Above the Law

Space Force Has ‘Space Control Weapons’ On Orbit, Air Force Secretary Reveals

Troy Meink didn't elaborate on what ‘weapons’ the US deployed, but revealed new info on other space and unmanned Air Force programs.

Morning Docket: 09.15.26

* Supreme Court majority opts against playing Calvinball and decides that presidents can’t unilaterally throw out mail-in ballots they don’t like. Alito and Thomas dissent, naturally. [NPR]

* Election law expert Professor Rick Hasen spotlights the fact that while the Supreme Court has a center block primed to attack voting rights, but unwilling to accept vote rigging. For now. [Slate Jurisprudence]

* Following up on the Judge Roy Altman ethics complaint, Professor Steven Lubet argues that, regardless of the ultimate outcome, refusing to even assign the complaint for investigation lowers the bar for federal judges. [The Hill]

* Plastic surgeon allegedly killed lawyer over billing dispute. [ABA Journal]

* EPA will drop pollution limits on fossil fuel power plants. [Stateline]

* North Carolina DAs and state bar argue that the state must maintain its ban on paralegals giving legal advice. North Carolina has an abysmal access to justice record, but monopolists gonna monopolize. [Carolina Journal]

* Law firm finance company Scan Logic facing a lawsuit from co-founder alleging he was improperly forced out while recovering from leukaemia. [Legal IT Insider]

Weil Isn’t Even Pretending To Be Sad About Losing Its Most Powerful Partner — See Also

Weil Insiders To Mike Aiello: Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!

AI Is Now Making Up Witness Testimony: It’s not just fake cites anymore, but fake humans, too! Watch your filings, lest you face a benchslap like this lawyer.

A Federal Judge Just Hit Pause On Trump’s Federal Hiring Loyalty Question: Turns out you can’t make career applicants write an essay praising the president’s executive orders.

Trump’s DOJ Lawyers Try To Save His Personal Lawyers: One of these things is not like the other… sort of.

People I Never Care To Hear About Again

Enough already!

Legal Ethics Roundup: Welcome Back! Headlines, Ethics Reforms, Reading Recommendations, Trivia, Events, Jobs & More 

Your tour of all things related to lawyer and judicial ethics, with University of Houston law professor Renee Knake Jefferson.

The AI Workplace Gender Gap In The Legal Profession

Women’s reluctance to use AI may also impact career advancement.

AI For New Jersey Public Defenders: Solving The A2J Problem One Bite At A Time

The NJ Office of the Public Defender partnered with a think tank and a prestigious university to get the AI program it needed.

The Cravath Shade Wasn’t A One-Off: Weil Insiders Line Up To Say Good Riddance

Biglaw usually manages a gentler goodbye than this.

Legal AI Needs An Escalation Layer

The legal profession has spent considerable energy teaching AI to answer. The next phase requires teaching it when an answer is not enough.

Trump’s Civil Service Loyalty Test Just Hit A Constitutional Road Bump

Turns out you can't make career applicants write an essay praising the president's executive orders.

With Reconciliation Uncertain, Pentagon Eyeing Plan To Retool FY27 Priorities With Congress

In exclusive comments to Breaking Defense, the Pentagon's comptroller acknowledged that some efforts may need to be pushed from FY27 into FY28 with help from lawmakers.

Morning Docket: 09.14.26

* Looks imminent? Anyone want odds? [Law360]

* Deep dive into how the federalist society got us here. [The Atlantic]

* How Legora aims to take on legal industry giants. [Business Insider]

* ACC going after another in house counsel group accusing them of training on proprietary data. [ABA Journal]

* Hallucination from a judge. [Reuters Legal]

* The lawyer behind Young Thug’s YSL trial and his passion for criminal defense work. [Complex]

* Must be Yale fans. [Huffington Post]

Missouri Keeps Beating Dead Horse Of A Map — See Generally

If At First The Supreme Court Tells You To Stop: Missouri Republicans keep unsuccessfully sending its gerrymander to the Supreme Court.

Try, Try Again: And the Supreme Court keeps telling them to pound sand.

Fifty-One Shades Of ‘Rigged’: DOJ and Education Department say Berkeley Law illegally favors Black students… where 51 of 1,128 students are Black.

Scale Model: Weil announced the loss of its corporate chair and a half-dozen M&A partners to Cravath by explaining that they had left for “a smaller platform.”

Deep In The Heart Of Private Equity: Kirkland & Ellis passed Jackson Walker to become the largest firm in Texas at 549 lawyers, twelve years after it first opened an office there.

Baby Steps To $455K: Liu Shur Kravis, a D.C. litigation boutique founded in April by three former federal prosecutors, matched the Milbank scale five months into its existence.

1 & Done & Done: Elon Law Dean Zak Kramer promised his students a tattoo if the class hit an 85% first-time bar passage rate, and got “1 & Done” inked on his forearm after they posted 91.96%.

Detector Gadget: Law professors have Pangram mania as they clutch their pearls over the possibility that fellow scholars might use AI to draft law review articles. Here’s a novel proposal: just read the submissions and see if they’re any good.

Life, Uh, Finds A Way To Sue: Minor Character Theater’s long-suffering Wonka general counsel is back, and he’s handling compliance for John Hammond.

That’s Some Epic Biglaw Shade — See Also

The One Thing Nobody Has Ever Called Cravath… ‘A Smaller Platform’: Until Weil, which just lost its corporate chair to the firm, gave it a shot.

Hear Me Out: Should we really care that a federal court opinion reads like Gen Z slang?

We Sure Could Use More Human Rights Lawyers These Days: So now is a great time to discuss the top schools for human rights law.

Say Bye-Bye To Another Trump Ally: Joe diGenova just resigned and stomped off in a huff.

She Earned The First Law Degree Ever Given To An American Woman And She Wasn’t Allowed To Use It

Barred from practicing law because she was a woman.