Late last week, President Donald Trump abruptly banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico reporters from the White House because he didn’t like their unfavorable (in other words, accurate) coverage. All three news outlets immediately sued on First Amendment grounds to get their access reinstated. They will probably win.

Even rivals stood by the banned media outlets. NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and yes, even Fox News released a joint statement: “The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”

Major television networks have refused to replace CNN’s White House pool crew. Trump’s first live event with no TV press pool took place on Monday. It was a ribbon-cutting ceremony for his new helipad, and it was live-streamed via the White House website, which the White House tried to brand as “Trump TV.” But nobody could hear a word Trump said throughout the shoddily produced video in the absence of TV press pool coverage.

And, you know, isn’t that a good thing? I fully agree that CNN, MS NOW, and Politico should all have the same right to be present at the White House as any other outlets. But maybe no news organizations should bother going to this particular White House. I can’t imagine that Trump actually had anything important to say during his helipad ribbon-cutting ceremony, and no doubt we’d all be dumber as a result if we had been able to hear whatever nonsense he was spouting.

During his first term, attempts were made to tally up all of Trump’s lies, and they easily reached into the tens of thousands. It’s kind of a pointless exercise at this stage. You might as well add up how many sentences he utters, which would be pretty close to the same number.

Press listening to what Trump says at the White House and then reporting on it, even if the substance of what they are reporting is to point out the inaccuracy of his statements, necessarily repeat the lies. The research is abundantly clear that the more people hear the same false information repeated, the more likely they are to believe it is true, even when they initially know of its falsity. It’s called “the illusory truth effect,” and it’s a big part of how Trump got elected in the first place.

White House reporters who are critical of Trump are, I suppose, better than those who fawn over him. Still, anyone amplifying anything he says for any reason is inevitably spreading disinformation.

For most of American history, we didn’t hear from our presidents every single day. We mostly got along better than we have been these past couple years. One time Woodrow Wilson had a stroke, and the public didn’t really hear from him for the remaining 18 months of his term. Is it truly that important to have a bunch of reporters posted at the White House at all times just waiting for Trump or one of his flunkies to pass them misinformation?

Constant White House press coverage, under this president anyway, is a lot like social media use. It feels entertaining, maybe even important. But it’s bad for us, and we’re not actually learning anything.

Reporters have a right to report. The Trump administration most certainly needs to be reported upon, particularly when it comes to investigative reporting. But Trump uses the press corps that follows him around like his own personal public relations firm. I don’t think we’re getting much useful out of that, even when he did allow in CNN, MS NOW, and Politico.

Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

The post Remaining Reporters Should Self-Deport From The White House, Avoid Spreading More Trump Lies appeared first on Above the Law.

Everlaw looked at this landscape and realized the same tool lawyers use to pick apart terabytes worth of emails and spreadsheets to guarantee that Globocorp defeats Worldwide Widgets could also help reporters sort through the same categories of documents to uncover the next Watergate.

This morning, Everlaw announced that newsroom investigations supported through its Everlaw for Good program have more than tripled year over year. The company’s free-and-discounted program now supplies more than 50 newsrooms and journalist organizations deploying the technology across more than 175 investigations, including USA TODAY, Le Monde, and WIRED. The broader program, which also serves legal aid groups, nonprofits, pro bono teams, and CJA panel attorneys, has passed 1,000 matters and $8 million in donated technology since 2017.

“Investigative journalists face many of the same challenges as litigators,” the company’s statement notes, “finding the key facts, patterns, quotes, and inconsistencies buried across thousands or millions of documents, often under tight deadlines and with limited staff.”

The big asterisk there is that many of those litigators have clients to pay for the platform with enough left over to pay another round of bonuses (though most of them aren’t doing that… for some reason). A newsroom handed a few hundred thousand records traditionally has a shared drive and Ctrl+F.

The Everlaw platform helps reporting teams securely review sensitive documents, search large collections, use citation-backed AI analysis, and collaborate across newsrooms while maintaining control over what information is shared. By helping journalists move more quickly from raw documents to verified facts, Everlaw supports the public-interest reporting that exposes wrongdoing, strengthens accountability, and advances the search for truth.

When Woodward and Bernstein set out to “follow the money” sifting through years of library pull requests, the cards are dumped on the table to give the impression of an impossibly tedious search. That stack looks positively quaint in the world of digital evidence.

The pace of growth for this program is wild. The company announced it had passed $6 million in donated technology in March. It’s at $8 million now.

“Investigative reporting is essential to a healthy civil society,” notes Joanne Sprague, head of the Everlaw for Good initiative. “But the newsrooms doing this work are often contending with mountains of documents, tight deadlines, and limited resources. Everlaw for Good helps journalists find the evidence that matters and collaborate securely, so access to truth does not depend on the size of a newsroom or its technology budget.”

And the last bit matters a lot these days when deeper pocketed media outlets are stepping back. Paramount paid $16 million to make Trump’s meritless 60 Minutes lawsuit go away and then got its merger approved. Bari Weiss took over CBS News and spiked a finished CECOT investigation. When Scott Pelley told the new executive producer that Weiss “is murdering ’60 Minutes,'” CBS resolved the issue by firing Scott Pelley.

Which is all to say that Paramount spent twice Everlaw for Good’s giving total to make one presidential grievance disappear so they could then NOT tell important stories.

“As an investigative journalist, I now consider Everlaw an indispensable tool,” said former Fast Company reporter Burt Helm. “It’s like a high-powered magnet, finding the shining needles of truth hidden in colossal haystacks of documents.”

While that sounds like a Wile E. Coyote scheme about to go horribly wrong, it’s worth remembering that the Coyote would’ve dined on Road Runner long ago if it weren’t for ACME’s negligence. Putting buckshot in birdseed and pulling out the comically large horseshoe magnet should have worked, dammit! So replace ACME with a trusted legal technology vendor and the magnet succeeds.

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 Everlaw Supplying Technology To Investigative Journalists To Help Root Out Corruption appeared first on Above the Law.

When a draft tax return is released, normally it draws little attention, even from full-time tax-return preparers. Perhaps the one exception was in 2018 when the tax return was shortened to two one-half pages. While most people probably appreciated the simplification, the unused bottom half of the pages would make an anal-retentive person cringe at the inefficiency.

But the recent release of the draft 2026 Form 1040, one question on the return piqued the interest of some tax professionals and taxpayers, particularly in the immigrant community. On the middle of the form, it asks: “At the time you file your return, are you, and your spouse if filing jointly, a U.S. citizen, U.S. national, or an alien lawfully authorized to work in the U.S.?” Each spouse had to answer separately. Back in May, the Department of the Treasury considered asking this question in a future tax return.

If this draft was released more than 10 years ago, few people would care. Even someone who is not a U.S. citizen or legally admitted into the U.S. would have to file a U.S. tax return if that person earned U.S. source income or has lived in the U.S. for a prescribed period of time (known as the substantial presence test).

But the current president has attempted to use the IRS and its taxpayer data to look for immigrants who could be deportable. Just recently the D.C. Court of Appeals upheld a lower court order blocking the administration’s attempt to use the IRS to obtain taxpayer data due to very strict privacy laws. So people will likely be on alert to see how the president and his staff plan to use the citizenship information on the tax returns.

Another new draft tax form that asks about citizenship is the Schedule 3-A (Federal Public Benefit). This form calculates your refundable tax credits, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit to name a few. But on the bottom, it also wants confirmation that you are a U.S. citizen, U.S. national, or a qualified alien. If you are not, then those credits will be disallowed. “Qualified alien” is a specific term under federal benefits law (8 U.S.C. § 1641) that is narrower than merely being lawfully authorized to work.

For those who practice immigration law, the term Federal Public Benefit sounds similar to Public Charge. Basically, a public charge is a person who an immigration officer believes will be dependent on government benefits to survive. Being a public charge is grounds for inadmissibility into the United States and granting of permanent resident status or citizenship.

The rules for the use of tax benefits to determine public charge status have changed. In 2022, the USCIS’s final rule specifically prohibited the use of tax credits or deductions when considering public charge status. But in July 2026, the USCIS adopted the totality of the circumstances test for determining public charge status and explicitly stated that the use of tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credits (which most helped low income families with children) and the Child Tax Credit can be used as one of many factors to determine whether an alien is likely to be a public charge.

The most recent memorandum from USCIS discussing this topic is unclear about the use of tax benefits in determining public charge status. But it states that they will review all relevant evidence in an alien’s record and make case-by-case decisions in the totality of the alien’s circumstance.

An alien seeking permanent resident status can have a sponsor complete an affidavit of support if he or she is at risk of being considered a public charge. An affidavit of support serves as an enforceable contract where the sponsor agrees to repay public benefits if used by the alien.

Some have speculated that given the citizenship question and President Donald Trump’s hostility toward illegal immigrants, some living in the shadows may not want to file their tax returns because they think it could lead to deportation proceedings. In most cases this would be a bad idea because it will negatively affect their chances of becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen (a lack of good moral character). Similarly, if they are in removal or deportation proceedings, not filing tax returns and paying taxes could put into question an alien’s moral character and can weigh against a favorable exercise of discretion by an immigration judge.

This draft tax return could be changed and the citizenship question may be removed in the final form. Comments can be submitted to the IRS. But it seems to suggest that the Trump administration still wants to use tax records to enforce immigration law.

Steven Chung is a tax attorney in Los Angeles, California. He helps people with basic tax planning and resolve tax disputes. He is also sympathetic to people with large student loans. He can be reached via email at stevenchungatl@gmail.com. Or you can connect with him on Twitter (@stevenchung) and connect with him on LinkedIn.

The post The IRS Draft Form 1040’s Proposed Citizenship Status Question: A Tool For Tax Compliance Or Immigration Enforcement? appeared first on Above the Law.

As reported by Bloomberg Law, Ludington has agreed to undergo treatment for alcohol use disorder and submit to regular testing while on leave through September 1, 2027. He’ll continue to collect his nearly $250,000 annual salary during his treatment. If he resumes hearing cases, he must first take senior status and show through alcohol testing that he’s capable of returning to the bench. He’ll also undergo regular and random alcohol testing.

Readers may recall the details that made this case so difficult to forget: After an October 2025 crash, Ludington registered a 0.27 blood-alcohol level and answered a request to recite the alphabet with “A, B, C, D, F, U.” His arrest did not become public until months later. The judge stepped away from the bench in February, pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge in April, and was sentenced to probation in May.

Ludington offered the following statement through his attorney:

“I’m pleased to have resolved this matter, which is a stark reminder that even a federal judge can make an embarrassing mistake, one that warrants the fair resolution contained in the order. I look forward to resuming my judicial responsibilities and to the opportunity to apply the lessons I have learned from this painful experience.”

Sixth Circuit Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton wrote in his order that Ludington’s arrest “had a serious adverse effect on the judiciary’s reputation and the public’s confidence in his ability to carry out his responsibilities,” but credited the judge for taking steps toward sobriety. Ludington says he has been sober since February.

Gabe Roth of Fix the Court, who filed the misconduct complaint, called the outcome fair but said it took too long to reach. Given how long the arrest stayed out of public view, that timing remains a fair question, even as the misconduct case comes to a close.

Drunken-Driving US Judge Agrees to Counseling for Misconduct (3) [Bloomberg Law]

Earlier: Ethics Questions Persist After Federal Judge Sentenced To Probation In DUI Case
Judge Accused Of Driving ‘Super Drunk’ Takes No Contest Plea
Federal Judge Accused Of Driving ‘Super Drunk’ Crashes Into Judicial Misconduct Complaint
Federal Judge Accused Of Driving ‘Super Drunk’ Takes ‘Voluntary’ Leave From The Bench
‘A, B, C, D, F, U’: Field Sobriety Test For Federal Judge Who Allegedly ‘Urinated Himself’ Goes Remarkably Off Script
Federal Judge Arrested, Accused Of Driving While ‘Super Drunk’

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 Judge With Infamous ‘A, B, C, D, F, U’ Sobriety Test Gets Another Year Off The Bench appeared first on Above the Law.

* “Judge dismisses suit claiming James Cameron misappropriated likeness of actress for ‘Avatar.'” I’ll say it, he hasn’t made a good movie since Terminator 2. [ABA Journal]

* Seyfarth admits social security numbers involved in hack. [Law360]

* At some point, Trump can’t just pretend every illegal act is “to protect us from drones” right? [Bloomberg Law News]

* Supreme Court rules in favor of parents after surrogate fled to Texas to birth potentially fatally ill baby. [Texas Tribune]

* The good folks at ProPublica found the photographic evidence that Russian oligarchs paid for a Trump wedding. This is what CBS used to do before it became a Trump outlet. [ProPublica]

The post Morning Docket: 09.23.26 appeared first on Above the Law.

Michael Luttig Isn’t Predicting Trump’s Downfall. He’s Predicting What Trump Does About It: Bleak assessment from the conservative legal movement’s former standard-bearer.

One Biglaw Cybersecurity Headache Begets Another: In the form of class action lawsuits.

California Is ‘Setting The Standard For The Rest Of The Country’ On Private Equity In Law Firms: Colorado and Illinois went first. California is the one with the market share.

The post Eighth Circuit’s Flirtation With A Constitutional Crisis — See Also appeared first on Above the Law.

Today, anyone accused of a crime who can’t afford a lawyer is entitled to one at public expense. Who invented the concept of a public defender, a salaried government attorney to defend the poor built as a mirror image of the public prosecutor, first floated as a self-taught trial lawyer in an 1893 speech at the Chicago World’s Fair?

Hint: A downtown Los Angeles courthouse now bears her name, and she was also the first woman admitted to the bar on the West Coast.

The post Before There Was A Public Defender, There Was Her appeared first on Above the Law.

Every lawyer who reads legal industry news knows what happens when AI errors show up in a court filing. A New York lawyer asked ChatGPT to confirm that six cases were real. It said yes. All six were fake, with invented docket numbers and quotations to match.

That was Mata v. Avianca in 2023, and Judge Castel sanctioned the lawyers over what he called bogus decisions with bogus quotes and bogus citations. The fines have only climbed since. 

A California appeals court hit a lawyer with a $10,000 sanction in 2025 after finding that 21 of his 23 case quotations were fabricated, and published the decision as a warning. By early 2026, a federal appeals court was charging attorneys $15,000 apiece and noting that smaller fines had plainly been inadequate.

So firms learned the lesson. Or they think they did.

Here’s the logic I hear all the time: AI is dangerous in briefs because a judge checks your work, but marketing is a safe place to experiment. Run it on the website. Let it draft the bios. Spin up some practice area pages. If something is a little off, who’s going to sanction you over a web page?

That assumption is the actual risk. And after 13 years running a legal content agency, I can tell you it does not hold up.

The Rule Does Not Care Whether It’s a Brief or a Bio

ABA Model Rule 7.1 is two sentences. 

A lawyer shall not make a false or misleading communication about the lawyer or the lawyer’s services. A communication is false or misleading if it contains a material misrepresentation of fact or law, or omits a fact necessary to make the statement, considered as a whole, not materially misleading.

The official comment kills the safe-sandbox theory in one line. The rule governs all communications about a lawyer’s services, including advertising, and whatever means you use to make those services known, the statements have to be truthful.

A website is a means. A bio is a means. A blog post with the firm’s name on it is a means. There’s no carve-out for the marketing department, because at most firms there is no marketing department. There’s just the lawyer whose name is on the page.

Read the rest of that comment and it gets uncomfortable. A communication that truthfully reports a lawyer’s results can still be misleading if it leads a reasonable person to expect the same outcome in their own case. Unsubstantiated comparisons are flagged. So is any claim implying a credential or certification the lawyer doesn’t hold, which Rule 7.2 hits directly.

Now picture the prompt a busy firm actually types: write a practice area page that highlights our track record and sets us apart from other firms in town. That prompt asks for exactly the claims the rule polices, and it hands the job to a tool that invents specifics for a living.

What the Tool Does When You Ask It to Sell

The data on legal AI is not comforting. A 2024 Stanford study found general-purpose chatbots were wrong on legal questions more often than not, and even purpose-built legal research tools were wrong more than 17% of the time, with one major product hallucinating on more than a third of queries.

Those numbers come from legal research, not marketing copy, so treat them as a floor. But the failure is the same one that matters here. The tool produces confident, polished, specific claims that aren’t true.

In a legal brief, that looks like a fake citation. In a marketing page, it looks like a $2.3 million verdict the firm never won, a board certification the attorney never earned, or a Super Lawyers listing that doesn’t exist. The format is convincing either way. The only difference is what catches it.

The Verification Gap Is the Whole Problem

This is where the safe-sandbox theory has it backwards. Litigation isn’t the setting with the least error correction. It’s the setting with the most.

Opposing counsel is paid to find your mistakes. A judge reads the pleadings. A motion to show cause drags the problem onto the record. Every AI sanction case became a case because someone went looking for a citation and couldn’t find it.

A marketing page has none of that. No opposing counsel reviews your homepage. No judge reads your bio. A fabricated settlement figure can sit on a practice area page for months, indexed by Google, seen by every prospective client who lands there, with nothing in the process built to catch it. The first person to notice may be a competitor, a reporter, or the bar investigator opening a grievance.

“Harder to Unwind” Is Not a Figure of Speech

A bad brief gets fixed. You file an amended version, you tell the court and opposing counsel, and the audience for the mistake is small and the loop closes. A misleading web page doesn’t work that way.

Bar discipline records are public and they last. Florida posts attorney discipline documents with a searchable history measured in years. California makes discipline dockets available online by name, and in 2026 the state Supreme Court rejected a proposal to auto-expunge those records after eight years.

A grievance over a marketing claim becomes part of your permanent public profile no matter how it is resolved. It’s the first thing a prospective client sees when they search your name.

The page itself is harder to erase than people assume. The Wayback Machine captures website content, and federal courts have accepted authenticated archive snapshots as proof of what a site used to say. Deleting the false claim doesn’t delete the evidence that it ran.

And bar discipline isn’t the only exposure. Every state has an unfair and deceptive practices statute that reaches false advertising of professional services, enforced by attorneys general with their own penalties. The FTC has already moved here, settling with an AI legal services company for $193,000 over claims that its product worked like a licensed lawyer. One false page can pull a bar grievance and a consumer protection complaint at the same time, from different directions.

The exposure doesn’t stop with the bar or the FTC. A current client who relied on inaccurate information on your website and suffered an adverse outcome may even have a malpractice claim against you. By then, you’re defending the same false claim from three different directions—regulatory, consumer protection, and private tort 

The Honest Caveat, and Why It Doesn’t Save You

Let me be straight about the record. No U.S. attorney has yet been publicly disciplined for AI-generated marketing content specifically. If you want to argue the risk is theoretical, that’s a fair argument. It’s also a weak one.

The enforcement machine is fully built and has been running for decades on marketing claims that had nothing to do with AI. State bars have disciplined lawyers for advertising office locations that didn’t exist, for claiming credentials they couldn’t back up, for ads implying the firm couldn’t lose.

The rule is settled. The process is active. The only new variable is a tool that manufactures the exact kind of false specific claim the rule was written to stop, at a volume no human copywriter could match. One AI session can fill an entire site with fabricated detail in minutes.

The cases haven’t shown up yet because the practice is new, not because the conduct is safe. That’s the gap between “this hasn’t happened” and “this won’t happen,” and it’s closing.

There’s a fair counterargument that the duty of competence already covers this. A careful lawyer reviews the output before it goes live and catches the fabrication. True. That’s also exactly what the sanctioned litigators believed they were doing. The ABA’s 2024 guidance on generative AI is clear that the duty requires independent verification, not asking the AI whether it told the truth.

If lawyers miss AI fabrications in a brief a judge is about to read line by line, betting they’ll catch them in marketing copy no one is checking is not a bet I’d make.

The Actual Takeaway

None of this is an argument against using AI in your marketing. We use it every day, and we’d be doing clients a disservice if we didn’t. It’s an argument against treating marketing as the place where the rules get loose.

The standard on a practice area page is the same standard as on a brief, because Rule 7.1 says so in plain words. Verify the specifics, the results, the credentials, the awards, before they publish, with the same independent check you’d never skip in a filing.

The sandbox was never safe. It just had no one watching it. That’s a different thing, and a worse one.

David Arato is the founder of Lexicon Legal Content, a content marketing firm that creates SEO-optimized and consumer-focused content for law firms and digital marketing agencies throughout North America. He advises law firms on where AI belongs in their marketing content and where it does not, building the review gates that keep AI-assisted work accurate and bar-compliant. Get in touch on LinkedIn or email david@lexiconlegalcontent.com.

The post Why ‘We Only Use AI For Marketing’ Is Still A Bar Complaint Waiting To Happen appeared first on Above the Law.

Did I do it? Sure.

Did it work? Sometimes.

Was it my favorite way to meet someone? Not even close.

Believe it or not, I was actually pretty shy when it came to dating. So, when online dating started becoming a real thing in the mid-90s, I was absolutely thrilled. The idea that I could go online, identify attributes that mattered to me, communicate a little before meeting, and then meet to determine whether there might be a fit. This was a GAME-CHANGER for me.

Not only did it improve the dating scene for me, but it eventually helped me meet my now wife, Lisa.

What I loved most about online dating was the process. It was simply the best way to qualify people before investing too much time.

One time, I had matched with a woman I’ll call Denise. One of the things that mattered most to me was that I wanted to date a non-smoker. I grew up with a smoking parent, and the smell just never worked for me. Nothing against smokers, but it’s not for me. 

So, I made that clear in my profile.

When I walked into the bar for our date, I saw Denise before she saw me. She was sitting at the bar smoking a cigarette.

I walked over, introduced myself, and said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but I was pretty clear that I don’t date smokers.”

She explained that she had quit for a while, was just having a drink, and had recently started again.

I said, “I appreciate that, but it’s just not a fit for me.”

Then I left.

Was that awkward? Absolutely. Was it a little uncomfortable? Sure. But it saved both of us from pretending something was going to work when it clearly was not.

That is where dating and legal business development have a lot in common.

Your goal with biz-dev is not to meet everyone. It’s not to chase everyone either. Your objective should not be to drag every conversation through three lunches, two coffees, and a golf outing just to discover that the person was never a real fit in the first place.

Your focus is to identify the right prospects and the right strategic partners, determine whether there is mutual value, and decide whether a second “date” makes sense.

Most lawyers waste enormous amounts of time because they do not qualify people in or out early enough.

They meet someone at an event. They grab coffee. Then lunch. Then another coffee. Then they exchange a few emails. Six months later, nothing has happened, and they are confused about why business development feels so frustrating.

It feels frustrating because there is no process.

One of the most important tenets of my Sales-Free Selling™ approach is learning how to qualify people quickly, respectfully, and professionally. Not in a pushy way. Not in a rude way. But in a way that protects your time and theirs.

With a prospective client, you should be asking yourself some basic questions.

Are they the kind of client I truly want? Do they have the kind of problems I solve? Are they financially qualified? Am I talking to the decision-maker? Is there urgency? Is there a reason to move forward?

If those answers are not there, you do not need to force it.

The same is true with referral partners.

Do I like this person? Do I trust them? Do they serve the same types of clients I want to meet? Do they understand what I do? Are they a giver, or are they mostly a taker? Do they have a real network, or do they just enjoy having coffee with other professionals?

That last one matters.

There are a lot of professional coffee drinkers out there. They are nice people. But if they are never going to refer, never going to collaborate, never going to introduce, and never going to move anything forward, you need to know that sooner rather than later.

That does not mean you treat people poorly. It means you stop confusing activity with productivity.

There is another dating story that drives this home.

When I met Lisa, we went on a few dates, and I thought she was great. But I could tell we were not in the same place. She had some things going on in her life, and the relationship was not progressing the way I hoped it might.

So, I did what I would now call a takeaway.

I said, “Lisa, I think we may be in different places right now. I really like you, but maybe it does not make sense to keep moving forward. If things change, feel free to call me.”

Then I stepped away.

A few months later, she called.

From that point on, we never looked back.

The lesson is not that you should play games. The lesson is that sometimes the best way to move something forward is to stop pushing it.

Lawyers do this all the time with prospects.

They over-pursue. They over-explain and send too many follow-up emails. They try to convince people who are not ready, not qualified, or not serious. They keep chasing instead of creating space for the right opportunity to declare itself.

Sometimes you get the business. Sometimes you save the time.

Either one is a win.

The best business developers are not desperate. They are discerning. Most importantly, they QUALIFY to understand the “fit” before investing too much time, money, and energy. They move the right people forward and let the wrong people go without drama.

That is how dating works when you are mature about it.

That is how legal business development works when you are serious about it.

Because the goal is not to fill your calendar. The goal is to build a book of business with the right clients, the right relationships, and the right opportunities.

If you want more resources on legal business development, networking, and building your practice with intention, visit bethatlawyer.com. And if you are a lawyer who wants to learn, network, and grow with other serious business developers, check out bethatlawyer.com/community and learn more about the BE THAT LAWYER™ community.

Steve Fretzin is a five-time bestselling author, host of the BE THAT LAWYER and Future Rainmakers podcasts, and a business development coach who works exclusively with attorneys. For more than 18 years, he has helped lawyers build strong books of business without selling, pitching, or chasing, using his proven Sales-Free Selling™ approach. His clients consistently become top rainmakers and credit his coaching and systems for driving meaningful, measurable growth. Steve can be reached directly at steve@fretzin.com, or through his website at bethatlawyer.com. Connect with him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevefretzin. His ALL NEW BE THAT LAWYER Community is changing how lawyers develop the skills never taught in law school. Learn more at bethatlawyer.com/community.

The post Is Legal Business Development Really Just Dating For Professionals? appeared first on Above the Law.

I view dissent as more than just a disagreement with the outcome of a case, I see them as an expression of faith in the future and a demonstration of hope. However desolate the moment feels, we who write for a future age have hope that the noble and collective work of bending the long arc of the law toward justice will continue.

— Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in remarks delivered after receiving the Philadelphia Bar Association’s 2026 Justice William J. Brennan Jr. Distinguished Jurist Award, during its Constitution Day celebration. Jackson, who has become one of the Supreme Court’s most prolific dissenters, explained why she views a dissenting opinion not simply as an objection to the majority’s ruling, but as an expression of hope that the law may one day bend toward justice.

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 Ketanji Brown Jackson Refuses To Lose Hope In The Supreme Court appeared first on Above the Law.

The law bars business entities from interfering with or attempting to “influence the professional judgment of a licensed attorney or litigant regarding any substantive litigation decision.” That means which cases a firm takes, which clients it signs, and when it settles. Violators, including the attorneys on the receiving end of the outside money, face statutory damages of $10,000 per violation, or three times whatever the client actually lost, whichever is greater, plus fees and costs. It covers contracts entered starting January 1, 2027. Consumer Attorneys of California, the trade group that pushed the bill, said Monday that the state is “setting the standard for the rest of the country to follow.”

Colorado and Illinois already have similar measures. California is just the largest legal market to do it, and it lands at the moment the richest firms in the country started taking the meetings.

Trisha Rich, a Holland & Knight partner whose team has closed more than 30 legal industry MSO deals this year, told Reuters the new law does not “change a single thing,” because the attorney professional conduct rules already guard against outside influence on legal decision-making. She noted that the Illinois and Colorado versions haven’t slowed MSO dealmaking in those states, and that no one has brought an enforcement action under those provisions.

All of that is accurate, but pardon me if I am just the teeniest bit skeptical that MSO advocates aren’t touting a system that exerts indirect, but meaningful control. Earlier this month, we covered Holland & Knight attorneys — Rich among them — pitching the MSO as a workaround for the ethics rules that bind law firms. In that specific example Rich, et al., were arguing that an MSO could allow firms to circumvent the ethical bar on non-competes. Rich may not think that this is a “legal control” issue, but the reason we have that rule is — in part — to allow a lawyer to move to a different firm if it’s in the best interests of a client. That feels at least “legal decision adjacent.”

Plus there’s still an optics issue when on one hand you’re saying ethics rules are a sufficient safeguard against outside money influencing legal judgment but also that the MSO structure can get be a workaround for other ethics rules.

There’s also a gap AB 2305 was written to close. The professional conduct rules bind lawyers, and the entity writing the checks is, by design, not a lawyer. California’s law skips the argument about which hat anyone is wearing and attaches a number to the conduct itself.

Rich is right that Illinois and Colorado haven’t produced an enforcement action yet, but PE’s infestation of legal is still young.

Earlier: Private Equity Investment In Law Firms Floated As One Neat Trick To Get Around Ethical Obligations
Private Equity Found A Law Firm That Said Yes
The Richest Law Firms Are Looking At Private Equity Cash Because I Guess They Don’t Have Enough Money
Private Equity Has Its Eyes On Biglaw’s Second Hundred Firms

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