Mike Abate

This part seems….bad?

It’s not great here. Most of city on shelter in place. Drove home through black cloud. 280,000 lbs of jet fuel to burn off.

Well, we have a Ky Court of Appeals decisions today with made-up cases in the briefs. Interestingly, it does NOT mention AI hallucination. Counsel claimed they were "placeholder" cites that inadvertently were left in. Hmm. #AppellateSky

opinions.kycourts.net/COA/2024-CA-...

Three! Insane. Two back-to-back is my record and I did it twice. Once they were related, once they were totally separate but happened to involve the same underlying tort (which I was awkwardly on both sides of).

What if she has roommates?

🍿 🍿

Fun exercise: if you have a golf handicap you can go into the GHIN app and calculate your handicap for that course from the tees they’re playing. It thinks I’d struggle to break 100. So do I. And that doesn’t even count the 5” rough.

Ehhh…not sure I read Gorsuch that way. Could easily see him joining an opinion that says you gotta try rule 23 instead.

Courier Journal files lawsuit against UofL over President Kim Schatzel's resignation The suit, filed May 6, alleges UofL's board of trustees violated state law when making decisions about former President Kim Schatzel.

Proud to be representing the Courier Journal in this new lawsuit against the University of Louisville for violating the Open Meetings Act in firing/hiring its old/new President. The public has a right to know how the Board made its decision and why it believed it had cause to fire her.

20 years ago, when I was a trial lawyer at DOJ, Mark was our opposing counsel in a few cases and he already had a security clearance at that time. I guess no one in the government noticed this supposed national security threat for 2+ decades?

Chasing Scratch

Have you discovered www.chasingscratchgolf.com? If you want to combine that addiction with a fun podcast filled with music/movie references, you can go way overboard. You're only 7.5 seasons behind!

Congratulations! Now you're really gonna be addicted, though.

But what if it’s really good? Would you file that in some case just for fun?

No, no. Gotta tie it to “sources and methods.” It’s about the sources of our hatred and the methods of our cruelty. Can’t reveal those or someone might, you know, stop us.

That’s a state secret!

In our annual Supreme Court review last year, I phrased it as SCOTUS ruling that the Free Exercise clause now renders the Establishment Clause unconstitutional.

What about a tshirt or golf shirt under a sweatshirt? Is that allowed? Only one is visible at a time.

Why does Westlaw require 2FA now? Should I be worried someone is going to log in an do my research for me? Have at it, bro!

deep squats too.

If some drone operator or pilot thought that bombing an apartment building violated the Geneva Conventions and leaked this very same info to a journalist, the government would 100% prosecute that person for disclosing classified information. How stupid do they think the public is?

So I worked on states secrets cases under multiple administrations when I was at DOJ. I will just say this: we always gave the court LOTS of information to explain why a thing couldn’t be disclosed to the parties or publicly litigated—especially if some info seemed to be public. This is….a choice.

It's a scary time in the legal profession. Hard to know what to do, so I'll just offer this: if you're someone thinking of leaving government, or large firm, or a large market, I've made all of those transitions. I would be happy to share my experience & perspective FWIW. #apellatesky

The Senate Sub for HB 520 is a bad bill. This would attempt to let agencies determine whether something should be released. Police departments & other agencies will try to abuse this to create the kind of "blanket" exemption the KYSCT has long rejected. Call Senators and tell them to vote NO.

What’s interesting to me, a former government appellate lawyer, is that the process would usually involve a memo from the us attorney, one from civil appellate, one from an assistant to the SG, and a recommendation from the deputy SG, plus SG approval. Many of these ppl know appellate jurisdiction.

In short, the water’s great out here if you want interesting work, more autonomy, and a nice quality of life. But it won’t be the brassiest of rings.

Also, most junior lawyers probably don’t see the long term economics of being a big firm appellate lawyer. Great $$, but they’re usually not your client. And there’s 30+ new SCOTUS clerks hitting the market every year. So you’re signing up for the grind and likely won’t be a rainmaker. /3

In a way it’s easier to get known as an appellate person in a smaller market. Especially if you had some clerkship or DC experience on the resume. But you also need to accept that it’s much harder to do just appellate. Which isn’t all bad. /2

I completely agree with the gist of this post. I’m in a significantly smaller market than you (Louisville), but we are able to do lots of very interesting appellate work. Just in the past few years we’ve done cases in 1st, 2nd, 5th, 6th, 9th, 10th, and DC Cir. Plus state courts of course. /1

Maybe we were all too quick to make fun of The Drizz?

Kentucky students demand the state provide ‘adequate’ public education in lawsuit A group of students associated with the Kentucky Student Voice Team has filed a lawsuit in Franklin County, arguing the state has failed its constitutional obligation to provide an “adequate and equit...

Another great piece about our new lawsuit. My colleagues and I are proud to stand with these students.
www.lpm.org/news/2025-01...