* If you have an older iPhone, you may be entitled to $25, since Apple is accused of intentionally slowing down the performance of outdated phones without notifying customers. Just don’t spend your $25 all in one place… [NBC News]
* Counsel for Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell are asking for a gag order over attorneys involved with her criminal case. [Seattle Times]
* Several Fox News hosts are accused of sexual misconduct in a new lawsuit. [Vulture]
* Authorities are investigating whether the anti-feminist lawyer accused of killing the son of federal judge Esther Salas was also involved in the killing of a mens’ rights lawyer in California earlier this month. [AP]
* Burger King has successfully moved to dismiss a lawsuit claiming that the fast food chain deceived customers into thinking it used different cooking surfaces for its vegan offerings. If they claimed the food was kosher, there might have been a different result… [Reuters]
Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.
According to data collected by Law.com, which Biglaw firm tops their Pro Bono Scorecard which ranks Am Law 200 firms based on their pro bono work performed by U.S.-based lawyers?
Hint: At this firm, the average number of pro bono hours per lawyer in 2019 was 175.4.
We Bar Examiners would like to remind you lazy students, who did not have to walk uphill, in the snow (both ways), that you are perhaps The Worst Generation Ever. Instead of studying for the bar with razor-like focus, you perpetually worry about whether you are going to die of COVID-19. How does that help your client? You aren’t going to die of COVID-19! You’re going to be worked to death, if you’re lucky! Look at us! Do we look happy? No. And that’s why we are here to make you miserable. We had to go through the same thing. And so can you!
In any event, having fully considered in the course of five minutes whether there should be a live Bar Exam (of course there should be, you lazy nitwits!), we have turned our attention to cheating. Please pay close attention to the rules for the bar exam, as things have changed depending on your jurisdiction.
Online Bar Exam Takers
A proctor will move in with you three weeks before the exam. This is to assure the proctor has sufficient time to search your domicile for places you might stash answers as you take the test. Please clean your laundry before the proctor arrives. The point of the proctor is not to go through your dirty laundry. THAT is the point of the character and fitness portion of the program!
Please download our bar exam software (SpySoft) three weeks before the bar exam. Remember that your camera must be on at all times, and we will have access to your financial data and everything on your computer. Please refrain from picking your nose for three weeks, as that disgusts us.
Please take your laptop into the bathroom with you so we know you won’t cheat and have stuff written on the toilet paper in there. Oh, don’t whine. You know perfectly well some of you have already done this during Zoom classes.
If your internet crashes, we will assume you are cheating and flunk you.
If you do not have internet you should have thought about that before complaining about COVID-19 now, shouldn’t you?
In Person/”Live” Bar Exam Takers
After much argument from LadyLawyerDiaries, we have agreed to let you use your own tampons and pads. That isn’t true for some bars, but this bar is kind and compassionate. Instead, we will stand watch over you as you change your tampon to assure there are no answers written. To avoid being considered sexist, we will inspect “johnsons,” too. Men, we know some of you might have to write smaller than others, so your proctors will bring magnifying glasses.
We’ve decided to combine proctoring of the bar exam with character and fitness. Thus, our proctors will be collecting urine samples during the bar exam. Please avoid poppy seed dressings and bagels for three weeks before the exam. If you are bladder shy, our proctors are authorized to sing “Soft Kitty, Warm Kitty.”
This is probably a bad time to mention rectal exams. But(t), we are very concerned about your cheating. Much more so than we are about COVID-19. So, your proctor will become your proctologist. You may protest, saying we never had to undergo such invasive searches. We counter that we could NOT possibly cheat like that because THAT is where we keep our heads.
Some of you have made the poor choice to be new mothers around the time of the bar exam. Babies are such a gift. But not for us! This is NOT a choice we as predominantly septuagenarian males would have made. You made a bad (nonmale) choice. But now you want accommodations. Thus, we have a couch in the testing lobby to assure that you can either breast feed or pump as you deem necessary. Your baby/breast pump will be inspected to assure that no answers are written on anything. Blue light will be used on your breast to assure the answers aren’t written in invisible ink as your baby latched on because of whatever magical fairy lipstick you put on your baby prior to nursing.
If you speak to ANYONE during any restroom break, our proctors are authorized (and you agree with the 20 waivers we made you sign) to kick you in your nether regions. That will be your first warning. Second warning is expulsion from the exam and a second kick. Don’t even think about saying “Excuse me” or “Hello” or “Gesundheit.”
Okay, that should be it for the changes in the ground rules to the exam. It is important that you understand that you are about to become part of a profession. Once you are in the profession, we’ll expect you to conduct yourself appropriately, without much oversight. Unless you steal client funds, we’ll barely notice! But for right now, we don’t trust you at all. You might even be the head of a state bar and make racist statements! And we might not care at all! Once you pass the exam.
Some of you might think our rules above run contrary to the whole notions of “fairness, integrity, and best practices in admission to the legal profession for the benefit and protection of the public” that one might find on the NCBEX website. You might think some of these requirements are sexist and contrary to a “competent, ethical, and diverse legal profession.” See, that’s the NCBEX vision, which is not necessarily our vision as we serve on state boards! Our vision is that we MUST have a bar exam free of cheating. And no matter how absurd and crazy the world gets, the test of competence is the bar exam.
Should you pass the draconian hurdles we set up before you for no other reason than our lack of innovation and cruel spirit, remember: Once you enter the bar, we will become VERY concerned about your mental health. Just not now.
Good luck. And stop thinking about cheating.
Your friendly neighborhood bar examiners.
LawProfBlawgis an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. He hates the Bar Exam. His thoughts are his and his alone. You can see more of his musings here. He is way funnier on social media, he claims. Please follow him on Twitter (@lawprofblawg) or Facebook. Email him at lawprofblawg@gmail.com.
Is it normal to have a 501(c)(4) controlled by a politician which transacts no business other than cashing $250,000 quarterly checks from an energy company looking for a billion-dollar government bailout? Asking for Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, who was arrested this morning and charged in massive, $61 million racketeering, bribery, and public corruption case.
And if you’re counting on your fingers to figure out how many quarters it would take to suck up $61 million in quarter million dollar tranches, he had a lot of help. Rest assured that a whole boatload of Buckeyes are on the phone with their lawyers right this very minute.
The case arises out of an Ohio law passed last year which zeroed out subsidies for wind and solar while bailing out two coal plants belonging to the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation and a nuclear power facility owned by FirstEnergy Solutions. Householder, who had served as his chamber’s speaker between 2001 and 2004, had recently won his old seat back and wanted help returning to the speakership. And FirstEnergy wanted to help him do it, according to the criminal complaint.
Following his January 2017 trip on Company A’s [i.e. FirstEnergy’s] private jet, in March 2017, Householder began receiving quarterly $250,000 payments from Company A into a bank account in the name of a 501(c)(4) entity secretly controlled by Householder called Generation Now.
Nothing to see here!
Arrested along with Householder were his longtime aide, Jeff Longstreth, who helped him set up Generation Now, former Ohio Republican Party Chair Matt Borges, and FirstEnergy lobbyists Neil Clark and Juan Cespedes. Apparently, they were a chatty bunch.
In 2019, Clark described himself on recorded communications as Householders “hitman” who will do the “dirty shit.” Clark stated, “When Householder’s busy, I get complete say. When we are working on stuff, if he says ‘I’m busy,’ everyone knows, Neil has the final say, not Jeff. Jeff is his implementer.
Testing, testing! Is this thing on? I would like to describe the structure of our criminal enterprise now.
Householder used the cash in Generation Now to build his political base, doling it out to other Republican candidates and preaching the good word of dirty energy, and in January 2019, he regained the speakership. Three months later, Householder introduced HB6, a $1.3 billion bailout for FirstEnergy, at which point the cash flowing from the company to Generation Now and GOP state reps kicked into overdrive. Between July and October of 2019, FirstEnergy sent $38 million to Generation Now.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio, “When asked how much money was in Generation Now, Clark said, ‘it’s unlimited.’” Borges referred to it as “Monopoly money.”
Which is a sh*t ton of cash in one state congressman’s little secret account.
Sure, Householder used some of that money to pay his campaign staff, and allegedly pocketed about $400,000 in personal benefits “to settle a personal lawsuit, to pay for costs associated with his residence in Florida, and to pay off thousands of dollars of credit card debt.” Plus he’s alleged to have “paid $15,000 to an individual to provide insider information about the ballot initiative and offered to pay signature collectors for the ballot initiative $2,500 cash and plane fare to stop gathering signatures.” Because Householder provided good service for his clients, and he made sure that a ballot initiative to repeal the bill never saw the light of day.
But that doesn’t add up to anything like $60 million. The complaint details transfers of about $20 million to Householder’s co-conspirators, but unless $40 million of that money is still sitting there in Generation Now’s account, it had to go somewhere.
Which brings us to David DeVillers, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, who promised in this afternoon’s press conference that “We are not done with this case.”
JUST IN: U.S. Attorney David M. DeVillers announces the arrest of Ohio Speaker of the House Larry Householder “for racketeering in likely the largest bribery, money-laundering scheme against the people of the state of Ohio.”
DeVillers promised the investigation would broaden now that the indictment has been unsealed and is no longer covert. Which sounds like a full employment plan for white collar criminal lawyers in the great state of Ohio. See, Householder really did protect jobs after all — just maybe not the way he planned to.
US v. Borges [Criminal Complaint, No. 1:20-MJ-00526 (S.D. Ohio Jul 21, 2020)]
Elizabeth Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.
But UBS is less exposed than its European rivals. Like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs in the U.S., UBS has a relatively low level of credit risk. Thanks to its strategic focus on wealth management, riskier forms of lending are limited. Most of its loan book is secured: Over half are mortgages, most of them in Switzerland, with a 55% average loan-to-value ratio, and another third are so-called Lombard loans to wealth-management clients backed by securities, with a 50% average LTV.
Alas, the very same illness that have kept it safe from COVID have some pretty unpleasant side effects themselves, such as $10 million fines.
Over a four-year period, UBS improperly allocated bonds intended for retail customers to parties known in the industry as “flippers,” who then immediately resold or “flipped” the bonds to other broker-dealers at a profit. The order finds that UBS registered representatives knew or should have known that flippers were not eligible for retail priority. In addition, the order finds that UBS registered representatives facilitated over 2,000 trades with flippers, which allowed UBS to obtain bonds for its own inventory, thereby circumventing the priority of orders set by the issuers and improperly obtaining a higher priority in the bond allocation process.
Imagine that it’s the morning before your dreaded civil procedure final. Ninety percent of your peers are already in the library studying. The other 10 percent are somewhere breathing into a paper bag. But you? You’re at home with your headphones on, lying on a lightly carpeted concrete floor, and your hip is starting to go numb. You’re assembling a bunk bed for your kids. No, you haven’t given up on law school. In fact, you’re on your way to graduating summa cum laude from BYU Law School (one of the most competitive law schools in the country).
Fast forward a couple of years. You have an hour break after a grueling morning of MBE questions. The bar exam isn’t over yet. You still have three hours of multiple-choice questions to go. You pop in your earbuds, grab your baseball bat and a bucket of balls out of your car, and walk to a nearby high school field. Between swings, you take a bite of lunch. No, you’re not about to fail. You don’t know it yet, but you’re going to score in the top 5 percent nationally on the Uniform Bar Exam.
Those unusual hypotheticals describe two real moments in the almost unbelievable story of 33-year-old Adam Balinski, the millennial who launched Crushendo, only a year after taking the bar exam himself.
Prior to law school, Balinski worked as a TV reporter for a CBS affiliate and then as a corporate trainer and instructional designer for Epic, a behemoth medical software company. Both careers proved critical in his preparation to found a revolutionary education company that specializes in audio outlines, audio flashcards, storytelling, and mnemonics.
It’s not an exaggeration to say no one has done law school quite like Balinski. While serving as a Law Review senior editor, he simultaneously served as editor-in-chief of the Education and Law Journal at BYU Law. During law school, he welcomed his third child. He served as a religious leader of a local congregation of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Beginning with his 1L summer job, Balinski worked straight through graduation and the bar exam to support his young and growing family. He interned with a few law firms, was a legal writing teaching assistant, worked in-house at Melaleuca and Pluralsight, and even taught Swedish at the university — yes, he had all of those jobs at some point during law school. Vad fantastiskt!
Now, you’re probably wondering, how the heck did he manage all of that without become an absentee husband and father? Along with saying a mountain of prayers, he credits an innovative study group and custom-crafted audio outlines.
Adam Balinski (second from left) with his wife, some members of his study group, and other law school friends goofing off at a dance.
Balinski has blogged at length about how he creatively and efficiently leveraged his study group. So, this article will focus on how he used audio.
I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Adam Balinski. In true Adam-fashion, he was doing two things at once. While I interviewed him, he was on his way to pick up an order of new Crushendo shirts. Here’s a (lightly edited and condensed) write-up of our lively conversation about bar review and how he built a successful company from the ground up.
Staci Zaretsky (SZ): Describe your journey. What made you decide to start this company?
Adam Balinski (AB): One way you can look at it is that it started more than a decade ago when I was studying as an undergrad. Even then, I would record my notes. I was listening to them between classes as I was getting ready for finals.
Those basic audio outlines helped immensely, so there was no way I wasn’t going to use a similar strategy during law school.
As it turns out, I quickly found that I couldn’t do law school the conventional way and be wildly happy. I thoroughly enjoyed class and had fun with my classmates, but then came the solitary preparation time — which is the bulk of law school. I couldn’t sit there almost all day, every day, with my head in my books or my eyes glued to the computer — that would have been a shriveling experience.
I wanted to use my time as wisely as possible and work smarter, so I recorded my notes and listened to them while exercising, cleaning, commuting — you name it. I felt like most outlines were too long and didn’t lend themselves well to memorization. So, I would condense my own outlines and trim away all of the fat. I found that a distilled, hour-long audio outline for each subject was just about right.
I’ve been borderline obsessed with efficiency and creating new processes for addressing old problems.
When it came time to study for the bar exam, I used a similar method. One day, I had a buddy come up to me and say, “Hey, I heard you made your own audio outlines for bar prep. Can I buy those from you? I’ll give you $50 for each subject. I just want to golf today and not feel guilty.” That’s when I realized there could be a real market for this sort of thing.
SZ: What has been most fulfilling about starting an education company?
AB: Seeing Crushendo help students and grads with a wide variety of backgrounds and challenges, especially those with disabilities, like blindness and dyslexia.
SZ: What do you think differentiates Crushendo from the rest of the competition?
AB: Mnemonics, memory palaces, brevity, affordability, illustrations, access length, and of course, our audio outlines and audio flashcards. There are so many more things you can do with audio learning instead of constantly having your nose in a book. You can have fun and learn what you need to know, all at the same time. You can play basketball, you can go for a run, you can go for a hike, you can go to the beach — and you can prep for the bar exam at the same time.
I wanted to create a commercial product that was so memorable, engaging, and efficient that it would be better memorization-wise than the valuable-but-labor-intensive process of creating your own outlines. My goal is to have this be the very best bar prep product, period, no questions asked, and the most affordable, which is a crazy goal.
Sometimes people ask, because they’re concerned about the cost of Crushendo, why is it so cheap? If it’s so affordable, it can’t be that good, right? They think to themselves, “I want to get the best for myself, so I’ll drop $3,000 on BARBRI because I don’t want to roll the dice when it comes to this big exam.” But like I said, I’m passionate about efficiency, so if there’s a cheaper or more affordable way for us to do something as a company, we’re going do it — and we’re going to pass savings on to our users.
SZ: Why do you think people will benefit from doing bar prep in this way if they’re not used to learning in this way? For example, say someone is a very visual learner. What would they gain from listening to audio lectures?
AB: Everything that we have in audio form, we have in written form as well, along with cool illustrations. So, regardless of whether you’re into the audio approach, we have something for you. I do think that people who haven’t traditionally used audio should at least give it a try because the payoff can be so great.
It can be more efficient and memorable if you can take the leap of faith and train your brain to engage with audio.
There are some people who are going to be more excited about our product than others. For example, podcast listeners are going to be stoked and it’s not going to be a steep learning curve for them. But we recognize we’re asking most people to study differently than how they have in the past. To change study techniques at the finish line — before the most important exam of their life — can be intimidating, terrifying, and maybe even paralyzing. To ease the anxiety of trying something new, we have a 30-day, money-back satisfaction guarantee. In fact, if you want to experiment with Crushendo without paying a dollar, you can reach out and we’ll give you access to one of our outlines for free.
SZ: How far off do you think Crushendo is from being the very best bar prep company?
AB: It’s audacious to say, but I believe that we’re already there. That said, we haven’t convinced the entire world yet. Most of the legal community hasn’t even heard of Crushendo. So, we have plenty of work to do. And even if we think our stuff is the best, we want to make it even better. We’re constantly striving to outperform ourselves.
***
You can see evidence of that effort in Crushendo’s recent video update:
True to form, the video shows Crushendo’s CEO standing on a ballfield, just like old times.
On behalf of everyone here at Above the Law, we’d like to congratulate Adam Balinski on creating the innovative bar review program that is Crushendo. If your goal is crushing the bar exam, then this may be the bar prep program for you.
(Disclosure: Crushendo is an Above the Law advertiser.)
One thing that I did feel in law school was that if I flubbed, that I would be bringing down my entire sex. That you weren’t just failing for yourself, but people would say, “Well, I did expect it of a woman.” It’s like they would say about a woman driver. So I was determined not to leave that impression.
— Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, discussing her time at Harvard Law School almost 65 years ago, in a wide-ranging interview with Dahlia Lithwick about her life and what she remembers about her nine female classmates. Click here to check out the transcript.
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.
I mean, I’m not surprised. Are you? The Republican party has long taken American Exceptionalism off of the international stage and applied it to their own political whims, with the only consistency being that they’ll twist principles to suit whatever is the political objective of the moment.
Anyway, Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently announced that she’s undergoing treatment for cancer, so naturally the GOP is wishcasting what it would be like to get a third nominee by Donald Trump on the Supreme Court. “But,” you say, “it’s an election year. Didn’t the GOP squash the nomination of Merrick Garland under the flimsy excuse that it was an election year?” Yes, yes they did. But the rules are different when the GOP has an opportunity to stack the Court with jurists of their own political persuasion.
“We will,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the second-ranking Republican leader, when asked if the Senate would fill a vacancy, even during the lame-duck session after the presidential election. “That would be part of this year. We would move on it.”
Compare and contrast with Thune’s comments from 2016:
“The American people deserve to have their voices heard on the nomination of the next Supreme Court justice, who could fundamentally alter the direction of the Supreme Court for a generation,” Thune said in a statement in March 2016. “Since the next presidential election is already underway, the next president should make this lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.”
Hmmm, I wonder what could possibly be different?
At least (seriously, this is the bare minimum) some Republicans aren’t quite so craven.
Asked about his past opposition to moving a nominee in a presidential election year after the primary season, [Judiciary Committee chair Sen. Lindsey Graham] said: “After Kavanaugh, I have a different view of judges,” referencing the brutal 2018 confirmation process of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“I’d like to fill a vacancy. But we’d have to see. I don’t know how practical that would be,” Graham told CNN Monday. “Let’s see what the market would bear.”
Which, to be clear, does not mean that Graham would stand in the way of a hypocritical SCOTUS nominee that would likely permanently hurt the legitimacy of the Court. Just that he’s unwilling to admit that to a news outlet… at this time.
Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, a member of the Judiciary Committee, said he would be “shocked” if Trump didn’t try to fill a SCOTUS vacancy no matter when it came up. Hawley at least tried to create a distinction between 2016 and 2020:
“I think we have a different set of circumstances. We have a President who is very actively running for reelection,” Hawley said. “He’s going to be on the ballot. People are going to be able to render a verdict on him like they couldn’t on Obama. My guess is he would absolutely nominate somebody. I would be shocked if he didn’t.”
Of course Hawley’s logic quickly falls apart. Because if the American people say to Trump, “You’re fired,” well, he’ll still have a placed his pick on the Supreme Court. This is the epitome of a distinction without a difference only designed to make Hawley seem like he is not being blatantly hypocritical when, you know, he is.
Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa also got in on the hypocrite train:
“(If) it is a lame-duck session, I would support going ahead with any hearings that we might have,” she said. “And if it comes to an appointment prior to the end of the year, I would be supportive of that.”
It’s telling that the most sane statements collected by CNN are from North Carolina senator Thom Tillis, which the publication tellingly describes as “vulnerable” in his reelection campaign, “I am praying for Justice Ginsburg’s health. That’s all I’m really focused on right now.”
And Tillis knows the chance of a vacancy caused by a retirement is pretty unlikely:
“I don’t think there are many indications that there are. Normally those moves are made back in June over the session. I don’t see any real possibility that there will be one,” Tillis said.
For the rest of the country, let’s just hold on to the fact that Trump filling another Supreme Court vacancy this year is pretty unlikely and hope like hell 2020 doesn’t have another unwelcome surprise waiting for us.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).
The era of Zoom has opened up new horizons as courts rapidly modernize and attorneys scramble to define the remote working model. But it’s also opened up some new professional and ethical challenges from “wi-fi indictments” to “no shirt, no shoes, no justice.” The latest ethical conundrum comes from Missouri, where a judge used the mute button on an attorney and now he says she’s violated the defendant’s right to counsel and due process.
Attorney Rob Eggert claims that Jefferson Circuit Judge Audra Ecklerle muted him “eight times during a 48-minute hearing, including once for five minutes and another time for seven minutes.” This selective muting had enhanced significance because Judge Ecklerle had allowed the prosecutor to attend the hearing in person but kept Eggert relegated to videoconferencing.
For her part, Judge Ecklerle says that Eggert was annoying and obstructionist and:
“Counsel must behave respectfully at all time, and those rules and etiquette do not change merely because the hearing occurred via telephone versus in person,” she said. “The court quite properly redirected counsel through the use of the mute button, as opposed to trying to yell over defense counsel’s screaming.”
Understanding overlapping Zoom conversations can get tricky so it wouldn’t seem to be a problem to use the mute button to enforce speaking times, giving each side an equal and uninterrupted opportunity to lay out their arguments. It would prevent both sides from lodging objections in real time, though without a jury the impact of that denial is negligible. Often the most obstreperous attorneys can offer clear and calm arguments when forced to wait their turn. Yet the petition doesn’t paint the picture of an even-handed use of the mute power.
There’s also no support for the contention that Eggert was “screaming” according to the Courier-Journal reporters who reviewed the tape. In the judge’s defense, who knows whether past behavior might have weighed on her decision-making. That said, Eggert’s petition suggests that Judge Ecklerle has a history of seeing improprieties that aren’t really there. He cites a contempt order she issued last year that sent the mother of a defendant to jail for 30 days claiming that she had “unleashed expletive-laded, abusive language to the court” and “incited riotous behavior from spectators in the courtroom and created a security issue.” The video of the event reveals the woman merely stood up and asked “How do you sleep at night?” before leaving the room. An appellate judge ordered the woman released upon seeing the video.
This all seems to add up to a judicial screw-up.
But putting aside Judge Ecklerle’s handling of this specific situation, the more interesting question is where judges draw the line. How much can a judge manipulate the technological levers of power in the interest of efficiency without crossing the line into prejudicing the whole hearing?
This isn’t likely to be the last challenge to a judge’s handling of a videoconference before this pandemic is over.
Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of 
