No generative AI required! ----- With AI hallucinations dominating the legal ethics headlines for years now, it's nice to see lawyers landing in hot water without having to rely on technology. For example, Holland & Knight got itself removed from a case in Rhode Island after accidentally putting opposing counsel on their internal emails about "dumb" Rhode Island judges. Meanwhile, Skadden and Kirkland caught a $2 million sanction after repeatedly withholding evidence and the Lewis Rice bankruptcy lead is out following allegations of serving the wrong client. All that and somehow the Golden Girls manage to work their way into the conversation.

This episode is sponsored by Smith.ai. ----- Discussing what we learned about legal technology in Nashville. ----- The International Legal Technology Association conference broke its own attendance records as the legal world flocked to Nashville to figure out what's going on with the technology that promises to revolutionize the practice of law... and can't quite stop producing fake cases. Maddy Martin, Senior VP of Growth at Smith.ai -- the sponsor of this episode of Thinking Like A Lawyer -- stops by to recreate the sort of exhibit hall floor conversation she and Joe have had at these conferences for the last several years. Catching up on the state of the industry, what it means for both Biglaw and the small and solo market, and trying to figure out what happens next.

The murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother accused of strangling her three young children, has spawned a courtroom subplot with real legal stakes: prosecutor Shanan Buckingham has spent weeks in Plymouth Superior Court in a rotating collection of hair bows, widely read as a tribute to five-year-old Cora, who loved them. But even a well-meant gesture is a gamble, handing the defense a ready-made argument that the state is leaning on sympathy over substance and potentially seeding an appeal. Over in the business of law, private equity finally got the yes it's been chasing: Wood Smith Henning & Berman, a 500-plus-lawyer insurance-defense shop, reportedly signed a letter of intent to sell a stake to Charlesbank Capital Partners at a roughly $700 million valuation. Structured through a management services organization to sidestep Rule 5.4's ban on non-lawyer ownership, it would be the largest PE investment in an American law firm to date -- a toehold, not yet a takeover. And in the category of career moves we can't recommend, a prominent Pittsburgh attorney landed himself in a fraternity drug scandal. Paul Robinson, a practice-group chair at Meyer, Darragh, Buckler, Bebenek & Eck, was charged with tampering and hindering apprehension for allegedly making evidence disappear from a multistate cocaine ring that prosecutors say his son helped run out of Penn State's Delta Upsilon and Sigma Chi houses -- where, per the AG, packaging kilos doubled as a pledge task.  

Also, Yale Law School grads have a side chat to discuss their infamous classmates. ----- Luigi Mangione's lawyers say their client can't be tried for murder now that he's pleaded guilty to federal stalking charges. At issue is a voluntary admission that his stalking led to the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, which is not an element of stalking but can be a sentencing enhancement. And his team hope this is enough to trigger New York's broad double jeopardy restrictions. Why is the Department of Justice going along with this? Meanwhile, Biglaw giants are taking meetings about taking private equity money, opening the door to investors buying stakes in law firms. The proposal revolves around the "management services organization," the same structure that put private equity in charge of your dentist. And J.D. and Usha Vance's Yale Law classmates maintain a private Signal group to compare notes on a couple they sat next to in Contracts.

Remember when Trump lost the birthright citizenship case? Because he doesn't. ----- Despite protestations that its deal with the Trump administration didn't forfeit the firm's independence, Paul Weiss reportedly seriously debated letting Stephen Miller review the firm's webpage edits according to the New York Times. The same reporting turned up the $3.5 million the firm spent to make its first openly transgender partner leave quietly. Elsewhere, Biglaw is now the largest employer of new law grads, even though it's a bigger slice of a smaller pie, with first-year hiring down for the first time since 2014. And having lost the birthright citizenship case, Donald Trump signed new executive orders explaining that he won it, moving one antecedent about six words to the left and calling it a holding. It's kicking off a string of proclamations from the White House that it's the real winner of cases it decidedly lost.

And summer bonuses have arrived. ----- The profession yet again forced law school graduates to take a closed-book doctrinal memory test to earn the right to perform a job where answering questions from memory constitutes malpractice. And, yet again, the ritual came with a series of catastrophes and a fully canceled test. In Maryland, the test faced delays. Missouri's delays were even worse, reminding us that the NCBE doesn't guarantee a better exam than the much-maligned California experiment. And in Washington, they had to cancel the whole test. In happier news, summer bonuses came to Biglaw -- or at least some of Biglaw -- with Milbank announcing a special treat. Finally, Wachtell's kissgate scandal spilled over into Gibson Dunn's lateral hiring coup, and we're reminded that work-life balance is important.

And Todd Blanche keeps trying to get over the Judiciary speedbump. ----- The biggest story in legal last week was an unfortunate guerrilla antagonizing of a couple making out on a park bench... who just happened to be a Wachtell partner and associate. And now an internal HR problem is suddenly national news. Say what you will about the person who filmed it, but "get a room" was good advice. Meanwhile, Todd Blanche's confirmation hearings continued to drag on, with former supporters abandoning him and even some Republicans wondering why he can't commit to ruling out a January 6 slush fund. A new book says Blanche once feared bringing frivolous cases. He seems to have gotten over that. And Elena Kagan publicly claims her colleagues get a "bad rap" for supporting Trump. She's wrong and making these statements unfairly maligns her liberal colleagues facing personal attacks for their work. Oh, and John Yoo is back in the news.

Maybe in several years, we can get it back. ----- A Vault 50 law firm announced deep staff layoffs -- upward of 10 percent -- last week. Is this a sign of things to come -- a byproduct of AI pressure and a precarious economy -- or a unique problem for that firm? Controversy erupted after the Trump administration swiftly fired a legally appointed U.S. Attorney to replace him with an illegally named imposter. The statute authorizes the dismissal, but the replacement undermines law and order, rendering the district functionally incapable of prosecuting anyone legally. And the law firms that settled with the Trump administration to avoid getting dragged into court have... been dragged into court. If only there had been a podcast warning those firms that this was the natural and logical consequence of those deals. Also, spoiler alert for this episode if you aren't familiar with Homer's 3000-year-old poem.

From firms to law schools, innocent bystanders take heat. ----- Everyone talks about conflicts and redundancies, but the saddest merger collateral damage is forcing legacy lawyers to go back through the last six months of their time. That's what's happening to the Cadwalader associates as their timekeeping system merges with Hogan Lovells. On the law school side, the University of Chicago unveiled its new AI policy to keep students genuinely learning while still tackling the reality of a future AI-enhanced workflow. But laptops became the collateral damage there, as the new policy bans students from bringing their computers to class at all. And we have a deep dive into Moana. 

But Sam Alito still has a job. ----- The Fourteenth Amendment lays out birthright citizenship in clear terms. Every subsequent legal challenge and all the scholarly work on the subject -- until about a year ago -- agreed on how to read it. Yet, the Supreme Court still managed to split on the question, with a 6-3 decision knocking down Donald Trump's executive order purporting to overturn the key constitutional provision -- that was more accurately 5-4, with Kavanaugh agreeing with the result on other grounds, but joining the dissent in erasing the Fourteenth Amendment. Or maybe it was 6-3 with an asterisk, because Neil Gorsuch went rogue, mostly agreeing with birthright citizenship in the only scenario the Trump administration really wanted to snuff out. Chief Justice Roberts also took his burning desire to be seen as the middle of the Court comically too far, authoring contradictory opinions back-to-back. And Sam Alito did not retire, despite reports. And in Biglaw, we continue to wonder where all the raises are.