Lawyers Who Do Lunch

Episode Notes

Transcript

Joe Patrice:

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

Kathryn Rubino:

Hi, Joe Patrice. I’m Kathryn Rubino.

Chris Williams:

I’m Chris Williams.

Joe Patrice:

And we are all editors at Above the Law, and this is our weekly look at the big stories in Legal week. That was, we get together and chat about that, but first we as always have a little bit of small talk. Small talk, which again, I will hijack small talk briefly to have a little bit of work, talk to just say the biggest stories of the week. That was, were of course all bonuses, but there’s not a ton to say about bonuses that we haven’t already said.

Chris Williams:

Wait, why are you hijacking the one section where we don’t talk about work to talk about work?

Joe Patrice:

Because, because it’s not a full conversation, but we want to let the listeners know that we do understand that this is the biggest story going on, but we’re not going to have a detailed conversation about it. It’s to allow people to know that we aren’t completely asleep at the switch.

Kathryn Rubino:

And I’ll just say as a quick reminder, please, if your firm is making any sort of bonus announcements, whether it be year end bonuses, special bonuses, whatever it is, please let us know. You can send the emails to us at tips at Above the Law dot com. All sources are kept strictly confidential so you can feel very confident sending us a screenshot of whatever bonus announcements are made so that we are on top of all of the bonus news.

Joe Patrice:

And so with that done, we do know that bonuses are going on. We just don’t have any more to say about it,

Kathryn Rubino:

But in pure small talk news,

Joe Patrice:

Yes,

Kathryn Rubino:

I will see. I feel like that conversation probably is more appropriate after small talk. But before we dove into the stories that

Chris Williams:

During the part where we talk about things that are relevant to the industry,

Joe Patrice:

Was it a big conversation? No, it was a small one. It is quite literally small

Kathryn Rubino:

Talk. See, I think that

Chris Williams:

That is not okay. The small nation of Jones Day doesn’t make it small talk combo.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah, it’s like small is not the length of the conversation. Small is in the

Chris Williams:

Nature. Nature of the content.

Kathryn Rubino:

Correct. I think it’s a content question, not a length question.

Chris Williams:

So small talk would’ve been like, Hey, I was in Cranberry in New Jersey and apparently there are been SUV sized drones flying above hell for a month.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. So we want to have drone talk. Drone talk. Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:

Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. It is, listen, I try very hard not to be a conspiracy theorist,

Joe Patrice:

But for the best in general,

Kathryn Rubino:

I don’t think I am. But man, I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on with these drone situation. Actually, they were over parts where of the country where my family lives and friends from when I was growing up that sent me videos of the drone situation. Listen, I guess my feeling is that it’s probably some other nations spy something, something, something I don’t really know, but

Joe Patrice:

Who are really interested in New Jersey.

Kathryn Rubino:

I mean, maybe, I don’t know, maybe it’s a trial

Joe Patrice:

And New York, I’m

Kathryn Rubino:

Not sure.

Joe Patrice:

And Philadelphia, New York,

Kathryn Rubino:

And

Joe Patrice:

I think at this point the uk.

Kathryn Rubino:

But what do we think it is? Do you think it’s like,

Joe Patrice:

I think it’s mostly people who don’t understand what planes look like.

Kathryn Rubino:

No, it’s not though. I have seen the plane maps of where all the flight patterns are and that is not there.

Joe Patrice:

There are definitely some drones. I think though that most of the sightings at this juncture are now people who,

Kathryn Rubino:

Again, I have seen video from shot by people that I personally know.

Joe Patrice:

Right? And I agree. How is that not what I just said. I said that there are definitely,

Chris Williams:

Because what you said was the dismissive, it’s actually just plains.

Joe Patrice:

No. Well, no. And again, that’s how it differs. There’s some phenomenon happening in New York, New Jersey area. This idea that it has spread to all these other places is largely a situation of folks not understanding what planes look like. Or the other day I stopped somebody who was staring at a quote drone and I had to inform them that that was in fact Venus. A lot of that is going on,

Kathryn Rubino:

But there are definitely drones. We do not know what they are. The federal government does not seem excited to calm the wild speculation that’s going on about what these

Joe Patrice:

Drones are. The Secretary of Homeland Security has pointed out that almost all of these are mistaken identity situations where people are looking at planes.

Kathryn Rubino:

A lot of them aren’t though.

Joe Patrice:

Sure, there are some.

Kathryn Rubino:

Okay, Joe. Okay. We’re trying to talk about the parts that aren’t the mistaken identity ones. Can we talk about those?

Joe Patrice:

Right. There are a few people flying drones.

Chris Williams:

You’re blowing up the thing that we aren’t talking about. So I think it was like Chuck, Chuck Schumer, somebody who was like, yes, these are unidentified. We don’t know what they are. It is weird. We’re looking for answers. And then there was a reporter, are there aliens? Are there aliens? And he was not at liberty to discuss that, blah, blah. And it was just interesting to see how people in the government had responding. I think at one point Trump was like, shoot ’em down or was open to shooting them down.

Kathryn Rubino:

The truth is that the way everything in the world has gone, if it’s revealed that they are in fact extraterrestrials, I don’t know if I’d be shocked. I’d be like, oh, okay, well that happened. And that’s not a great reaction, but I think that’s earnestly what my reaction would be at this point in time.

Joe Patrice:

I mean, it is several of these, the actual drone situations have drifted close enough to closed air spaces that they’ve caused. This is where it gets kind of legal. There are laws against flying drones near airports for fairly obvious reasons. There are drones that have been apparently interfering with medevac flight routes. Those are bad things. And whoever is doing this probably will have some legal repercussions for them on the back end of it whenever we figure

Kathryn Rubino:

Out if we find them

Joe Patrice:

Right. When we find the random hobbyists who are doing

Kathryn Rubino:

This, I do not think they’re hobbyists,

Joe Patrice:

Random

Chris Williams:

Hobbyists with SUV sized drones. Yeah,

Joe Patrice:

I again, don’t think they’re SUV sized. I think there are a lot of fairly small drones that people are doing flying that are freaking people out.

Chris Williams:

Okay, so quick thing, this is not small talk. This is work. Talk

Joe Patrice:

For

Chris Williams:

The people that are listening at the end when we talk about how we love comments and likes and interaction, please tell Joe how wrong he is. We would love to see that, especially if you have citation.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah,

Chris Williams:

Love some citation.

Joe Patrice:

If you know what the actual drone situation is, by all means let us know. But until then,

Kathryn Rubino:

Or good theories, I’m very open to theories at this point as well because I don’t like any of the theories that I am noodling on right now.

Chris Williams:

An initial theory that I heard but then shot down was that these are actually just Elon Musk drones, but I was like, wait, he would brag about it if they were

Kathryn Rubino:

His. That is so true.

Chris Williams:

He’s not shut up about it. So it’s not Elon.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yes, that is. I feel very good about that particular bit of analysis.

Joe Patrice:

All right. With that said, we can move on to our actual conversations of the week. The first one that we have on tap is about a unique lunch date, shall we say.

Kathryn Rubino:

I do like that you framed it that particular way, but yeah, that was your story, Joe, taking a hands-on approach.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. Judge David Proctor, who’s the chief judge down in northern district of Alabama, has a history of not enjoying people being petty in his court. He has lashed out, and as we use the term here, bench slapped lawyers in the past for their lack of civility. In this instance, he had some sparring lawyers and a particularly contentious request for an extension. Somebody asked for an extension on filing. The other side said they would only grant that extension on the condition that they not move to dismiss. They fought about that. That is inappropriate. The judge ruled, but then the judge, rather than let this go on, ordered the two parties to have lunch with each other and write,

Kathryn Rubino:

Talk it out,

Joe Patrice:

Write a report to him based on that lunch about how they plan to keep things civil for the rest of this case.

Kathryn Rubino:

Bless his heart,

Joe Patrice:

This isn’t the first time that people have been ordered and or petitioned to have lunches to settle these sorts of things. I covered earlier this year, even a petition from some lawyer who said they wanted to have the judge order the other side to lunch because the other side refused to respond to disclosure requests. And in that case, they cited before support for that case, they cited a past case where a judge had ordered lunch. So this isn’t entirely out of left field, but it is wild that we’ve reached this point that judges are seeing this kind of lack of ity.

Kathryn Rubino:

I mean, I think it’s interesting because it’s almost an effort to inject into a profession that has very much gotten away from everyone knows each other kind of collegiality. It doesn’t matter which side you’re on, we’re all working for the betterment of a same system. Kind of a vibe to, I think professionalize is part of it, but also just siloed in a lot of ways where people don’t have that same kind of necessary comradery for the other side of any sort of case or disagreement. And I think this tries to inject that kind of forced collegiality in a small court, kind of Matlockean worldview back into the profession.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. I guess the real issue I saw was the order lacked specificity. So I wanted to know the way they have it set up is the more guilty party, the one who was refusing this extension has to pay for lunch while the other party has to cover tip. That strikes me as fraught with potential abuse. One side trying to go to McDonald’s,

Kathryn Rubino:

They have the raw bar option,

Joe Patrice:

The other side trying to run up, but order those bottles of dom at the Applebee’s or whatever. So there is potential. Now that said, I think there’s some degree of a disincentive because I would imagine if any shenanigans happen, the fallout that the chief judge would write after that would be particularly harsh.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah. I think when you’ve kind of been called to the carpet in this way, it behooves you to act like a civil human being.

Chris Williams:

Yeah. I wonder what would have the greater social fallout of picking a bad restaurant or being a bad tipper after the judge order. Right. Did you only do 18% get out? Right.

Joe Patrice:

That all ends up in that report. Yeah. Maybe the judge will order them to go back to the restaurant to up the tip.

Chris Williams:

I dunno.

Joe Patrice:

Anyway, this lunch has to happen before December 31st, which I thought was nice of them to schedule it before the big college football playoff games for all the Alabama fans out there, who would want to watch? Oh, wait, wait, what’s that? I mean, Alabama surely is in the playoff. I’m trying

Chris Williams:

Now. You’re doing small talk. What I was going

Joe Patrice:

To say, that is not small talk. That is very much part of this conversation.

Kathryn Rubino:

Oh

Joe Patrice:

My God. Anyway, have fun in the ReliaQuest Bowl, everybody. Boom. Okay. Kathryn, you had a piece talking about laterals.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah, I think that’s something that is been kind of an ongoing theme over the last few years, not just this year, but really I think since 2020 was not just laterals in terms of associates, but the partnership lateral market has really been booming. We’ve talked on this podcast about these sort of $20 million paydays, and those are all in effort to get these sort of big ticket lateral partners to different firms bringing their book of business with them and hopefully generating profits for the new firms. But there was a recent study into what happens after you do these massive hires. Pure sales did a study of AM law 100 firms between 2020 and 23, and what happens once you have a lateral partner? And they went through and assessed these firm’s rate of retention. So are they churning and going to a firm right after that within, that’s a pretty quick turnaround within two or three years leaving the firm you’ve just joined and going to a new firm, or are they staying?

And they have receipts in the sense that they have sort of the worst firms for lateral partner retention. And that was actually Sherman and Sterling, which is not a firm anymore, merged with a and o Sherman. So that is a little bit different. And there are some firms that have a hundred percent retention rate, but most of the firms that have a hundred percent retention rate tend to not really have participated as much in the lateral partner market. So yeah, Cleary has 29 lateral partners over that timeframe. They kept them all, okay, that checks out, right? They’re not really going crazy in the market, so whatever. But Cravath has an 82% retention rate. That’s probably pretty low when you consider sort the short timeframe there.

Joe Patrice:

It’s interesting how these markets work. I think it unfortunately is going to be the trend going forward. Fortunately or unfortunately, it depends on what side of the aisle you’re on, I suppose. But the era of long-term collegial, lockstep partnerships is all but over. We see one of the last holdouts in the single tier lockstep partnership world fell very recently. So we’re getting to a point where nobody really sees that partnership role as a long-term investment within the firm. It is a platform that you can work with and when you get a better deal, move to another one that’s going to lead to these sorts of situations. I don’t necessarily know as though that’s ill will towards any of the individual firms as much as a sign of a somewhat frothy, and maybe not as frothy right now, but at the time the study was taken, it has been fairly frothy, a fairly frothy market of firms trying to peel laterals and take books of business.

Chris Williams:

I’ve never heard the term frothy market or heard frothy said that often in such a small amount of time.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah,

Chris Williams:

No. Well,

Kathryn Rubino:

Maybe barista, but yeah, no, I do think it’s interesting, but I don’t know if it’s necessarily ill will towards these firms that folks are leaving, but there is something to be said. Is it because they don’t necessarily have the kind of robust practice areas that support these bigger books of business that they’re trying to recruit? Is it because they’re not as generous with the top? Maybe they share them a little bit more collegially their profits in that way. Is that why these top rainmakers are leaving and why there’s this kind of churn at that level? I think that borrowing down into the whys is going to be really important for firms as they’re trying to balance all of these questions going forward.

Joe Patrice:

I know that some firms welcome this world. They are ready for a world in which people leave relatively quickly and they’re fine with that. I know there are others that have taken steps to try to make any incoming book of business be more locked in with the rest of the firm, more mandates upon how your book of business can be leveraged for other partners within the firm. That model obviously points toward building a better firm, but it is also off-putting to somebody who’s trying to lateral to find that they brought 2 million, 3 million into the firm and they’re being told, thank you. We are going to take a couple million off of that for ourselves. When they see that kind of a world, then they’re not going to want to join that sort of firm when they can get a better deal elsewhere, which further weakens the firm structure and really makes it more of a fiefdom universe.

Kathryn Rubino:

And I do wonder, and this study doesn’t go into this aspect of it as much, but what’s the impact on those clients in that book of business having sort of three different firms of the course of three or four years, that is response primarily you’re responsible for whatever that book of business is. Is it something where does it build ill will towards the partners that’s kind of jerking their business around? Does it kind of give them this sense of, oh, my business must be very important if it’s going from firm to firm and therefore I can make more demands on the partners or the new firm or whatever it is? I think that these are all kind of related pieces to the puzzle.

Joe Patrice:

I think there’s a lot of personal allegiance at this juncture. So I don’t think it really matters to jump from firm to firm on that level. That said, this is where back office work becomes really important because if you jump from one firm to another and the client now has to deal with a Byzantine broken system to figure out how to pay, they’re not getting the right same they used to. That sort of a change could be a real hurdle. But if you are jumping from place to place and it’s seamless, which one would hope it would be then, I don’t think it’s a big deal,

Kathryn Rubino:

But it definitely, I think it’s a real change in what the big law industry is going to look like. Not just now, but kind of over the next few years as well.

Joe Patrice:

Oh yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:

Oh, I’m glad we could get your attention on this conversation here.

Joe Patrice:

Look, I’m very tired. I’ve got a cold. I’m really not

Kathryn Rubino:

Feeling great.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. Hey, listen, I wasn’t going to do anything about it or bring it up. You’re the one who caused all this and we’re back from my nap. Oh, that’s going to be weird with this topic. We’re going to talk about brothels now.

Kathryn Rubino:

No, we’re talking about murder. Oh, only murder.

Well, this is a case that is very much ongoing and one I feel confident I have not written the last about. Back in September, judge Kevin Mullins was shot dead in his chambers. He was in the middle of a meeting with the sheriff, Mickey Stein’s. Mickey Stein came out from the meeting, put his hands up and was immediately arrested. So this is all the stuff we knew immediately as it was happening, details and what happened. They were apparently friends for decades or at least acquaintances. And what happened between the two of them in that office and what led to the shooting has been a matter of tremendous speculation, I think on the internet generally, but also in court filings. And that’s really where we are in the case. There’s a lot of stuff that we’re still learning about. Steinz has pled not guilty to the murder of a public official, which I believe is what he’s been charged with in Kentucky.

But we know that they had lunch earlier in the day before the shooting happened. We know that there was a phone call, or I think Tu actually made to Stein’s daughter, and that Stein’s daughter’s phone number was saved on Mullen’s phone. And we know that earlier in the week before the shooting happened, Stein gave a deposition in a case about one of a disgraced deputy that had worked with him. And that’s where this brothel allegation comes from. So this former deputy is accused of running kind of a scheme whereby women who are under house arrest or otherwise in the judicial, the justice system, were given beneficial treatment by the deputy in return for sexual favors. And there are allegations that Mullins was involved as well. One of the women who brought the initial civil lawsuit that also spurred a criminal investigation said that she saw Mullins having sex with a girl in the office. And her attorney is the one who said it’s like they were running a brothel out of that Courtroom because apparently there are these allegations that it was kind of this widespread sex for good treatment scheme.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, I mean, when that case initially broke, it was wild.

Kathryn Rubino:

It was one of those things that it’s jar even. And you knew something had to have happened lunch earlier in the day. They’d known each other for decades and all of a sudden, not even trying to get away with it, kind of a shooting, right. People saw in the outer office area, saw Mickey signs came in, saw him be like, I need to talk to you. Go into the inner office, heard shots, saw a dead man, saw Mickey Sz come out with his hands up this. It’s all about the why. It’s all about what really went on between those two folks. I think we’ll see a lot more of these, a lot more updates to this story before it’s all said and done before Mickey Stein’s fate is down. Okay.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah. I don’t know. I think it’s really interesting.

Joe Patrice:

It is. It is.

Kathryn Rubino:

And I also imagine that ripped from the headlines sorts of, has

Joe Patrice:

This been an episode of SVU yet?

Kathryn Rubino:

I mean haven’t, I’m not a

Joe Patrice:

Regular, the dun dun is coming.

Kathryn Rubino:

I’m like, I’m not a regular viewer, but I have to imagine some sort of legal fiction will pull from some of the details of this case because it seems like it’s ripe for it.

Chris Williams:

Yeah. My immediate thought was, this is really good television. But I was like, Chris, it just happened. But now that the bell has been rang, it’s an amazing narrative if you abstract it from this being real events to happen to real people.

Kathryn Rubino:

And it kind of tickles that kind of itch in the back of your head that why is the daughter’s phone number on the phone of the judge what’s going on? What was said in the deposition? What documents were Mickey Stein’s? What was he presented with at the deposition that led to, it’s a lot of questions I think going on that inquiring minds are very interested in. And I think it’s also kind of important for the justice system generally to find out, because no matter which version of events winds up being true, whether it’s some breach of trust was made, whether it’s by a judge, whether it’s by Shepherd Sheriff, whether it’s by both, who knows. But I think that the sort of sanctity of the judicial system and the justice system is very much at play in this case.

Chris Williams:

Definitely. And when whoever makes the show and they named this episode Kentucky Justice, I whoop my cut.

Kathryn Rubino:

It’s, it’s something.

Joe Patrice:

All right, well, I think that is all we have on tap for us at this juncture. Thanks everybody for listening. You should be subscribed to the show, get new episodes when they drop, usually reviews, stars, write some things, all of that. You should listen to The Jabot Kathryn’s other podcast. I’m also a guest on the Legal Tech Week Journalist Roundtable. You should also listen to the other various shows in the Legal Talk Network universe, cinematic universe as we’ll call it. You should be Reading Above the Law, so you read these and other stories before we talk about them. You can follow us on social media. I am mostly over at Blue Sky now, so I’m at Joe Patrice. She’s at Kathryn one. Chris is at Writes for Rent. The publication is at abovelaw.com. I don’t think we’ve started putting much up on that account yet, but it exists. And with all that, we will talk to you later.

Kathryn Rubino:

Peace.

Chris Williams:

Peace.

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