The Climate Scoreboard Is Out!: See where the biggest names in Biglaw rank on climate work.

Attempted Swatting At Amy Coney Barrett’s Home: Dangerous time to be a judge.

Trump Gets Legal Help From DLA Piper: A partner at the firm was hired to defend his comments about the Central Park 5.

Siloed Workers Don’t Learn At The Water Cooler: Senior partners can’t outsource training new talent to LLMs.

The post Bonuses Are In The Air! — See Also appeared first on Above the Law.

According to a report by Bloomberg Law, the Department of Justice’s Office of Immigration Litigation has seen at lest how many attorneys quit, retire, or otherwise leave the office since January 2025?

Hint: Despite the brain drain, a DOJ spokesperson said the Office of Immigration Litigation is “continuing to fire on all cylinders to defend immigration cases and file denaturalization cases against those who take advantage of American citizenship.”

See the answer on the next page.

The post A Breakdown Of The DOJ’s Immigration Departures appeared first on Above the Law.

Something jumped out at me early at the recent LegalTech Connect Law Firm Research & Innovation Conference with the legal research community. Greg Lambert asked how many attendees have encountered partners who don’t know their Westlaw or Lexis passwords. That question resonated throughout the room as most had experienced this. 

It’s general knowledge that partners rarely conduct legal research, but if they don’t know how to log in to a legal research platform, what process are firms using for partners to access the underlying sources in a brief?  

Over the past year, we’ve seen a steady stream of headlines about AI hallucinations where fake cases, fabricated quotes, and misstated facts made it through a review process and into court filings.

Technology Isn’t The Issue; It’s A Process Problem

While lawyers are responsible for their work, there is a tendency to blame the breakdown on the introduction of AI technology into the process. I think a better explanation is that AI exposed a flaw that already existed in most processes.

For decades, law firm drafting was built on partner guidance and associate writing, with a senior associate taking a pass and then the partner reviewing in a supervisory role. Citation tools such as Shepard’s or KeyCite are used by the associate along the way. But in practice, how, what, and when does the supervising attorney review the work? 

If a case was reviewed earlier in the process, is it checked again at the end of the process, including the quotation pulled from the case? 

Before AI, a mistake that squeaked through a gap in the process didn’t matter as much because potential errors were minor and could be corrected as errata if necessary. But that doesn’t work anymore. Human authorship is being augmented by AI-generated content and editing that can alter facts, fabricate quotes, and invent citations to nonexistent cases. 

AI Exposes The Gaps That Were Always There

Anyone who uses AI grammar-checking software or Microsoft Copilot on a regular basis has had the experience of “uncorrecting” its revisions that are more grammatically correct but also change the meaning of a statement. Associates are still learning and may miss subtle errors introduced by these powerful new tools.

What was correct at an earlier stage of a document may very well be changed by AI in a later version. 

Errata Versus Fabrication

The central issue here is that an AI hallucination is a fabrication. Fake cases are one issue, but more recent issues in filings include fake quotations.  A complete review of everything, including foundational facts, needs to be conducted at the end of the process before filing.  

The tried-and-true workflows that once assumed human authorship must change. 

Drafting And Review Should Be Inseparable

Remember your high school science class? There are protons, neutrons, and electrons within an atom, but the atom itself cannot be separated. AI highlights this in document creation.  The drafting and review processes are atomic.  They can’t be separated without some kind of nuclear reaction.  

AI creates efficiencies in drafting, but it imposes new burdens on the review process and highlights assumptions about who reviews what and when. 

The process now needs to track who verifies citations, when verification occurs, and how it is communicated across the team drafting and reviewing the document.  The same should happen for quotations and fact-checking.  

Zero Trust principles

In Cybersecurity, there is a concept called Zero Trust.  It’s basically “never trust, always verify”.  Unfortunately, AI systems are probabilistic.  They are literally guessing the next part of a word that fits a pattern. This means that hallucinations are a feature of the system’s design rather than a bug. There are techniques to minimize hallucinations, but they can’t be eliminated. 

“Back to Basics” review processes

The consequences of AI incorporated into drafting are that errors can become fabrications that are well beyond the scope of errata.

Before the Internet, it was common to print out all authorities and keep them in binders for access and review.   But the digital equivalent to that physical binder has been lost in some firms. 

There are solutions available to help organize and improve processes. Creating hyperlinks within documents to a repository of referenced authoritative sources can help expedite review. If a link doesn’t exist to a case, then it’s a red flag that it may not exist. Clicking on a link can help review and verify that quotes or facts are correct, too.

Firms should take action now

AI Policy is not a process.  Firms need to operationalize how attorneys can comply with the policy and provide the processes and tools needed to make it easier to meet the standards of Rule 11 Ethical responsibility. 

The California Bar recently solicited comments on changes to the rules of professional conduct as they pertain to AI.  And there is some discussion proposing an actual Hyperlink Rule to ensure sources are linked in filings.  Firms shouldn’t wait for regulators to tell them what to do. 

Conclusion

AI may have introduced gross fabrication into legal work, but it also removed the illusion that review processes were ever airtight.

There are more advanced solutions possible, including some I have suggested in prior writings on hallucinations. But before the industry considers more advanced solutions, it should ensure it addresses the basics first. 

The firms that recognize and rebuild their review processes and tightly couple them to the drafting process will be in a much better position than those that treat this as a problem caused by technology or a problem to be solved with policy alone.

AI was used in the review of this article.

Ken Crutchfield has over forty years of experience in legal, tax, and other industries. Throughout his career, he has focused on growth, innovation, and business transformation. His consulting practice advises investors, legal tech startups and others. As a strategic thinker who understands markets and creating products to meet customer needs, he has worked in start-ups and large enterprises. He has served in General Management capacities in six businesses. Ken has a pulse on the trends affecting the market. Whether it was the Internet in the 1980s or Generative AI, he understands technology and how it can impact business. Crutchfield started his career as an intern with LexisNexis and has worked at Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg, Dun & Bradstreet, and Wolters Kluwer. Ken has an MBA and holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from The Ohio State University.

The post Back To Basics appeared first on Above the Law.

Some lawyers are lucky and rarely, if ever, need to deal with clients who do not pay their bills. However, the vast amount of attorneys will invariably face a client that has not paid their bills and seems unlikely to do so in the future. If the matter a lawyer is handling for the client involves litigation, the attorney may need to ask the court permission to withdraw as counsel, which can be a time-consuming process. There are a few things lawyers should keep in mind when deciding if they should withdraw as counsel for nonpayment.

I know some lawyers who withdraw as counsel shortly after a missed payment deadline. However, it might be worthwhile to wait a little before doing so. Clients have an unusual ability to pay in full even after months of nonpayment have passed. I have seen clients pay substantial bills close to a year after invoices were first generated. Withdrawing as counsel might ruin an attorney-client relationship, so it might be important to extend the client a little good faith.

Moreover, a court might not appreciate that a lawyer wants to cut ties with a client shortly after a missed payment deadline. Generally, the more time that has passed, and the more ignored payment notices a lawyer can show were served, the more likely a court will be to permit counsel to withdraw. Moreover, withdrawing might involve work and expenses that can be avoided if the client eventually pays those invoices.

Another important factor in the decision to withdraw is the stage of the litigation. Lawyers generally should not wait until a case is trial-ready to withdraw from a matter. This is because courts might find that clients and other stakeholders may be prejudiced by a withdrawal of counsel too late in a case. If a trial date is approaching, this might militate in favor of asking for permission to withdraw earlier rather than later in order to maximize the chance withdrawal will be approved by the court.

It also pays to make friends with counsel for other parties to a case when asking permission to withdraw. Clients rarely oppose motions to withdraw as counsel, but I have seen other lawyers to a case file opposition to the withdrawal of counsel. Sometimes lawyers do not want a case stayed to allow a party to obtain new counsel, and other times, lawyers think their clients’ interests would be best served if a party is represented by counsel who has been handling the matter. However, I have seen firsthand lawyers not opposing withdrawal motions out of professional courtesy when counsel liked each other, so this is another reason to maintain solid professional relationships.

It is also important to keep clients apprised of the process that will be undertaken to permit counsel to withdraw. Often, courts require lawyers to serve clients with orders and motion papers related to the request to be relieved as counsel, and this can be confusing to a client. Indeed, I had one client who thought he was being sued since papers related to the motion to withdraw were served at his home.  Communication with clients can help make service of the necessary documents easier and preserve some goodwill the client may have for their counsel.

All told, it usually makes sense to give a client at least a few months to make payments before asking the court to withdraw as counsel for nonpayment. However, the state of the litigation may dictate when a lawyer files a motion to withdraw.

Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothman.law.

The post Considerations When Withdrawing As Counsel For Nonpayment Of Fees appeared first on Above the Law.

U.S. President Donald Trump has beefed up his defense team in a defamation lawsuit related to the overturned Central Park Five convictions, adding a senior lawyer from prominent law firm DLA Piper.

Caryn ​Schechtman, who leads DLA Piper’s securities and financial investigations practice, signed a brief Trump filed Thursday in the ‌3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seeking to overturn a decision that allowed the case to move forward.

Working for Trump is a bold move. Even if you brush aside the ethical complexities of defending a convicted felon who has extensive connections with the highest profile child sex ring in recent history after he accused exonerated men of being rapists, what’s the payoff gonna be? While Trump is good at getting paid, he has a heavily documented history of not paying the people who work for him. Dude has skimped out on hundreds of people. And as hopeful as it might be to think that he just screws over the little people and not the lawyers saving his ass in court, the $1.6M he owes to 12 different firms points to the contrary.

That said, he’s been known to pay in other ways. He’s taken care of Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, maybe this is Schechtman’s way of pivoting to a new role? Dealing with proto-dictators is one way to ensure job security in these trying times. And if it isn’t, we’ll be happy to add Schechtman to the list of lawyers that got screwed over by the guy known for screwing his lawyers over.

Trump Expands Legal Team With DLA Piper In Central Park Five Defamation Case [Reuters]

Earlier: Offhand Lie About Central Park 5 Lands Trump Back In Legal Trouble

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s .  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boat builder who is learning to swim and is interested in rhetoric, Spinozists and humor. Getting back in to cycling wouldn’t hurt either. You can reach him by email at christopherrashadwilliams@gmail.com and by Tweet/Bluesky at @WritesForRent.

The post DLA Piper Partner Backs Trump Central Park 5 Defamation Case appeared first on Above the Law.

We will continue to promote to both income and equity tiers moving forward.

Developing our talent and providing those opportunities earlier contributed to the larger class.

It’s been broadly positively received. It adds more definition and clarity to the career track here at Skadden.

—  Jeremy London, executive partner at Skadden, in comments given to the American Lawyer, concerning the firm’s adoption of a nonequity partnership tier and how the new program has done since its inception. Thanks to the nonequity track, the firm announced 55 new partners in April, compared to 22 in 2025 and 21 in 2024.

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 Nonequity Partners Entered The Chat, And Skadden’s Promotion Numbers Soared appeared first on Above the Law.

The implosion of the case against protesters outside the ICE facility in suburban Chicago has been well-documented. Boutros, a former federal prosecutor who previously led white collar prosecutions at Dechert, admitted that AUSA Sheri Mecklenburg: vouched and misstated the law in her first presentation to the grand jury; removed jurors in the second; and engaged in ex parte communications with jurors in the third. With hand on heart — we assume! — he assured Judge April Perry that no one in his office ever intended to bend the rules. He only proceeded with the tainted grand jury to avoid the appearance of forum shopping. Boutros did not explain why he let the prosecutor who got no billed on her first outing and behaved so inappropriately at her second take a third crack at the panel.

His office then launched a damage control campaign, loudly trumpeting an investigation into that one bad apple Mecklenburg’s prior cases.

But even as Boutros insisted that he’s a REAL lawyer, not a common Lindsey Halligan, it emerged that his office is leading a perjury investigation into the 82-year-old advice columnist who’s been trying to collect almost $90 million from the president for the past three years. The supposedly false statement took place in a deposition(!) in October of 2022.

Here’s the pertinent exchange:

Q: Are you presently paying your counsel’s fees?
A: This is a contingency case.
Q: So you’re not paying expenses or anything out of pocket to date; is that correct?
A: I’m not sure about expenses. I have to look that up.
Q. Is anyone else paying your legal fees, Ms. Carroll?
A: No.

In fact, a non-profit associated with Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn and prominent supporter of liberal causes, was paying some of the upfront case expenses, which Carroll’s counsel voluntarily disclosed in April of 2023. Trump’s lawyers made a big stink about it, which is kind of amazing considering that Alina Habba, Joe Tacopina, and Todd Blanche, who represented Trump in the Carroll cases, collected millions from the Trump campaign and associated PACs. Judge Lewis Kaplan gave them extra time to depose Carroll, and when they took their caterwauling to the Second Circuit, the judges said it was clear that Carroll simply forgot and then corrected the record when she remembered — no harm, no foul.

But now the Trump administration sees a chance to do to Hoffman’s non-profit, American Future Republic, what it did to the Southern Poverty Law Center, and take out Carroll, to boot. According to the New York Times and Washington Post, Boutros’s office is investigating whether AFR instructed/conspired with Carroll to lie about the source of her litigation funding, with an eye to potentially charging them all with money laundering and obstruction.

Yesterday, Boutros’s office put out a very carefully worded statement

Note that Boutros does not deny that his office is investigating AFR for conspiring with Carroll to commit perjury — just that she’s the target of the investigation. Which is pretty much what you’d expect from a guy who looked a federal judge in the eye last week and pinky swore that “there was no desire to mislead the Court and no deliberate misconduct on the part of the prosecutors.”

It’s possible that Andrew Boutros thinks he’ll come out the other side of this without too much stink on him. That he won’t be the next Aileen Cannon, or a Todd Blanche, or an Alina Habba. He certainly tried to assure Judge Perry that he wasn’t like those other hacks, he’s a real prosecutor who doesn’t play fast and loose. And yet here he is, barely a week later, making clear that the reek of corruption is coming from his office.

Liz Dye produces the Law and Chaos Substack and podcast. You can subscribe by clicking the logo:

The post US Atty Boutros: If Not Trump Hack, Why Trump Hack Shaped? appeared first on Above the Law.

Threats against Supreme Court justices garner more attention, but incidents of violent intimidation directed at federal judges are up across the country without much fanfare. Balls and Strikes tallied 241 threats against 202 judges in 2026 alone, and that story came out in March. Supreme Court justices have access to heightened security — like the officers already stationed at Justice Barrett’s house — but lower court judges aren’t as fortunate. That’s not to downplay the seriousness of this specific incident, but it should frame how we talk about it.

In January, conservative judges were mocking the rise in threats and harassment against fellow judges. Judge James Ho blasted the Federal Judges Association for having “politicized” security for judges. “Today, they’re fearful when a judge receives an unsolicited pizza delivery at home,” he said, glibly ignoring that these orders communicate we know where you live and are being made in the name of Judge Esther Salas’s murdered son. And the intimidation tactics go beyond the macabre pizza deliveries. Judge Ana Reyes described being called a “foreign-born lesbian” who should “eat a bullet” after an immigration ruling. At an event last fall, Judge Paul Grimm quoted a threat made against a different federal judge “We are going to rape your daughter in front of you, cut her head off so the blood splatters on you, then rape you, and kill you.” As Judge Grimm explained, these threats are flooding in whether judges were appointed by Democrats or Republicans.

Though, between the lines, it seemed that the quality connecting that bipartisan collection of judges was ruling against Donald Trump.

It’s hard to deal with political violence — from any ideology — when one side treats it as a joke. Judge Ho’s mockery fits a broader pattern. Paul Pelosi was nearly beaten to death with a hammer in his own home, and the response from right-wing social media was to turn his skull fracture into a punchline and a conspiracy theory. When a gunman impersonating a police officer assassinated Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband and shot State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Senator and former Supreme Court clerk Mike Lee’s contribution — before the suspect was even in custody — was to post the shooter’s photo captioned “This is what happens When Marxists don’t get their way” and “Nightmare on Waltz Street,” because he’s too lazy to even correctly spell Tim Walz’s last name. The suspect turned out to be a Trump-rally-attending registered Republican, but Lee didn’t seem interested in correcting the record. He just deleted the posts and moved on.

An attempted swatting is horrific, but if the same people snickering about Pelosi and the murders in Minnesota cast a threat against a justice with round-the-clock security as somehow more grave, it speaks to a more fundamental breakdown that prevents any serious response to the core problem.

For the record, I suspect at least one conservative voice will find a way to turn this incident into a reason to build a White House ballroom.

The media plays a role in enabling this cynicism. The NBC report on this story is 13 paragraphs long. The unprecedented wave of threats facing lower court judges over the past couple years is relegated to paragraph 12. Obviously, mainstream reporters feel compelled to clear their whos, whats, wheres, and whens first. But with more people getting their news from social media blurbs and circulating headlines without ever bothering to read the underlying story, a penultimate paragraph mention may as well not even exist.

If this story becomes “crazy leftists target conservative justice” as opposed to “judges face increasing threats across America and deserve more security,” then nothing changes. Indeed, elevating this story to suggest the Supreme Court is uniquely under siege gets the threat profile exactly backwards.

While the Supreme Court enjoys deservedly heightened security, the majority has put targets on the lower courts. The Roberts Court has spent the last year using the shadow docket to vacate district court orders without explanation, reprimand trial judges for failing to read the supermajority’s mind, and broadcast to the administration and its online auxiliaries that the judges enforcing the law are the real problem. Dozens of federal judges told the New York Times the emergency docket was eroding public trust in their work, and most agreed that it had caused real harm. When the highest court in the country keeps signaling — without bothering to write an opinion — that the trial bench is an illegitimate obstacle to the president, it’s not a surprise that the same people who stormed the Capitol would start issuing violent threats.

Roberts says personally directed hostility toward judges is “dangerous” and “has got to stop.” That’s true, but his proposed solution is “stop questioning us” as opposed to pumping the breaks on churning out rulings baselessly suggesting that lower court judges are arbitrarily undermining Trump.

Part of recognizing political violence as a problem beyond ideology is being honest about the partisan disconnect in the response to it. When conservatives keep reacting to violence by laughing at the murder of Democrats and constructing flimsy conspiracies to sell books blaming liberals and downplaying right-wing violence, it not only engenders more right-wing violence, but opens the door to previously more rare left-inspired violence as they internalize the insane idea that it’s a tactic that the other side gets to use without repercussions.

You know, like when people storm the Capitol and try to kill the police and get pardons. That’s the sort of thing that normalizes all political violence.

Hopefully, this event results in real change. But it probably won’t. We’ll be treated to a bunch of takes about how this is all a liberal’s fault and then if it comes out that this was one of the legions of disgruntled MAGA-heads who think Justice Barrett is a RINO for ruling against Trump’s tariffs — or an embarrassment to her family as Trump himself said — it will be quietly shunted aside as inconvenient.

Earlier: Judge With Overinflated View Of His Intelligence Blasts Judges For ‘Overinflated View Of Their Intelligence’
Legalweek’s Annual Judicial Panel: A Clear And Present Danger To Our Judges — And The Rule Of Law
‘I’ll Put A Bullet In Your Head’: The Disturbing Reality Of Being A Judge In America
Jonathan Turley’s Swatting Theory Fizzled So He Launched His Own Phony Assault

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 Amy Coney Barrett Swatting Incident Tests Whether Anyone Cares About Threats To Judges Who Aren’t On SCOTUS appeared first on Above the Law.

It’s high time to reconsider whether the old training by osmosis approach, the learning by hanging around the water cooler notion, is going to work any longer, particularly in the age of AI.

You know the argument: let’s get their butts in the office because that’s critical for the training of younger lawyers. The idea is they will come to the office, hang around, bump into a senior partner at the water cooler and somehow absorb some great truths about the practice that they wouldn’t otherwise get. 

But what actually happens is a bit different. The associate comes to the office, goes to their personal space, closes the door and works. They might come up for air here and there and get a cup of coffee but that’s only for a moment. Then it’s back to the grindstone. And the partners are doing the same, all in pursuit of billing hours to meet artificial quotas set by firm management.

The Impact Of AI

And that was before AI. I read a recent article in Business Insider by Aki Ito that talked about the impact of AI on work and in-office collaboration. The point of the article was that the things for which workers used to seek out colleagues to get help with or to run by is now done by AI. Instead of going next door and talking through a problem, workers just ask ChatGPT — or its equivalent — for answers. That is dramatically reducing the amount and nature of worker interaction.

And these interactions are valuable. As a practicing lawyer, I would often run ideas by colleagues even if it was just to hear my proposals and ideas out loud. Many times I would get halfway through my spiel, stop, and say never mind. Because, in speaking it out loud, I realized it wasn’t all that great.

Moreover, according to the article and some studies it cites, the less actual interactions, the less workers trust their human colleagues. And, sadly, that workers are turning to AI rather than colleagues for performance feedback. 

The fabric of work, where we at least get to talk to other people about our problems or even just to vent, is unraveling. And that talking (and venting), says the article, was what made work more tolerable and meaningful. It made for a happier work environment.

It’s All The More Problematic For Lawyers

All of this is a particular problem for lawyers and particularly litigators. I’m fond of pointing out something one of my client representatives used to say: let’s be careful we don’t end up in the closet talking to ourselves too much. He meant, of course, that we need to say things to one another and get feedback from others to create the best product. For litigators and trial lawyers, our best product and the most persuasive arguments are those that resonate with other humans. What better way to get that resonating product than by talking to human colleagues and getting their views. Or just seeing their reaction: what did their body language suggest? Were they bored? Did they understand the argument being made? Did it move them?

These are human reactions. They can’t be replaced by a bot that all too often tells us what we want to hear.

And these interactions are indeed important to younger lawyers. When I was a first- or second-year associate, I would often seek advice from a more senior associate or even administrative staff on how to do things. For background. To review some idea I had. To understand the idiosyncrasies of the firm or a particular partner. It was how I and many younger lawyers learned. 

And by doing multiple drafts for exacting senior partners, I learned how to write persuasively and, indeed, the sometimes laborious process of creating good work product.

But wait, you say. Didn’t you start off by saying that having young lawyers come to the office was not particularly worthwhile. That’s not exactly what I meant. 

My point was that having young lawyers come to the office without more doesn’t necessarily teach them anything. And now with AI, the lack of teaching and training will be even worse. As the Business Insider article pointed out, we are all forsaking human work interactions due to the siren call of AI.

The old way was easy. It didn’t require thought, planning, and analysis. Or time. But it’s not going to work anymore. If we demand everyone come to the office and then let them float in an AI world with their office doors closed and heads down, we will end up with associates with heads full of mush. 

What Can We Do

Most importantly, as with any problem, we have to start by recognizing that we actually have a problem. We have to admit that the old notion that informal interactions at the water cooler will adequately train younger lawyers will no longer work. It was a myth before AI and it’s certainly a myth now.

Then, we have to work to replace the informal water cooler with more formal and designed training that creates the opportunities for interaction between associates and between associates and partners. Structured training ensures that training will actually happen and that all will get the training, not just those who are lucky enough to be at the water cooler at the right time. We have to set aside the myopic focus on billable hours and commit to nonbillable time to create the training and the interactions that are needed.

Lastly, we have to recognize that AI, while it provides tremendous opportunities for younger lawyers and for all of us, can’t be left in a vacuum. Showing younger lawyers how and why AI outputs are wrong or don’t fit the situation at hand is important. This requires greater mentoring and thought on the part of management and partners. 

And for partners, they themselves have to search out the kinds of interactions with each other I experienced and described. They have to recognize the value of AI along with the value of the human interactions to create the great product and, for that matter, a better work environment. 

Otherwise, when it comes down to persuading other humans, which is the heart of our business, our arguments will sound like they came from AI and won’t be convincing. Nor will it create and further the trust which is at the heart of a good attorney-client relationship.

They will sound like what they are: something that came from AI, not our hearts.

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 It’s Time To Say Goodbye To Water Cooler Training appeared first on Above the Law.

The logic sounds straightforward. Bring in a global event, attract millions of visitors, fill hotels and restaurants, generate tax revenue, and showcase the region to the world. Politicians celebrate the projected impact long before the first ticket is scanned.

That is certainly part of the narrative surrounding the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which will bring matches to the New York metropolitan area next month, including the tournament final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.

But an interesting wrinkle has started to emerge.

Some early hospitality indicators in New York City appear softer than many expected.

That does not mean the World Cup will fail economically. It will still attract enormous crowds, global attention, and significant spending. But it does raise a larger and increasingly important question:

Do mega-events consistently deliver the economic windfalls the public is promised?

Or do projections often outrun reality?

Those questions matter because public agencies and taxpayers frequently absorb enormous logistical and financial responsibilities connected to these events. Transportation systems are expanded. Security operations intensify. Police, sanitation, emergency management, and infrastructure costs rise dramatically. Public officials justify much of that spending by pointing to expected tourism surges and long-term economic benefits.

But the economics of modern mega-events are often more complicated than the headlines suggest.

One possible explanation for softer hotel expectations is pricing itself.

Traveling to the World Cup is becoming extraordinarily expensive. Between airfare, event tickets, restaurant costs, transportation, and lodging, many fans are already confronting eye-popping totals before they even arrive. Some may choose shorter stays. Others may attend only a single match rather than building an extended vacation around the tournament.

And some may simply decide not to come at all.

There is also the issue of geographic dispersion.

This is not a traditional single-country World Cup concentrated in a handful of closely connected cities. The 2026 tournament will span the United States, Canada, and Mexico across 104 matches. Fans may move frequently between regions rather than staying in one place for extended periods. Others attending matches at MetLife Stadium may stay outside Manhattan entirely, including in New Jersey or outer suburban markets where hotel prices are lower.

Alternative lodging platforms may also reshape traditional hotel demand. Large sporting events increasingly drive travelers toward short-term rentals, group accommodations, and other nontraditional options that reduce pressure on conventional hotel inventory.

There is another factor that cities rarely like discussing publicly: displacement.

Major events do not simply attract tourists. They can also discourage regular visitors.

Some business travelers postpone trips to avoid crowds and inflated prices. Some families delay vacations because hotel rates surge during large events. Local residents sometimes avoid entertainment districts entirely during major tournaments because transportation and traffic become difficult.

In other words, the World Cup may create new tourism while simultaneously pushing some existing tourism away.

That dynamic is rarely reflected clearly in early economic projections.

History offers plenty of cautionary examples. Olympic Games, Super Bowls, and other international sporting events have often produced headlines predicting transformational economic benefits that later proved overstated or unevenly distributed. Certain industries and neighborhoods may benefit substantially while others experience little meaningful impact at all.

That does not mean hosting major events lacks value.

There is real prestige attached to being at the center of a global cultural moment. International visibility matters. Businesses in hospitality, entertainment, and transportation may see meaningful gains. Some infrastructure improvements can create lasting public benefits.

But prestige and economic reality are not always identical.

That distinction becomes especially important when governments and public agencies commit substantial resources based on assumptions of overwhelming financial upside.

The public deserves honest conversations about both the opportunities and the limitations attached to events of this scale.

Will restaurants and hotels benefit? Certainly many will.

Will the region receive extraordinary international exposure? Absolutely.

Will every economic projection fully materialize exactly as promised? History suggests caution.

The problem is not enthusiasm for the World Cup itself. Soccer remains one of the few truly global shared experiences capable of bringing together people across countries, languages, and cultures. Next summer will create memorable moments for millions of fans.

But large sporting events increasingly exist at the intersection of sports, politics, commerce, real estate, tourism, and public finance. That means cities should evaluate them with clear eyes rather than pure optimism.

If hotel numbers in New York are softer than anticipated this far out, that does not necessarily signal failure. It may simply reflect a more complicated economic reality than the public is often sold when these tournaments are announced.

And perhaps that is the real lesson.

Mega-events are rarely as economically simple as the promotional brochures make them appear.

Michael J. Epstein, a Harvard Law School graduate, is a trial lawyer and managing partner of The Epstein Law Firm, P.A., a law firm based in New Jersey.

The post The World Cup Is Coming To New York. So Why Aren’t Hotel Numbers Higher? appeared first on Above the Law.

Ed. Note: A weekly roundup of just a few items from Howard Bashman’s How Appealing blog, the Web’s first blog devoted to appellate litigation. Check out these stories and more at How Appealing.

“Is Trump the President the Framers Feared? The drafters of the Constitution hoped for energetic but accountable presidents.” Adam Liptak has this new installment of his “The Docket” newsletter online at The New York Times.

“Supreme Court Says Death Row Inmate Can Challenge Exclusion of Black Jurors; Terry Pitchford was convicted in 2006 for his role in the murder of a shopkeeper by a 12-member jury that included one Black member”: Ann E. Marimow of The New York Times has this report.

“Police Officer Gets Sig Sauer Accidental Gun Firing Suit Revived”: Shweta Watwe of Bloomberg Law has this report (subscription required for full access) on a decision that a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued today.

“Are Wendi and Harvey Adelson in the Clear . . . Or Will They Face Murder Charges like Donna and Charlie”: Surviving The Survivor has posted this video on YouTube.

“Appeals court unlikely to intervene in ‘Scandoval’ revenge porn lawsuit; The ‘Vanderpump Rules’ love triangle may be a distant memory, but the litigation is just getting warmed up”: Hillel Aron of Courthouse News Service has this report.

“Justice Anthony Kennedy assesses the challenges facing the Supreme Court in Trump’s second term”: You can access the new episode of the PBS program “Firing Line with Margaret Hoover” via this link.

The post How Appealing Weekly Roundup appeared first on Above the Law.

And one of Biglaw’s least savory business pipelines involves building pipelines. Or otherwise greasing the wheels of corporate pollution and fossil fuel consumption.

The Law Students for Climate Accountability puts together an annual report ranking the Vault 100 on how much fossil fuel work they do. In the era of on-campus interviewing, the Spring presented an excellent opportunity to do some research before selling your services to a law firm defending the rights of companies to burn chemicals next to schools. Maybe that’s an added advantage to Biglaw blowing up that schedule — they can lock in students before they have time to figure out what their new job entails.

In any event, it’s not all bad news. A handful of firms land at the top of the LSCA list. Like Foley Hoag, a firm that managed to somehow improve upon its three-year run in the A-tier by earning the organization’s first A+ in the seven-year history.

Without further ado, here’s this year’s scorecard:

The 2026 Scorecard grades the Vault 100 on litigation, transactions, and lobbying that either exacerbates or mitigates climate change, then assigns each firm the worst of its three scores. LSCA refuses to average, recognizing the concept of “net” damage as uniquely damaging in climate discourse. “The idea of netting is not tethered to reality,” the report explains, “greenhouse gas emissions are not netted out of the atmosphere simply because more renewable energy is being produced.” It’s a methodology designed to frustrate exactly the kind of ESG-page accounting that firms have spent a decade perfecting.

Not that law firms tout their ESG work as much these days. Republicans warned Biglaw several years back that vague punishments would follow if firms talk about climate change, and the Trump administration made good on those threats, prompting law firms to scrub ESG mentions from their websites.

And when they aren’t talking about their environmental success — real or imaginary — the work suffers. The topline numbers in this year’s report mark the worst the group has recorded.

The V100 facilitated a combined total of $818,993,000,000 in fossil fuel transactions in 2025; this was also the peak figure over the five-year period, accounting for a disproportionate 26.5% of the total fossil fuel work analyzed. In other words, many of the world’s largest
and most influential law firms are patently expanding emitting fossil fuel industries, in spite of calls to wind down the industry writ large.

The same 10 repeat offenders that have each cleared 12 figures in fossil fuel deal work over five years were responsible for close to half a trillion dollars in 2025 by themselves.

Another key factor in the worsening outlook is the arrival of the AI data center boom. Simpson Thacher ranked first globally in data center transactions in 2024, advising on over $275 billion in deals since 2018. Latham & Watkins, the top M&A firm of 2025, described the year as defined by “AI and data centers.” Sidley Austin advised on a 2,300-megawatt natural gas deal to power Oracle’s AI buildout, with the gas moving through Energy Transfer’s pipeline network — the same Energy Transfer whose Dakota Access SLAPP suits were run by Gibson Dunn. Gibson Dunn, for its part, advised the SpaceX-xAI merger that created xAI’s corporate parent. The firms structuring the AI deals are, unsurprisingly, firms that earned F grades.

The end of that pipeline lands in South Memphis, where xAI installed dozens of methane gas turbines at its Colossus data center without bothering to obtain air permits, in a predominantly Black neighborhood where the cancer risk already runs four times the national average. An xAI representative said the plan for the next facility was to “copy and paste” the approach. The NAACP and the Southern Environmental Law Center have filed notices of intent to sue under the Clean Air Act.

LSCA’s point is that — at this juncture — data center work is fossil fuel work with a facelift. Firms can report reductions in “oil and gas” work while shifting the hours spent setting up an AI campus with unpermitted gas turbines as “technology.”

The litigation findings carry their own familiar names. Only three firms cleared 100 exacerbating-litigation points: Arnold & Porter, Gibson Dunn, and Paul Weiss — the last of which LSCA’s prior coverage flagged as the worst actor in the field. Paul Weiss taking an unpopular action to benefit its bottom line? Surely that can’t be the case!

Across the Atlantic the picture is bleaker still, and the hypocrisy more nakedly documented. Four of the five Magic Circle firms — Linklaters, Clifford Chance, Freshfields, and A&O Shearman — land among the top five UK firms by fossil fuel transaction value, with the five Magic Circle firms together accounting for some $482.5 billion.

Congratulations to those firms earning the As and Bs. They’re outnumbered but prove that there’s still a lucrative business model out there that doesn’t involve scorching the Earth along the way.

(The full report goes into significantly more detail and can be accessed here)

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 Biglaw’s Climate Scorecard Is Out, And The AI Data Center Boom Just Made The Curve Worse appeared first on Above the Law.

Editor’s note: First in a series.

The Litera Foundation knowledge management platform doesn’t just have customers. It has innovators — law firms continually using the system in new ways to enhance client value. 

These ground-breaking firms were recently honored in Litera’s inaugural Foundation Innovation Awards, which recognized the creative ways firms are using this powerful tool. 

Foundation’s simplicity and adaptability are at the core of these awards, which highlight the endless use cases Foundation customers are putting into practice. 

Here, we look at a use case from one finalist firm.

A Virtuous Cycle

If a legal tech solution has a high degree of adaptability, customers can start small and gradually secure buy-in and expansion. Initial wins create a virtuous cycle, where success leads to growth, and this growth leads to more success. 

A Cleary Gottlieb team that includes members of its Knowledge Management and Business Development groups has implemented such a cycle at that firm.

“Establishing oversight of our program across the firm’s global footprint was our biggest hurdle,” said Jeannine Zito, the firm’s Senior Manager of Knowledge Solutions. “We needed analytics to show us who should be involved and when, what strategies were working, and where we had gaps. Foundation helped us define the right data to measure our success, and that visibility created momentum for expansion.”

The Cleary team launched Foundation in 2020 across five practice areas, establishing a core infrastructure. From the launch onward, the types of data tracked continued to grow, and the firm’s reporting concepts continued to evolve.

Soon, the team introduced data visualization and other insights. Then the Cleary team used the system to produce “Health Reports,” which provide high-level metrics for firm leadership. 

After the Health Reports were live for a year, they had sufficient data for longitudinal comparisons, revealing trends and further supporting data-driven decision-making. Now, the firm is incorporating user feedback and redesigning its reports to address ever-more sophisticated strategic goals. 

Establishing measurable metrics to monitor program health while identifying areas for improvement — along with implementing real-time tracking of profile completion and data quality — were areas of emphasis throughout the initiative at Cleary. 

The need to track when data was entered was particularly impactful, because it ensured that stakeholders continually updated Foundation. The resulting high-quality data, in turn, could be used by firm leadership to guide decision-making regarding firm operations and other areas. 

Today, the fruits of this analytics initiative are evident throughout the firm. 

The Foundation initiative has brought efficient knowledge sharing and intelligence-focused business development, made possible by improved access to precedents and insights across practice areas. These insights also enable evidence-based performance measurement.

The framework’s success demonstrates how technology can transform traditional legal operations into analytics-based, strategic initiatives.

And by demonstrating clear ROI to law firm leadership throughout the initiative, the Cleary team has ensured that this program will continue to expand and grow even more impactful and sophisticated in the years to come.

With so many unique use-cases for Foundation, it’s no wonder to see why it has such innovators. If you would like to learn more about Foundation and explore how it might help your firm transform your experience, pricing, and other precedent data, connect with the Litera team to request a detailed analysis of your marketing tech-stack!

This and other use cases form the basis of a business of law eBook, sponsored by our friends at Litera. You can download your copy using the form below.

The post How Cleary Gottlieb Created A Virtuous Cycle With Tech appeared first on Above the Law.

Trump Mobile has subsequently confirmed the leak, which they’re blaming on somebody else:

“Phone provider Trump Mobile has confirmed that it was exposing customers’ names, email addresses, mailing addresses, cell numbers, and order identifiers to the open internet…[a spokesperson] said that the exposure was linked to a third-party platform provider that supports “certain Trump Mobile operations.” He did not name the provider.”

Whoops.

Even calling Trump Mobile an actual company is generous. As we noted when it was “launched” last year, the company is really just a lazy rebrand of an existing MAGA-friendly MVNO provider, Patriot Mobile, which itself just resells T-Mobile service.

A cornerstone of the venture was a “made in America” gold “Trump phone” named the T1 that was supposed to launch last August. Though shortly after launch the Trump Organization eliminated all the “made in America” claims. And the actual phone still hasn’t arrived in the hands of most customers, despite people paying $100 as early as June last year to reserve one. So very on brand, really.

Some of the Chinese-made phones have started showing up with reviewers, and it’s not going great. The screen is smaller than promised, the gold is more of a sickly yellow, the American flag is missing two stripes, and the phone, despite promises that it was “made with American values in mind,” appears to just be a lazy rebrand of an existing two-year-old Chinese-made Android phone (the 2024 HTC U24 Pro).

So it’s a dated Chinese phone, slathered with Trump’s name, gold paint, and an incorrect depiction of the U.S. flag — that’s a year late, not particularly secure, and pre-loaded with propaganda (Truth Social). Again, very on brand. Though curiously in stark contrast to all of the Trump bravado about how he’d personally ensure most smartphones would now be made in the States.

Still, Trump Mobile execs are trying to put on a brave face and pretend this is going well:

“The technology business is more difficult than some may realize, as parts must be tested for quality assurances,” Trump Mobile CEO Pat O’Brien said in a statement to CNET earlier this month. “We have experienced delays during a variety of steps in getting the T1 to completion, but those delays were worth it in our minds as we are delivering an amazing product.”

Except there’s no real indication that last bit is true. Like most Trump efforts to make money off his name, it’s clear this entire thing was aggressively half-assed.

‘Trump Mobile’ Has Struggled To Ship Any Phones, But Has Already Leaked Subscriber Data

More Law-Related Stories From Techdirt:

Violent Crime In The US Is At Record Lows, But The DOJ Is Eliminating The Funding That Helped Reduce Crime
Trump FCC Proposes Vile New Trans Panic TV Warnings
35 Former Federal Judges Call Trump’s Self-Settlement A Fraud On The Court

The post ‘Trump Mobile’ Has Struggled To Ship Any Phones, But Has Already Leaked Subscriber Data appeared first on Above the Law.

Sources tell us that Selendy Gay — a firm famous for offering bonuses that exceed the market scale — recently announced spring bonuses for associates who were on track to meet their billable expectations. Those bonuses were paid in amounts up to $25,000.

Here’s a statement from the firm concerning the bonus payouts:

These bonuses recognize associates’ exceptional work and continued dedication to our clients and the firm. Separate from the spring bonus, associates whose matters required exceptional levels of intensity and commitment received an additional bonus compensation in recognition of those contributions.

Just a few short months ago, Above the Law referred to the 2025 bonus season as the year of the boutique firm, and it looks like 2026 is turning out the same way with a boutique firm leading the pack on spring bonuses. Will your firm announce spring or summer bonuses for associates?

Congratulations to everyone at Selendy Gay!

Remember everyone, we depend on your tips to stay on top of compensation updates, so when your firm announces or matches, please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Bonus/Matches”). Please include the memo if available. You can take a photo of the memo and send it via text or email if you don’t want to forward the original PDF or Word file.

And if you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Bonus Alerts (which is the alert list we also use for salary announcements), please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the bonus alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each bonus announcement that we publish. Thanks for your help!

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 Surprise! Spring Has Sprung, And So Have The Bonuses appeared first on Above the Law.

The reason for the secrecy isn’t hard to infer. “Everybody knew who he was,” one source told NOTUS. “I think it’s fair to say he kept a pretty low profile. I kind of had the impression that he was kind of a little bit sheepish about his celebrity affiliation. You’d go into a meeting and if people were introducing themselves by first and last name, he’d just say ‘Phil,’ not Phil Alito.” According to a second source, Alito was made an attorney-adviser who would get briefed on all kinds of important Treasury matters and offer legal feedback, meaning he was, as that source put it, “in all the meetings” and “knew all the issues across the board.” The same source was direct about how he got there, “There’s no doubt he got that position because of who he is.”

All of which would be mildly noteworthy on its own. But it takes a turn to the ethically questionable because Philip Alito was working at Treasury while the Treasury Department, along with other agencies, was actively defending Trump’s tariffs before the Supreme Court. His father, Justice Samuel Alito, did not recuse himself and sat on those cases.

The official responses have been, let us say, carefully worded. “Philip Alito is currently detailed from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia as a Counselor in the Office of the General Counsel, and his portfolio covers a broad range of topics,” a Treasury spokesperson said. “As a matter of both professional and personal judgment, Phil does not counsel on any matters reasonably expected before the Supreme Court.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent added: “I am sure that Mr. Alito follows all legal and ethical guidelines and I can assure you that at Treasury, we follow all the legal and ethical guidelines.” And the Supreme Court’s public information officer stated flatly: “While there, he has not worked on any matter related to the tariffs imposed by the federal government. As a result, Justice Alito has not recused in those cases.”

And that Phil Alito’s role was a weird secret is just a coinkydink is what we’re all supposed to buy, I guess.

The problem is that the entire predicate of this situation — a justice’s son working at a department actively defending administration policy before that same Supreme Court, in a role kept deliberately low-profile — is exactly the kind of thing that the recusal framework exists to address. The question isn’t only whether Philip Alito personally worked on the tariff cases, it’s whether a reasonable person could question the impartiality of a justice whose son holds a position of trust at one of the agencies whose most consequential policy was simultaneously before the Court. The answer to that question seems fairly obvious, which may be why the whole arrangement was handled with such conspicuous quiet.

This would be jarring from any justice. From Sam Alito, it lands differently because this is not his first, second, or even third ethics controversy. This is the same justice who flew an upside-down “Stop the Steal” flag outside his home after January 6th and then blamed his wife, refused to recuse himself from Trump-related cases despite the flag controversy, got caught accepting luxury travel from a donor with business before the Court and then denied the relationship despite the fact it was noted way back in 2009, and has serially declined to explain his recusals even after the Court adopted a new ethics code specifically designed to address that kind of opacity. A federal judge was literally rebuked for calling Alito’s flag behavior “improper and dumb” — because the Supreme Court, which considers itself exempt from all judicial ethics rules, took the position that criticizing a justice’s ethics is itself an ethics violation. You cannot make this up.

The Supreme Court has spent years resisting meaningful ethics oversight on the grounds that it is a co-equal branch of government that can govern itself. Philip Alito’s quiet Treasury role, and his father’s non-recusal in the tariff case, is a pretty good illustration of how that’s going.

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