Quinn Makes A Few Changes: Quinn Emanuel’s work from anywhere policy is a popular perk, but it’s now got a few more restrictions.

Ho Goes Style Over Substance: James Ho complains that even though the Supreme Court sided with conservatives on trans rights, he’s hopping mad that they didn’t symbolically change the pronouns in the case. And he lays out his belief that taking pictures of people in the bathroom should be constitutional.

A Groundbreaking Parental Leave Policy: This is one of the first firms to offer NICU leave. Congrats!

The post Trump Propaganda Ads Outlast Court Order Thanks To One Unopened Email — See Also appeared first on Above the Law.

In the early 1900s, a founding partner of which Wall Street law firm was hired by French investors desperate to recoup their losses on a failed canal project and ran one of the most audacious lobbying campaigns in American history, steering the U.S. government to route its canal through Panama instead of Nicaragua, helping to bankroll and orchestrate a revolution that split Panama off from Colombia, and collecting an $800,000 fee for his trouble?

Hint: Part of the campaign involved mailing U.S. senators Nicaraguan postage stamps depicting an erupting volcano, to scare them off that route for the canal.

See the answer on the next page.

The post This Biglaw Co-Founder’s Side Project Was Engineering A Revolution appeared first on Above the Law.

On Friday, the Fifth Circuit voted 10-7 against an en banc rehearing of Evans v. Garza. This case involved a woman seeking to block a potential prosecution against her for — checks notes — posting a surreptitious picture of someone in a bathroom. Because, you know, the First Amendment should protect bathroom candids!

In May 2023, Michelle Evans, a Texas GOP activist, went to a Texas House debate about gender-affirming care for minors. In the Capitol’s women’s restroom, she encountered a trans woman who was running for the Texas House at the time. After confronting the candidate outside the restroom, Evans went back to the gallery, where a seatmate showed her a Facebook photo that someone from their group had taken of the candidate washing her hands at the sink. Evans then posted it to Twitter, racking up some 1.6 million views.

The Texas Penal Code § 21.15(b) made it a state jail felony to photograph or transmit “a visual image of another in a bathroom or changing room” without consent and “with intent to invade the privacy of the other person.” The local prosecutor opened an investigation based on the fact that Evans… did that. Evans, backed by Elon Musk’s X, sued to block any prosecution on First Amendment grounds.

This seems like a pretty good law to have! Judge Priscilla Richman, concurring in the denial, explained why the statute makes this an easy case:

The Texas Legislature reached the considered judgment that everyone, be it the Governor, a member of the Texas House or Senate, a state or federal judge, a political activist, a tourist, or a child, should have protection from being photographed without their consent when in a restroom, when the intent is to invade their privacy. This is a substantial, legitimate state interest.

Evans challenged the law on its face, which Richman describes as a non-starter because “it is highly unlikely that there is a First Amendment right to distribute, without their consent, images of a person’s genitalia (whether they be an adult, infant, pre-teen, or teen) while utilizing bathroom facilities.” As for an as-applied challenge, Evans argued that, despite the broad language of the statute, it shouldn’t apply once a person left the stall and stands at the sink.

Adult lawyers argued that maybe some parts of the bathroom should be fair game for photographs. Richman asked “as to urinals, does the First Amendment say cameras can click once the pants or trousers are zipped?” before opting not to rewrite the statute on this one.

But Judge Ho saw an opportunity. In dissent, Ho frames the facts as an attempt to stifle conservative speech, as though we make laws against creepers installing cameras in bathrooms to oppress conservatives:

After all, the photo depicts the individual in question in precisely the same way that that person chooses to present himself in public. So if that’s a violation of privacy, then we have truly lost all understanding of the word.

A creeper snapping pictures of a teen girl in the bathroom would also show her in the way she presents herself in public, but that doesn’t make it okay. Ho leads off his dissent lamenting that the law should apply equally to everyone, though he declines to grapple with the logical conclusion of opening the door to start snapping away inside bathrooms. Meanwhile, Richman actually put in the effort to explain what it would mean to apply Ho’s standard evenly.

Presumably — or at least hopefully — Ho doesn’t actually believe that this law should be struck down to open the door to every pedophile on free speech grounds. But it’s a convenient hook for him to draft a Townhall blog post masquerading as a judicial opinion and that’s what it takes to stay atop the potential Supreme Court promotion power rankings.

One of Ho’s principal rivals in those power rankings, Judge Andy Oldham, wrote his own dissent. “Travis County District Attorney Garza wanted to prosecute Michelle Evans over a tweet,” he writes, before citing a story about Pakistani human rights lawyers sentenced to 17 years for social media posts. I’m not sure the human rights lawyers put in jail for calling out their government for running a terrorist state presents an apples-to-apples comparison to taking stealthy bathroom pics, but Oldham swings for the fences.

If Ho’s opinion reads as a blog post, Oldham reached for a book report of The Trial:

Kafka’s Inspector said, “I can’t even confirm that you are charged with an offense, or rather I don’t know whether you are. You are under arrest certainly, more than that I do not know.” . . . That was not supposed to be an instruction manual.

Ooh, Kafka. How literary! While Kafka’s protagonist was placed under arrest and tried for an unknown charge, Evans was… none of those things. The local prosecutor investigated the case, but Evans was never arrested or charged or put on trial. She sought an injunction against potential prosecution herself and, at the end of the day, this case died because the prosecutor told the court that the office isn’t moving forward with anything anyway.

So Oldham’s opinion adopts the same flawed frame as Ho’s:

Never mind that the tweet constituted political speech. And never mind that criminally charging social-media users for core political speech is tragicomically unconstitutional in this country. 

The problem was never political speech, the problem was YOU CAN’T POST PICTURES OF PEOPLE IN BATHROOMS. It doesn’t become legal to traffic in bathroom pics just because someone slaps a political excuse on it.

Oldham likes to posture as “the reasonable one” in the SCOTUS race compared to fellow hopefuls like Ho and the Ninth Circuit’s VanDyke, but he’s really the same except he wants you to know he’s the kind of guy who read his senior year English assignments.

Anyway, back to Ho. Because here’s the most bizarre part of his audition:

I’m well aware that today’s decision captures the cultural zeitgeist of societal elites. Just a few months ago, the Supreme Court used a female pronoun to describe the male plaintiff in the caption of its decision in West Virginia v. B.P.J.

Does this case have anything to do with the B.P.J. case other than tangentially involving a trans person? No. Indeed, the Supreme Court sided with the conservatives in that case. This case isn’t even really about trans rights, it’s about whether there’s a First Amendment exception to posting bathroom pictures if the plaintiff asserts a First Amendment interest in pictures of people taking a piss. But Ho’s clearly been hankering to go on a tirade about the Supreme Court accepting the caption rather than taking the symbolic act of unilaterally changing it. The conservative legal movement is just style over substance all the way down.

This reads like Ho had this cooked up for a caption that actually involved a pronoun dispute, but then the Alito retirement chatter convinced him that perfect could not be the enemy of the good and he decided this was a good enough hook to hang this on. All so he could send the message that most of the conservatives on the Supreme Court are liberal squishes, but that Ho would be willing to stand up to the scourge of living with a caption.

So I’m grateful to have this opportunity to dissent. I only regret that we could not extend that same privilege to Michelle Evans.

Evans dissented to 1.6 million people — Richman even adds that, aside from everything else, Evans could’ve conveyed the exact same message without the picture — and the only repercussion she faced was temporarily handing over her phone.

When Ho complained that there’s no way for a judge to refute the charge that he’s auditioning, he overlooked one option. Stop sending in tapes.

(Full opinion on the next page…)

Earlier: James Ho Uses Opinion To Whine About People Accusing Judges Of Auditioning For Promotions

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

The post James Ho Demands First Amendment Right To Post Covert Bathroom Pics appeared first on Above the Law.

Law firms are pouring money into AI adoption right now, hoping a new tool will magically organize decades of scattered knowledge.

Nobody threw anything away, but almost nobody organized it either, notes Rachel Shields Williams, the director of AI and knowledge management at Bass, Berry & Sims and president of the Legal Marketing Association.

In this episode of “Adventures in Legal Tech,” Rachel joins host Jared Correia to discuss the state of most firms’ data and how the industry can manage it more effectively.

AI Can Do Everything, Right? 

Wrong. The real work, Rachel  says, happens before any AI tool touches your files.

Respecting the ‘Riptide’

Using technology in a law firm can also be a lot like swimming in the ocean. Here, Rachel explains why.

The Full Conversation

Curious to learn more? Check out this episode below

The post ‘Adventures In Legal Tech’: Where Knowledge Management Meets AI appeared first on Above the Law.

I spent a good part of my professional life trying lawsuits. So when I saw the recent AI Guide for Litigators from the Thomson Reuters Institute (TRI) and ILTA, I paid attention. I’ve generally found TRI’s work to be insightful. It is typically free of thinly disguised sales pitches found in much of the supposedly substantive content offered by vendors.

TRI’s Guide rightly notes that AI tools can be used at virtually any stage of litigation. But the description of AI use in early case assessment (which TRI calls ECA) and outcome analysis (both of which I’ve always heard described as front-end loading) stood out for me. It could indeed be AI’s highest and best use in litigation.

TRI’s Guide

Here’s how TRI describes what AI can do at this early stage:

·      Analyze large volumes of materials to assess a matter’s scope, facts, and likelihood of success.

·      Pre-litigation case assessment, comparing the current matter against historical precedents.

·      Identify key custodians and timelines.

·      Inventory and characterize matters of fact or law potentially relevant to the case.

·      Highlight patterns, gaps, inconsistencies, or other anomalies in evidence.

·      Identify advantageous arguments, venues, and courts.

Why did this stand out? Because in my view, this initial stage of any case is the most important one to get right. But it is often the one that clients balk at paying for.

ECA. It’s Critical

Why do I say it is the most important? Because if you get this correct, it provides you with the vision and strategy for the rest of the case. It helps you formulate your themes. It will expose your case’s strengths and weaknesses. From the beginning.

I learned over the years that knowing this can help you determine how the case should best end. Is it a case to be settled? When? And, most importantly, at what number? Or is it one that has to be tried? If done right, it will reveal what your client really hopes to achieve. The true objective.

ECA will determine your relationship with other defendants, if any. It enables you to direct the client where the case will be going and what to expect. It will form the basis of determining who and what type of expert witnesses you will need. It will help you identify who you need to depose. It will determine your motion practice and the timing of motions. It will guide you in determining the relevant documents and enable you to master those documents.

I had some pretty good mentors along the way. One used to say the first thing he would do when a case came in the door was to draft the jury instructions. Another would spend a couple of hours looking out the window thinking before he did anything. Both used these techniques to guide their underlying approach for the rest of the case. 

What these mentors were trying to do was in fact the very early case assessment and outcome analysis that the Litigation Guide discusses. They were front-end loading.

Those Pesky Clients

But pre-AI, front-end loading took time. A lot of time. And that was the rub. Often, clients would tell me they did not want to pay for the time needed to do the kind of analysis that I thought needed to be done at the outset of the case. 

Why? Several reasons, all related to cost. Some clients were in denial, thinking maybe the case would go away, so why pay for the work. Or that the plaintiff’s lawyer would not put in the time to pursue it or pursue it well. Or was not capable. Some believed that the exposure did not justify the time needed to do a good early analysis. Some figured the work could just be done later if it proved necessary or it could be spread out. The “one step at a time” approach.

The High Cost Of Back-End Loading

All of which was wrong, of course. Later always adds costs. And not doing a robust early case analysis and trying to catch up with back-end loading inevitably leads to more time and cost. Not doing it often digs you into a hole that is expensive and difficult to get out of. 

I took over a case once because the existing lawyer did not do this kind of early analysis. He allowed his first witness to be deposed early in the case without doing the work needed. His intuition was that his case was pretty strong, and he thought he would save the client costs. (Or maybe he was just lazy.) 

His intuition held up right until the time the plaintiff’s lawyer slid a document across the table. A document the defense lawyer hadn’t found. A document he hadn’t vetted with the client and its witness. A document that looked deadly and for which the witness could offer no explanation. I can only imagine how the faces of the witness and the lawyer dropped when that one showed up.

Now the case had a serious problem. We recovered, but it took a lot of work and rehabilitation later on. Overall costs skyrocketed. Never saw that previous lawyer again, by the way. Early work is critical.

Enter AI, Stage Right

So what does this have to do with the TRI Guide and AI? It’s simple. AI can substantially reduce the cost and time of doing this front-end work. It can do things like help create an initial chronology, identify key legal issues, match claims to evidence, identify critical witnesses, develop a litigation plan, assess expert witness needs and identification, evaluate motions that could be filed, analyze damages, and identify key documents. Good and bad. What do we know? What do we not know? 

And perhaps most important for the clients, it can help develop a litigation budget. A budget based on an actual strategy instead of somebody pulling numbers out of thin air and hoping the client doesn’t ask too many questions.

Not only can this kind of assessment be made at a fraction of what it used to cost, but it can also save costs throughout the litigation. Identify key issues and witnesses early and  maybe you conclude you don’t need 25 depositions. You instead need fewer and more pointed depositions and more pointed discovery. Or you decide not to waste time and money filing certain motions. 

The cost savings will run throughout the litigation and enable this kind of assessment to be made in almost any case, big or small. It’s quite an advantage.

And The Human?

From this AI work, the trial lawyer can determine what really matters and what the exposure of the case really is from day one, not on the eve of trial. Which guides every other decision. So front-end loading is the most important thing you will do in litigation. And you now have a tool that will do most of the work at a fraction of the time and cost. 

That leaves the lawyer to do what they do best. Looking out the window and applying their judgment and experience to all the front-end grunt work.

And that’s the real highest and best use AI can have. In any litigation. 

Stephen Embry is a lawyer, speaker, blogger, and writer. He publishes TechLaw Crossroads, a blog devoted to the examination of the tension between technology, the law, and the practice of law.

The post AI And Front-End Loading: The Highest And Best Use appeared first on Above the Law.

Former Chicago Mayor and Democratic strategist Rahm Emanuel summarized Donald Trump’s presidency with the alliterative phrase: “Greed, grievance, and grandeur.”

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries uses a different alliterative phrase:  “Chaos, cruelty and corruption.”

By Jove, I think I’ve got this!

Three words. Alliterative. And, although Emanuel and Jeffries (pikers that they are) may have missed this idea, one word should be about affordability, one should be about the war in Iran, and one should be about corruption, or sex, or one of Trump’s other personal failings.

I thought really hard, and I came up with this one: “Prices, Persia, and pussy.”

Or: “Inflation, Iran, and indulgence.”

What do you think?

But at that point, my imagination had run out.  

The good thing about artificial intelligence is that its imagination never runs out. (Frankly, its imagination is not too clever, either, but you can’t deny that it’s unlimited.) I asked AI to give me one good three-word, alliterative slogan for each letter of the alphabet.

Some were awful. But here are a few of the better ones: 

Affordability, aggression, and arrogance.

Bills, bombing, and boasting.

Costs, conflict, and conquests.

And here, you thought I was kidding, didn’t you?

Fees, firefights, and felonies. (“Felonies” is good, but “fees” and “firefights” don’t really capture the other two ideas.)

Inflation, Iran, and iniquity. (I kind of like that one — but it’s pretty close to what I ginned up without ChatGPT.)

Macro-inflation, missiles, and megalomania.

Overpriced, offensives, and obsequiousness. (On reflection, I should have told ChatGPT to steer clear of polysyllabic words. We are, after all, trying to communicate with the American public. The slogan must be easy to say during a speech.)

Real income, raids, and rape. (“Real income” is a cheat, and “raids” doesn’t do justice to Iran, but surely one could come up with an alliterative phrase that uses “rape.”  Has anyone tried Claude? Perplexity?)  

Tariffs, tension, and tyranny.

Upcharges, unrest, and unbridled ego.

Wages, war, and wrongdoing.

The experts say that AI is about to take away all of our jobs.

Not so fast: Based on AI’s responses to the query that I posed to it, people who write pithy political slogans will remain in high demand.

Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and later oversaw litigation, compliance and employment matters at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

The post ChatGPT’s Anti-Trump Slogans appeared first on Above the Law.

There were people walking by on the sidewalk, and they were completely ignoring this situation that was going on. That’s why I jumped out of the car. Maybe that’s just how they roll in New York, but I’m not from New York. I’m from Michigan.

— Judge Herman Marable Jr. of Michigan’s 67th District Court, reflecting on the moment he stopped to perform lifesaving CPR on a stranger who had collapsed on a busy New York City street while bystanders continued walking past. Marable, who learned CPR at age 12 but had never needed to use it in more than 50 years, was credited with saving the man’s life. His heroics have since inspired his courthouse to offer CPR and AED training to court employees, proving that sometimes the most important judgment a judge can make happens far outside the courtroom.

Staci Zaretsky is the managing editor of Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Bluesky, X/Twitter, and Threads, or connect with her on LinkedIn.

The post Not All Heroes Wear Capes, Some Wear Judicial Robes appeared first on Above the Law.

Miss me?

It has been a minute since I’ve appeared on this site. Nearly 10 years, actually, since I wrote the column in which I made a bold prediction that I’ve come back to revisit. A few things have happened in that time. Half the country started on GLP-1s, and the other half is asking ChatGPT if they should. Nvidia sold enough GPUs to surpass Canada’s entire economy, and GPS is still a thing. It has been a massive decade for the capital letters “G” and “P.”

But before all that — back in January 2017, when I had the glorious complexion you see in my author photo (sigh) — I made the prediction of which I speak. I said:

“By 2027 the legal industry will produce many billionaires, but few, if any, will be practicing attorneys — they will be alt.legal entrepreneurs solving huge problems at scale.”

That was a big swing to take at the time. Would I be back here if I had whiffed? Absolutely not. But it’s still 2026 and we can already call this a home run. Legal tech now has minted 16 unicorns (including decacorns). I like my odds here, a LOT. 

I could see this coming because of MY one asset which appreciated significantly: an almost comic enthusiasm for legal tech. When I made my prediction, I was a Biglaw exile at Thomson Reuters Legal Managed Services, running a legal outsourcing business and co-writing this column with my Penn Law classmate Ed Sohn. Later, I co-founded the legal tech accelerator LexFusion, which in 2025 was acquired by Baretz+Brunelle. I am now a partner there, doing exactly what my column said someone should do: helping legal tech companies grow up, and helping firms and legal departments figure out which ones to buy.

Rereading my 2017 column, it’s clear that I was desperate for someone — anyone — to see the possibilities that I did for legal tech, and to join me in that world. My evangelism rested on three foundations, which I’ll quote directly: “the market for legal innovation is huge,” “the alt.legal community is tiny,” and “your skills will translate.” 

Let’s see how each of those statements has aged over the last decade.

THE MARKET FOR LEGAL INNOVATION IS HUGE

This is truer than ever. In 2017, I bragged that legal outsourcing generated over $1 billion a year. Big business, I said. Adorable. 

The LPO market was pegged at $27.8 billion in 2025 by some people who I assume know what they’re talking about. Meanwhile, I’ve had a front row seat to even more explosive growth in legal tech. A few examples from my career: Casetext, an early LexFusion member, sold to Thomson Reuters for $650 million in 2023. Agiloft, another LexFusion member, took a majority investment from KKR in 2024. DISCO (LexFusion member) went public, and Litera (LexFusion member) bought Kira (also a LexFusion member), which was like watching two friends getting married. 

It’s not just my portfolio. Legal tech funding hit a record $4.6 billion in 2025, per Crunchbase, and startups pulled in more than $2.2 billion this year by late August. Tracxn counts roughly 12,800 legal tech companies worldwide. 

Spending and use are up just as much as investment. Law firms grew their technology spend 9.7% in 2025, likely the fastest real growth the industry has ever seen. Among general counsel, generative AI adoption jumped from 44% to 87% in a single year. Seemingly every firm now has a chief innovation officer, a chief transformation officer and at least one person whose entire job is to attend ILTACON. (I applied to a few of the latter, but they weren’t feeling me.) 

Have law firms become technology savants? Only 18% say they measure AI ROI, which means 82% are doing what lawyers have always done with tech budgets: spending them vigorously and crossing their fingers. But in 2017 the fight was getting firms to admit innovation was a thing. 

That fight is over; we won.

THE ALT.LEGAL COMMUNITY IS TINY

How times have changed. In my 2017 column, I all but begged readers to join me at Stanford’s CodeX conference, where you’d see the same few people year after year. Not anymore. Now, crowds of 5,700 people are coming to tentpole events like this year’s ILTACON, where Sheryl Crow performed a private concert at a Legora event. As Stephen Embry observed here, the gathering felt downright CES-like, filling all 700,000 square feet of Nashville’s Gaylord Opryland. 

But this is one change that shouldn’t scare anyone from jumping into legal tech. That’s because the white space is still staggering. Companies spend about 2% of their legal budgets on technology. Most legal problems on earth never meet a lawyer, let alone a model. 

The legal tech community can also still feel small in the best ways. Evan Shenkman, the Fisher Phillips innovation chief who was the design partner behind Casetext’s CoCounsel, joined Baretz+Brunelle as a partner last month. He now sits about 11 feet from me. He’s (Ron Burgundy voice) kind of a big deal, but if you’ve spent any time in legal tech there’s a good chance you know him. 

YOUR SKILLS WILL TRANSLATE

If you have any inclination to get into legal tech, this is the most important of my three points — and in 2026, it remains true. My basic point was this: hard work, great writing, and strong persuasive and organizational skills can make you a great operator, not just a great associate. I have now witnessed this point proven roughly a thousand times. Casetext founder Jake Heller was a litigator. More broadly, according to Firm Prospects, 46 lawyers left Am Law 200 firms for AI companies in the first half of 2026 alone, so I think my secret is out.

Law schools have noticed, and are encouraging cross pollination between legal techs and young lawyers. Northwestern’s Pritzker Entrepreneurship Law Center has represented hundreds of founders and startups. Starting this fall, BU Law is weaving AI training into all three years of its J.D. curriculum. Now Penn Carey Law has the Institute for the Future of the Legal Profession, where they let me onto the founding advisory board, and Evan sits on WashU Law School’s AI Advisory Board. In short, the skills of good lawyers and good legal tech entrepreneurs are harder to separate than ever. 

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

On the whole, one global pandemic and an AI revolution later, my old column holds up remarkably well. But my prediction isn’t the only thing to look back on. 

Back in the days of alt.legal (that term may be the most archaic thing about this whole exercise), I profiled a bunch of legal tech entrepreneurs, many of whom were scraping together seed money and explaining to skeptical partners what “the cloud” was. I’m planning to track a few down to see where they are a decade later. Some went on to great success, including a billion-dollar exit; another runs legal for OpenAI. For the others, I’m not sure, but at least one probably became a sommelier. It should be fun either way to find out.

Stay tuned.

Joe Borstein is a partner at Baretz+Brunelle and co-founder of LexFusion, B+B’s innovation portfolio.

The post Where Am I Now? A Legal Tech Evangelist Checks In appeared first on Above the Law.

Alas, in 2026, the Work From Anywhere policy is a tad more complicated. Quinn attorneys can still work from anywhere, but the policy includes a significant shift in tone, having gone from “work from wherever they do their best work” to the new mantra “we are at our best when we are together.”

At a time when most Biglaw firms have beat a retreat from their hybrid work arrangements, Quinn is not ending remote work, but it does seem to be putting a little extra weight on the scale toward convincing lawyers to come back to the office. And as part of that, the “indefinitely” has morphed into a mostly:

WFA attorneys must work on-site at their home office for a minimum of three days at least two times per calendar year.

Six days a year is not a huge ask. Frankly, it’s hard to imagine a lawyer schedule that wouldn’t have brought them back into the office for at least a couple weeks a year just for meetings. But it’s notable that the firm has formalized a change after years of a hands-off approach.

The fine print on eligibility has changed as well. Back in 2021, the policy covered first-years too, but now associates need “at least two years of post-law school experience,” before taking advantage of the plan. Beyond that, all candidates looking to work from anywhere must first “work on site in a US QE office for at least one year.”

If there’s been any takeaway from the COVID era, it’s that about half the country is willing to pretend a deadly disease doesn’t exist as long as conspiracy theorists tell them it’s true. And if there’s been a second takeaway from the COVID era, it’s that training matters. Young professionals generally have proven behind on basic skills, and junior lawyers understand they desperately need to build the soft skills that really only develop with in-person work.

And some don’t even understand how much help they need.

Attorneys can excel working remotely if they already understand what the work is all about. But until they do, they’re better off in an environment where they can pick up the lessons they need.

“The WFA policy has been tremendously successful, and we’re proud of the flexibility our culture affords,” Andy Rossman explained. “These adjustments are intended to connect participants even more closely to the firm and set them up for continued success.”

WFA status may be renewed for two additional one year terms, for a total program participation of three years. Execom may, in its sole discretion, renew an attorney’s WFA status beyond three years.

This reads like a big departure from “indefinitely,” but if you can’t start the program until your third year, and you get to the beginning of your sixth year still performing at a high level… they’re going to extend it.

Participation in the WFA program may affect an attorney’s mentorship and relationship-building opportunities, which can in turn impact contributions to the Firm’s culture and business development. Accordingly, the Firm may consider WFA status as one of several legitimate business factors when determining discretionary bonuses or compensation awards.

Check that… they’ll either extend it or they’re telling you that you need to be coming in because partnership requires a couple years of networking. And if you aren’t performing at a high level at that point, it’s probably time to look elsewhere anyway.

Current participants are “grandfathered and exempt” from the three-year limit, and the ones who never worked on site are excused from the one-year requirement too. This appears to be about making sure the next generation of Quinn attorneys — either coming in from law school or moving over from another firm — learn the Quinn way in an office setting first.

This is still the best deal in Biglaw for any lawyer that values flexibility. If you can do your job, you can do it anywhere. But it looks like even the most generous out-of-office policy has to bend a bit to allow the firm to accomplish all its goals.

Earlier: Quinn Emanuel Will Allow Lawyers To Work Remotely, Indefinitely, From Anywhere In The Country

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

The post Quinn Emanuel’s ‘Work From Anywhere’ Policy Scaled Back appeared first on Above the Law.

As if the emotional toll weren’t enough, there’s another worry lurking in the background: work. How long will your baby need to stay in the NICU? How much parental leave will you use up sitting beside an incubator? And what happens if you’ve exhausted your paid leave by the time your baby is finally healthy enough to come home?

For Biglaw parents, where demanding schedules and billable hours don’t exactly lend themselves to flexibility, these questions can be particularly overwhelming. But one firm is showing that compassion and Biglaw don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

Lowenstein Sandler has announced a new paid parental leave policy specifically designed for employees whose newborns require extended NICU stays. Under the policy, parents will receive additional paid leave proportional to the length of their baby’s hospitalization, up to eight extra weeks. Lowenstein, which has more than 400 lawyers, is among the first law firms to offer dedicated extended paid leave for parents of hospitalized newborns.

The idea is simple, but incredibly important: Parents shouldn’t have to spend their entire parental leave watching their babies receive medical treatment, only to be forced back to work shortly after finally bringing them home.

The policy originated with the firm’s Women’s Initiative Network (WIN), whose members brought the idea to Chief People Officer Donatella Verrico earlier this year. Verrico championed the proposal, and the firm’s Operating Committee approved it.

“This policy reflects something we believe strongly: NICU families deserve the best possible support during an extraordinarily difficult and uncertain time,” Verrico said. “We’re proud to formalize that support for all members of our community as a continuation of Lowenstein’s longstanding commitment to working parents.” Managing partner Jonathan Wishnia echoed that sentiment, noting that the firm’s leadership supported the proposal without hesitation. “Supporting our people through major life events is part of who we are and is embedded in so many of our core values, from being boldly innovative to purposefully connected to generous by nature,” he said.

While Biglaw firms are usually competing over associate salaries, bonuses, and other financial perks, this is the kind of benefit that can make a life-changing difference for attorneys and staff when they need it most. No parent should have to choose between being there for their medically fragile newborn and protecting their career.

Kudos to Lowenstein for recognizing that bringing a baby home from the hospital is when a new chapter of parenthood begins, and giving NICU families the additional time they deserve. Here’s hoping other Biglaw firms follow its lead.

Lowenstein Sandler Enacts New Paid Leave Policy for Families with Extended NICU Stays [Lowenstein Sandler]

Staci Zaretsky is the managing editor of Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Bluesky, X/Twitter, and Threads, or connect with her on LinkedIn.

The post A Biglaw Firm With A Heart: This New Parental Leave Policy Deserves Applause appeared first on Above the Law.

Budget season isn’t just about numbers. It’s about the choices shaping the future of the legal department.

Watch the on-demand replay of “Summer’s Over. Budget Season Begins,” a moderated discussion launching the 2027 In-House Legal Budget series.

Drawing on research from 510 legal and finance leaders across six countries, industry leaders from Ford Motor Company, Google, and Aon, alongside author Richard Susskind, explore what today’s budget decisions reveal about the future of in-house legal, from talent and AI to outside counsel, legal operations, and evolving service delivery models.

Featuring:

• Richard Susskind OBE, President, Society for Computers and Law
• Sean D’Souza, Chief of Staff & Director, Legal Operations, Google
• Aisleigh McGann, Head of Global Law and Compliance Operations, Aon
• Darth Vaughn, Ford Motor Company
• David Pierce, Chief Customer Officer, Axiom

Sign up to view it today!

The post What Axiom’s Budget Study Reveals About The Next Generation Of In-House Legal appeared first on Above the Law.

Cool, great, very professional.

On Sunday evening, U.S. District Judge Jennifer Rochon of the Southern District of New York granted a temporary restraining order and a stay under the Administrative Procedure Act in the Common Cause-led challenge to the $20 million taxpayer-funded campaign ad blitz, the one that moved money Congress gave DHS for border security into national TV spots praising the president weeks before the midterms. Rochon, a Biden appointee, stayed DHS’s purchase order with its ad vendor, LMD Agency, stayed the Office of Management and Budget’s $20 million apportionment, and barred the department from spending appropriated funds on the ads. And because she could read a calendar, she ordered the government to “cancel or cause to be cancelled any slot, placement, reservation, or arrangement for the airing or dissemination of the challenged advertisements, including those placements for the evening of October 11, 2026.” The order was effective as of 6:45 p.m. Sunday.

To appreciate how that played out, you need to know how the government defended the ads, because, well, it didn’t. As Law Dork’s Chris Geidner reported, the Justice Department opposed the TRO without saying a word about whether the ads were legal. DOJ recited the Supreme Court’s standard for preliminary relief, likelihood of success on the merits included, and then skipped that factor entirely. The actual argument was that the plaintiffs (Common Cause; Robert Hunter, an Alabama state senate candidate; a union; and the union’s PAC) lacked standing, had filed in the wrong venue, and would suffer no irreparable harm because the ads were ending Sunday anyway. Holly Mehringer, the Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Chief Financial Officer at DHS, swore out a declaration that the vendor had bought airtime through October 11 “at an approximate cost of $19,000,000.”

So the defense of spending $19 million in federal money on Trump’s greatest hits was, more or less, “but we’re almost done anyway.” That’s the equivalent of telling the state trooper that sure, you were doing 95 mph, but your exit is coming up.

The plaintiffs called it what it was. “That attempt to run out the clock does not cut against issuing a TRO and a Section 705 stay; it shows why the Court should grant relief today,” they wrote in their reply. And Judge Rochon agreed.

Well, about that…

On Monday, the plaintiffs told the court the ads kept running Sunday night, and a few more aired early Monday. DOJ’s required status report, filed Monday evening, offered this explanation:

As Your Honor is aware, the Court emailed the TRO to the parties yesterday at 6:46 p.m. Counsel for the Government emailed the TRO to agency counsel at 7:58 p.m. Agency counsel did not become aware of Government counsel’s email until this morning. The undersigned apologizes to the Court and the plaintiffs.

“Sorry, just seeing this!”

DHS now says it’s in compliance, LMD has been told it’s enjoined, and both the purchase order and the apportionment are stayed. The TRO lasts 14 days unless extended, and Rochon is rescheduling Tuesday’s conference.

Meanwhile, in the Democratic National Committee’s parallel suit in D.C., Main Justice’s Federal Programs Branch did attempt a merits defense, which mostly boils down to the claim that something only counts as impermissible propaganda if it’s “completely devoid of any connection with official functions.” That hearing is set for Thursday morning. We’ll see if anyone over there has better luck with the inbox.

Earlier: Former Bush Ethics Lawyer: Trump’s Taxpayer-Funded Campaign Ad Could Be An Impeachable Offense

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1