Naomi Osaka (by si.robi via Wikimedia)
* “How Tough-on-Crime Prosecutors Contribute to Mass Incarceration.” My review of Emily Bazelon’s new book, Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration (affiliate link). [New York Times Book Review]
* When it comes to prosecutors, as former prosecutor Joel Cohen explains, it’s all about discretion. [New York Law Journal]
What Biglaw Can Learn From Personal Injury Firms
How a former insurance agent built a Houston injury practice around systems, empathy, and disciplined advocacy.
* Judge Nancy Gertner (Ret.) defends Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins’s exercise of her prosecutorial discretion — and argues that Thomas Turco’s criticisms of Rollins are unfair. [Boston Globe]
* Another ex-prosecutor, Quinn Emanuel partner Alex Spiro, is representing tennis star Naomi Osaka in the “repugnant” lawsuit filed against her by her former coach. [Tennis365]
* Former federal prosecutors, many of them now partners at Biglaw firms, represent more than half of the defense lawyers in Operation Varsity Blues, aka the college admissions scandal. [Big Law Business]
AI Is Reshaping Legal Practice—But Tools Aren’t The Real Differentiator.
Explore the mindset, cultural shifts, and training strategies that define the AI‑savvy lawyer, revealing why human judgment, standardized competence, and integrated learning—not technology alone—will shape the future of the profession.
* High-stakes litigation is just one of many factors contributing to Biglaw’s robust profit margin these days — hovering around 40 percent, its highest value in almost 30 years, according to Madhav Srinivasan of Hunton Andrews Kurth. [Law.com]
* Ronald Collins interviews Joan Biskupic about her latest judicial biography, The Chief: The Life and Turbulent Times of Chief Justice John Roberts (affiliate link). [SCOTUSblog]
* And speaking of SCOTUS, Will Baude believes that the death penalty “is justifiable and constitutional” — but argues that the Court has not acquitted itself well in its recent handling of capital cases. [Volokh Conspiracy / Reason]
David Lat, the founding editor of Above the Law, is a journalist, speaker, and novelist. His first book, Supreme Ambitions: A Novel (2014), was described by the New York Times as “the most buzzed-about novel of the year” among legal elites. David previously worked as a federal prosecutor, a litigation associate at Wachtell Lipton, and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at [email protected].