Category: News Feeds

The only reason Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump don’t have even more Article III judicial vacancies to fill is because when Harry Reid was majority leader he nuked the filibuster for lower court appointments. Reid was criticized at the time, and when the Democrats lost the majority in the Senate in 2014, he was criticized again. When Donald Trump won the presidency and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell nuked the filibuster for Supreme Court appointments, allowing McConnell to finish his plan of stealing a Supreme Court seat and hand it to Neil Gorsuch, Reid was again criticized for his actions.

I never agreed with the critique. The notion that Mitch McConnell wouldn’t do something to grab more power, but for the fact that Harry Reid did it first, strikes me as laughably naïve. McConnell was willing to steal an entire Supreme Court seat, he wasn’t going to be flummoxed by the filibuster right at the point of victory. If anything, Reid should have nuked the filibuster even earlier during Obama’s term. And lord knows that Obama should have been ready to fire off more and more progressive judges right from the moment he took office. Harry Reid was one of the only people in the Democratic leadership who fully appreciated what Republicans were willing to do to the courts. Compared to current Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Reid looks like goddamn Braveheart to Schumer’s Robert the Bruce.

Now, Harry Reid is back with an op-ed in the Salt Lake Tribune, challenging the Democrats to take the Supreme Court and other judicial appointments seriously. And he’s telling Dems that they have to be willing to go to the mattresses to fight the Republicans for the future of the courts:

When I hear Democrats running for president talk about their ideas to address our country’s urgent problems, I always find myself returning to the same question: What will you do to protect the Supreme Court of the United States?..

[A]ny Democratic candidate serious about addressing the urgent crises facing our country needs a plan for dealing with the Supreme Court.

This starts with a public commitment to nominate bold, progressive lawyers to the court. Mitch McConnell’s elimination of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees means that, if Democrats win back the Senate next year, the next Democratic president will not have to cater to unreasonable Republicans to find a justice who can win 60 votes. Instead, there will be an opportunity to nominate justices who have spent their careers fighting for progressive values and can rebalance a Court that is now biased towards the rich and the powerful.

Reid cited Demand Justice’s list of 32 potential nominees (we wrote about that list here) as a good starting point for the discussion of what “bold, progressive lawyers” actually look like.

As a person who understands what courts do, and specifically what conservative, FedSoc jurists do, the fact that the Democratic primary has not been focused on judicial issues is frustrating and actually crazy-making. There is NO plan, not a progressive one, not a moderate one, forwarded by a Democrat running for President which can survive the Roberts Court as currently constituted. In many cases, the Dems don’t even have plans that will survive the freshly stacked Circuit Courts of Appeal. I simply do not think that most people are prepared for what the Federalist Society is prepared to do, and now able to do thanks to Trump and McConnell.

The POINT of stacking the courts as they have isn’t just to advance the Republican agenda, it’s to retard any shred of “progress” Democrats might try to achieve, should Republicans even lose their grip on electoral power. McConnell has turned the courts into the Republican bulwark against electoral majorities that Republicans can no longer win. The candidates who aren’t prepared to deal with that are selling an entire fantasy about what happens next, should any of them win.

Democrats need to take back the Senate, and pack the courts at ALL levels. OR, they lose. They win the White House AND the Senate AND they pack the courts OR nothing happens. Democrats need to shoot the moon, or they lose. Taking back the White House, but not the Senate and not the Courts will make people feel better, but it’s not going to change a damn thing.

Harry Reid: Democrats running for president need a plan for the Supreme Court [Salt Lake Tribune]

---

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

Mark Yacano has had a really interesting journey in law and has been able to navigate multiple transformations with grace. He started as a commercial and product liability lawyer and then morphed into eDiscovery. After a stint in New York leading an eDiscovery services company, he leveraged his passion for law and technology at Major, Lindsey & Africa to help build a business unit that focuses on, contract management programs, content automation and alternative staffing models.  Mark explains, “ Legal Department clients often come to us they have a ‘burning platform,’ and a deep business needs to find ways to improve their process and interactions with technology.”

Mark also hosts Erasing the Stigma: Conversations About Mental Health in the Legal Profession a podcast at Major, Lindsey & Africa. You can find it on the Legal Talent Talk Network wherever you get your podcasts. “As someone who personally has faced mental health issues, I jumped at the chance to join my MLA colleagues in contributing to the dialogue,” Mark explains. He continues, “I am engaging with passionate and generous people every day. The podcast is a true labor of love. It gives me an opportunity to give back to the profession I love.”

Mark explains, “Although a lot of focus is on the issues that lawyers in firms face, the problem goes beyond law firms.” Mark says, “In-house attorneys often have as much work (and stress) as their law firm counterparts but with fewer resources. We see a lot of lean legal departments these days with gifted lawyers working under constant stress.” According to Mark, the personality characteristics of lawyers that make it hard for them to seek help are the same, whether you are at a firm or in-house.

There are a lot of things we can do to cope with stress and practice self-care. Mark cautions, “Please understand they should all augment getting proper health care including regular physicals, along with therapy and psychiatric care, where appropriate.” And yes, Mark has some tips!

Start with Basics, Eat Right

Mark says, “For me, eating right means avoiding binges at multiple food carts when I am stressed. Attempting to digest hot dogs, pretzels, and gyros within ten minutes of each other is a short-term high. You feel much worse afterward.” So definitely do not try this at home!

Be Consistently Inconsistent to Mix Things Up

Mark is often on the road. After all, he is in a client service business. “When I travel, I try to mix things up because I think it makes the grind of being on the road less stressful.”  Mark uses the Mind-body app to find new places to work out. He says, “I have found that failing at yoga in a place where you know no one is liberating. Going to different restaurants and trying new dishes is a great way to avoid the rut of (over) eating the same thing.”

Order (Nice!) Stationery and a (Fancy!) Pen 

People like notes and they remember them. Marks advises, “Getting a handwritten note is a nice surprise these days. They are memorable because they are rare. They also humanize the author and make a relationship.” That is why he insists that traveling with notes, stamps and a nice pen is a must!

Stop Talking to Yourself!

“An enormous amount of our stress comes from the inner dialogue we have with ourselves,” according to Mark. He continues, “Unfortunately, the inner dialogue usually isn’t a pep talk but an often-incorrect narrative about who we are. We often talk to ourselves more harshly and less respectfully than we talk to others.” Mark recommends, “I travel with a copy of Gary John Bishop’s book called UNFU*K Yourself: Getting out of your head and into your life. I consider it the ultimate pocket guide to stopping the negative self-talk.” 

Watch Hallmark Movies, Often 🙂

Mark recommends watching the classic, hallmark movies. “You can watch them all year round, and they always have the perfect ending! Who hates a movie where everyone is happy?” Mark explains. After all, there is a reason why these movies resonate across generations. 

Learn to Cook to Build Great Relationships

 Mark says, “Cooking not only helps you sustain life, is a way to learn, create, and to bring people together.” He explains, “Having grandparents who were in the restaurant business, I grew up with a great view of how food can bring people together. My mom still has people in for dinner weekly. My wife and kids all cook.  It is a common bond that ties us together. Great relationships can come from time spent at the dinner table.”

---

Olga V. Mack is the CEO of Parley Pro, a next-generation contract management company that has pioneered online negotiation technology. Olga embraces legal innovation and had dedicated her career to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive than before by embracing technology. Olga is also an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor, and entrepreneur. Olga founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to participate on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. Olga also co-founded SunLaw, an organization dedicated to preparing women in-house attorneys to become general counsels and legal leaders, and WISE to help female law firm partners become rainmakers. She authored Get on Board: Earning Your Ticket to a Corporate Board Seat and Fundamentals of Smart Contract Security. You can email Olga at olga@olgamack.com or follow her on Twitter @olgavmack. 

We already know the general trend of California bar exam results this year (up, after an abysmal 2018), but now we’ve got a breakdown revealing just how each law school’s graduates faired on the exam.

There’s lots of good news. 100 percent of test takers from Duke Law and University of Chicago Law School passed the Cali bar. Harvard Law School and University of Michigan Law School had a 97 percent pass rate, and New York University School of Law clocked in 96 percent, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and the University of Virginia School of Law had a 95 percent rate, Stanford at 92 percentage passage, Columbia Law at 93 percent passage, and Yale Law had 91 percent pass the exam.

As you can see, Stanford is the only California law school that cracked 90 percent, but Berkeley (89 percent) and UCLA (88 percent) also had noteworthy showings.

And all law schools did as well or better than the results of the 2018 bar exam. The biggest jump, amongst California law schools are University of California, Hastings College of Law, from 60 percent to 79 percent; Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law from 66 percent to 82 percent; and the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law from 50 percent to 63 percent.

Congrats to everyone who passed, and check out the full results below.

---

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).

As a practicing criminal defense trial attorney, I’ve seen a lot of grim pictures in my day — photos of crimes, of bodies cut open for autopsies, of gaping wounds. I’ve visited taped-off police scenes just after the crime was committed and sidestepped blood from stabbings and shootings. But last week I saw something I’d never seen before that both moved me and made me sick — line drawings of a person being tortured, penciled by the torture-victim himself. While the drawings were basic and the technique primitive, they speak volumes about the horrendous acts our government permitted against people perceived to be its enemies. They also show how far our country went, post-9/11, to justify unjustifiable acts in the name of patriotism and the quest to stop terrorism.

The drawings were done by Abu Zubaydah, an alleged terrorist captured in 2002, who is still being held by the U.S. in a detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

When his drawings were declassified (a surprise in and of itself), Mark Denbeaux, a professor at Seton Hall University School of Law, contacted Zubayah’s lawyers and, with his students, wrote a 95-page report titled, “How America Tortures.”

The report (which includes the drawings and notes from the prisoner) is a grim look at the codification of torture, officially making legal “enhanced interrogation techniques.” From the moment the “high value detainee” is captured, he is made to feel the sting of his apprehension. In Zubayah’s case, when he was moved by plane to his eventual place of detainment (the “rendition”), he was shackled like cargo to the plane floor. Earmuffs, blindfolds, and a hood were placed over his head for sensory deprivation. He wore a diaper because he was not permitted to use a bathroom.

Once interned at a “black site,” he was waterboarded, sleep-deprived, beaten, exposed to loud noise, kept naked and cold, then caged in a box so cramped, even getting into a fetal position was difficult.

According to the report, Zubaydah had already been interrogated by the FBI, who were satisfied that he told them all he knew, when he was picked up by CIA agents and brought first to a black site in Thailand for further questioning. The CIA had no handbook for enhanced interrogation at the time so contracted two psychologists experienced in training special military-op forces to withstand enemy torture.

Although Zubaydah was waterboarded several times a day, up to 86 times in all, kept from sleeping for weeks, and made to stand on a badly injured leg for hours with his hands cuffed to an overhead bar, he gave no new information. According to the report, “Other personnel at Detention Site Green were ‘profoundly affected’ by what they saw in the interrogation sessions, sometimes ‘to the point of tears and choking up.’”

The report leads to many questions: Who are the people assigned to inflicting such harm on a fellow human being? What do their consciences say? Do they extract such pain for “love of country,” or are they prompted by something darker like sadism or blind revenge?

One of the main goals of terrorism is to destabilize the democratic underpinnings of the system under attack. Terrorists want to cause chaos and fear. By upending systemic safeguards for those charged with crimes (that means all crimes, including terrorism), ignoring the presumption of innocence, and willfully causing others harm, we hand terrorists a victory.  We’ve upended our system of law.

The drawings are not only revelatory about what Zubaydah underwent but also provide a window into how our system willingly turned its back on process and order.

Torture doesn’t work. It might elicit information, but by its nature, that information is suspect. Meanwhile, our humanity and values have been compromised for questionable, if any, gain.

While the drawings are hard to look at, it’s our obligation to do so and make sure that every prisoner, no matter the charge, never undergoes such treatment again.

---

Toni Messina has tried over 100 cases and has been practicing criminal law and immigration since 1990. You can follow her on Twitter: @tonitamess.

It feels like every year we have a professor decide to reuse an old exam setting off a firestorm when students realize that some of the class had prior access to the exam — and sometimes the grading rubric — and others didn’t. The school gets involved and crafts a solution that pleases pretty much nobody while gunners complain that they shouldn’t be punished for having dug up every exam the professor’s ever given. And frankly they’ve got a point. If being a lawyer is about doggedly researching every angle to get the best result then it’s hard to say they did anything wrong — it’s not like they knew the exam they looked at would be copied. Consider this “practice ready” education.

But something has to be done for those who couldn’t get access to the old exam and that’s where there is — and we repeat this all the time — never a good remedy to reusing an exam question.

This year, the short straw was drawn by Cornell Law School where Professor Winnie Taylor reused a contracts exam essay question. To her credit, she *thought* she was in the clear because she had given the previous exam at her old stomping grounds of Brooklyn Law School and didn’t think anyone would dig those up.

Someone dug those up:

Professor Winnie Taylor’s contracts class exam essay was verbatim borrowed from her Brooklyn Law contracts class. Select international students obtained said exam prior to its administration. Upon complaint to the law school by the entire class, Dean of Students Markeisha Miner issued an unclear statement as to what part of the exam would be struck, citing the wrong portion of the test that wasn’t even at issue. The writing portion of the exam was worth 50% of the total class grade, thus leaving a poorly-written multiple-choice section constituting the entire four credit contracts grade. Students are extremely upset and the school refuses to address the issue of fairness considering students who previously obtained the exam had extra time to flush out the remaining parts of the exam.

Note, it was also supposedly Cornell Law School the last time this happened, though some tipsters disputed the original intel. If that story was correct, you’d think they’d be getting good at dealing with this by now.

In any event, there’s no way to please everyone here which is why it’s so essential to never put the class in this position. Why do professors ever think this will work out? It’s just a profound failure to appreciate the gumption of your gunners. If this is a professor’s first exam ever, a couple of students are still going to find her 1L class notes to dig for clues. The great game of the legal academy is forever professors against gunners in a constant struggle to keep the exam predictable enough to be fair but fresh enough that it’s not rite regurgitation. With the internet giving everyone access to everything, this is harder than ever. But when professors underestimate the students, this is what you get.

Professors probably should write new exams every time out of the fate, but if you HAVE to skimp for some reason, consider trading exams with some other professor. Use your next academic conference to build relationships with folks working out of the same casebook and throw your exams into a mutual google drive or something. Just don’t tell people your plan.

Earlier: A Note For Law School Professors That We Regrettably Have To Repeat: There Is Never A Good Remedy To Reusing An Exam Question

---

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Ed. note: This post was originally published on December 1, 2017. We have republished this article to bring peace of mind to our law school audience during this stressful period.

“Without a wrinkle in today, cuz there’s no tomorrow/Just a picture perfect day that lasts a whole lifetime.” — Jay-Z

I haven’t read it. The House Judiciary Committee released a report early Monday morning, detailing (again) the case for impeachment of Donald Trump, and explaining the two charges that the full House will vote on this week. The report is listed at 182 pages, but when you pull it up in Adobe it’s 658 pages and… I haven’t read it. I don’t think I’m going to. I have been defeated by the Republican Party. I do not know what it would take to make elected Republicans perform even the most basic and cursory execution of their Constitutional duties, I doubt I will find anything buried in a 658 report that will change their calculus.

If there are still persuadable voters, I doubt they will read this latest report. Indeed, to still be “persuadable” at this point requires such a devoted avoidance of hearing and processing information that expecting such people to even read a snippet of the report is like expecting dog to use a toilet. People who have been paying attention have already made up their minds, people who haven’t been paying attention are not going to start now, and are certainly not going to start with this.

A Senate trial would be an opportunity for low-information voters to get more knowledge about the various crimes and abuses committed by President Trump. But, that is precisely why Mitch McConnell and Republican Senate lapdogs will have no such trial. To know more about Trump is to learn additional details about why he is unfit for office. The Republicans do not want people to think too critically about what is going on here, and so they won’t provide an opportunity to think about, or deliberate, these charges.

They won’t even put on a defense of their guy and their eventual vote to acquit. In a normal political universe, a President would want an opportunity to put on a defense. Senators poised to acquit him would want to put on some sort of a showing to justify their eventual votes. But it appears that Republicans are not interested in any of this. They’re confident that their base wants Trump to get away with his crimes, and they seem supremely confident that they will suffer no electoral retribution for being in Trump’s pocket.

What I’ve gleaned from the House Judiciary report, through topic sentence skimming and the reports of others who have read the thing, is that it contains additional arguments making the case that Trump committed actual crimes: namely bribery and wire fraud. I feel like that has been obvious for some time. If waving around a giant report makes people feel more confident when saying that, I guess that’s a good thing.

As for me, I feel like Gandalf at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm. Swords are no more use here. Neither are facts. Trump is a Balrog, a demon of the ancient, authoritarian world. Republicans are goblins, cowering and scattering in fear of his might. Do the Democrats have a wizard? No? Then I think we’re all going to die.

---

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

With primary filing deadlines flying past, we at Dealbreaker are slowly coming to a painful realization: While Mike Bloomberg is not going to be the next president of the United States, Jamie Dimon is not going to be, either, on account of his not running. (This also means that Marianne Lake is probably not going to be the first female CEO of a top bank, but that’s for another time.)

Since he’s apparently staying put at JPMorgan, JD has to find some way to occupy his time, now that he’s already revolutionized the U.S. healthcare industry and gotten to work on some new digs more befitting of his grandeur. And that was is by horning in on his competitors’ wealth management businesses.

This is the fourth article in the monthly “An Interview With” series! In this series, I  connect with people from all parts of the legal profession and at all stages of their legal careers to learn who really makes up the legal community and what they are actually doing with their legal degrees. 

This month, I am talking with Logan O’Reilly, who is a Tax Consultant at Ernst & Young. Logan is a 2017 graduate of the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University and 2019 LL.M. graduate of Georgetown Law. In addition, Logan has a vision condition called Stargardt’s macular dystrophy, colloquially known as juvenile macular degeneration. The disease is progressive and causes Logan to slowly lose his central vision acuity until he will be legally blind. In this interview, Logan shares valuable insight into his experience as a lawyer and law student with a vision impairment.   

KS: Please share what your journey navigating law school, the bar exam, and your LL.M. program was like in light of your vision impairment. Please speak specifically to any challenges that arose and how you overcame them. 

LO: My vision problems started in high school where I realized that I had trouble seeing who was walking toward me, and I had trouble seeing the whiteboard. Flash forward to law school: my eyesight got worse, and my struggles with accommodations began. At the time, my law school did not have a Director of Disabilities on-site, and the individuals who managed the accommodations did not do so full time. This made it difficult because working with someone who is ADA-knowledgeable is helpful as they would have ideas on how to handle accessibility issues and devices you never knew existed.

My vision problems also caused a financial burden. I needed electronic versions of all of my reading materials. In order to get the rights for these, I would have to buy all of my books brand-new. I ended up spending close to $1,000 on my books each semester, which really hurt my budget.

Furthermore, many professors did not understand my disability, which is understandable as my disability was invisible, and they didn’t see an apparent need for my accommodations. However, it was difficult not having enlarged handouts in class and not being able to see the projector, especially in legal research. I still don’t know how to Bluebook, and citations scare me! I was also contributory negligent (throwing bar exam terms out there) because I didn’t know how to advocate for myself. I tried and was met with resistance. My final exams in the first year were a disaster! I had to use scantrons and I did not know where the line was that I was supposed to fill out. Luckily for me, I used this experience as a learning lesson and I helped teach the Registrar’s office about my disability. I became very close with the people in the Registrar’s office.

The bar exam was not so difficult to get accommodations for because I had about 80 pages of medical documentation. However, the process of getting bar exam accommodations required endless doctor’s signatures and forms to be filled out. If you’re taking the bar in July, start getting all of the materials and applications together in the fall. For those of you applying for accommodations for the [New York] bar exam, be prepared to have to take it in Albany! This was such a hassle because when you’re visually impaired, how does one get to Albany?

It was during my LL.M. at Georgetown Law where I truly accepted my disability. Georgetown has a team dedicated to students with disabilities. It was here where I learned how to advocate for myself. I was given an office with assistive technology, and I was told where I could go within the city to get services. Furthermore, I was finally comfortable using a red/white cane to put people on notice that I am an individual with a disability. 

I currently work at a firm that sees me beyond my disability and has worked with me to get my accommodations put in place. 

KS: As one of the most positive people I know, I’d love for you to talk about any ways you feel your vision impairment has been a strength to you. 

LO: I learned compassion which allowed me to look at everyone in a different light. Everyone works differently! My low vision has allowed me to learn material differently and given me the chance to prove people wrong. This experience has proven that having a disability doesn’t mean you are weak but makes you work 100 times harder to prove yourself.

KS: What inspired you to go to law school?

LO: I wanted a career in which I would always be learning and be challenged. As a gay man, there were so many obstacles I saw individuals have to break down for equality. When I was in college there were only a handful of states which allowed same-sex marriage. I wanted to help build a more equal country. 

KS:  What are some challenges you have faced in your first year as a tax consultant and how have you overcome them? 

LO:  As a tax consultant, I come up with plans that companies can use to minimize their tax liability. I write advisory opinions on how likely a company is to be taxed and how their worldwide income will be taxed to the state. One of the struggles I deal with is the compliance aspect of tax. There are times where I have to use an Excel spreadsheet to figure out how one subsidiary’s income will affect the whole parent and subsidiary’s combined return. Excel is hard for me to use as rows can go on for pages and with my magnification software, I can’t always see the headers. 

KS: What, if anything, did you do in law school that you found really helpful in preparing you for your first year of practice? In retrospect, is there anything you wish you had done differently to be better prepared? 

LO: I think the classes offered by your school’s academic support team are a must! They really teach you how to analyze and to think like a lawyer. I think another great thing to do is network and build a network of people who will support you and give you career advice. Also, don’t be afraid to ask for help. It took me to my 2L year to gather the courage to go to my academic support center, and, once I did, I made lifelong friends there. They helped me with everything through my finals to the bar exam, and with all of my interpersonal issues in between.

KS: I can say from knowing you through law school and the bar exam that there is no challenge that will knock you off the path or make you back down. However, I  think a lot of people in your situation might have given up or not gone to law school in the first place because of the difficulties and challenges. What advice do you have for law students who need to overcome challenges? 

LO: Talk to people about your challenges. Let them lift you up and encourage you. Don’t give up on your dreams. Use your challenge as a way to find a new, more innovative solution. 

You can connect with Logan here.

Know someone who would be great to profile in this series? Send an email to info@vincoprep.com with “An Interview With” in the subject line.

---

Kerriann Stout is a millennial law school professor and founder of Vinco (a bar exam coaching company) who is generationally trapped between her students and colleagues. Kerriann has helped hundreds of students survive law school and the bar exam with less stress and more confidence. She lives, works, and writes in the northeast. You can reach her by email at info@vincoprep.com.

 

The overall view across the firm is that the result has given certainty. It removes what has been holding businesses back. Overwhelmingly, partners would rather have remained in the EU. But it’s now got to a point where we can see a stable government and the pound going up, so we’re now optimistic and hopeful.

Litigation has retained business, but transactional work has been challenging. But those concerns, we hope, are now lifted. We’re hoping for a Brexit bounce. There has been a political paralysis, and that wasn’t good for confidence and overseas clients.

— Michael Chissick, managing partner at Fieldfisher, tells Legal Week what law firms expect following the stunning UK election. Other legal heavyweights agree, the increased political certainty following Boris Johnson’s win will lead to more deals that have been languishing as the will-they-or-won’t-they question is now resolved.

---

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).