Oh, and welcome to the latest episode of Thinking Like a Lawyer.My name is Katherine Rubino.I'm a senior editor at Above the Law.And today I'm joined by my colleague, Chris Williams.Hey, Chris.
Pretty good, pretty good.
We are missing today our resident sound effect guru and co-host, Joe Patrice, as he makes his way to yet another Legal Technology Conference.
Regular listeners, I'm sure, will be just waiting with bated breath for his update next week about the latest Legal Tech Conference, because he's been to, I think, 75 this fall.We will have to wait.
And until then, we'll start with our opening segment.As always, a small talk. How was your weekend?
It was pretty good.I played a lot of this game called God of War Ragnarok.And it's interesting.It is the first game I've played where I cried because of the narrative. It is, it is, it is very, very well done.
I won't give any spoilers, but if anyone out there played a God of War 4 or God of 4 for anyone that's familiar, the one that came out in 2018, get God of War 5.Play it on, play it on your computer.It's really good.It is really good.
Atreus is still annoying, but it's, it's worth it.
I will have to take your word for that one.I'm not, there's too many buttons involved in playing video games.I just, you know, it's not for me.I mean, that's not entirely true though, right?
Because like there's all these stats about how like women play a ton of video games.They just don't think of them as video games because they play like Candy Crush and other sort of puzzle games that- Animal Crossing is not- Yeah, yeah.
It counts. It counts in the same way that Kavanaugh's recent book is readable.
Gorsuch.Gorsuch, any one of them.
But no, yeah, that is a book in the way that Animal Crossing is a game.
It counts.That's what happens when you try to make our small talk segment about the law.So you get punished by karma.You're welcome.Taylor Swift sends her best. My weekends, my last couple of weeks have been a little different.
So I live in the Hudson Valley and for about two and a half weeks every year, it is perfect.The weather is crisp.It is not cold where you need like a jacket, but you can wear one. You maybe get a little warm in the sun.
The trees are brilliant shades of yellow and orange and red and green all together.At the same time, the pumpkins are pumpkining.You can get an apple cider donut at every gas station, roadside stand, anywhere you pass.
You're never more than three and a half minutes away from an apple cider donut, which, you know, it's good news for all.And we are in the middle of that right now.
You know, I have a one and a half year old daughter, so I'm trying so hard to make the pictures and the memories right now.So I feel very stressed out in the sense that we went to a pumpkin patch on Saturday and she was wildly uninterested.
Not uninterested.That would have been fine. She was angry at the notion that she was forced to deal with.It was so crowded.I mean, it was so many, so, so, so many people, but that's my own fault for going on a Saturday afternoon in October.
I probably should have just taken like a morning off.I should take like a random Wednesday afternoon off and be like, I'm going to a pumpkin patch, you guys. But I went on a Saturday, she just cried the entire time.
I went with another family and I felt bad because I was like, I gotta go.It took us longer to get to the pumpkin patch than the amount of time we spent in the pumpkin patch.Fortunately, the entry fee was $3 and children under two are free.
So it cost me $3 to realize that my child was having exactly none of it.I got some pretty hilarious pictures of her crying because those are all so cute.
And like blackmail, you gotta love it.Like if you don't clean your room, they will see this on whatever equivalent of TikTok is out there.
I mean, chances are those are already gonna be out there.So whatever, maybe I shouldn't save it for that purpose.But then I tried again on Sunday morning, which wasn't like a pumpkin patch, pumpkin patch, but there's like a little farm.
It was really close to my house.I didn't have to spend a ton of time driving there.
What is a non-pumpkin patch pumpkin patch?A squash patch?
So they may or may not grow pumpkins there.It's unclear to me, but they certainly have a giant pile of them that you can take pictures in front of.They have like a kind of a cute little setup.So you're on a farm. Yes, it was, yes.
As I said, it was a little farm.It's really close to me.They have like a little cafe and really, really delicious food and they have a gift shop.So I've been there a bunch just for, they have, you know what it is?
They have iced coffee and they, one of those places that they freeze the ice cubes made out of coffee.So when you get it, you've got like, listen, if you are into your iced coffee, you know that this is like God level stuff.
So I've gone there a bunch.
This is a five-star Yelp review at the moment.
Jones Farm in upstate New York, I would highly recommend for that.And they have really good pies and other baked goods.
Anyway, so I've been there a bunch for just kind of eating and shopping purposes, but they apparently, again, I don't know, maybe they do grow the pumpkins on site.It's unclear to me.There's a couple of animals, not a ton.
It's small, it's local, but she had a much better time there.So that was good.But it was like, you know, she was running down these hills with like these beautiful amber trees behind her. That's all I want.
I want like 10 more pictures like that and I can call it good.
I feel like that was a phenomenal advertiser for the farm, but at this point we should probably talk about legal stuff.
Interesting, interesting.Fair enough.We will end our small talk segments without the fanfare that we normally have, but it will still end nevertheless.
OK, so kind of, you know, we try occasionally here to have our to have, you know, segues that make sense.So we were kind of talking about children and the children are our future.So let's talk about the GOP going all in on teen pregnancy.Good.No.
You know, honestly, if you had told... Listen, I was alive in the 90s, and if you had told me that the GOP, like that GOP, would one day in your lifetime come out and say that they miss teen pregnancy and that they wanted it back, I would have been hard-pressed to believe that that is true.
It's one thing for the liberals to finally remember the Bush presidency, but for the GOP to be like, nah, we need these kids getting more pregnant.Like, it is a weird.
Yeah, this is the world we live in.
This is actually kind of a follow-on suit to one that was dealt with during the last term when conservative lawyers and state AGs got together and formed a corporation in Amarillo, Texas, in order to bring a case in front of Judge Matthew Kaczmarek challenging the FDA's approval of
The abortion drug, you guys.
It's rough.It's okay.It's okay.It's the abortion pill.It's fine.
So that happened during the last couple of years, and they got thrown out because of a lack of standing, which they now think that they have solved with their latest filing, which says that the state has a compelling interest in getting teen girls pregnant.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.There's apparently 199 page amended complaint saying that the decrease in teen pregnancy as a result of people having access to health care, aka access to the abortion pill.
Wait, wait, wait, this is in Texas, right?
Yes, yes, but okay, so that's where the case.
Did they just move there?Oh my God.
That is where the case is filed.
Look what Champagne Papi brought upon us all.
But again, this is filed by state AGs.They have all signed on to it.So that includes the state AG for Missouri, Idaho, Kansas.So not just Texas GOP members that are involved in this.This is much bigger than that.This is kind of a nationwide thing.
And they said that the decrease in births that teenagers aged 15 to 19, the decrease that is a result, they say, of the abortion drug has hurt states.
that they, because girls or people are less likely to give birth when they're 15 to 19, when they have access to the abortion pill, they say that that hurts those states.
Yeah, we're just one step closer to the state-mandated girlfriend meme.Like, this is... What happened to them being the party of, like, not policing your body, like, leaving you alone?
Like, now you have a state obligation to breed, and the drug gets in the way of that?
Oh, yeah.Oh, yeah.I mean, listen.Listen, the whole libertarian tint was just some shiny wrapping paper that they put on a whole bunch of conservative ideals that have nothing to do with actual liberty. No, but this is completely dystopian.
The reasons why they say that they have a state interest in teen pregnancies is because they might lose a house seat if populations dip so much because people are making choices about their own bodies.
That is the most cynical, cynical, cynical thing that I have read in a really long time.They also
go on to say that a decrease in population means that they will not have access to the same federal funding, that their federal funding will be less because their population is less, which really gets me because you don't need that money if you have fewer people, right?
But I mean, what a cynical way to be like, well, we weren't going to spend it on the new people that are in our state.We were just going to take the money and use it for, you know, whatever else we had in our minds.
I'm just thinking about the implications of this.Do states have an interest in defunding education programs because that is more likely to increase the population?Because there's a clear correlation between sex ed and later rates of teen pregnancy.
Where does this stop?Does the state have an interest in propagating low-income rates?
This is ridiculous.Yeah, no, this is a kind of plot where if this came up in some dystopian novel, you'd be like, but surely, surely they're not making this kind of an argument.Everyone would immediately see through it, wouldn't they?
Yeah, and it's a shame, because there's a point where you're like, oh, not everything needs to be brought back to literary analysis.We get it, you have an English degree.
But we're at the point where like saying like, oh, we're living in the handmaidens tale is just not doing enough.
Come on, Margaret, I would get on it.I need a better analogy here.I need something worse.
We need Handmaid 2 Electric Boogaloo to explain what's going on.And it's just the dresses aren't red.
I believe it is a series, right, though?Isn't The Handmaid's Tale a series?Am I wrong about that?
I would defer to you here.That was not in my summer reading list ever, so.
You know, listen, I've read certainly my fair share of dystopian future books, but this one, it's too sad, it's too sad.But maybe it is just a single book, I can't tell.No, it's just a novel, I was wrong.
Maybe it's just the TV show, season six we are on of that, so.
Well, no, I think the sequel is just coming out in our newspapers, so that's the confusion.
Yeah, fair, fair. But yeah, I mean, listen, who knows?Hopefully this will not be a successful argument, even though, you know, it's in the Fifth Circuit.So question mark.
One at least hopes that by the time it gets to the Supreme Court, if it gets that far, that that that will end there.But, you know, we don't say we live in the worst and the dumbest timeline for no reason.
So let's just let's just cross our fingers and hope like hell.
I just can't wait for Thomas to write the decision and be like, yeah, this clearly falls under the police power.Just some BS justification.
Yeah.I mean, listen, right?The last time it was this case in the earlier version was in front of the Supreme Court.There were definitely conservative justices who were writing
Certainly, there is a compelling state interest, but I don't think that this is what they anticipated the argument would become.
I think they were, you know, hopefully advocating for a much more more reasonable, although still not particularly reasonable.But, you know, we'll see.
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Now that that break is over, we can shift to some uplifting good news money now.
Certainly, certainly a set of news.There was some reporting from the American lawyer talking about the paydays of big law partners.Now listen, we write about the paydays of big law partners all the damn time.It's kind of our bread and butter.
But usually, we talk about sort of the higher end on the scale,
20 million dollar paydays, you know Partnerships different law firms rewriting their partnership agreements such that they have the flexibility in order to offer these eye-popping multi-million dollar deals to lateral attorneys that will in their mind bring a large book of business with them as well, but apparently there's also the downside as well, which is that if
you can actually get your compensation cut, even if you're an equity partner at a big law firm.So just because you got that brass ring that you've worked your entire life for, it doesn't mean the worries about your money are over.
The estimates from some experts vary.And again, there's a fair amount of darkness when you're talking about the actual money that specific partners are making.We're kind of talking in generalities.
and individual examples, but we're talking anywhere between 10 and 30% of equity partnerships get their amount of money devalued.Yes, that's rough.
Well, and that's better than my first reading of it, actually.
I thought it was saying that the partners are losing 10 to 30% of their income, which is like, it's better than losing a third of what you're getting paid a year, but still for 10 to 30% of the people being affected, it's still.
Right, right, right, right.So yes, so for, I mean, and maybe that actually hurts worse, right?
Because the firm is posting record profits and kind of touting their strong financial performance and you're taking a cut, you know, which can't feel great one imagines, but
You know, I think it's becoming increasingly popular, but certainly not as popular as it was, you know, during economic downtimes.Right.In 2009, I think sort of we've we saw this a lot more frequently, but it is definitely back.
And I think that sort of the the this is the the corollary to the hotness of the lateral market.If you want to be able to make these deals to get these big name lateral partners, the money has to come from somewhere.
Although some of the experts are saying it's not as bad as all that because when you bring more people to the firm and this overall, overall compensation and the overall profitability of the firm goes up, that the points that you get are worth more.
So even though you might be getting a haircut in terms of the number of points you have in the firm, that they might actually be valued more.So it's not quite as bad as you might fear.But still, I don't know, it just seems super depressing to me that
You do all the things, you get all the things, and you're a big law equity partner.That's it.You get an A-plus on your career, and you still have all these money woes that you're dealing with.
I'm just trying to wrap my head around it, because there's the partner-partner, and then there's the partner-fancy-associate thing going on.So this is dealing with equity partners.
So income partners or non-equity partners generally are given a salary as opposed to points or shares in the profitability overall of the firm or in particular clients.
Or sometimes it's a combination, but the bulk of their compensation comes on a kind of statics, maybe year to year, but on a set.
a compensation model of a salary as opposed to points or equity sharing, sharing in the wellbeing of the firm, which is what equity partners do.
Yeah.So is it like the shares that the equity partners have, is it moving down because new partners are coming in and those partners, the shares that the new partners need can have to come from elsewhere?That's what's happening?
Well, not necessarily.And again, very much varies, I think, from firm to firm.And I think it really is about how much they get valued in the sense that you're having a down year or down series of years.
you know, your practice group is, is in decline and doesn't show any particular, you know, reason to think that it's about to turn around and they don't want to sort of be overpaying partners while, you know, might be reasonably profitable, maybe it's not as profitable as the rest of the rest of the firm.
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Our last story is also a Texas story, as the first one was, but it sort of has to do with the ongoing romantic saga between now former Judge David Jones and now former Jackson-Walker partner Elizabeth Freeman.
I think it was over a year ago now that this scandal first broke, and it turns out that the bankruptcy judge Jones and the bankruptcy partner, Elizabeth Freeman, were in a relationship for many years and never disclosed that fact.
The powers that be at Jackson Walker, Elizabeth Freeman's former firm, actually say that she lied to them about whether or not she was in a relationship with Judge Jones.But despite the fact, listen, you can love who you want to love, right?
That's not an anti-love story, but you do have to disclose it if you continue, this way you're not continuing to hear cases that your romantic partner is either involved with or perhaps giving advice on or her firm is involved with.
Yeah, you know, it's more about legal ethics than it is about romance bad.
And listen, I can almost promise you that this is not the last story that I am going to write about this particular romantic relationship slash scandal that has been birthed as a result.
Judges just generally have a bad time of disclosing.
You know, you would think that the whole mere appearance of impropriety would be taken a little bit more to heart by the judiciary, but we are finding increasingly that that is not accurate.
The move now is how would they know?They'll never know.
Who's going to tell them?Yeah, but so as I said, Judge Jones, at the time, Judge Jones continued to hear cases involving Jackson Walker.
As a result, once this scandal broke, the Justice Department's bankruptcy monitor, the US trustee, filed a lawsuit seeking to claw back over $18 million in fees that they paid to Jackson Walker in the cases that Jones presided over.
So that's kind of the thing that is hanging over all the developments in this case.
But Bloomberg Law was able to see some of the messages, the text messages between Freeman and her colleagues that kind of show what was happening, or at least not necessarily ex-party conversations, but certainly
some conversations that were going on behind the scenes right before Jackson Walker represented JCPenney in their bankruptcy, Chapter 11 bankruptcy case.
And before they filed that particular bankruptcy, Freeman texted a colleague, talked to Jones, he's got us. And after that, there was a sort of a series of maneuvers that the firm participated in in order to make sure that the J.C.
Penney case was in front of Judge Jones.
I always feel like I'm in a weird position where I just expect better of shady stuff.Have this be in Morse code something.At least let it be more than the obvious, hey, we shouldn't be doing this, wink, wink.
Communicate as if these things are going to end up in a lawsuit, because at some point,
Yeah.Yeah.One of the other texts that the that they report on that Freeman said to her colleague, we are keeping this down low with lots of O's and W's.
But but which is not a low way to communicate the sentiment.You know, I'm just waiting for like a judge to be on a hot mic.Let's keep it hush. Yeah.
So, yeah, they filed the case in a particular jurisdiction where there's only two judge options, the aforementioned Judge Jones and Judge Isger, who they the text messages reveal where they are thought of as a process hawk, I think it was.
And they wanted to they know that Jones will cut through the bullshit.So it's not so much they want to dodge, Isger, but, you know, They do.
And by process, Hawk, is that a pejorative for saying make sure things are done correctly?
Who knows?Who knows?I will.I will also note that cases that are immediately designated complex by the filer are generally given to Isger.And the JCPenney case was not noted as complex before or during the initial filing period.It was later diagnosed.
It was later designated complex, but that was by Jones and Jones kept the case as a result.So yeah, that's what happened there.
And this is just kind of one, there are 33 cases where the US trustee is disputing the fees that they paid to Jackson Walker.They paid about $1 million in fees to Jackson Walker for this case.
And almost $286,000 of that $1 million fee were from Freeman's hours and the time that she billed to the matter.So I think we're starting to understand why this is a case, why all this is kind of going on.
And it feels like this won't be the end of the story. Yeah, as I said, I will be very surprised if this is the last time I have to talk about the fallout from the Jones-Freeman love affair.
Again, love who you love, but don't bang your gavel in front of them.Yeah, that's- And if you need that as a tattoo inspo, take it.I don't even need credit, but just take it to heart.
Yeah, you know, mere appearance of impropriety is real, and it'd be super, just super if more people took that seriously.I think that pretty much wraps us up for the week.
Thank you to all of our listeners, and you should be reading us on Above the Law to get these and other stories about the legal industry.You can follow us on social media.I'm at Catherine1.Chris is at Rights for Rent.
You should be listening to the other shows on the Legal Talk Network.I'm also the host of The Jabot, which is a different podcast.Yeah, read us, follow us, listen to us.Send in tips. Send in tips, you can always send tips to AboveTheLaw.
You can just send it right off to tips at AboveTheLaw.com.All information is kept strictly anonymous, so you don't have to worry on that front.That's it, have a good week, y'all.
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