Closing Out The Year With Mergers And Attacks On The Rule Of Law

0:28Welcome to another edition of Thinking Like a Lawyer. Big stories from the week that was in legal over here at Above the Law. But we usually begin with a little bit of small talk, which we set off with a trumpet sound effect. How's everybody going? Yeah. Good. A week of Christmas for those who celebrate very, very busy in my household. Lots of family, which I'm super excited to hang out with. But, you know, just a lot of people to juggle. yeah so i'm going to pull a joe and i'm going to talk about an article i wrote for work but okay there's a fun aspect to it so bonuses great king and spaulding they got bonuses they match nothing over the top but hey when you're making that much money whatever you get is market is over the top so fun thing about king and spaulding they do work at least in the past i'm assuming they still do they did work with coca-cola um which joe just happened to sip at the moment i I swear this isn't a sponsored post.

1:27And you know it's true because nobody else saw it. We ain't getting that Coke money. Yeah. No. Only weed. Anyway. So recently we've been getting into perfumes, colognes, fragrances, what have you. And if you're listening and you've seen the bonus post, they're pretty much boilerplate language. It's X firm, matches, goes above, doesn't pay, blah, blah, blah. So what we try to do is every once in a while, sprinkling some extra facts to make the bonuses seem more interesting at least you know just so we don't fall asleep as we're writing them and i got to recommend a fragrance to the recipients of the bonuses at king and spaulding which is really fun because this uh fragrance is called tonka cola by mancera that's the fragrance house and i just think it's cool i just imagine that there's at least one person who works at the firm who might click the link and buy a fragrance that smells like a Coca-Cola vibe working at the Coca-Cola firm.

2:23And that was really fun to do. So I just wanted to share that. Yeah. King of Spalding has been working with Coca-Cola for over 100 years at this point. So I actually have a bunch of Coca-Cola creamy holiday vanilla flavor. I'll tell you, Coca-Cola as a company has gone over the top this year on their flavors. And I, for one, I'm here for it. I think it was like in October or November, they re-released their Diet Coke lime, which was my favorite in law school. Like that got me through torts like nothing else. Like it was my absolute favorite. And then they changed the formula to be lime with ginger.

3:00And like if you go to like a movie theater and you get those big fancy machines and you can - Or Five Guys does those too. Yes, yes, Five Guys does. And you can pick the flavors, but that is not lime. That's lime ginger. Not as good. Not as good. I like the original lime and they re-released it. And so I've been slowly trying to hoard it every time I go to a store. And I was like, oh, they have the lime. We should get three more cases just so that I continue to have it as long as possible. But that was not the end of their – they have the creamy vanilla like Joe was talking about. They have creamsicle.

3:33Their Sprite, they have a holiday cranberry varietal. They've really gone above and beyond and I am very excited. I bought the Sprite one. I'm excited for that. That feels very festive. Maybe get like a sugar rim, get a little bit of that. What's your go-to with one of those machines like we were just talking about, like a movie theater and Five Guys? So I will get the ginger lime, usually just because it's so hard to – you only get it when you get the machine. But the last couple times I got it, I felt like deep regret. I was like, I just should have got plain. I just – I do – I'm a big Diet Coke fan.

4:11Like I really enjoy my Diet Coke. I especially like Diet Coke from like a fountain Diet Coke. Like Diet Coke from McDonald's is elite. You can't convince me it's not a different formula. But I usually I think wind up my going forward will definitely be the plane. I just want to say I love you, Catherine. Don't get it twisted. But that is the wrong answer. The right answer to what you get at that machine, what you press, you press every button. Listen, I go to five guys. I don't even think of them as a burger joint. I think of them as a spot that has the Coca-Cola kiosks. I order my shit. I tell them to take their sweet time.

4:49They can sous vide the burgers for all I care. I'm pressing every f***ing button. Nice. I do cherry vanilla with Diet Coke. I think that those two together with Diet Coke is the ideal. Anyway, which is rough because when you – to buy them in stores, I think they mostly – if they do have it available at a store, I usually see it as their Coke Zero formula, not their Diet Coke formula, which I prefer. I prefer the Diet Coke as well. Yeah. That's why – may I, again, recommend the Diet Coke with lime. Actually, no. No one else drink it. I don't want them to run out. They'll discontinue it if the market isn't there, so you do want people to buy it.

5:28I think that they're planning it to be a limited run regardless because there was huge outcry for it in the first instance. And like the first month that it came out, like I couldn't find it places. Like it was sold out. Like you couldn't preorder it. It was it was a whole thing. It had become a little bit more ubiquitous, but I definitely am hoarding it. And I don't I can't even I'm not apologizing for it. This is probably not the case. So don't don't sue me, Coca-Cola. But I just imagine it would be really funny if the reason it turns out that they canceled the lime flavor was because, oh, we can't put asbestos in soda.

6:02But now that RFK Jr. is back in, they can bring in all the old flavors because there's no regulation. It's cool. It's cool. All right. So that ends that section. So we sometimes do a law section on this Coca-Cola podcast. and the big story this week uh one of the big stories this week uh probably one of the biggest of the year uh is cadwaller the oldest law firm in america but has had some a bit of a rough go this year and is now going to be merging with hogan levels yeah uh they definitely had a really rough here. They were one of the nine firms that capitulated to Donald Trump and signed deals promising millions in pro bono payola to causes, conservative causes.

6:56And that is only part of the problem. Even before that happened, there was a bunch of partners that were exiting and it was only accelerated once they signed those deals. A lot of big name litigators started leaving the firm. So there was there was a lot of movement in that firm and not surprised that they found or were looking for a merger partner. Are we surprised, though, that it's that it's whole love? A little bit. Yes and no. I was thinking that it was going to be something transatlantic. And early on, we saw we had some buzz before this that Cadwaller like sniffed around some rumors that it was like talking to Allstate and Byrd and stuff, which I thought was weird.

7:39Mm hmm. But that that and I thought it was weird because I thought it was going to have to be something transatlantic. And as it turns out, I was right. The because it just makes more sense. Ultimately, you want to minimize redundancies and conflicts and so on. So the the right answer is to aim for somebody who, while they operate in a lot of the same markets, who operates predominantly in other markets. That way is more of a synergy. And here we are. I'd like to substitute more of a synergy with more whole love to go around. No. Because at the end of the day, the firm will still be called whole love.

8:16Well, at least by us. And I just think that's a great way. Hogan Levels, Ked Waller is how they're going to try to find it, it sounds like. Yeah. You know, honestly, Hogan Levels is one of the few firms where the merger name kind of stuck and didn't get completely dwarfed, right? Because usually when these things happen, we just boil it down to whatever the first name is. Well, it's because Holove is a great nickname. I mean, that is a huge part of it. Yeah. But also, I mean, you know, the kind of the firm you pointing out the sort of history of Holove as an international firm. But I think they're actually technically co-headquartered because I think that their D.C.

8:57office is also considered their headquarters. Well, because it was so like Hogan and Hartson. Right. was kind of there and that was the American one. But when they merged with levels, we didn't lose the levels. It didn't just become Hogan like so many of these mergers do. We just boil it down, yeah? They went from whole hearts to whole love? They did go from whole hearts to whole love. That is nuts! Yeah.

9:24Oh my God. Heart, love, now they've gotten together with a cad. Which in British lingo, yeah. That is very funny, actually. What is a cat in British lingo? Kind of like a... A rake. A rake, yes. I mean, that's also weird and old-timey. Oh, yeah. That's perfect. There had to be somebody in the C-suite. It was like, you know what would be really funny? Hell yeah. Shouts out to Whole Love. That's my favorite merger now. That's my favorite merger. So the big deal with this, of course, is that this brings together now two firms. It's going to be like a massive... Yeah, they're going to, in terms of size, that they're going to increase.

10:08I think they were currently at like 12 or something like that, and they'll be top five. Yeah, I think fifth. Yeah, this is billions and billions and billions of dollars here. I think, what are they going to have, like 3 billion or something like that? I can't remember. Yeah. Well, they were already, like, Whole Love by itself was like over$2.5 billion in revenue last year. Yeah, 3.6 is what is being projected. 3 ,100 lawyers across the globe. It's a massive move. So congratulations to all of them, I suppose. This brings an end to a rough year for Ken Walleter, and good luck moving forward as part of the Hogan Levels Hart family.

10:51Yeah, friendship circle. All right. Let's take a break there and come back and switch gears a bit. imagine getting a free marketing consultation or workshop for your law firm every month without ever booking a meeting or paying it done sounds too good to be true right they don't have to imagine it conrad because they can actually experience it our podcast lunch our legal marketing which you can watch right now on youtube has dozens of episodes explaining how to update your google business profile what kinds of campaigns are working for lawyers and what seo strategies you should implement. And that's just scratching the surface.

11:31Now, there are a lot of people out there who think they know the ins and outs of SEO, social media and paid marketing. But in reality, they're just greedy or grifters or faking it most of the time. As agency owners, my co-host Guy and I know what we're talking about and would love for you to be part of our growing community. Check out our library of episodes and subscribe to the Lunch Hour Legal Marketing YouTube channel or wherever podcasts are found.

12:00You like legal podcasts because you're curious and want to be the best attorney you can be. I'm Dave Scriven-Young, host of Litigation Radio, produced by ABA's Litigation Section with Legal Talk Network. Searching your favorite podcast player for Litigation Radio to join me and my guests as we examine hot topics in litigation and topics that will help you to develop your litigation skills and build your practice. I hope you'll check out Litigation Radio and join the ABA litigation section for access to all of the resources, relationships, and referrals you need to thrive as a litigator.

12:34Okay, now our gear shift is to law school. So the U.S. news rankings don't come out until the spring, of course, but we have a lot of the little background. They've changed their methodology a lot over the recent few years because some of the big elite law firms, elite law schools, ha ha, have stopped cooperating and giving non, you know, non-public information that U.S. News used to rely on. That means they had to kind of change around their methodology. So we now have a new methodology and most of the information in it is public. So we have access to it and we know what, with pretty good sense, unless they change their methodology, what it's going to end up being.

13:19And so with that, Derek Muller, Professor Muller puts together a, you know, a projection every year of what it looks like the rankings are going to be. And we have that headline conversation about that is Yale and Harvard are now tied. So, you know, they're going to be tied as law schools. They will be tied at fifth with Duke, but they will be tied. Okay, a couple of things. I think that this projection means almost nearly definitively that they will change the methodology before they are officially released, which is something they've done in the past, too, where we think we know what they're based on information that they've provided.

14:01We think we know what the rankings will be. Then all of a sudden that seems problematic. And there's been some changes to the formula. Here we go. I think that having Harvard and Yale that are in no no further down the ranking than three. There's no argument in anyone's mind legitimately that Harvard, Yale and Stanford are not the top three law schools in this country, period, like full stop. Yeah. So, I mean, it depends, of course, on what you're looking for. And as we always caution people with rankings, you should not be looking at rankings as one definitive list. There should be multiple things you're taking into account.

14:43The above the law rankings, which we do, are part of that. Now, in ours, historically, the elite law schools like Yale aren't at the very top. But the reason for that is that the rest of the list works out better that way because we are creating our list based on outcomes rather than any of the inputs like GPAs from undergrad or LSATs. And so we've always hoped with that ranking that you get a better sense of like and money to you get a better sense of bang for your buck, how to get the best thing without going bankrupt. And so schools like UVA and Penn tend to do really well better than Yale.

15:26That's not to say that you don't go to Yale if you get into Yale. But by having this methodology, the breakpoints further down in the list are much better as far as who is a better value. But I think that it's important to note that U.S. News has, for the majority of its history, been a stand-in for prestige, been a stand-in for what the profession thinks of as the best law schools. And frankly, the above the law rankings are in a lot of ways a response to that being the dominant ranking that is out there. It only really the ATL rankings only make sense because you look at it and say, well, sure, but what what kind of jobs can you get?

16:07That doesn't tell you that. Here's the response. Here's a response. And I think that U.S. news has has really lost the plot and it's it's just increasingly problematic. And I think that I will be shocked if we actually see the final rankings and Harvard and Yale are tied for five. Figure out a way to get them up there. I think so. I mean, well, you know, it's interesting you say prestige. And I think that is a good pivot point to the other aspect of this article that's really important, of this story that's really important, is that we are now seeing, unfortunately, a trend where the firms are now hiring people out of law schools before they even have their first semester grades.

16:48All right. So we we aren't getting people interviewing after a year's worth of grades. We're getting them before they have their first semester. Now, what that means is they're making judgments based on GPAs and LSATs and the fact that you got into a place at that point. You know, we've given U.S. News a lot of guff over the years for being a naked prestige ranking. But guess what? That focuses on GPAs and LSATs. Guess what? Right now, that's actually probably what a student hoping for a job is best off looking at. And if the U.S. news rankings are not mirroring that prestige particularly well, then there's now nothing that a student can look at to figure out exactly where they need to go.

17:35Yeah, big law of recruiting is fundamentally broken. We talked about it on the podcast before, but once NALP took off the guardrails that were sort of, you know, you can't interview people before this day, you have to keep offers open, like all this kind of rules of the game. once they got rid of all that, it has been an absolute positive race to the bottom that is terrible for everyone. It is terrible for the law firms. It is terrible for the law schools. It's even worse for the law students, which are also the people who are in the most vulnerable position with the least amount of power and all this.

18:08And it is bad for all of them. But no one, there's an inability to work collectively and say, well, how do we get ourselves out of this problem. Instead, people are governed by fear. And we don't let people if we don't interview in the first semester that somebody else will get all the good candidates. And so there's this terrible race to the bottom that is really should be studied and will be studied in 15 years when, you know, the whole system collapses. I link to it in my piece. But David Latt had a good article about about this recruiting problem a couple of weeks ago. And it's linked in the piece.

18:44But yeah, Yeah, that problem, which needs to be fixed independently, has now put a weird strain on these rankings and a new spin on the problem with these rankings. What's the over-under on these law firms setting up tents at undergraduate graduation? Yeah. Well, I mean, that's a good point. At a certain point, why don't you just go to Princeton and ask people, are you considering law school? Here's an offer. Because we're not any further away than that. It's wild. Not only are you seeing people interviewing and getting offers before they have their first set of grades in law school, you're having people who already have offers from those law schools getting walking around money from the law firms to do recruiting on behalf of the firm for their fellow students.

19:31That is wild. You don't actually know. At best, these people have had one summer at a firm. How do you trust them as ambassadors of your brand? That seems out of pocket to me. I just the entire system is broken and there is a lot of consternation about that fact, but very little will to do anything, which is a real problem for the industry. One of the things that I found was the most psychologically stressful about law school, it wasn't even learning to rule against perpetuity. It was just being surrounded by my peers. There's a difference between being seen by my peers and being watched by them.

20:09And I definitely had that feeling of being watched. I mean, COVID was phenomenal. I lost a bunch of weight just because I didn't have all the stress from being seen by my peers. But I can't even imagine what it's like if my peers are, one, the people I'm competing with for my grades, but also they could be the people recruiting me. Like, how do I how do I dress for my cohort? You know, like, oh, got to put on my fancy Brooks Brothers tie in case Caleb from ConLaws looks my way. Like, that's ridiculous. The social pressure of it just doesn't make sense. I completely agree. And I think that it also feeds another it's going to long term feed another phenomenon that we're seeing, which is that is the rise of boutique law firms.

20:47because how can you be confident in a decision you're making in your first semester of law school that this is where you actually want to practice for any length of time? Instead, we're seeing these boutique law firms that are smaller and are more focused on the sort of law that you may or may not want to do. And that seems like a better option. And I think you're going to see more and more people looking for these boutique opportunities because they really, even more than just like, oh, I don't like working at big law, but they made the decision so early in their career that there's almost no chance that this is a legitimately good fit for them.

21:21And so you're going to see more and earlier lateral rolling. And you're going to see that, and you're going to see more people looking outside of the traditional big law model for their jobs. I think that's fair. Especially because, as those bonus stories reveal, a lot of boutiques are paying a lot more money. A lot of money. All right, gang. Let us take a break here and be right back on the other side. Before we get to the other side, just wanted to give some context to the lot of money we were talking about. I think there was one boutique firm that was giving out like$770 ,000 in bonuses. Yeah, yeah.

21:56I mean, but that's, yeah, those kind of places are distinct, though. It still felt like more than like the prior years I've been in. Because like every once in a while, I was like, okay, a boutique firm is coming in above average. But they were like, whoa, this is like the third one paying like$300 ,000, you know. So one of the big issues with those boutiques is – and Boys is kind of this way too. They have a mix of business that includes plaintiff side work. And so if you are involved in any of those cases where like at the end of that case, the firm wins$38 billion or something like that, you get a considerable windfall.

22:31Right. But there's because of the nature of their business, though, there's sort of an understanding that that your that bonus will not necessarily be matched the following year because it's based on those contingencies. Whereas the big law numbers are very much considered, you know, if I'm in good standing, I expect that I'm at least getting this my fourth year number after, you know, kind of that. That makes sense. All right. So we're back. Captain, you had a story about. Deeply disturbing. Yeah. All right. Yeah. So apparently there is or there was on the ICE website a list of attorneys. It was found by attorney Arlene Amarante.

23:12And it's just it was just a list of attorneys that have done immigration work. No explanation on what it is. No explanation for why there that is. And there's deep suspicion in the immigration attorney world that it is a watch list. There's actually been a Freedom of Information Act request filed, not that there's been any response to it as of yet, trying to figure out what it is, why there's why certain attorneys are on there. And according to the attorney who initially found the list, she points out that the majority of folks on this list are people of color or other minorities. And it's sort of deeply disturbing that ICE currently is monitoring or at least keeping tabs on this list of attorneys.

24:01And, you know, that kind of fact in and of itself is wild. But one of the things that I think is interesting about this story is that can you imagine this happening? I don't know. And in any other administration, right? It's just a list of attorneys. If, you know, this happened under the Obama administration, who, by the way, was very aggressive on immigration as well. the initial impulse would be like oh was this like a list of people who made appearances in this court or that court and they're kind of being kept and it was accidentally published publicly like there'd be so many logical reasons for keeping a list of attorneys that i think your mind would just naturally default to as opposed to an enemies list which is immediately where things have gone in the year of our lord 2025 yeah i wonder what the name will be in like the year of our lord 2045 because like looking back we have like an easy place name and being like oh this was mccarthyism when they were like all like the blacklisting or the you know just people being accused of being communist or like red scare era tactics but like i wonder what this will be named like trumpism seems like it's it's the easy go-to but i i hope that there's something not that because there's going to be so much trumpism i just want to know like what specifically this will be like regard to like the the obey in advance um leaking of you know surveillance Yeah, I mean, I think MAGA land.

25:24I think that MAGA probably is how this era will be remembered or Trumpian. But I think that in particular, the way that the Trump II administration has attacked the rule of law is why I think the initial impulse to a list of attorneys has gotten more than a fair amount of side eye. It's cute. You all think that there will be a 2045. Maybe not for me. But it's interesting that you suggest – talk about that because it's a decent pivot to a little sub-story, which is who knows? Trump may still be president then. He doesn't seem like he would be able to live that long, but he may be able to be elected that long because Alan Dershowitz is out there writing books about how – What if the 22nd Amendment isn't real?

26:17Quite a notable fall from the intellectual grace that Alan Dershowitz once held. I think that he's managed to got he's got a whole book that he's releasing. Sometimes I wonder, like, what if they just served in pierogies at like Martha's Vineyard? Would he still be on this track? Like, what if what if good customer service was it was the thing that, you know, is the reason that we don't have this now? I mean, that's the question that I pose in the article. In fact, I have the – I even put the meme of the little domino knocking down the big domino, and it's like that guy not giving him a pierogi fascism.

26:54Oh, it's terrifyingly funny. But no, like what gets me about it is this is not a difficult legal question. It is kind of shameless to be writing a book about it given how it's not a real legal question. And it's just being done because he understands that there's a built-in market of crazy people who want this kind of wish casting. He doesn't ultimately conclude one way or the other that, yes, it is or no, it's not. The answer is no, you can't have a third term. That is actually the easy answer. But he says, oh, it's not clear, which, of course, is all that – which seems like, oh, well, at least he's not saying that you can do that.

27:35But at the end of the day, muddying the waters is actually all that you need. Yeah. And this is not Alan Dershowitz is not the first legal mind to sort of start the process. Right. It started very early in Trump's second term with Judge Edid saying that, you know, this is the 22nd Amendment is not a settled legal question. Right. Like that started early. Alex Kaczynski came out of the woodwork to say, hey, maybe the 22nd Amendment isn't a thing. DOJ attorneys during oral arguments have made this argument as well. And now you get Alan Dershowitz. The fact that this is not the first is the domino in a lot of ways because so many people have put their names – so many more than you would ever expect.