Who Knew Biting Other Lawyers Was Frowned Upon?

0:11so what's uh going on with my boys and in some cases gals out there hi yeah this is Joe from above the law uh katherine ravino uh spoke up as the in some cases gals i guess uh we're also joined by chris williams this is a the show where every week we're above the law we talk about the big stories in legal from the week that was uh if you're not familiar with the gag that we were just working on uh donald trump's uh donald trump took to truth social to uh say what's going on with my boys in quotation marks, and in some cases, gals also in quotation mark. It's his long diatribe about why he thinks that we need to stop talking about the Epstein files that he claims were written by, I think, Obama and Hillary and James Comey now is his new logic.

1:08Just throwing memes out there that will get people back on his side, I think is actually what's going on there. Yeah, so the Epstein stuff, I mean, well, hold on. I guess we can get started with some small talk, which we can continue talking about this because this is not one of our topics, but it is, you know, some fun. So the Epstein files, so I don't understand where the idea came from that there is some sort of a client list, but maybe there is, maybe there isn't. I always kind of assumed there wasn't. I thought this guy seemed like he was just a sex trafficker for his own purposes, and he hung out with a few people.

1:52But it didn't seem like he was engaged in some sort of grand conspiracy. But somewhere along the line, it became a kind of right-wing talking point that there was some client list that was going to bring down the deep state. and that got hyped and hyped and hyped up to the point where our attorney general said that she had the list on her desk and now she says the list doesn't exist and people are mad well you know lying will do that but it's it's not really the lying that seems to even be the the thing that's sticking in craws but just this is what happens when you have a conspiracy theory that you you You can't hold on to it, right?

2:32The people who, if you're trying to use conspiracy theory to accumulate power, you don't always have control over what people who will believe a conspiracy theory believe. Yeah, you kind of painted yourself into a corner at a certain point. It's a boulder. It's going down a hill. You can't always rein that back in. The thing I don't get is even if there is no list, the government lies all the time. Just make one. Just make up a list. Yeah, no, it was just really ridiculous. Well, they also released the video of Epstein's last day to dispel rumors that he was murdered, and then they forgot that metadata exists.

3:09And it's obvious from the metadata that they accessed the file and cut parts out, which, I mean, just – again, probably – An Adobe Pro. Yeah. Shouts out to Johns Johnson. You're the government. Y 'all should have better editing software than something that civilians can access. it just yeah it's like also probably not probably not actually nefarious but if you're trying to get conspiracy theorists to leave you alone you don't put out doctored stuff you know what's crazy about this is and it's also from the uh the trump tweet uh or truth or whatever the hell we call those where he's talking about boys and gals he waxes philosophic for a bit about the jfk assassination that's a that's a good example here where there probably isn't anything but if you if you only release stuff that seems that seems yeah i feel like you're doing a lot of work here with these probabilities where are these where is that coming from fair enough there probably wasn't a list there probably wasn't anything that's fair i i mean i'm trying to be very lawyerly about it i should be more um more direct lee harvey oswald acted alone and we all kind of know that but uh to the extent there are conspiracy theorists out there if you only release stuff that seems shady people are just going to believe the conspiracy theory more uh which and in the jfk side the trump folks did release a bunch of jfk files as part of their attempt at transparency and they have been reviewed and the result is huh they kind of say what the official warren report said all along again i can go ahead and keep saying probably just to the extent that who knows like maybe other things but it certainly seems unlikely anyway yeah so this epstein thing is continuing to be a problem it is uh we had an issue where at least as of going into the weekend It sounded as though either the FBI's leadership or the attorney general would leave or be fired.

5:18It seems like that has died down. That said, if the first Trump administration is any indication, whenever he says he has the utmost confidence in somebody, it's usually the precursor to them being fired. So we don't know. So by the time this episode comes out, hey, maybe somebody's been fired. But yeah, it's been a week. All right. Is that good? We talked about that. It's not small, but okay. Very much was. So. Just a quick personal note. Comedy show, Josh Johnson. It's great. Oh, yeah. Support the arts. He's really good. Yeah. Yeah. So the first story we have this week is, yeah, something that we can really sink our teeth into.

6:05Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, there are going to be quite a few. Biting remarks. Biting. Okay, yeah. Okay. Yeah. If you haven't yet seen the story on Above the Law, we got some tips. A bunch of them from a few different sources started coming in about maybe a few days before we published the story. So it's a big law story. It's a big law story. And a big law story, obviously, sometimes, you know, big law has a lot of screamers. This is a story about somebody being chewed out, you said. Okay. Okay. Listen, you all didn't get a chance to write the story, so I'll let you have your fun with all the puns you can add.

6:42You already sunk your teeth into it. Yeah, right? So go for it. All right. Yeah. The Big Law Vampire has struck. This is a story about a summer associate that was actually fired from their job because they bit people. That's it. That's the story. That's really the entirety of the story. and it still is baffling. You said people. There it is. There it is. I was going to say it's not the entire story because you used a plural word. I sure did. I sure did. Yes. This person, the big law biter, apparently bit double digits number of people. About 15 is the number that we've heard, though cannot confirm with each of the individual victims.

7:29But I have seen a photograph of the mark that was left on one person after this Big Law Summer associate bit them. The Big Law Biter is what I'm calling them. So we can compare dental records, if anything. I mean, we probably could. It was definitely a mark. It was a bruise for sure. I do not think that the skin in that particular instance was broken, but you should not have physical marks post an interaction with a co-worker. Right. At work. Emotional only. Sure. Sure. Sure. There's a lot that is just sort of low-key baffling about this story versus why. How and why, really, I think of the repeated questions.

8:20And from what I've been able to gather from insiders at the firm, this person, it wasn't sort of a, I'm mad at you, now I'm going to bite you, or, you know, like rather than punch you, I'll bite you. It wasn't like that. Right, because that would be insane. Maybe less insane, to be fair. But sort of a pseudo cutesy, I'm just going to bite you for funsies. Kind of imagine like, you know, if somebody was like kind of punching you on the shoulder in a good natured joshing sort of way like that, but with teeth, which is wild. Although personally, I will say, I have heard of something similar. My sister had an experience when she was in college of a girl who would get drunk and playfully, quote unquote, bite people, friends.

9:08And it was wild and people made a big deal about it when they were in college as opposed to, you know, after college in a professional setting, which, you know, magnifies the what the hell is going on here of the entire situation. I think the other sort of what how is the number of victims? not so much listen if you have a proclivity to bite the fact that you would continue to bite probably checks out in its own way right but how did it happen for so long well that's what gets me too because i have some i have something to blame here that i feel like not enough people are talking about okay it's because we got rid of remote work if nobody was in the office if nobody was in that damn office this would have never happened what happened to covet consciousness people six feet again this was a summer associate right so those are the folks that are first of all most likely to want to be in the office because they want to kind of understand what the firm is like before they accept their full or their full-time offer so you know there's there's that's aside yeah but from from what i've heard from people at the firm is that this was an otherwise nice person no one sort of was a kind of a hesitance to raise the raise the issue uh to firm management for a while because they seemed otherwise fine and normal and okay you know so there was a lot of like i'm not going to be the snitch kind of vibe going around uh the sidley i don't know but biting people seems to be a big otherwise yeah like i know i'll get some skin in the game in this story um i also bit somebody uh i was in i was in high school i was sitting at a i was sitting at my desk and i felt like my english teacher was invading my personal space she had her hand on my shoulder i said if you do not remove your hand i will bite you so then she looked at me like i know the hell you won't so then i bit her and then she was like i mean that took her hand away i think that's fair game i think quite frankly it might be some self-defense You shouldn't teachers shouldn't be touching students.

11:19And if a student wants to establish some some, you know, some no no zone area where you're not touching, that's completely fine. So, like, as a person that's been done some biting, this is still a crazy story. And again, that going back to kind of the earlier, I think it's less crazy if if it's if it's, you know, this defensive move or if, you know, there somebody was in a fight. Yeah, but I think it does speak to why there wasn't earlier action taken. Because if you're just confused by what's happening, you might not take action. Did that really just happen? I mean, I know I have a mark on my body, but.

12:00Maybe they didn't mean to do it that hard. I can see how all of that sort of confusion happens. Like a nip versus a gnaw. Okay, so maybe y 'all are getting Casually bitten by coworkers More than I am I can't say that has ever happened to me Listen, once I see the canine Get a little too close to my flesh I'm pushing But you know I don't care how nice you are I think a lot of people have that reaction Chris, but let's not Put too fine a point on it Somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 people Let it go Yeah Yeah. Right? Or something slightly south of there. Unless she was Mr. Rogers reincarnated.

12:43I don't think you could be that nice. I just want that to be said and on the record. Yeah. And I think it's also fair that, you know, that was the amount of victims that happened before sort of management was called in. This person was eventually let go from the firm. But, you know, there are, I think, informal consequences that probably did happen. I think that the reason why we had so many tipsters on this particular story is because people were talking about it. Before they even let go, people were talking about it. I think internally at the firm, you know, some associates also have groups not just of the people they're working with, but, you know, from their schools, those kind of cohorts.

13:21So this was really getting around. Our first tip was actually from outside of the firm. Somebody being like, I just heard this happen, and then we were able to get people in on the ins. So here's the thing. I feel like if somebody's doing this sort of biting in a good-natured, what they believe is good-natured way, it seems to me as though the HR intervention is, we know you didn't mean to do all this sort of thing, but it is bad and inappropriate. You need to stop. And so the fact that they lost their position suggests that that question might have been asked, and the response was, I have to follow my heart and keep biting.

14:02Well, or I think it's entirely likely that there were other questionable moments of judgment, perhaps, that this person displayed and that also played a part in it as well, right? I imagine if somebody's going out and biting folks, they probably are making other sorts of poor judgment calls. I mean, perhaps. Comparative question. Which is worse? A nice, well-mannered coworker giving you a massage unprompted? like right back of the shoulders or a nice co-worker unprompted biting you i think biting is definitely worse definitely worse they're both bad yeah i think that is also true i think they are definitely both bad but you know you're less likely to have to use a band-aid after i'm thinking if there was if we got a tip of like a serial massager story in big law sure i think if if it was if it was above 10 we'd be like why didn't somebody you know say this earlier i'm i am wondering why it took up to 15 people because like i i agree i think biting is worse than massage yeah and i mean listen there are lots of you know bad underlying often misogynistic things that people are become indoctrinated to over time like you know there are plenty of bringing you back to your earlier example chris uh you know i'm sure plenty of People have had that experience in high school where a teacher was doing these things.

15:27And, you know, that kind of builds up the I guess it's not that bad, even though I think it is and whatever. But that probably would play into our hypothetical why someone might not be so quick to point out like that. Hey, HR, they gave me an unprompted back rub. Right. That might be why somebody might be more hesitant to bring that up. But biting is a lot less common and certainly seems a lot more aggressive as a default. Yeah. All right. Well, let's take a break and, you know, leave you to chew on that while we move on. Masticate on it maybe? Okay. That doesn't make sense. Like, masticate doesn't have an alternative meaning like chew on does.

16:09That's the whole point. Like, it's the play on the words of – I mean, like masticate. The reason why you use it in that phrase is the same thing. And masticate is actually a longer process, which is anyway, we'll be back after this break. Every legal professional wants to put their clients first, but billing, payments and case management get in the way. 8am is the professional business platform that helps law firms get paid faster, manage cases more easily and grow with confidence. trusted by over 260 ,000 legal professionals 8am integrated solutions like 8am law pay and 8am my case help simplify the business of running your firm so you can actually put your clients first first visit 8am.com legal talk to learn more

17:09That's my impression of the hold music your callers hear right before they hang up. Smith AI pairs AI with real live agents to answer calls, qualify leads, book consultations, and even send retainers 24-7. Better intake, fewer missed opportunities. No more hold music solos. Try it free at smith.ai. Mention Above the Law or use code NOHOLD at sign up to claim 20 % off your first two months of service. I am still dumbfounded by the fact that I had to have that conversation. All right. So the next thing that we had that was big this week was a, hey, cease and desist letters are always annoying. And they often there are not really repercussions for them.

17:55Right. It's like the no skin in the game version. Yeah. Like, I mean, it can be the prelude to action, but it can also be. But a lot of times it isn't. And it can also be the least you can do because rule 11 is not going to attach to your cease and desist letter. And for that reason, sometimes people make very dumb requests in cease and desist letters. And sometimes we just kind of let that go. And other people don't let that go. This is the latter story. So this begins with a date gone wrong situation. There was a date that got kind of cut off because of what goes on in the text exchange. The guy puts the text exchange on social media.

18:44Some people laugh about it. That's kind of the end of it, theoretically. However, the woman decided to escalate and got a lawyer involved, and here we are. So at this point, the lawyer writes the letter saying, you know, take these things down and we will explore legal options if we need to. As it turns out, the guy has hired Mark Randazza, who has actually been on this show years and years ago, an episode that I wasn't on and an episode. Well, I was on. I had to record a disclaimer at the beginning to apologize for everything that was about to be said in that conversation. So to give you a sense of where this is going.

19:28So but no, he is a First Amendment lawyer who is very, very fun and creative with the way in which he writes these things is not the way lawyers often write. And to that extent, he he well, let's let's just say he says in this letter, I sense by the tenor of your demand that you are not you don't entirely believe in it yourself. I suspect that your conversation with Julia went something like, Julia, there's not a thing you can do about this. Are you out of your fucking mind? Then something other than conviction and the ideas expressed convinced you to say, fine, I'll send this stupid demand. I'm sorry, bro.

20:07I get it. Sometimes you just get stuck in a situation is from the letter. So that's what we're talking about here, this kind of a letter. I'm going to take your threat. literally that if my client does not remove the content from his social media, you are going to consider further legal remedies. You will consider them, then realize that every one of them is fucking stupid. Then that will be the end of this. Or you could escalate this and we could make you look even dumber. Your move. So, okay. So this letter ticked off a kind of a social media divide. I saw a lot of people that I follow in the legal space talking about how bad this was that, you know this is you know bad decor you know sure it's it's it's a little raunchy it's a little disrespectful but i mean i think that and and probably why there's the another side to this and and what i think probably plenty of lawyers also realize too is having to defend against these these demands letters that are you know we said earlier there's no skin in the game there's You have somebody who has a demanding client who just wants it done.

21:14So you put out there, even though there's no legal actual recourse here, but they put out a bunch of threatening language. And if you can imagine that lawyers are annoyed by this process, they are not always sent and usually even sent to somebody's attorney, sent to that individual. Because you don't know, so they have an attorney. Because they don't necessarily even have a lawyer at this point in the case. And a lot of people just react to it because they are scared of, oh, there's a bunch of legalese in here. People react and it's sort of using the sort of inscrutability of the law and of the legal profession and what lawyers do in order to do something that is not backed by law.

21:53Yeah, I think that that was kind of my take on it, too. I think a lot of the lawyers who were offended by it are forgetting the plight of the client. Yeah, as a lawyer, you can all be nice and play good. But for the person who's getting a threatening letter, it's unfortunate because not only are you feeling threatened, but now you have to spend a bunch of money just to get a lawyer to explain to you that you aren't actually in any trouble. And that sucks. Lawyers are expensive. And that's a problem. And when cease and desist letters have no real downside attached to them, that means that it can happen.

22:33And people can kind of get almost like the word extorted is loaded and has real legal meaning. So we don't mean it in that context. But low-key extorted where you feel like, oh, I'm going to – bullied. Yeah, I'm going to take this down because of the – because I don't understand this threat. And that's bad. And so to that extent, there's nothing you can really do about it other than publicly shame lawyers for going along with it. And to that extent, I get it. I would not have written this letter. That said, I'm happy someone out there wrote a letter like this. So I imagine the woman's lawyer had to have mentioned to her.

23:14It was that case where there was a bunch of women that had a Facebook group and they would post information about men in the area. And I think that guy found out, hey, you're defaming me in this private Facebook group. Just tried to sue, went nowhere. Whatever that was happening in that group feels like it's similar to but more extreme than what the fact pattern this is based on. Like knowing that, why would he even take her on? Like, listen, this isn't going anywhere. The reason why I had to take that on as a client is that there's low downside, right? Like the fact that this letter has become viral and we're talking about it now is unusual.

23:50And the overwhelming majority of cases like this, you're going to take the client who wants you to send a demand letter. You may not ever say, like, I don't think this is worth taking to court, but I will send a demand letter. You charge them. You collect your fee for writing the letter, and that's it. That's why. And, you know. Close stakes. And if the person you send it to doesn't hire a lawyer themselves and is worried by it, you might get a result for the client. But there's no downside, only a possibility of some quick upside, and you can get paid. And frankly, even if they do hire a lawyer, that lawyer might say, you absolutely are right, and you don't have to do this.

24:27But also, if you take it down – Do you want to go to court? If you take it down, then we don't have to worry about it anymore. And sometimes that happens. How important is this to you? Yeah. Yeah, and there's low downside, and I think that what's interesting about this particular matter is that this is creating a downside for an attorney because there's kind of public shaming. Yeah, I think it's the only possible deterrent to a cease and desist letter. Obviously, the beginning of the ur text of this is the 1974 Cleveland Browns letter, which I don't know if everybody remembers that. But in 1974, a lawyer sent a demand to the Cleveland Browns about some sort of, I don't even remember what it was, ticket issue or something like that.

25:12And the response from the general counsel of the Cleveland Browns football organization was attached as a letter we received on November 19th. I feel that you should be aware that some asshole is signing your name to stupid letters. Very truly yours, Cleveland Browns. And so that is kind of the model for this. And people have been chasing that ever since. Obviously, you know, we've talked about Tom Goldstein, who is a founder of the SCOTUS blog, a Supreme Court litigator, you know, also a poker player, as it turns out. And so that's the why we've talked about him recently since there's a federal indictment about that.

25:47But he wrote one several years ago about in response to a season to a demand letter that that, you know, related to throwing a porn star off a roof. so that was that was an interesting one too but but again a cheeky response and with with the definite attempt to create public shaming because yeah that's the old about the only way you can you can do that yep quick aside is there a word for throwing someone off a roof i know to defenestrate is to throw them out the window yeah no uh there there isn't because i i remember writing that story and trying to find one uh because i had the same thought you did that It needs to be.

26:25It needs to be. Maybe we just don't put people from roofs. Now he's being naive. What if the roof is on fire? No. Yeah, no. We don't need no water. We don't need no water. Throw them off. All right. So the final story of the week is not properly a legal thing that happened. It's more insane things happening in people's minds. The Superman movie came out. It has pretty much had a big, I mean, like it's not earth shattering or anything, but I had a huge domestic box office opening. It's made back most of it. Would you describe it as super? I had no, no. It was a little under super. It was good. It was very good.

27:16It made back all this money. It's I mean, we're not talking Avengers kind of opening, but it's, you know, it's good. In the COVID world, those numbers are different now. Anyway, made a bunch of money. It's successful. And that has prompted a downright meltdown in some sections of the right-wing ecosphere. Fox News has run several stories on it. Their social media people are freaking out. And all of these folks' complaint is they're upset that the movie draws upon themes of like kind of an immigrant story. because, you know, Superman's an unaccompanied, undocumented, you know, migrant to this country and world.

27:59And so they are really pushing back. They don't want – they're mad that there's a movie that suggests that he's an immigrant, that immigrants can be good. And they're very upset about that. And a lot of it took legal form in that there were some people going on these things and trying to explain why the law wouldn't cover Superman. There's I'm here to say I've done the research and that is not true. There's not really any good argument for that. Yes, that is correct. And it's kind of wild that this is something that they're pouring any time and effort into because it seems like it's pretty obviously a story about an immigrant, right?

28:40Like this is not like a new spin on the Superman story. This is the same Superman story that we've been telling over and over and over again. I think the walkaway lesson here is that textualism and originalism go out the window when it doesn't conform to right-wing talking points. Yeah. We are like two weeks off of somebody saying that the X-Men is trying to force wokeness down our throats because Professor Xavier is in a wheelchair. i mean there's a lot of reasons why x-men is there's a lot of reasons x-men is for yes because the mutants are the mutants are black people that's more so than any other comic it's pretty the subtext is text uh but and another thing is i don't do do most do you think most people know that like subtext superman is jewish i mean that that's the writers are part of it i think i think there were two jewish uh yeah they may have been brothers but it was like a jewish allegory yeah Yeah, no, well, so they're both the children, their first generation, their parents were both, were all Jewish immigrants to the country.

29:45Well, one of them through Canada, and my point is immigrants from, Jewish immigrants from Europe. And a lot, and it's very not particularly subtle the way in which it's focusing on the conditions that were happening at the time in the 30s where, you know, there were a lot of Jewish people in Europe trying to leave. And the U.S. and several other countries had an uptick in xenophobic actions to prevent people from getting in, which kind of signed their death warrants in a lot of cases, which is a large part of why in the late 30s these guys felt like putting together a superhero comic like this.

30:25So it is – They can teach the younger generation what not to do. So it's pretty straightforward. But I mean, I saw one where they were like, well, he's not an immigrant because he's an orphan. I'm not even sure what that is supposed to mean. I think, as I said, I think it would be news to the three year olds who have to defend themselves in immigration court. And that is real. Our government believes three-year-olds are competent to defend themselves. So there you go. Yeah, so there's that. I saw Clay Travis tried to make the – or more accurately, Clay Travis, vis-a-vis his wife, was making the argument that Superman would qualify for the extraordinary EB-1A visa, which maybe he would qualify at this point.

31:12But he certainly didn't have those those skills as a baby, nor nor would he qualify as a journalist because I don't think he's, you know, I think Lois is one who gets Pulitzers. And that is how that that particular visa works. Like one of the conditions that the DHS looks for is do you have a Pulitzer or something like that or an Oscar or something like that? All things he would not have had as a baby. so like you can kind of reverse justify keeping him in but you can't really you know ex-ante or say that there was something which brings us to kind of the the overarching immigrant issue right which is every all of these people like to point to people and say oh well that's a good immigrant story but almost all of those stories are by taking somebody after they've been here and made good and then trying to use that when they would never have let them in in the first place because they don't see that sort of potential for good, which that's the problem.

32:16And it shows kind of how they're twisting themselves into knots trying to mess with this law, this body of law that they don't understand because they can't grapple with the way in which they don't get to have hindsight when they make those decisions. Yeah, and obviously this is supercharged, pun intended, because at the same time, right, all the birthright citizenship stuff is also happening. They're trying to – the right wing is also trying to simultaneously rewrite the Constitution and say that if you're born here but we don't like who your parents are, then you actually aren't a citizen. So speaking of that, good point.

32:53Speaking of rewriting things, I did not know this before I got into this story. There's apparently a retcon that was done at one point, and I think it's been retconned back since. But there's a retcon that happened in the superhero comics, Superman comics, that suggested he really wasn't put in a spaceship and sent to Earth. The spaceship itself was a birthing matrix, so he was actually born when he landed in Kansas, which now there, you know, he might theoretically have birthright citizenship. But for, as you point out, they have changed the birth – tried to change the birthright citizenship situation.