A Manhattan federal jury on Monday found that DLA Piper did not discriminate against a pregnant ex-associate who claimed she’d been fired for requesting maternity leave.

The jury found that Anisha Mehta failed to prove that the firm was liable for discrimination under the New York City Human Rights Law. The panel also said the firm was not liable for interfering with Mehta’s Family and Medical Leave Act rights and had not committed retaliation.
…
In opening statements, [DLA partner Brett] Ingerman said Mehta had made numerous mistakes while at the firm, including beginning a trademark infringement action in Singapore when it was supposed to be filed in Switzerland.

You win some, you lose some. Even if there was some incongruity between the firm’s words and their actions, winning a discrimination suit against an at-will employer is usually an uphill battle.

Partner and lead attorney on the case, Brett Ingerman, commented on the verdict: “I was proud to represent the law firm I’ve called home for the last 32 years. DLA Piper and its lawyers are committed to fostering an environment that promotes the family journey. I believe the jury saw and understood that, and we are grateful for their verdict.”

The jury might have bought DLA’s family fostering in the courtroom, but I’m sure the parents who had their parental leave cut by six weeks have some choice words. I guess the real takeaway from this is that it isn’t enough to just mind your Ps and Qs — you also have to mind your Singapores and Switzerlands.

DLA Piper Did Not Discriminate Against Pregnant Associate, Jury Finds [New York Law Journal]

Earlier: DLA Piper Headed To Trial Over Firing Of Mom-To-Be

Major Biglaw Firm Slashes Parental Leave

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 Jury Decides Mother-To-Be’s Discrimination Case In DLA Piper’s Favor appeared first on Above the Law.

“Both we and Ms. Sankano are pleased that a settlement of this matter has been reached,” said Michael Willemin, a partner at Wigdor LLP who represented Sankano.

Sankano had sought at least $35 million in economic and punitive damages.

To recap the background, because it is worth recapping — Sankano filed suit in January 2024, alleging that after a senior partner retired and she was reassigned to work under partner Matthew Bowsher, things went sideways fast. The complaint describes “aggressive emails questioning her cognitive ability,” culminating in one that the filing characterized as “outrageously demeaning, dehumanizing, and demoralizing.” The email itself, included in the complaint, features Bowsher, ahem, generously donating 20 minutes of his morning to inform Sankano that her communication skills were “elementary” and that he simply did not know “what more I can say here.” (He had more to say. It went on.)

When Sankano complained to HR, the firm’s response was interesting. According to the complaint, it took the firm 77 days to investigate. The conclusion of that investigation? Bowsher’s email was “inappropriate” but not racist because, the firm argued, he treated people at his prior job the same way. As I noted at the time, arguing your partner is a generalized equal-opportunity menace is certainly one defense.

This case has been percolating since early 2024, and it reaches its conclusion in a legal landscape where Biglaw firms have spent the past year dismantling DEI programs — cutting affinity groups, scrubbing websites, and signing executive order deals — under pressure from an administration that has made DEI its favorite piñata. The optics of settling a $35 million racial discrimination suit in that environment says enough (even though Troutman Pepper has not commented on the settlement).

Sankano, for her part, gets to move on while the firm gets to avoid a trial. The partner whose emails apparently needed 77 days of investigation to be deemed merely “inappropriate” presumably continues his career uninterrupted.

Earlier: Former Associate Hits Biglaw Firm With Racial Discrimination Case After ‘Dehumanizing’ Email

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 Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.

The post $35 Million Racial Discrimination Suit Against Troutman Pepper Ends In Settlement appeared first on Above the Law.

Our partnership’s approval reflects a shared belief that combining to form Ashurst Perkins Coie will create a truly differentiated global legal platform. One with the scale, sector depth, and technological leadership to meet our clients’ increasingly complex, cross-border needs.

—  Bill Malley, managing partner of Perkins Coie, in a statement announcing partnership approval of the transatlantic merger of Ashurst and Perkins Coie. As noted by the American Lawyer, partners at both firms voted “overwhelmingly” to approve the combination, surpassing the two-thirds majority needed to push through the Biglaw tie-up. “This vote confirms the strong alignment between our firms and our joint ambition for the future,” said Ashurst CEO Paul Jenkins. “Our complementary expertise across sectors and practice areas, together with our shared commitment to innovation, will deliver greater scale and global reach for our clients.” When the merger closes on July 1, 2026, the combined firm will have ~3,000 lawyers (including 800 partners) spread across more than 50 offices, with a revenue of about $2.8 billion. Malley and Jenkins will serve as global co-CEOs of Ashurst Perkins Coie.

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 Say Hello To The Next Top 20 Firm: Partners Approve Transatlantic Biglaw Merger appeared first on Above the Law.

At least one managing partner reading these stories suffered a small cardiac event, and forwarded them to the IT department with “thoughts???” in the subject line.

Everyone needs to chill out. And then get more scared.

Claude Mythos Preview is Anthropic’s newest model, aiming to replace Opus 4.6 assuming Opus doesn’t successfully blackmail the company into keeping it live. According to Anthropic — a company actively litigating against the claim that it presents a threat to national security — the new model is arguably the greatest cybersecurity threat in history, and will not be released to the public until a select group of trusted enterprise partners (called Project Glasswing) can sort out the risks. If the Pentagon’s supply chain designation was serious and not a bumbling attempt to strong arm the company into giving the Defense Department even more Anthropic products, posturing as an apocalyptic technology would be a poor strategic maneuver. Thankfully, it’s not.

Anthropic is telling everyone that its new model is rapidly uncovering thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities — bugs nobody knew existed — across every major operating system and web browser. It found a decades-old flaw in OpenBSD, an operating system whose entire selling point is being unhackable. It chained together a bunch of low-severity Linux kernel bugs into a full-scale attack. On an exploit-writing benchmark where the prior model succeeded twice, Mythos succeeded 181 times.

But we’ve seen this ploy before.

OpenAI told us all that GPT-5 was a frightening leap forward when it was… not that. It seems as though the big AI industry players constantly market their product as exceedingly dangerous, with the caveat that their version — despite being the most dangerous of all — is the only one we can trust. Other industries don’t do this. Coke doesn’t say, “Cola will kill your family, but if you have to drink it, just make sure it’s not Pepsi.” There will be marketing text books written about this curious moment in American business where every provider in an arguably trillion-dollar industry frames their product as the sensitive bad boy from a YA novel.

Except Grok, which is framed as the creepy incel whose notebook is all anime porn and swastikas.

Though make no mistake that it’s mostly marketing. Within days of Anthropic’s announcement, researchers at AISLE, an AI cybersecurity startup took the specific vulnerabilities Anthropic showcased in its announcement, isolated the relevant code, and tested them against small, cheap, models. All eight of the eight tested models detected the FreeBSD exploit that Mythos flagged. One of those models only had 3.6 billion parameters and cost 11 cents per million tokens. A 5.1-billion-parameter model recovered the core analysis of the 27-year-old OpenBSD bug. AI cybersecurity researcher Heidy Khlaaf, the chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute, cautioned against taking Anthropic’s claims at face value without more detail on false positive rates and the role humans played in the process.

Another way to put it is that Anthropic’s marketing is a wee bit delusional:

While tech experts may be dunking on Mythos for not presenting a uniquely powerful new threat, that’s actually a much more terrifying proposition for law firms. The fact that cheaper models, available to anyone, can find these same problems means that the problem isn’t waiting on Anthropic’s release, it’s already here.

As Anthropic’s red team acknowledged, they didn’t train Mythos to be a hacker. It’s what happens to people when they get better at coding, so why wouldn’t it be what happens to a model trained to get better at coding? Getting better at writing code begets getting better at spotting exploits. And most of the models have been getting better at writing code. Mythos may be faster, but the capability isn’t limited to this release. The genie left the bottle a while ago.

Hackers with motivation and a few pennies per million tokens can crack almost anything. The cost and expertise required to find exploitable vulnerabilities has been collapsing across the entire AI ecosystem for over a year. We’re screwed.

The good news of the Mythos story is that while hackers can find soft spots, AI can also potentially discover them before it’s too late. Everyone wants to talk about AI running down non-hallucinated precedent, when they should be interested in seeing if it can run down that gaping hole in your system.

That said, Biglaw firms are still falling for dumb pfishing attacks so maybe this isn’t the wake-up call the industry needs yet.

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. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

The post What Lawyers Need To Know About Anthropic’s Mythos appeared first on Above the Law.

I spend my days writing LinkedIn profiles and building personal brands for high-caliber general counsels, CEOs, and board members, as well as advising them on cultivating a strategic network for their next job search or landing a corporate board seat. I see things from many angles of the equation, including the executives and lawyers who want a strong LinkedIn profile presence, but are concerned about who to let into their network.

I want to warn you of an ongoing predatory practice that’s happening, and possibly without you even realizing it.

There’s a version of LinkedIn networking that looks like collaboration but functions as extraction. In the 2018 to 2019 era, engagement pods on LinkedIn became a thing. These LinkedIn users were gaming the algorithm, creating large followings by mass-connecting with anyone and everyone, and using that to boost an influencer status.

During the pandemic, engagement pods continued to soar, touted as “supportive communities,” some via exclusive paid memberships. They were easy to recognize: the same folks commenting on each other’s posts in a tit-for-tat style with monotonous comments that provided little to no value. What I described years ago as “puffery” has simply found a more targeted vehicle: your LinkedIn post’s engagement list.

I’ve experienced this firsthand on multiple occasions, each following a similar pattern.

Several people in my network (clients, personal contacts, and peers) reported receiving unsolicited connection requests from someone they didn’t recognize. The common thread? They had liked or commented on one of my posts. The individual was a newer connection who never once engaged with my content, yet went directly after the people who showed up in my post’s engagement notifications rather than first building any legitimate relationship.

That’s not networking. That’s harvesting. It exploits something real: when you engage with someone’s content on LinkedIn, you become visible. Your name, your photo, your entire profile, your activity, and your connections are visible to anyone who is closely watching.

Predatory networkers know this. They monitor the engagement on influential profiles and scan connection lists, treating both as a prospecting tool: strangers made acquaintances by association. The behavior becomes more troubling if the person operates in the same space as you. At that point, an individual using your network’s engagement or connections as a prospecting tool isn’t a misstep. It’s calculated poaching.

Why LinkedIn Harvesting Is a Misunderstanding of How Networks Actually Work

I’ve written before about what strategic LinkedIn networking looks like, and the principles haven’t changed. As I noted in a prior article on building an effective LinkedIn networking strategy, proper LinkedIn networking is not a race to accumulate as many connections so you appear legitimate. While you want to connect with people who are relevant to your work, your industry, and your goals, it should be purposeful and meaningful.

What I described in that article as the “pepper spray approach” — blanket connection requests sent to anyone tangentially related to a contact’s network — is precisely what this kind of harvesting behavior looks like in practice. It’s high-volume, low-integrity. But more importantly, it won’t offer the long-term gain that person is expecting. Instead, it will often backfire once those being prospected catch on to the modus operandi.

It’s also why I’m deliberate about who I accept into my own network. I decline a significant portion of connection requests, particularly those that are untargeted or where the intent is clearly lead generation or poaching rather than genuine connection and a shared interest. If your opening move after connecting is an immediate sales pitch, you’ve already answered the question of why you wanted in.

Your follower count is not an accurate measure of how robust your network is, and the engagement you see on a LinkedIn post doesn’t reveal who is quietly reaching out behind the scenes. A network built on scraped associations is purely transactional. You want a network of people with whom you share genuine professional overlap, not hundreds of strangers who landed in your inbox because an algorithm surfaced your name under someone else’s post.

Real influence is built over years by showing up consistently, delivering value, and earning trust one relationship at a time. There are no shortcuts. Attempts to manufacture that kind of connection by piggybacking on someone else’s community aren’t worthwhile.

The Key Takeaway: Always Protect Your Network

If what I’m describing above hasn’t happened to you yet, it may. Unfortunately, LinkedIn’s default settings aren’t protective of your privacy. Here are a few adjustments worth making now to secure your own privacy:

Limit who can see your connections. Go to Settings > Visibility > Who Can See Your Connections, and toggle it so only you can see your full connections list. This is one of the most meaningful protections you can put in place. Also, manage who can see who you follow, as well as who can follow you.

These are small adjustments, but they limit the ability of someone to systematically mine your engagement and connections list for prospecting purposes.

A Final Note on Building A LinkedIn Network

The number of “likes” on a LinkedIn post or the size of a LinkedIn network is not an indicator of success. Borrowed influence is not influence, and when it’s taken without permission, it erodes the trust you spent years (maybe even decades) building.

Some of the most successful lawyers, general counsels, and C-suite business executives I’ve worked with who land the fastest in a new role or on a corporate board seat are the least active on LinkedIn. They aren’t manufacturing connections. They aren’t always actively commenting on posts or creating evergreen content. They stay in their lane and run their own race. They are purposeful in who they allow into their network and are focused on showcasing their own brand, credibility, and visibility.

A strong network is one of the most valuable professional assets you have. Build it strategically and guard it accordingly.

Wendi Weiner is an attorney, career expert, and founder of The Writing Guru, an award-winning executive resume writing services company. Wendi creates powerful career and personal brands for attorneys, executives, and C-suite/Board leaders for their job search and digital footprint. She also writes for major publications about alternative careers for lawyers, personal branding, LinkedIn storytelling, career strategy, and the job search process. You can reach her by email at wendi@writingguru.net, connect with her on LinkedIn, and follow her on Twitter @thewritingguru.

The post The Dark Side Of LinkedIn Networking: How To Recognize Harvesting And Protect Your Professional Network  appeared first on Above the Law.

Plus, tomorrow is publication day for Sarah Isgur’s book, Last Branch Standing, and The Dispatch is running a special promotion for Dispatch members who order it. Check it out here.

On Site

From the SCOTUSblog Team

The sports stars, hip-hop artists, and celebrity magicians playing a role in pending Supreme Court petitions

Among the petitions for review awaiting the justices’ attention this spring, there are at least four that involve well-known petitioners or “friends of the court,” including sports figures, rappers, and two of the country’s most famous magicians. Here’s an overview of those four petitions and their significance, and a brief reflection on what a public figure’s involvement can mean for a case.

SCOTUS Outside Opinions

Law, memoir, and the mystery of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s writing

The Supreme Court justice memoir, so lucrative for its authors, tends to be a less than illuminating genre. Hence, the pleasant surprises in reading Justice Anthony Kennedy’s memoir, Life, Law & Liberty, published last fall and promoted by Kennedy in an interview this year. But how do we reconcile the modest yet elegant prose of the book with the oft-criticized sweeping rhetoric of his judicial opinions?

The post SCOTUStoday for Monday, April 13 appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

On Site

From the SCOTUSblog Team

How the justices decide … which cases to decide: an explainer

One of the more frequent questions we get here at SCOTUSblog is how the court decides which cases to review on the merits. Although we’ve covered this topic before, we thought it might be useful to put together a thorough refresher on the subject.

From the SCOTUSblog Team

Just who are “the people”?

The Second Amendment states that “[a] well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” But who, exactly, are “the people” that may possess firearms? The answer may not be as straightforward as you assume.

Contributor Corner

Birthright citizenship: oral argument highlights

Over the past two months, Akhil and Vikram Amar laid out in detail in their Brothers in Law column their ideas about the key issues in the birthright citizenship case. In their latest piece, they compare their arguments and analysis to what the justices asked and said at oral argument on April 1.

The post SCOTUStoday for Tuesday, April 14 appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

On Site

Case Preview

Justices to hear argument on right to jury trial in FCC proceedings

The Seventh Amendment guarantees a right to a jury trial in “suits at common law.” In 2024, the Supreme Court ruled in SEC v. Jarkesy that the Securities and Exchange Commission’s imposition of fines in its administrative proceedings as a penalty for securities fraud violated that guarantee. On Tuesday, the justices will consider whether that same reasoning applies to fines that the FCC imposes for violations of federal communications laws.

The post SCOTUStoday for Wednesday, April 15 appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

On Site

From the SCOTUSblog Team

Court allows Steve Bannon to move forward on dismissal of criminal charges against him

The Supreme Court on Monday morning added one new case, involving challenges to veterans’ benefit laws, to its docket for the 2026-27 term. The justices also sent the case of Stephen Bannon, a former adviser to President Donald Trump who was convicted of contempt of Congress, back to the lower court, where the Department of Justice has filed a motion to dismiss his indictment. And the court rebuffed, without comment, a challenge to an Illinois law banning guns on public transportation.

Contributor Corner

What really happens on the emergency docket

In a post for SCOTUSblog, Taraleigh Davis explained what she learned about the court’s emergency docket by examining Justice John Paul Stevens’ papers at the Library of Congress. “Stevens’ files contain not only his own memoranda on emergency applications, but the response memos circulated by each of his colleagues, making it possible to reconstruct the full deliberative record across a wide range of such applications,” Davis wrote.

Contributor Corner

An actual alternative to originalism

In his Justice, Democracy, and Law column, Edward Foley wrote on the Supreme Court’s embrace of originalism, which requires determining the Constitution’s “original public meaning” when interpreting it. Foley suggested that it would be better for the court “to interpret the Constitution according to its contemporary public meaning,” or “what the average member of the public today understands the words of the Constitution to mean.”

The post SCOTUStoday for Tuesday, April 7 appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

On Site

Contributor Corner

The who, what, and where of gun control

In her A Second Opinion column, Haley Proctor explored how the court has analyzed gun regulations that limit (1) who may possess a firearm, (2) what arms people may own or carry, and (3) where they may take them.

Contributor Corner

What oral arguments and opinion authorships can actually tell us

In his Empirical SCOTUS column, Adam Feldman analyzed what aspects of oral argument are most helpful in trying to predict who will write a majority opinion.

SCOTUS Outside Opinions

The 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause is not trapped in amber: a reflection on oral argument

In a column for SCOTUSblog, Pete Patterson drew on his work in the Second Amendment context to challenge some of the arguments put forward by Cecillia Wang last week against President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship.

The post SCOTUStoday for Wednesday, April 8 appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

On Site

Interim Docket

State election dispute on political speech comes to Supreme Court on interim docket

Lawyers for Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, as well as county election officials, urged the Supreme Court on Wednesday to let them go ahead with a ballot that does not include Sam Ronan, a candidate for Ohio’s 15th congressional district, for the state’s Republican primary on May 5.

From the SCOTUSblog Team

A Supreme Court status report

In early January, as the country eagerly awaited a tariffs ruling that – as it turned out – was still more than a month away, Supreme Court watchers raised concerns about the court’s pace for releasing opinions. Approximately three months later, are those concerns still justified?

Contributor Corner

Supreme Court summarily closes the courthouse doors again

In his Civil Rights and Wrongs column, Daniel Harawa reflected once more on “the Supreme Court’s troubling habit of summarily closing the courthouse doors on those with the least power in our legal system,” this time highlighting a qualified immunity ruling.

The post SCOTUStoday: Sotomayor criticizes Kavanaugh appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

He wore it like a badge of honor. If you weren’t exhausted, if you weren’t consumed, if you weren’t carrying every case like it was a personal burden, then maybe you didn’t care enough. At least that’s what he believed. And for a while, I thought he was right.

Because when you’re young in this profession, you assume intensity equals excellence.

I remember watching him prepare for hearings. He would sit at his desk long after everyone left, surrounded by stacks of paper, yellow pads filled with notes, cases highlighted within an inch of their life. He wasn’t just preparing, he was bracing for impact, like every hearing was a collision he needed to survive.

And the thing is, he was good. Judges respected him. Opposing counsel took him seriously. Clients trusted him. From the outside, it looked like the model of a committed lawyer.

But there was a cost that didn’t show up on his resume.

He was always tired. Not the kind of tired you fix with a weekend off, but the kind that settles into your bones. Conversations with him felt rushed, as if he were always somewhere else mentally. Even when he was talking to you, he was also talking to himself about a case, a strategy, a mistake he thought he made.

And over time, something started to shift.

He wasn’t getting better.

He was getting more worn down.

That’s the part no one tells you early on. There’s a difference between working hard and carrying everything. One makes you sharper. The other makes you heavy.

And when you’re heavy, you start to lose the very thing that makes you effective, judgment.

You second-guess more. You react instead of thinking. You start solving problems emotionally instead of strategically.

And in this profession, that’s when mistakes happen.

I had my own version of that phase. Maybe not as extreme, but close enough. I would go home and replay depositions in my head, thinking about the one question I should have asked differently. I’d wake up in the middle of the night thinking about a motion I needed to file or a deadline I might have miscalculated.

It felt responsible. It felt like ownership.

It also felt exhausting.

At some point, you realize something important: your cases don’t need you to suffer. They need you to think.

There’s this quiet shift that happens when you stop trying to carry everything and start focusing on what actually matters. You prepare the same way. You care the same way. But you don’t internalize every outcome like it’s a reflection of your worth.

You create space.

And that space is where good decisions live.

The best lawyers I know aren’t the ones who are constantly grinding themselves into the ground. They’re the ones who can step back, assess, and act with clarity. They don’t confuse urgency with importance. They don’t treat every issue like a five-alarm fire.

They’re deliberate.

They know when to push and when to pause.

And that balance is what makes them dangerous in the courtroom.

There was a case I handled where everything escalated quickly: heated emails, aggressive motions, and a client who wanted to fight every point. A younger version of me would have matched that energy, fired back, tried to win every exchange.

Instead, I slowed it down.

Picked up the phone. Lowered the temperature. Focused on what mattered instead of what felt urgent.

The case resolved faster than it should have.

Not because I worked harder, but because I thought more clearly.

That’s the trap a lot of young lawyers fall into. They think the job is about doing more, more hours, more emails, more arguments. But the job is really about doing better.

Better questions.
Better judgment.
Better timing.

And you don’t get better by running yourself into the ground.

The lawyer I mentioned at the beginning eventually burned out. Not in some dramatic, walk-out-the-door way. It was quieter than that.

He just stopped enjoying any part of the job.

Everything became a burden.

Everything felt like pressure.

And once that happens, it’s hard to come back from it.

This profession will take as much from you as you’re willing to give. That’s not a criticism, it’s just reality. There’s always more to do. Another case. Another deadline. Another fire to put out.

If you don’t set boundaries, the job will set them for you.

And you may not like where they land.

So, what do you do with that?

You stay committed but not consumed.

You prepare, but you don’t obsess.

You care about outcomes, but you don’t tie them to your identity.

You learn to mentally leave the office, not just physically.

Because the truth is, the lawyers who last in this profession aren’t the ones who burn the brightest for a short time.

They’re the ones who find a way to sustain it.

Who can think clearly under pressure?

Who can keep perspective when everything feels urgent?

Who can go home and actually be home?

And I still think about that lawyer sometimes, the one who never really went home.

He believed that carrying everything made him better.

But in the end, it just made him tired.

Frank Ramos is a partner at Goldberg Segalla in Miami, where he practices commercial litigation, products, and catastrophic personal injury. You can follow him on LinkedIn, where he has about 80,000 followers.

The post The Lawyer Who Never Went Home appeared first on Above the Law.

Inmate 1: So what are you in for?

Inmate 2: AI Hallucinations.

And while that conversation could happen anywhere, Georgia wouldn’t be a bad state to bet on. Atlanta News First has coverage:

Calling her efforts to oppose a new trial for a convicted murderer “expanded legal research,” a metro Atlanta attorney has admitted using AI to cite nonexistent cases in a recent appearance before the Supreme Court of Georgia.

In a signed affidavit, Deborah Leslie – who is listed as an attorney for the appellate and assets forfeitures unit in the Clayton County District Attorney’s Office – has apologized for citing some cases that don’t exist.

On March 18, Payne appeared before the state Supreme Court as it was hearing arguments in Hannah Payne’s attorneys’ request for a new trial.

“Expanded Legal Research?” That’s what we’re calling it now? At least “This was once revealed to me in a dream” was earnest and quasi-poetic. That said, I admit “I went to the make-shit-up machine to help me with my job and submitted the made-up shit without bothering to check its veracity” doesn’t roll as cleanly off the tongue.

Dealing with prosecutors is rough enough without having to worry if they’re just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. Georgia’s public defender office has been facing a staffing shortage for years — to be overburdened with work and know that the other side isn’t even bothering to check their work must be maddening. Thankfully Payne’s lawyers had the time to call out the prosecutorial misconduct. One of them, Brian Steel, has built a reputation for putting belt to ass when prosecutors step out of line. At least it wasn’t a secret ex parte meeting this time!

Payne’s lawyers argue that that the underlying murder case relied on a botched jury instructions. Hopefully she gets a second chance at justice.

Attorney With Clayton County DA’s Office Apologizes For Using AI, Citing Fake Cases In Court Brief [Atlanta News First]

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 Atlanta Prosecutor Repeatedly Cites Non-Existent Cases To Avoid Murder Retrial appeared first on Above the Law.

Presumably, Trump made this decision after seeing how well Bondi was doing in the Above the Law annual bracket challenge as the lawyer most in need of having her license to practice law permanently stripped. For a president obsessed with projecting an image of strength, the ridicule of ATL’s readership was surely too much to handle.

But it could also be the fact that his administration keeps getting handed its ass in court, the Justice Department cannot miracle up anything but frivolous claims against the president’s enemies, and a bizarre rumor that Bondi tipped off Rep. Eric Swalwell about an effort to use the FBI to rehash his long ago relationship with a woman suspected of ties to Chinese intelligence.

Murder rates are at historic lows, though they’ve been trending down for decades now, making this boast similar to claiming this year marked an all-time low in people driving 1981 Honda Accords.

“Transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector” is brutal. Trump invented a fake new job in the administration when Kristi Noem got canned. Bondi isn’t even getting that courtesy. And if Trump hoped that this move could distract from the growing frustration in Congress over the Justice Department’s effort to keep Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein covered up:

This does raise the saliency of our aforementioned bracket challenge. Bondi is heading to the private sector a little prematurely, but this is the risk to the profession’s legitimacy. After supervising the Department of Justice as it racked up tons of documented instances of lying to tribunals and contemptuous acts, Bondi is poised to waltz over to a fat paycheck from a law firm who wants to put “former Attorney General” on their letterhead. And we can’t depend on the law firms to restrain themselves because they will just see the dollar signs they could secure by marketing themselves as having a former Justice Department insider around. The only way to protect the profession and the public is through ethics probes and licensing consequences.

Who replaces Bondi long-term? Blanche will take over in the short run, but despite Trump’s curiously capitalized description of Blanche as a “very talented and respected Legal Mind,” he isn’t considered the favorite. Early indications point to EPA Chief Lee Zeldin.

That would certainly track Trump’s preference for parking garage lawyers and insurance attorneys over those with actual experience.

There’s one candidate no one is talking about out there and Trump has already publicly expressed that he believed the man was capable of doing this job. He’s tanned, rested, and ready!

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. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

The post Pam Bondi… You’re Fired! appeared first on Above the Law.

Once in a generation, a new technology comes on the scene that radically transforms how government work happens.

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The post AI For Government Legal Teams — What’s Possible? appeared first on Above the Law.

Alas, Judge Amit Mehta just ruled that, at least some of the president’s alleged actions in whipping up the crowd that morning fell outside even the Supreme Court’s wildly expansive view of what counts as an “official” act for the purposes of immunity.

Trump also asked the court to reconsider its prior ruling that Trump’s speech on the Ellipse that morning could plausibly be construed as incitement and fall outside the protection of the First Amendment. And one gem tucked away toward the back of the 79-page opinion — helpfully flagged by Lawfare’s Roger Parloff — addressed Trump’s First Amendment argument that, if you think about it, he’s basically like a rapper.

That might be a misspelling.

As a final salvo, President Trump resuscitates an argument the court previously rejectedbut with a twist. He again insists that an adverse ruling “will open floodgates for incitement decisions” and thereby constrain First Amendment protections. Before, his focus was on the impact such ruling would have on political speech. Now his concern is over the “ramifications for public citizen speech.” To illustrate the point, he poses the hypothetical of a popular rapper (bearing some resemblance to Eminem) whose concert performance leads to fan violence.

(citations omitted)

I assume “some resemblance to Eminem” means that even as a longshot hypothetical Trump made sure his lawyers made him white.

It goes something like this. The rapper is known for his provocative and controversial lyrics, which “describe explicit violent acts, including gun violence, rape, and a description of the rapper drowning his wife.” It is widely reported in the news that his song lyrics are inspiring young people to “act emotionally and sometimes violently.” The rapper is aware of this phenomenon. Yet, when he takes the stage in front of thousands of fans, he performs his “most aggressive” songs and stokes his audience’s passions saying, “Fight the Man! Fight the Establishment! Don’t let them tell you what to do! Fight like hell!” Chaos ensues. Inspired by these words, concert goers “storm[] the nearest establishments,” stealing food from concession stands, attacking vendors, and “beating down security guards to access the backstage areas of the venue.”

(citations omitted)

Stan could still get that autograph if Mike Pence has the courage.

Personally, I never liked the argument that Trump should be responsible for his Ellipse speech. The whole thing felt too similar to the frivolous lawsuits against DeRay Mckesson, alleging that the civil rights activist should be responsible for injuries caused by others at a protest he attended. Trump’s role in exacerbating the riot by failing to take reasonable steps to quell the violence and withholding National Guard assistance could give rise to a claim, but the speech itself always felt like a bridge too far.

But, if the courts are going to indulge the Mckesson case nonsense, then it’s only fair to hold Trump to the same standard.

As for the rap analogy, Judge Mehta found it lacking a few critical elements:

But here is what is missing from the President’s hypothetical. There is no contention that, for weeks before the concert, the rapper told his fans that the Establishment had taken something valuable from them through fraud and deceit. No assertion that the rapper knew his fans had prepared to act violently on that very day (including by bringing weapons to the show) to reclaim what was taken from them. No averment that during the performance the rapper specifically identified the members of the Establishment who took this thing of value. And no allegation that, at the show’s crescendo, he implored his fans to “Fight the Establishment” and “Fight like hell”and then directed them, without warning local law enforcement, to descend thousands strong onthe very place the Establishment was working to finally take away that thing of value. Only if those facts are included does the rap concert begin to resemble January 6, and only then do the artist’s song lyrics and exhortation to “Fight like hell” mirror the Ellipse Speech. The court would agree that, in this revised hypothetical, the rapper’s expression plausibly are words of incitement. But not in the incomplete one posed by the President.

While Trump was always a long way from forging a complete analogy to January 6, he could have at least met some of Judge Mehta’s conditions if he’d just built the analogy around any of the many musical acts from 60s folk to 90s rap with songs explicitly about “Fighting the Man and the Establishment.” But the legal team would rather have a suboptimal example like Eminem than let Trump be compared to N.W.A. And, to be clear, it shouldn’t be incitement, but Fuck Tha Police would make for a stronger comparison in a case about a crowd attacking the literal Capitol Police.

So the case can proceed with Democratic members of Congress and Capitol Police officers who were there that day getting their shot in court.

As for the rap concert analogy, it now joins the proud lineage of Trump legal arguments that managed to be both creative and self-defeating.

(Opinion on the next page…)

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. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

The post Trump Argued He’s Like A Rapper, Federal Judge Dropped Bars In Response appeared first on Above the Law.

On Site

Argument Analysis

Supreme Court appears likely to side against Trump on birthright citizenship

On Jan. 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that would end birthright citizenship – the guarantee of U.S. citizenship to virtually everyone born in this country. Trump’s order has never gone into effect; since then, every federal court that has considered a challenge to the order has struck it down. After just over two hours of oral arguments on Wednesday, before an audience that included (at least for part of the morning) Trump himself, a majority of the Supreme Court seemed likely to do the same.

View from the Court

Trump attends birthright citizenship argument

In his View from the Court column, Mark Walsh described what it was like in the courtroom as Trump made history as the first sitting president to attend oral argument. He noted that the president was joined by Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, and White House Counsel David Warrington.

Argument Analysis

Justices seem dubious of government’s argument in criminal venue case

The Supreme Court on Monday considered whether federal prosecutors can try a defendant not only in the district where the offense occurs, but also where the crime’s “contemplated effects” are felt. During the roughly 80-minute argument in Abouammo v. United States, the justices seemed to suggest that the answer was no.

The post SCOTUStoday for Thursday, April 2 appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

This term, the Supreme Court’s oral argument docket has had a distinctly public-facing quality. Many of the biggest arguments have involved disputes that reach well beyond the parties and into the country’s political life: redistricting in Louisiana v. Callais, presidential tariff authority in Learning Resources v. Trump, presidential removal power and the Federal Reserve in Trump v. Cook, and birthright citizenship in Trump v. Barbara, which was argued on April 1. Even by the standards of the modern Roberts court, that is a striking concentration of cases touching elections, executive power, and the very architecture of government. That docket has naturally drawn attention to outcomes. But it also offers a useful chance to look at something more granular: the nature of oral argument itself. Which advocates are carrying the heaviest load? Which justices are speaking most often? Which cases become justice-dominated exchanges, and which leave more room for uninterrupted advocacy? And what does that tell us about how the law itself is being shaped?

Of advocates and justices

This term’s arguments – which were analyzed through the end of the March sitting on March 4 – suggest a court whose most prominent cases are producing both high advocate speaking totals and heavy judicial engagement. A small number of repeat Supreme Court specialists appear at the center of the biggest arguments. And on the bench, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson – and her fellow liberals – stand out as the court’s most active questioners.

As for the advocate-side numbers, these make one thing immediately clear: The most speech-heavy arguments are clustering around big cases and elite counsel.

The top single-argument attorney speaking total in the figures (at least up until the birthright citizenship case) belongs to Solicitor General D. John Sauer in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (the tariffs case), at 8,811 words. Just behind him is Amit Agarwal at 8,223 words in Trump v. Slaughter, who was a clerk to Justice Samuel Alito and in that case opposed the administration’s authority to fire a head of the Federal Trade Commission. Next comes Principal Deputy Solicitor General Sarah Harris in United States v. Hemani, a gun rights case, at 7,216 words, and former Solicitor General Paul Clement representing Lisa Cook in Trump v. Cook, at 7,104 words (Clement had three of the top 10 speaking totals in a single argument).

The pattern is suggestive. The lawyers speaking the most in a single argument tend to be the advocates one would expect to find in the Supreme Court’s most charged disputes: experienced specialists, often representing institutional actors (whether the government or parties on the other side), and often arguing cases whose legal framing is broad enough to invite sustained questioning.

As for the justice-side numbers, these show an equally clear, though somewhat more complicated, pattern.

The top single-argument justice speaking total in the chart belongs to Jackson in Louisiana v. Callais, at 2,747 words. Jackson also appears at 2,307 words in Trump v. Cook and Wolford v. Lopez, a gun rights case. Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s 2,222 words in Hamm v. Smith, a death penalty case, takes the fourth-place spot, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh comes in fifth, with 2,137 words in Trump v. Slaughter. In other words, Jackson appears again and again near the top, while other justices have high-volume showings depending on the particular disputes.

This is not particularly surprising. Since she joined the bench, Jackson has regularly been among the justices most inclined to engage quickly and at length. This term’s data appears consistent with that broader pattern. It also fits another observable feature of recent arguments: the liberal justices often account for a substantial share of total questioning – perhaps to voice a potential dissent or try and narrow the contours of a possible majority decision that they may oppose.

The cumulative totals reinforce this broader pattern. Jackson leads the aggregate chart at 53,299 words across cases. She is distantly followed by Sotomayor at 34,967 and Justice Elena Kagan at 30,606. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh sit in the same general range, at 27,880 and 27,657, followed by Alito at 24,541, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett at 23,978. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas trail the group, at 16,538 and 7,278, respectively.

Those totals suggest a bench with fairly uneven speaking habits. Jackson sits in a class of her own. Sotomayor and Kagan form the next tier. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh remain highly active, although not nearly at the same cumulative level as Jackson. Roberts and Thomas are markedly less talkative – this is not new but the gap is still striking.

One way to read this is that the court’s oral arguments now often run through a handful of dominant questioners. Another is that the court’s center of verbal energy has shifted somewhat in recent years, with Jackson’s arrival intensifying a tendency toward active, strategic engagement from the liberal wing. Either way, the data gives this a concrete shape.

Argument structures

If Trump v. Cook offers the best advocate case study, it also offers the best visual example of how an argument is structured.

The turn-sequence graph for Trump v. Cook captures a familiar but revealing rhythm. Sauer occupies long stretches early in the argument. Clement appears later in an extended block of advocacy. Between and around them come repeated clusters of judicial questioning, with Jackson visibly active, Sotomayor and Kavanaugh making sustained appearances, and shorter interventions from Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kagan, Thomas, and Barrett.

The plot does not tell a substantive story on its own, but it does show how the argument unfolded in practice. This was not a leisurely presentation interrupted by occasional questions. It was a dense exchange in which the advocates had to navigate bursts of sustained judicial attention, then recover, then do it again. The most experienced Supreme Court lawyers are often valued in part because they can survive that kind of environment while still keeping the legal frame intact.

Some transcript excerpts further make the point.

At one point, Sotomayor pressed Sauer on the historical novelty of the dispute:

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: “A hundred and twelve years, and it’s unprecedented that any Federal Reserve officer has ever – has ever been removed. So the unprecedented nature of this case is a – is a part of what the president did, not what Ms. Cook did.”

GENERAL SAUER: “I think that statement has to be qualified by the recognition that there have been situations where governors have been credibly accused or found to have engaged in financial improprieties, and those governors have resigned for financial improprieties that are quite analogous to what is at issue in this particular case.”

That exchange captures one of the defining modes of modern Supreme Court argument: the justice uses institutional history to frame the stakes, and the advocate responds by narrowing the comparison and contesting the historical characterization. Sotomayor’s question invites the court to see the case through the lens of novelty – that the administration is doing something unprecedented. Sauer’s response tries to blunt that by shifting from the exact situation at issue to analogous episodes of financial impropriety and resignation.

Later, Alito pushed Clement with an extreme hypothetical:

JUSTICE ALITO: “All right. I understand your position. How about if, after the person assumes office, videos are disclosed in which the office-holder is expressing deep admiration for Hitler or for the Klan?”

MR. CLEMENT: “I can only imagine –”

JUSTICE ALITO: “That must be –”

MR. CLEMENT: “– where these hypos are going to eventually go, Your Honor, but –”

JUSTICE ALITO: “Well, yeah, because your position leads to –”

MR. CLEMENT: “I’m going to stick with my position.”

JUSTICE ALITO: “Well, you’re – all right.”

MR. CLEMENT: “Of course, I’m going to stick with my position and I’m going to say
that’s an official that would be impeached in a heartbeat …”

This is a different but equally familiar pattern. A justice stress-tests a legal rule with an extreme hypothetical. The advocate acknowledges the force of the move without conceding the principle. Clement’s answer is recognizably that of a seasoned Supreme Court specialist: he does not run from the premise, but he does not let the hypothetical redefine the case either.

The case-level charts also help show how much argument structure varies.

In some arguments, justices account for an unusually large share of the total words spoken. In Barrett v. United States, which dealt with the double jeopardy clause, the justices’ share reaches 53.2% – in other words, they spoke even more than the advocates. In Hamm v. Smith, it is 50.3%. In Trump v. Slaughter, it is 47.4%. Pung v. Isabella County, on the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment, and Wolford v. Lopez, are also near the top. Louisiana v. Callais comes in at 44.7%, and Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump at 42.8%. Trump v. Cook sits at 40%.

Those are substantial numbers. In practical terms, they suggest that some of the term’s biggest arguments are not simply lawyer presentations punctuated by questions. They are conversations the justices are actively shaping in real time. That can mean sharper testing of doctrinal boundaries, more visible skepticism, or simply a court more inclined to use oral argument as a forum for working through the implications of its own possible rulings and speak to one another through the advocates.

The court’s conversation

Of course, no speaking-time analysis can tell the whole story of oral argument. It does not measure who asked the best question, who changed a colleague’s mind, or which exchange ultimately mattered most at conference. Volume can reflect persistence, skepticism, interest, or the simple contingencies of a particular day. Still, it captures something real. Oral argument is a structured conversation that the justices are not only having with the advocates but with one another, and the distribution of speech helps show who is trying to shape that conversation.

So far this term, the answer is fairly clear. The court’s highest-profile arguments have centered on politically consequential disputes with large institutional stakes. Those arguments are often being handled by elite advocates with the capacity to absorb extended questioning. On the bench, Jackson remains the most consistently forceful verbal presence, with Sotomayor and Kagan also heavily involved, while justices such as Kavanaugh remind observers that the pattern is not one-directional and not ideologically tidy in every case. And while the former may be attempting to shape argument to achieve any victory they can, the latter – given his frequency in the majority – may be projecting the eventual ruling.

That combination – politically charged cases, experienced advocates, and concentrated judicial engagement – has given the term’s oral arguments a distinct feel. The cases may be remembered for what the court eventually decides. But the arguments themselves are already revealing how the justices and the lawyers are grappling with those eventual decisions in real time.

The post Who is driving the conversation at the Supreme Court? appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

• Abouammo v. United States: Case Preview and Argument Analysis
• Jules v. Andre Balazs Properties: Case Preview and Argument Analysis
• Pitchford v. Cain: Case Preview and Argument Analysis
• Trump v. Barbara: Case Preview and Argument Analysis

On Site

Argument Analysis

Court appears sympathetic to death-row inmate’s attempt to challenge racial discrimination in jury selection

The Supreme Court seemed sympathetic to a Mississippi man who argues that a district attorney violated the Constitution’s ban on racial discrimination in jury selection.

From the SCOTUSblog Team

The Supreme Court of India

For SCOTUSblog’s series on different supreme courts around the world, Zachary Shemtob spoke with Rohit De, an associate professor of history at Yale University, about the Supreme Court of India.

Contributor Corner

Who is driving the conversation at the Supreme Court?

In his Empirical SCOTUS column, Adam Feldman analyzed the nature of the oral arguments that have taken place so far this term, exploring such questions as which justices are speaking most often and which arguments left more room than usual for uninterrupted advocacy.

The post SCOTUStoday for Friday, April 3 appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

And this week, Justice Clarence Thomas passed Chief Justice John Marshall on the list of longest-serving Supreme Court justices. Thomas is now the fourth-longest serving justice in history and just over two years away from the top of the list.

• Watson v. Republican National Committee: Case Preview and Argument Analysis
• Keathley v. Buddy Ayers Construction: Case Preview and Argument Analysis
• Noem v. Al Otro Lado: Case Preview and Argument Analysis
• Flowers Foods v. Brock: Case Preview and Argument Analysis

• In Rico, the court held that the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 does not authorize a rule automatically extending a defendant’s term of supervised release when the defendant fails to report to a probation officer.
• In Cox Communications, the court held that a company is not liable for copyright infringement for merely providing a service to the general public with knowledge that it will be used by some to infringe copyrights.

On Site

Relist Watch

Brady violations, child abduction, qualified immunity, and confessions of error

In his Relist Watch column, John Elwood highlighted six petitions for review that were newly relisted for today’s conference. They address such issues as qualified immunity; the Hague Convention and abducted children; and intellectual disability and the death penalty.

Opinion Analysis

Justices reject billion-dollar judgment for copyright infringement by internet service provider

On Wednesday, the court unanimously ruled against Sony Entertainment, rejecting its effort to hold Cox Communications, an internet service provider, liable for copyright infringement by Cox’s subscribers. Justice Clarence Thomas’ brief opinion made it clear that content providers like Sony that are worried about copyright infringement are not going to get anywhere by suing internet service providers like Cox.

Opinion Analysis

Court repudiates extension of federal supervised release while a defendant absconds

After completing a term of imprisonment, federal criminal defendants often serve terms of supervised release that usually last between one and five years, depending on the offense for which they were convicted. In a narrow ruling, the court held, 8-1, that this supervised release time does not automatically extend when a defendant on supervision flees.

Argument Analysis

Justices debate arbitration exemption for “last-mile” drivers

On Wednesday, the justices considered the scope of an exemption in the Federal Arbitration Act for interstate transportation workers. Specifically, the question is whether that exemption reaches “last-mile” drivers who don’t themselves cross state lines, even though the goods they are delivering are on an interstate journey.

SCOTUS Outside Opinions

When the Supreme Court let a president get away with redefining birthright citizenship

In a column for SCOTUSblog, Neil Weare explored President William McKinley’s effort to disrupt the long-settled meaning of the 14th Amendment’s “citizenship clause to deny citizenship to people born in Puerto Rico, Guam, and other territories that became subject to the sovereignty and jurisdiction of the United States following” the Spanish-American War, comparing it to Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship that is now before the Supreme Court.

The post SCOTUStoday for Friday, March 27 appeared first on SCOTUSblog.