The intake script that wins clients in 30 seconds

When what goes on behind the scenes is revealed, the reaction is rarely relief. First up, a firm wrote a clause to punish partners who leave; now the public gets to see its partnership agreement. Also: the quiet, unglamorous work of teaching AI to do actual legal tasks, told by the lawyers doing it. The new season of “Serial” gives you an insider’s look at death row's appeals, where minutes matter. And why "going off script" costs you more clients than it wins.

But first, a California judge is allowing a class action over windowless window seats on United flights to proceed.

There’s a map for everything. 
Reddit user zummit pulled court data on font choices to map out the preferences of state supreme courts, U.S. District Court judges, and U.S. Courts of Appeals. 

El signo de peso es mi nuevo signo del zodíaco.
Their financial disclosure forms reveal SCOTUS justices earned millions from authoring books. And Sotomayor likely went to a Bad Bunny concert. 

Now hiring.
The Supreme Court is beefing up security. And they produced a recruitment video to prove it. 

The poodle is property no more. 
Courts are treating pet custody more like child custody in a growing number of states. 

Road Trip: 250 is nothing.
This month will mark the 407th anniversary of the convening of the House of Burgesses, the oldest English-speaking, democratic assembly in the Western Hemisphere. You can visit the actual site where representatives gathered at Jamestown, Va., or a reconstruction at Colonial Williamsburg.

Global payroll may seem complex, but with Rippling, you can streamline the entire process. The system provides:

Say goodbye to international compliance headaches and uncomplicate your global payroll for good.

After they announced their departure for Sidley Austin, Cliff Cone and Michael Sabin were told by their old firm, Clifford Chance, that it intended to claw back millions in prior compensation. The partners sued, arguing that clawbacks and similar exit penalties violate New York’s rules on professional conduct. 

Why this Matters: Most partnership agreements are never meant to see the light of day. daylight. This one did, and it's worth reading—not just for the clawback dispute but for what it reveals about how a major firm structures pay, manages departures and handles media. Small firm owners writing or revising their own agreements now have a rare benchmark. (Reuters)

Do you think you can draft a legal scenario complex enough to stump AI? Or explain your reasoning process well enough that robots can replicate it? Companies are paying lawyers to give these tasks a try—some for $200 an hour.

Why this Matters: AI isn’t magic. It has to be taught how to solve problems, and this article explains how and why some attorneys are lending a hand. (Business Insider)

When “Serial” debuted in 2014 with its dissection of the Adnan Syed case, it changed the podcasting game. It became the fastest podcast ever to reach five million downloads and effectively created the true-crime podcast genre. 

The latest season of this perennially popular pod, titled "The Last 12 Weeks," follows a team of capital defense lawyers racing to stop the execution of David Wood. Convicted in 1992 of murdering several women and girls near El Paso, Wood was nicknamed the Desert Killer.

Why this Matters: Produced with The Marshall Project and reported by longtime death-penalty journalist Maurice Chammah, the series gives listeners an in-depth look at what 11th-hour post-conviction work is actually like. It’s high-stakes, high-pressure lawyering on another level. (The Last 12 Weeks)

Potential clients decide if they want to hire you within 30 seconds. Or so says Connor Gallic, whose company handles intake calls for small firms. Because you only have a limited amount of time to make a good impression, Gallic has created a script to follow: answer promptly and personally with firm name and first name, acknowledge the caller's situation with one human sentence before asking any intake questions, ask a single open-ended question and let them talk without interrogating or going silent, then close by stating a clear next step.

Why this Matters: The script in this article is one that any firm can adapt and adopt. It works because it emphasizes human connection over information-gathering, which is a lesson that applies long after that first half minute is over. (Attorney At Work)

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Raise the Bar is written and curated by Emily Kelchen, edited by Bianca Prieto.