like, Hey, I proved that the music industry is using algorithms to boost sales. It’s like, okay, that’s probably a wash since it goes to everybody. You still a pump for going to the reporting about this. So I don’t really see how it goes well for his career.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. I don’t think that the cases against the record companies have much to them. You could say that there is some degree of a defamation claim buried within the pedophile thing that said, until the Supreme Court gets rid of it, this is very much a public figure. This is very much in the style of a rap battle, which I think, I don’t know as though the Supreme Court’s ever opined upon it, but seems

Kathryn Rubino:

How actual malice works within,

Joe Patrice:

Well, no, the actual malice part, the public figure thing, yes. But I also think that they’ve never really had an occasion opine on it, but that seems like a rap battle would be at least somewhat similar to parody and satire and so on. I feel like a lot of the protections that we give those to make claims should probably apply to a rap battle. But

Chris Williams:

Yeah, and it’s great that these are words with legal significance because of the body of this work that Kendrick has released against Drake. I think there’s no question. There’s actual malice, there’s seething hatred.

Joe Patrice:

But legally, yes, right. The difference between actual malice as in hatred and actual malice as in the legal concept is a thing. It matters. It matters. Yeah. He’s not necessarily saying it, knowing it would be false. It seems like there have been rumors about these sorts of things, so it would fit within that. But yeah. All right. We’re back. My friend and yours, Jonathan Turley is back in the conversation, this guy. So this time though, he decided to take a shot at me directly. So this is kind of speaking of

Chris Williams:

Like a rap battle, speaking of legal dissing,

Joe Patrice:

Speaking of tracks, this all began about a year ago. About a year ago. He was swatted, the police were called, and they came to his house. Obviously he’d done nothing,

Chris Williams:

Which is unfortunate swatting on anyone.

Joe Patrice:

Indeed. And in fact, that was the point of my original article about this When it happened. I wrote about it and wrote about how this is bad and awful, and sorry that he had to go through it, but also I took the opportunity to speak a little bit about the concept of swatting and where it fits within the current legal moment. Because Turley, who wrote a book, if you read anything by him or watch him on TV or listen to him in anything, you might hear that he wrote a book called Age of Rage, because that’s all he talks about. And his logic there was that he took his own swatting situation and turned it into a big, this is because liberals are mad and violent. People

Kathryn Rubino:

Always be hustling mad.

Joe Patrice:

You got to

Kathryn Rubino:

Respect it and

Joe Patrice:

Did it to try and focus on his book. And I responded saying, I don’t really think there’s enough here to suggest that that’s what’s going on. I actually think that the deeper problem put aside the motivations of it, the deeper problem with the swatting situation is that this is something that can now be used because of the way in which the conservative legal movement has metastasized the gun problem. You used to be able to call the police about things and they would not show up with a SWAT van and a bunch of military grade weapons. But they do that now. And the reason they do that is because they have to legitimately fear that the people that they’re going to, if a false call is called in, it could escalate to that. And so because of the real fear that the civilians are armed, that leads to violent overreaction on the police side, and then that leads to tragedy. Anyway, I talked about that. He also said some stuff about how he thought it happened because the court system doesn’t take it seriously. Somebody just got 20 years for it. So I don’t know though. That’s true, but he said that was part of his argument. Anyway, I wrote this a year ago about, this is bad, but let’s consider these reasons. His theory that a bunch of liberals were targeting him. It turns out that probably wasn’t true.

Kathryn Rubino:

Weird.

Joe Patrice:

So his update is that the Department of Justice has found out who did it. It’s not anybody here. It’s some foreign nationals who were doing it to several government officials and public figures in an effort to just disrupt and cause problems, and they’re going after it, and that is good. So given that his theory that it was a bunch of rage filled liberals fell apart, he just kind of hand waves past that and decides to go after Joe Patrice by

Kathryn Rubino:

Saying, well, I mean a year later is exactly the time.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. He said, I made the usual ad ho attacks, which again, people don’t understand what ad homan

Chris Williams:

Means. Did he have a manila folder when he wrote it? I

Joe Patrice:

Know, right? What is it with these people and not understanding ad hominem anyway, whatever.

Chris Williams:

Well, at the level of rhetoric, even if, I mean not to talk rhetoric with we all, but even if it is not the case that they made an ad hom, it still attacks the legitimate missy of the person that you are targeting to say they are using unfair debate tactics. So even if it’s not a proper ad hom, it still makes you look like a dick.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, because the ad Hom thing

Kathryn Rubino:

Is, and I mean you are, but not for that reason.

Joe Patrice:

No question. No question. There we’re in agreement. I mean, he’s the one doing it, but still, these people think that if you spice into your article that somebody’s an idiot that that’s ad hominem. But ad hominem is the rhetorical fallacy where that’s all you’re doing, that you don’t actually have something other than poisoning the Well,

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah, and you’re missing the kind of because and evidence part of it,

Joe Patrice:

Right? That is

Chris Williams:

Not what your article said. If the person’s like, Joe, Patrice is stupid, here’s point A, B, and C from here, any reasonable person can see this is actually a symptom of stupidity. That’s just analysis.

Joe Patrice:

That is a description descrip that

Kathryn Rubino:

That

Joe Patrice:

Is absolutely just analysis. Well, so he says that I delivered the usual ad ho attacks against him, and while adding a truly unhinged spin on the story, he said, then he points out that he has some non-sequitur about things I’ve said about law schools. And then he talks about my gun analysis to which he replies, prosecutors notably did not include the conservative justices as coasts, conspirators with the people in this case. That is not an answer or analysis to anything that I said. As I pointed, this is kind of a data-driven thing. I actually went, and just to put a fine point on it, I put some of the studies in here that talk about the ways in which states with lax or gun laws have resulted in more and more police in the line of duty killings, which has resulted in more and more armament of police.

It is a cycle that leads to this being something that bad actors can exploit, and that’s the real problem. Bad actors exploit this, but it’s only gotten to this point where it can be such a deadly, tragic thing to exploit because of all of this. Anyway, he did that. I was You did that. Yeah, I was very eye rolly about it. The fact that what got me was that he took a year and his only response was, well, they didn’t also put the conservative justices on it. I’m like, dude, come on. I can even come up with, if I were devil’s advocating, I could try to formulate some sort of a coherent response to myself. It would be wrong, but it would be something. But I mean, this is just lazy. He’s not even trying,

Chris Williams:

Or at least, and this is just spitballing here. He could have made a, Joe was too stupid to see that. The real reason is that there’s actually been a breakdown in people’s trust systems. That’s what allowed for foreign nationals to call in the police. It’s not about guns, it’s about our ethical relationships to each other. And that’s something I came in like 10 seconds. Is it a good argument? Nah, it’s better than I think what he did.

Joe Patrice:

Look, it’s not really responsive to the extent that could it best respond? No, but I think you’re right.

Chris Williams:

Is what, cause he’s in a position where he can’t say people having easier access to guns is the problem, which is what you’re saying. So he has to have some causal connection between being swatted and not the police having a reasonable response to an armed public body. And I think going for ethics gets at it. Not the words he would use, but yeah,

Joe Patrice:

He could very much focus on the motives behind it. And frankly, even though it appears as though his hypothesis of the motives turned out to be completely, absolutely wrong anyway, but to the extent he wanted to say it had something to do with those motives, he could try to do that. But between that being wrong and then the opportunity issue that I was talking about, him having no response, I mean, this is just a brutal intellectual ass whipping if I do say so myself, which of course are not my words. Those are, and

Chris Williams:

What school does he teach at

Joe Patrice:

George Washington?

Chris Williams:

Imagine being graded by that guy.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, I know, right?

Kathryn Rubino:

Well, at least you’re doing the Lord’s work, Joe, so that people don’t inadvertently walk into his class without knowing whose class they’re walking into.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. It’s getting to a point with him where I’m almost feeling like it’s almost sad. It is just sad to watch a guy who can’t really formulate coherent arguments, coherent thoughts. I don’t know if something’s wrong, but it’s just real bad at how he’s done this. But I’ve always given him a little bit of the benefit of the doubt that he just does it so that he can stay in the good graces of the people who put him on tv. But maybe he isn’t.

Kathryn Rubino:

Well, I mean, I don’t know that Fox News cares about the Joe Petre dig down.

Joe Patrice:

Right? Fair. Well, no, I don’t think about that. No, not about that. About all of his takes. Yeah. I’m not hyping up myself necessarily here.

Kathryn Rubino:

Oh, right. I’m saying that your gracious interpretation

Joe Patrice:

Is Yeah. Yeah. Fair. I am gracious. I am gracious.

Kathryn Rubino:

That’s one way to end the show.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:

Thanks,

Joe Patrice:

Everybody who listening, you should subscribe to the show so you get new episodes when it comes out. You should leave reviews stars write. Thanks. That all helps. You should listen to the Jabot Kathryn’s other podcast. I’m also a guest on the Legal Tech Week Journalist Frown table. We have a number of other shows that we aren’t on at the Legal Talk Network to checkout. You can read Above the Law, you read these and other stories. Before we talk about ’em here, you should be following us on social media. I’m at Joe Patrice at Blue Sky. She is Kathryn one, the number one. Chris’ writes for rent. We are now a verified, the publication is a verified over there, which it means it’s at Above, the Law dot com. Nice. Over at Blue Sky. And then still doing some stuff at Twitter where I’m Joseph Patrice, but everything else same. And with all that, I think we’re done.

Kathryn Rubino:

Peace.

Chris Williams:

Peace.

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