Above the Law

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So Many Ways For Law Students To Make Bad Decisions — See Generally

Ranking For The Sake Of Ranking: The Princeton Review found a plethora of ways to rank law schools other than the straightforward ones.

King & Spalding Upping The Pressure: To get associates back in the office.

Do AI Bots Dream Of Electric Benchslaps?: Butler Snow lawyers earn one of the harshest AI-related sanctions yet.

Librarians To The Rescue: Law librarians talk shop about being on the frontline against disinformation and figuring out how to deal with AI.

That Trump Pro Bono Will Have To Wait: A&O Shearman delays some start dates.

Habba Dabba Do: Alina Habba shouldn’t be the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, but she’s not letting “statutes” stop her.

Take A Hike!: Is one Biglaw bonding option.

We Just Can’t Quit You: The tale of the Biglaw Biter has legs — or should I say teeth.

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A&O Shearman’s Incoming Associate Class Gets Ready For Epic Bar Trip — See Also

Waiting Is The Hardest Part: A&O Shearman incoming associates won’t start job until January 2026.

I’m Not Even Sure What Law School Quality Of Life Even Means: But some schools seem to ace it.

Like A Bad Penny, Alina Habba Keeps On Turning Up: Screw the rule of law and judicial independence!

The Biggest In Biglaw: NYC edition.

The Librarians Know What’s Up: Dispatch from the American Association of Law Libraries annual meeting.

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Supreme Court To Lower Courts: Ignore Actual Binding Precedent, Follow Our Unexplained Shadow Docket Vibes Instead

The Supreme Court’s shadow docket has become a lawless mess. The justices are issuing extremely consequential rulings with either no explanation at all, or with barely a paragraph of reasoning. No full briefing. No oral arguments. Just vibes-based constitutional law that lower courts are somehow supposed to follow. Now the Court has made this chaos worse […]

Morning Docket

Morning Docket: 07.25.25

* Trump withdraws Habba’s nomination so he can avoid statute the prevents nominee from serving as Acting U.S. Attorney… even though the statute actually says she’s blocked from holding the job if her name was ever submitted for nomination. But surely the devoted textualists on the Supreme Court will hold fast to the law! [NY Times]

* The Supreme Court is totally going to overturn NYT v. Sullivan by throwing Candace Owens under the bus, aren’t they? [CNN]

* A response to the Barnett-Wurman effort to rewrite birthright citizenship. The title references the “Dunning School” which is not about the Dunning-Kruger effect even though that’s a better description of the scholarship being critiqued. [Cornell Law Review]

* The pigs finally caught Chuck E. Cheese. [People]

* You may be able to indict a ham sandwich, but LA grand juries will not indict ICE protestors. [TPM]

* January 6 prosecutors sue Pam Bondi over retaliatory dismissals. [NBC News]

* The firms fighting back against Trump are likely using their profits to fund the battle. [American Lawyer]

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It Was The Left Of Times, It Was The Right Of Times — See Also

Wonder Which Law Schools Have The Strongest Political Skew?: Make your guesses then read this list!

$200M Is A Little Too Late: Trump’s legal “wins” are getting overshadowed by huge media losses.

Can’t Make This Up: Federal judge claws back opinion after discovering mistakes and misquotes. Looks like AI!

Former Biglaw Partner Disbarred Over Illegal Sexting: The former Bryan Cave partner was caught attempting to sext a minor.

Some Unexpected Success Indicators: Read up on these “FRETZINISMS” and thank us later.

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