Above the Law

Posts by Above the Law

Morning Docket

Morning Docket: 06.25.25

* DOJ files suit in the District of Maryland against every judge in the District of Maryland. CHECKMATE! [Bloomberg Law News]

* Court agrees that using copyrighted material to train AI is fair use. [Washington Post]

* Judiciary tells Congress that PACER poses a cyber risk. Maybe if they'd modernized it with all those fees they collected instead of redesigning their offices, hm? [Law360]

* Lawyers copied brief from another law firm, including all the arguments that already lost. [ABA Journal]

* Law firms struggling to keep pace with the Trump administration's changing list of banned words. [American Lawyer]

* Emil Bove's judicial nomination will provide opportunity to ask about DOJ management, including report that Bove encouraged open defiance of court orders. See, a savvy administration might have not nominated him to avoid this...[Reuters]

* Stephen Miller may have a financial stake in the company he's having ICE use to deport people. [Rolling Stone]

See Also

What’s The Bonus For A Third-Year Biglaw Assassin? — See Also

Biglaw Partner Thought He Was Running The Continental From John Wick: In fairness, Biglaw would be a lot more interesting if they replaced all the associates with "assassins."

Don't Play Lawyerball With The Referee: Supreme Court majority tried to give "deporting people to war zones" the Drive-Thru treatment, but Justice Sotomayor turned the tables.

Certainly No One Cares About Mindlessly Pursuing Status In *Checks Notes* D.C.: The top law firms in Washington ranked!

Emhoff Class Is In Session: Maybe the Willkie lawyer is looking for an employer that isn't planning to sell itself off to Trump.

Ma'am This Is An Arby's (If The Arby's Was A Contract Claim): Penn Law’s Amy Wax brought her First Amendment argument to a contract dispute and it went about as you'd expect.

How To Get Clients Beating A Path To Your Door: Turns out, making clients feel at ease has to begin before they're even on board.

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Morning Docket

Morning Docket: 06.24.25

* Supreme Court greenlights deportations to third countries without an opportunity to argue that maybe it violates their rights to drop them into a warzone. [AP]

* Here's a rundown of that case if you're interested in all the nuances. [Lawfare]

* Profile of Mexico's most powerful indigenous lawyer, new Chief Justice Hugo Aguilar Ortiz. [NY Times]

* Simpson Thacher hyping its tech deals... basically anything to make you forget that they're deputized to the Trump administration. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Ninth Circuit strikes down California law limiting people to one gun purchase per month. "[W]e doubt anyone would think government could limit citizens’ free speech right to one protest a month..." which is true and probably why the First Amendment doesn't have the word "regulated" right there in its text. [ABA Journal]

* Media Matters files suit after FTC jumped in to harass the organization to help out Elon. [Reuters]

* Doug Emhoff joining USC Law as a visiting professor. [Law.com]

* Florida Republican nearly died because of abortion law she supports... but she blames the Democrats so it's all OK.[Yahoo]

Morning Docket

Morning Docket: 06.23.25

* Kilmar Abrego Garcia released pending trial. [Axios]

* In addition to massively expanding the deficit, Congress is also planning student loan caps that will crowd out law school access for many. [Reuters]

* White nationalist receives law school prize from Trump judge over paper arguing that constitutional protections should only apply to white people. [NY Times]

* UK judge warns that citing AI-hallucinated cases could carry maximum sentence of life in prison. [AP]

* Lateral market for energy lawyers heating up. Get it, because energy is... whatever. [Bloomberg Law News]

* AI could drive the next big class action. Honestly, AI could BE the next big class action. [Law.com]

* On the other hand, this civil rights lawyer secured a big victory with the help of AI. [Business Insider]

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Morning Docket

Morning Docket: 06.20.25

* It's that time of year to start wildly speculating about Supreme Court retirements. [ABA Journal]

* A new decision strikes down medical privacy rules to give prosecutors more access to scour private abortion records. It will shock you not at all that this comes from Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk sitting by himself in Amarillo. Weird... the GOP was up in arms about district courts issuing nationwide rulings a few weeks ago. [The Hill]

* It's telling that Cuomo's history on judicial nominees barely even registers on the list of reasons not to vote for him. [New York Law Journal]

* Administration plans to tie infrastructure funds to willingness to consign local law enforcement to immigration work. [Reuters]

* "Texas Judge Brings Outsider View to Bankruptcy Romance Scandal" is objectively a bizarre string of words that we have to string together these days. [Bloomberg Law News]

* State AGs warn about the dangers of a federal ban on state AI regulations. [Law360]

* The Skrmetti opinion is destined for infamy, if the country survives long enough. [The Nation]