Courts

$3,000-An-Hour Lawyer Skirts The ‘You Can’t Be Your Own Client’s Witness’ Rule

You can do whatever you want when you're Alex Spiro.

By Chris Williams on December 02, 2025 6:34 pm
Alex Spiro (Photo by Marlena Sloss/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Funny thing about being a lawyer and testifying on your client’s behalf — the zealous advocacy baked into your job makes people a little suspicious of whatever you say on the witness stand. Despite that, we may see Alex Spiro stepping up as Elon Musk’s witness against the accusations that Musk manipulated Twitter’s stock prices before he was forced to buy the company. Reuters has coverage:

Elon Musk has persuaded a judge that his longtime lawyer Alex Spiro can represent him in a shareholder lawsuit over the billionaire’s 2022 Twitter acquisition even though he may be a trial witness in the case.

San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in a ruling on Monday rejected the plaintiffs’ objections…Musk’s lawyers called the effort to disqualify Spiro a “Hail Mary” before a January 2026 trial, saying the investors waited too long to object to Spiro’s role.

Can Elon have a normal trial for once? If it isn’t him making it okay for his lawyers to testify on his behalf, he’s got a judge with sizeable investments in Tesla or is trying to turn Texas into the new Delaware if it means he gets better legal outcomes. The quirk in norms will probably a wash at the end of the day — chances are the guy getting paid $3,000 an hour will find a way to get whatever narrative he needs to on the witness stand without setting foot on it, but it goes to show the wackiness that can arise when plaintiffs don’t object to lawyer-witnesses early on.

Musk Wins Fight To Keep Lawyer Alex Spiro In Twitter Trial [Reuters]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s .  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who is learning to swim, is interested in critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.