Jane M. Spinak did not set out to write a book arguing for the abolition of family court. She thought that she would be making the case for a set of sensible reforms. But the more she dug into the history of the family court system, the previous attempts at reform, and the examples of real world harms that the system had caused, the more she began to believe there was no saving it.
Large language models such as ChatGPT are all the rage these days. A lot of commentators, legal professionals, lawyers and media outlets, including this podcast, have spent a lot of time examining this game-changing technology.
Because Paul M. Smith was the editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal, clerked for then-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. and handled various Supreme Court cases—including for paying clients—many thought that it made sense for the Washington, D.C., lawyer to argue Lawrence v. Texas, which led to a 2003 landmark opinion that struck down state laws criminalizing sexual conduct between consenting adults of the same gender.
As Michelle Browning Coughlin, of counsel at ND Galli Law in Louisville, Kentucky, was raising her two daughters, she wanted her kids to understand what lawyers do. She worried that children only knew the type of lawyers who commonly appeared in courtrooms on television shows.
“The regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) in the United States has been a topic of growing concern and discussion in recent years. As AI technology continues to advance and become more integrated into various aspects of society, policymakers and lawmakers have recognized the need for a regulatory framework to address its potential risks and ensure responsible development and deployment.
In his new book, The Supermajority: How the Supreme Court Divided America, Michael Waldman identifies three times that the U.S. Supreme Court caused a public backlash against itself—and warns that the court may be well along the path to a fourth massive public backlash.
When the National Conference of Bar Examiners launches a revamped version of the bar exam in 2026, called the NextGen bar exam, it is expected that there will be new assessments on skills including legal research, investigation and client counseling. And that could mean less focus on memorization for candidates. Or not, says Mike Sims, president of the test prep group BARBRI.
In The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic, University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck argues that the U.S. Supreme Court is expanding its powers at the expense of the rule of law and public transparency.
There are plenty of judicial analytics and litigation prediction tools on the market. They may have differences in execution and focus, but the general rule of thumb is that they look at a judge’s past rulings and opinions to predict how that judge might rule on a similar motion or case in the future.
As chunks of the Berlin Wall were being torn down by jubilant crowds Nov. 9, 1989, James Silkenat was serving his term as chair of the ABA International Law Section. But he is the first to admit that he did not immediately anticipate what that event would mean for the Cold War, or that monumental changes would soon be taking place across Europe and Central Asia.
In the criminal justice world, pig butchering refers to bacon—but not literally. Instead, it’s a term used to describe scamming someone online out of all their money through promises of romance and cryptocurrency windfalls, says Erin West, a prosecutor in the Santa Clara County, California, district attorney’s office.
When it comes to taking on stories about larger-than-life women, lawyer and author Heather Terrell, who writes under the pen name Marie Benedict, has a long track record.
Many of us still get a chill running down our spines when we hear about bank failures and bailouts. After all, it was less than 15 years ago when we went through one of the worst economic disasters in history, and institutions such as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers Inc., American International Group Inc. and others became famous for the wrong reasons. The Great Recession took years to recover from, and some of its effects can still be felt to this day.
Bruce Jackson grew up shuttling between Brooklyn and Manhattan public housing projects in New York City. His journey led him to Hofstra University and then the Georgetown University Law Center. He ditched a white-shoe firm job to launch a career in entertainment law and represented some of the hottest hip-hop and rap artists in the 1990s.
The 1964 decision in New York Times v. Sullivan protected the civil rights movement, established the "actual malice" standard, and is the basis for modern American libel law. But in recent years, criticism of the case has grown among conservatives—with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas calling it "policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law" and suggesting that the decision should be reconsidered.
As rises in Chicago carjackings continue to increase fear among many residents, Cliff Nellis, an attorney and pastor who founded the Lawndale Christian Legal Center, says his nonprofit group represents a fair amount of young people charged with the crime.
In November, when OpenAI unleashed the newest, most advanced version of its chatbot, ChatGPT, it immediately captured the imagination. As we’ve covered on this podcast, ChatGPT represents a major leap forward for generative artificial intelligence in that it can converse with and respond to users in a natural, almost humanlike way. So far, it’s been a hit.
When Lauren Stiller Rikleen was approached in 2020 by the ABA Judicial Division to help compile autobiographical stories from women judges in America, a powerful motivating factor for her was to capture stories of the barriers that the judges overcame in their words.
Jessica Bednarz has spent much of her career representing people, researching access-to-justice issues and using that knowledge to try to find better ways to deliver legal services. That includes using what’s known as “design thinking” for developing client service programs.
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