Joe and Elie share their tips on how law students should prepare for final exams. They suggest getting into the mindset of mentioning concepts in the right place, organizing your notes before test week and even choosing the perfect song to get you hyped for studying. They top it off with their dislikes for final papers!

Joe and Elie check in on the legal academy and boy was it a mess this week. One law school is closing. A T14 school claims it's in financial distress. And another school made all its students attend a racist propaganda rally. Just another day in the law school world.

With work flowing away from mid-sized firms with high overhead to either the established elite or small shops, the shape of the legal labor market was bound to change as well. That's where Lawclerk's solution comes in at the intersection of technology and human capital. Joe chats with Greg Garman and Talitha Gray about their platform and how they help efficiently match freelancers with small shops needing a dose of expertise.

Joe and Elie catch their breath by recapping the top legal stories of last week. At the annual meeting of the Association of Corporate Counsel, Elie describes an in-house community deeply concerned with navigating the #MeToo era, the gang discusses the abrupt decision of Baker McKenzie's managing partner to step down for "exhaustion," and the pair argue over a new set of law school rankings.

You've seen all the mainstream media reports of student walk-outs and protests, but what are law school campuses really like these days. Joe and Elie are joined by Melissa Murray, a professor at NYU Law and former interim dean of Berkeley, to discuss the reaction from an insider's perspective and to delve into the overall mood on law school campuses these days. Are law students really desperate for "safe spaces" or is it more nuanced?

Joe and Elie take a serious turn, talking to University of Cincinnati Law Professor Mark Godsey, director of the Ohio Innocence Project, and author of Blind Injustice about the scourge of wrongful convictions, prosecutorial misconduct, and the trouble with local elections. Professor Godsey, a former prosecutor himself, discusses his conversion to an advocate for the wrongfully convicted and his grasp of the psychology that consistently lands the wrong people in prison.

Joe attended this year's Clio Cloud Conference and sat down with Sarah Schaff of Headnote to discuss her legal career and how she's shifted to become an entrepreneur with a product that helps attorneys collect on their bills within hours instead of months.

Joe and Above the Law's Kathryn Rubino react in real-time to the Kavanaugh hearings, recapping the morning testimony of Christine Blasey Ford and watching the Kavanaugh opening statement in all its ripe-for-SNL-parody glory. Since this recording, the vote's been delayed pending an investigation but it's worth taking a step back and ruminating on what we saw.

The legal workplace would be almost unrecognizable to a lawyer of the past. The typewriters are gone, WordPerfect is gone, the fax machines are going, and a whole host of new platforms providing services that those older lawyers could never have imagined. Joe and Elie chat with Casepoint CEO Haresh Bhungalia and Casepoint Chief Strategy Officer David Carns about the legal technology landscape generally and Casepoint specifically and how each are changing the legal workflow.

Before the Kavanaugh nomination took its decidedly darker turn, the nominee spoke tentatively but positively of opening up the courts to cameras and same-day audio. The House has also put forward a bill to expand this transparency. Joe and Elie talk to Andrew Eisbrouch and Jesse Weber of the Guys Who Law podcast and the Law & Crime network. Law & Crime is dedicated to broadcasting live courtroom telecasts to inform the public about the judicial system, so we wanted to know their thoughts on transparency.

Joe and Elie review the week that was in the Kavanaugh confirmation fight. Procedural fights! Threatened explusion! Giving false testimony to the Senate! Mysterious Kasowitz connections! After a wild week, will Brett Kavanaugh still have the votes to narrowly get confirmed to the Supreme Court? We'll just have to wait and find out. But the answer is yes.

Joe and Elie talk to Jason Cruz, a Seattle attorney and writer for MMA Payout covering the law and business side of MMA fighting. We discuss just how someone gets from a law degree to this world and walk through the lawsuit against Conor McGregor for throwing cans into the crowd. Elie also shares his theory for the unwritten social contract all sports fans should agree to and it's safe to say Elie wants us all to live in a dystopian nightmare.

Joe and Elie hit the road, coming to DC to ask some bar trivia questions to benefit the DC Bar Pro Bono Project. The winning score was 19/30... can you do better?

The Washington Post's Style section isn't normally where you'd go for your lawyerly insights, but last week they graced us with not one, but two legal stories. Joe Patrice and guest host Kathryn Rubino dive into Tiffany Trump's alleged law school woes and the hilariously grumpy life of Wachtell's George Conway as he navigates his days married to Kellyanne. There's also some Brett Kavanaugh talk, because why not?

As on-campus interviewing season begins, Joe and Elie welcome Vanderbilt Law School's Associate Director of Career Services Nick Alexiou to discuss the on-campus interviewing process. Learn to master the arcane art of speed dating with law firms and answering the difficult question, "why do you want to work here?". And the event details are here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/trivia-challenge-at-iltacon-tickets-46580583780

THE Ohio State University, as they prefer to be called, has commissioned a Biglaw firm to look into its head coach's handling of domestic abuse allegations against his staff. But what is an internal investigation? What exactly is it going to mean when Mary Jo White gets mentioned on ESPN? Joe and Elie give a quick, high-level rundown on the internal investigation process and Ohio State's situation. Sorry, I mean "The Ohio State's situation."

Elie can't make it to today's podcast, so Joe goes on an extended rant about movies with legal mistakes in them that drive him crazy. If you've ever watched Jaws and thought the movie should have really followed a string of lawsuits to put Amity out of business, this is the episode for you.

After years of giving them a pass, the ABA is cracking down on flagging for-profit law schools that consistently produce few graduates with legal jobs while raking in huge bucks. But how did these schools manage to make it this far? Social anthropologist Dr. Riaz Tejani spent three years working at a for-profit law school and has compiled his research in LawMart: Justice, Access, And For-Profit Law Schools. He joins Joe and Elie this week to talk about his work.

Barring some unforeseen parliamentary math, Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the DC Circuit will be the next associate justice of the Supreme Court. But as we come to the end of a whirlwind couple of weeks leading up to this announcement... did anything in we talked about matter? We all thought Kavanaugh was going to be the pick and after a ton of wild coverage Kavanaugh was still the pick. Joe and Elie discuss how the media got duped into following a horse race that never existed.

Police accused a Vinson & Elkins partner of fleeing the scene after swimming away from a boat crash — ostensibly to get help — that left a number of V&E partners injured and then disappearing for five hours. Is this a good use of prosecutorial resources?

Joe and Elie chat with Above the Law Founder David Lat about Justice Anthony Kennedy’s announced retirement. What is Kennedy’s legacy? Where will the Court go from here? And handicapping Kennedy’s potential successors.

Elie and Joe sit down to discuss one of the truly stupid law school final exams in history. Did it cover material that could reasonably come up in future practice? No. Did it require reasoning through currently controlling precedent? No. Was it wildly offensive? Oh, you better believe it was.

Joe and Elie discuss Above the Law's annual ranking of the top law schools in America with ATL Research Director Brian Dalton. There were some major shifts at the top of this year's ranking, and Elie isn't happy about any of them.

Joe and Elie talk to Ellen Trachman, an attorney specializing in all things baby, about artificial insemination, custody conundrums, and how twins can be citizens of different countries.

Milbank surprised everyone this week by boosting associate salaries over their 2016 levels. While we wait to see if others will follow suit, Joe and Elie break down what's happened and what this might mean for the industry at large.

Elie and Joe talk to author and analyst Lisa Green about Trump family nuptials, and some common pitfalls in the asset protection game.

Last time, Elie and Joe tackled a number of audience emails asking for counsel on where they should attend law school. That episode triggered a deluge of follow-up emails from listeners with their own questions, so the guys put their "Decision" hats back on and talked through even more law school scenarios. Can you get to Biglaw from a second-tier school? Have you spread your applications too thin? Are you deciding between Harvard and Stanford? We address all these questions and more.

Join Elie and Joe as they give tips to prospective law students about where they're thinking about going to law school and offer their advice on it. Offers from Penn and Berkeley? They got thoughts about it.

Elie and Joe chat with Joshua Lenon, Clio Lawyer-in-Residence, about global cybersecurity threats and what lawyers can do about them -- for both themselves and their clients. We also discuss potty training philosophies, so if you're looking for guidance on that, Elie has you covered.

Next week, Above the Law will unveil its comprehensive law firm brand rankings based on an extensive survey of in-house counsel. Joe and Elie sat down with Above the Law Research Director Brian Dalton to talk a little about the ranking and what clients are looking for in a law firm.

Elie and Joe talk to Slate's Jordan Weissman about Trump's plans to change the nature of student debt, how Elie finally paid off his educational debt, and concussions in the NFL. Don't worry, it all fits together.

Bitcoin and its ilk enjoyed a surge in value toward the end of 2017, but the pendulum is always poised to swing back dramatically in this largely unregulated market. Joe and Elie chat with Thornton McEnery of Dealbreaker about the cryptocurrency market, the role of big banks (read: our clients) in the crypto landscape and what's on the horizon in the U.S. and abroad to regulate the market.law lawyer legal podcast attorney practice

Roll out the red carpet for the second edition of the Thinking Like A Lawyer annual awards. On this star-studded evening, Joe and Elie honored the best — and by that they mean the worst — of the year in law. We laughed, we cried, it was better than Legally Blonde.

Jonathan Shapiro's career took him from the DOJ, to politics, to writing and producing hit shows from The Practice to The Blacklist to Amazon's Goliath. Along the way he even took a detour back into Biglaw. Joe and Kathryn sit down for a wide-ranging discussion about how a lawyer breaks into Hollywood and how penning lines for James Spader differs from practicing law.

Joe and guest host Kathryn Rubino talk to Jeff Ton of Bluelock about what's on the horizon for 2018. Ransomware attacks, data disasters, robot lawyers... it actually isn't all as bad as that sounds. Lawyers are notoriously behind the times with technology, so take this podcast as your wake up call. These are the obstacles your practice will face and the tools you'll be working with to solve them.

Elie and Joe talk with Above the Law's Kathryn Rubino about the challenges faced by women who go into Biglaw. From the struggle for equitable leave policies to hazing to sexual harassment, the legal industry is fraught with obstacles. Kathryn's new project, The Jabot aims to bring together a community to discuss these and other issues facing women and minorities.

Joe and Elie talk to Cristian Farias about producing a legal podcast non-lawyers listen to, and explaining the Supreme Court to a law audience. 

Joe and Elie talk with Ray English, Career Services Director at Arizona State Sandra Day O'Connor School of Law, about when to start finding a job. (SPOILER ALERT: Now). And how to start finding yourself.

College football is back in all its amazing and absurdist glory. Texas already lost to Maryland?!?! Cam Newton has a little brother?!?! Joe and Elie took advantage of the dawn of another season to examine the ultimate "JD Advantage" job by talking with Shutdown Fullcast co-host and SB Nation contributor Ryan Nanni about college football and how an NYU Law grad transitioned from Biglaw to covering college sports.

Remember the right to vote? That was a fun right, wasn't it? Elie and Joe talk to Professor Rick Hasen about the voting rights and redistricting battles being waged at the nation's highest courts. Also, apparently you can run a whole course on what's wrong with election law by only using examples from North Carolina. Good job Tar Heels.

When Peter Thiel bankrolled Hulk Hogan's ultimately successful suit against Gawker, he didn't just make every litigation financier look bad, he struck another blow in a systematic war on journalists being waged by the powerful. Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press, a new documentary by Brian Knappenberger, probes the Hogan case and other assaults on the press featuring interviews with Gawker principals, the staff of the Review-Journal -- the Nevada paper taken over by Sheldon Adelson, and free speech guru Floyd Abrams.   Oh and we have a very serious talk about robot cops.

Joe and Elie discuss the relatively sleepy Supreme Court Term with Goldstein & Russell's Tejinder Singh. How has Gorsuch changed the Court? How mad can one guy get over a footnote? What's really happening with that travel ban? We get to the bottom of all these questions.

Lost in the shuffle of big headlines at the end the Supreme Court Term was the decision to take on New Jersey's challenge to PASPA, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, otherwise known as the "why you can only bet on sports in Nevada law." But as guest Steve Silver of The Legal Blitz explains, this is a potentially huge state's rights case directly linked to the Shelby County voting rights opinion.

With Harvard following Arizona's lead and accepting GRE scores in the admissions process, more schools are starting to warm to the exam. But is the GRE really as good as the LSAT? Are schools just doing this as a cash grab at the expense of the profession? Elie thinks the GRE is basically filled out in crayon. Joe thinks it's a perfectly acceptable alternative test. Jeff Thomas of Kaplan Test Prep joins the show to say they're both a little right.

Above the Law unveils its 2017 law school rankings and uncorks a few surprises. Elie and Joe discuss the new rankings, the ATL methodology, and why everyone should consider the Above the Law rankings if they're deciding on law school with special guest Brian Dalton, Above the Law's Director of Research.

As a new crop of law school graduates prepares for the bar exam, Joe and Elie talk to James Mullen of Law School HQ about the "last test you'll ever take." What is a "UBE" and is it a good development? Why are so many people struggling to pass the bar? And, really, what's California's problem?

Between fake drug bust prom proposals and pulling people over out Christmas gifts, police departments across the country are trying to improve their image in the worst way possible. Joe and Elie discuss how this isn't so much "cute" as "a glaring violation of the Fourth Amendment."

Joe and Elie open the mailbag and answer questions from listeners trying to decide where to go to law school. Even if you're not facing the precise decisions these listeners have, they hit on major issues that all students should consider in making a law school decision.