Above the Law

Morning Docket: 12.30.25

* Another former partner sues Kasowitz alleging unpaid compensation. [NY Law Journal]

* The Post Office will no longer postmark mail on the day it’s sent. The goal is to prevent mail-in voting, but… so long mailbox rule![Brookings]

* Alex Spiro writes California governor warning him that his clients will leave California if the state attempts to make them actually pay taxes. [Yahoo]

* Jeffrey Toobin profiles Tom Goldstein’s predicament. Key takeaway… it seems as though he might not have been quite as good at poker as he thought. [New York Times Magazine]

* Professor redesigns contracts course to recognize the role AI plays in modern practice. [Law.com]

* Legal Cheek’s most read stories of the year. [Legal Cheek]

Best Of ’25 — See Also

Chief Justice Roberts Get Outed By A Handshake: Hard to play impartial after the buddy buddy display.

Bye Bye, OCI: Latham dropped out of the time-tested recruitment method.

You’re Arresting Me For What?: Former cop arrested over a Facebook meme.

Words Have Consequences: Biglaw recruiter fired after racist rant.

From Risk Aversion To Risk Calibration: What Senne Mennes Taught Me About Building Legal Systems That Learn

Slow and steady is the death of innovation.

The Deepfake Courtroom Problem: A Colorado Blue Ribbon Study Sheds Some Light And Offers A Start To Solutions

Deepfakes and evidence created or enhanced by AI are going to become increasingly prevalent. How can we successfully confront the problem?

Another National Security Concern!

It's almost like the administration is ginning up national security concerns that don't really exist.

Morning Docket: 12.29.25

* The Supreme Court told the Trump administration it couldn’t deploy national guard troops to police cities. [One First]

* But this probably won’t amount to more than a speed bump for the administration. [The Bulwark]

* Meanwhile, Kavanaugh used this opinion as an opportunity to convince people to stop calling his racial profiling standard a racial profiling standard. [Raw Story]

* Epstein files reveal Trump’s first administration DOJ put reporter under surveillance for investigating Epstein’s crimes. [Daily Beast]

* Diddy seeks resentencing. [National Law Journal]

* Under a standard obligation not to make extrajudicial remarks about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the government… immediately makes extrajudicial remarks about Kilmar Abrego Garcia. [Mother Jones]

* Are young lawyers lateraling too much? Probably not. [New York Law Journal]

What Is HHS Proposing In Its New Rule?

HHS proposed changes that would roll back many Biden-era policies, eliminate most health tech certification criteria, and scrap planned transparency requirements for healthcare AI tools.

Distressed Businesses Should Still Pay Their Lawyers

The amount of money a business may owe in legal fees is small in comparison to the pain that could be caused by going without counsel altogether.

ATL Top Outside Counsel Quiz

We share a few clues from our in-house counsel survey and you try to name that firm.

Lawyers Try To Bench Aileen Cannon From Case, Arguing She’s Been In Trump’s Corner One Too Many Times

Attorneys think Cannon’s pattern of deference to Trump has destroyed any appearance of neutrality.

How Appealing Weekly Roundup

The week in appellate news.

Take The Law Department Compensation Survey!

Help us track compensation for in-house counsel and legal ops professionals.

Top 3 Firm Spreads Holiday Cheer By Stuffing Associate Stockings With Big Bonuses

This top firm is offering bonuses on top of bonuses on top of bonuses.

Google Built Its Empire Scraping The Web. Now It’s Suing To Stop Others From Scraping Google.

From the the-open-web-is-closing dept...