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Judicial Notice (08.30.26): Paying The Piper
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Kalshi is in the New York City subway system—and probably on its way to the U.S. Supreme Court (photo by David Lat).Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking here.
Twenty years ago today, on August 30, 2006, I launched Above the Law. This anniversary led me to reflect on how the world of legal media has changed dramatically over the past two decades—ATL included.
If you look back at my inaugural post on Above the Law, you’ll see my initial vision for the outlet was focused heavily on gossip and humor. And while there are still traces of that DNA at ATL—hello, Biglaw Biter1—it’s fair to say the Above the Law of 2026 is a more serious and substantive publication than the self-described “legal tabloid” of 2006. For instance, I doubt the original ATL would have been the subject of a 1,600-word feature by Elizabeth Williamson of The New York Times (gift link).
As for me, I left ATL in 2019, tried out legal recruiting, and almost died of COVID. That near-death experience made me realize I wanted to return to full-time writing—which I did in May 2021, by activating paid subscriptions here at Original Jurisdiction.
When I launched OJ, I felt the same anxiety I did when I started ATL: Will this flop? Fortunately, like ATL, OJ thrived—and I owe it all to you, my subscribers and sponsors.
Today, I do four things for a living: publish this newsletter, write a Bloomberg Law column, host a podcast, and do some paid speaking. I’m professionally happier than I’ve ever been, and for the first time, I’m not looking for “the next big thing.” My current plan is to keep doing exactly what I’m doing—until I retire, die, or get replaced by AI. To my readers, listeners, and sponsors, I have just two words: thank you.
A programming note: the next OJ podcast episode will air on September 9, instead of September 2 (because of having to schedule the recording around the crazy schedule of my next guest, one of the busiest lawyers in America). But I’ll still have plenty of content for you, possibly including a Supreme Court clerk hiring post; if you’re aware of any hires not included in my last report, please drop me a line.
Now, on to the news—ridiculously busy for the last full week of August.
Lawyer of the Week: Beth Wilkinson.
In a podcast interview I recorded last week with Jacob Robinson for Law of Code (teaser here), he asked me if I’d ever return to practicing law. Although I keep my New York law license active—mostly to keep my mother honest when she tells people, “My son is a lawyer”—I no longer practice, and I have no desire to return to practice.
There are, however, two things I’d be willing to return for, on a temporary basis: to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court, or—more realistically—to try a case to a jury, all the way to verdict (even a boring case, and even as the most junior person on the trial team). And if I drew up a short list of the litigators I’d want to work for, it would include Beth Wilkinson of Wilkinson Stekloff, trial lawyer extraordinaire.
Oh, you want to work with Beth Wilkinson? Take a number. Right now she’s handling three of the biggest litigations in the country, as noted in Jessica Toonkel’s recent profile of Wilkinson in The Wall Street Journal (gift link):
Wilkinson has successfully defended the National Football League and pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, as well as Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh against accusations of sexual assault in his confirmation hearings, making her a go-to trial lawyer in high-stakes cases. She has won about 60 cases and lost four jury verdicts, two of which were set aside and one settled. She has never had a client pay a judgment.
She is now in the middle of the three most high-stakes media battles in years…. In addition to working for Paramount [in its litigation against state attorneys general trying to block its $81 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery], Wilkinson is also representing TV station operator Nexstar Media Group in defending its $6.2 billion acquisition of competitor Tegna, a deal state attorneys general have also sued to block, and Walt Disney Co. ABC in its fight with the Federal Communications Commission over the network’s broadcast licenses.
If ABC v. FCC rings a bell, it should: filed by Wilkinson and leading Supreme Court litigator Paul Clement, it was last week’s Litigation of the Week.
Given the many famous cases she has handled over her long career, some of which we discussed in our podcast interview—including, of course, her successful prosecution of the Oklahoma City bombers—Wilkinson has many individual wins to celebrate. But as she told me in our conversation (and later wrote in a Bloomberg Law piece), what excites her most at this point in her career is mentoring and developing younger colleagues, then sitting back and watching them thrive.
In that sense, one of the biggest signs of Wilkinson’s success is a fourth case in the headlines, People of the State of California v. Meta Platforms Inc. This litigation settled in the middle of trial, for $17 billion—which many analysts see as an excellent outcome for the defense (for reasons discussed below, under Litigation of the Week).
Wilkinson Stekloff was trial counsel for Meta, alongside Covington & Burling and Davis Polk—but Wilkinson wasn’t her firm’s main courtroom lawyer. Instead, if you look at Meta’s written filings and news stories about key cross-examinations, you’ll see mention of colleagues like Brian Stekloff and Moira Penza. And that is, in my view, a testament to the team that Beth Wilkinson has helped build at Wilkinson Stekloff: a firm so formidable that clients like Meta will trust it with matters of existential importance—whether or not Beth Wilkinson herself is personally involved.2
Other lawyers in the news:
Speaking of legendary litigators who have appeared on my podcast, David Boies, still going strong at 85, had a good week:
On Thursday, Judge Jed Rakoff (S.D.N.Y.) approved Bank of America’s $72.5 million settlement with Jeffrey Epstein victims who alleged that B of A aided in Epstein’s sex trafficking. Judge Rakoff also signed off on a 30% fee request for the lawyers—including Boies, Sigrid McCawley, and Andrew Villacastin, of Boies Schiller Flexner, and Brad Edwards, of Edwards Henderson.
On Friday, Judge Richard Seeborg (N.D. Cal.) awarded almost $147 million in attorneys’ fees to Boies and his co-counsel in a privacy class action against Google that covered 98 million people and resulted in a $425 million jury verdict. Judge Seeborg said the one-third fee was high but justified, given counsel’s “exemplary performance.” The lawyers included David Boies, Alexander Boies, and Mark Mao of BSF; Bill Carmody, Amanda Bonn, and Shawn Rabin of Susman Godfrey; and Ryan McGee of Morgan & Morgan.
Will Scharf, who will assume the role of White House counsel on September 1, was profiled by Luke Broadwater for The New York Times (gift link via Howard Bashman’s How Appealing). The article struck me as neutral to positive, maybe 6/10; ChatGPT agreed (6.5/10), while Claude dissented (4/10).
Who’s replacing Will Scharf in the influential role of White House staff secretary? A fellow lawyer: current deputy staff secretary Benjamin “Ben” Moss, who graduated from the University of Chicago Law School and previously served as general counsel to then-senator JD Vance (R-Ohio).
Speaking of job changes, Kerry Abrams will step down as dean of Duke Law after more than eight years in the role. Query whether she can resolve the DOJ investigation into alleged racial discrimination in Duke’s admissions before she departs at the end of the 2026-27 academic year.
Abrams is leaving the deanship voluntarily, while staying on at Duke as a member of the faculty. In contrast, Nathaniel Cullerton—the Wachtell Lipton partner caught making out with an associate in Central Park, in a viral video—“is being forced out by the elite law firm,” per The New York Post.
In the August 23 edition of Judicial Notice, I discussed Department of Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival, his thread on X criticizing four judges who ruled against DHS, and an ethics complaint filed against Percival by 128 retired judges, including Nancy Gertner and J. Michael Luttig. In a reader poll that drew almost 600 votes, 65% of you expressed support for the complaint. For additional views, see (or hear) Sarah Isgur of Advisory Opinions, who criticized the complaint as “barfare” (weaponization of the attorney ethics process), or Professor Steve Vladeck of One First, who argued that the real issue isn’t the ethics complaint, but the “abominable” nature of Percival’s conduct.3
In memoriam: assistant U.S. attorney Andrew Haden (S.D. Cal.) passed away on August 19, at 48. Initial reports didn’t specify the cause of death, but last week, the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed that he died by suicide. If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental-health crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (988) or contact a lawyer assistance program in your state. As someone who is all too familiar with the devastating toll of suicide,4 I encourage you to donate to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention or a similar charity focused on suicide prevention.
Judges of the Week: Judges Rita Lin and Noël Wise.
Last week, I wrote that the Northern District of California is one of the five most important district courts in the country right now, thanks to its popularity as a venue for (1) big-ticket cases involving Big Tech and (2) challenges to Trump administration policies. I picked Chief Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers (N.D. Cal.) as the most recent Judge of the Week based on her handling of a major tech case, People of the State of California v. Meta Platforms Inc. (discussed below). And now I’m bestowing Judge of the Week honors on two of her colleagues, Judges Rita Lin and Noël Wise, based on their benchslaps of the Trump administration: In the span of roughly 24 hours, these two relatively new Biden appointees ruled against the federal government in a pair of high-profile cases, both based on the First Amendment.
On Thursday, in Anthropic PBC v. U.S. Department of War, Judge Lin blocked the Pentagon’s blacklisting of Anthropic. After the AI giant refused to allow its Claude AI models to be used by the U.S. military for surveillance or autonomous weapons and publicly criticized the government’s views on AI safety, the government took action against Anthropic—including designating the company “a supply chain risk.” Represented by WilmerHale, Anthropic sued, alleging it was retaliated against for its speech in violation of the First Amendment. In a 59-page opinion, Judge Lin agreed, declaring that the Trump administration’s actions were “illegal and baseless.” In one of the opinion’s most widely quoted lines, she wrote, “The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics.”
On Friday, in Stanford Daily Publishing Corporation v. Rubio, Judge Wise ruled that the Trump administration violated the First Amendment by arresting, detaining, and deporting noncitizen students for expressing pro-Palestine views. In a 90-page ruling that Reuters described as “blistering,” she wrote that “in the United States, freedom of speech belongs to the people” and “is not the government’s to take.” As Conor Fitzpatrick of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, counsel to the plaintiffs, told The Times (gift link), “Today’s ruling proves that free speech isn’t a privilege, but the inalienable right of every man, woman, and child.”
In other news about judges and the judiciary:
Josh Morrow, a partner at Lehotsky Cohn, conducted an interesting analysis (posted by Professor Eugene Volokh on the Volokh Conspiracy). Morrow ran 2,250 published opinions from federal appellate courts from 2026 through Pangram, an AI-detection tool, and found that more than 50 showed signs of AI authorship. He then took roughly 300 opinions published in January 2022 by federal circuit courts and fed them into Pangram—and found no signs of AI-generated text. Some folks I discussed this study with were troubled by its findings, but I wasn’t. First, 50 opinions out of 2,250 is a shade over 2%, a tiny percentage. Second, signs of AI authorship simply suggest that AI generated the prose; they don’t denote the presence of hallucinations or other errors.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito overlapped at Yale Law School for two years. Why weren’t they friends? As Thomas recounted to Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) on his podcast, Alito said to Thomas, “Clarence, you were scary.” What did he mean by that? During their YLS years, Alito was the introverted, nerdy conservative that he still is today—while Thomas was “a left-wing radical,” in Cruz’s words, who wore bib overalls and combat boots around 127 Wall Street.
If you’re trying to get rid of your Indiana state criminal case by forging a dismissal order signed by a judge, pick a jurist other than Chief Justice John Roberts. A Colorado man named Joshua Culver learned this the hard way—and now he faces federal charges of impersonation and forgery as well.
In memoriam:
Judith Kreeger, who served as a judge in Miami-Dade’s 11th Judicial Circuit Family Division for more than 25 years, passed away at 85.
Barbara McDermott—who served for almost 14 years as a judge in Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas, spending a majority of that time handling homicide cases—passed away at 71.
May they rest in peace.
Job of the Week: an opportunity for an of counsel in trademark litigation.
Lateral Link is working with a global IP practice seeking an exceptional litigator (6+ years) to join as of counsel, handling sophisticated trademark disputes. This is a fantastic opportunity for experienced litigators looking to join a top trademark practice. Prior trademark experience is not required—strong general commercial or IP litigation experience is welcome, provided the candidate has outstanding writing skills and the ability to take a meaningful first-chair role. Candidates from top litigation boutiques or Am Law 100 firms are of particular interest. This role requires proximity to one of the firm’s offices and is not intended to be fully remote. Compensation ranges from $196,000–$350,000, depending on hours, experience, qualifications, and location. To be considered, please send your résumé to Steven Rushing at srushing@laterallink.com.
