ALAB Series
An infrequent podcast series about the American legal system, hosted by Andy, Tarik, Tim, and Charles. ALAB tells engaging stories about lawyers, legal cases, legal issues, and the legal profession more broadly. It focuses especially on the outrageous, excessive, and absurd sides of law and legal practice.
Episodes
Episode 32: Free Speech But It'll Cost Ya
Andy, Charles and Tim discuss the sanctioning of UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese after her report on corporate complicity in Israel's devastating attack on Gaza, the meaning of free speech beyond the Constitution and how the Trump administration is forgetting the point of international diplomacy and the world that the UN grew out of.
Andy - @wyattprivilege.bsky.social
Charle
Episode 31: DOJ and DOGE
Andy and Charles talk about the litigation over the blanket USAID contractual "pause" through the lens of Andy's former job as a federal civil trial attorney and how DOGE is probably wreaking havoc throughout the DOJ civil branches.
Andy - https://bsky.app/profile/wyattprivilege.bsky.social
Charles - https://bsky.app/profile/ugarles.bsky.social
All music from https://bsky.app/profile/gloomfather
Episode 30: Do Not Sue Us
Andy, Tim and Charles take a look at the Jane Doe lawsuit for sexual assault against Diddy, and more importantly for this episode, Jay-Z. The litigation tactics of Jay-Z's attorney came under scrutiny both by the judge in the case and the pundits online. Crazy, or crazy like a fox? By the time we got this episode edited the case had been dropped by the plaintiff, so ... spoiler warning.
Andy: htt
The Alex Jones Miniseries 4: Because They Are True
In the fourth installment of the Alex Jones Miniseries, Andy, Tim, Charles, and Tarik finish swimming in the muck and dry off in their mind palaces while imagining, "what if Alex Jones had mustered a competent defense?"
The Alex Jones Miniseries 3: They're Not Just Curious
In the third installment of the Alex Jones Miniseries, Andy, Tim, Charles, and Tarik take their first dive into the muck being raked by, and in turn raking, Alex Jones.
The Alex Jones Miniseries 2: Some Kind of Art Project
In the second installment of the Alex Jones Miniseries, Andy, Tim, Charles, and Tarik discuss the horrific December 14, 2012 shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School and its immediate aftermath.
Voiceover work by Libby Kasch
twitter.com/DasDing_Dong
Music by David Shaw
twitter.com/gloomfather
https://orlandogloom.bandcamp.com/album/circular-season
Art by Travis Bye
twitter.com/maskthemovie
Episode 29: Mic ... Dicta?
Andy, Charles, Tim and Tarik kick off a spate of piping hot new ALAB Series episodes with a zesty discussion about frosty iced creams and the frozen legal wasteland America's Mayor now calls home. Enjoy!
The Alex Jones Miniseries 1: A Great, Dark Wickedness
In the first installment of the Alex Jones Miniseries, Andy, Charles, and Tarik explore how Alex became Alex, and how the nation became a little Alex too.
All Music by David Shaw
https://twitter.com/gloomfather
https://orlandogloom.bandcamp.com/album/circular-season
For more information, join our friends over at Knowledge Fight www.knowledgefight.com.
Episode 28: Something Given Has No Value
In perhaps the cruelest of his many attention-seeking stunts, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis defies the will of Florida's citizens, who voted overwhelmingly to restore voting rights to their neighbors with prior felony convictions. Andy, Charles, Tim, and Tarik explore the derailing of a 150-year-long project to correct a lasting injustice.
Episode 27: COACH!
Finally released from their months-long imprisonment for contempt of court, Andy and Tarik face down their most dangerous foe yet: Edward "Coach" Weinhaus.
Episode 26: That Colossal Wreck
Andy, Charles, Tarik, and Tim explore the hilarious meltdown of the Ozy Media empire, and discover a cautionary tale about corporate governance.
Episode 25: Release the Crackpots
Michael, Tim, Tarik, and newest ALAB-er Charles discuss the expansive sanctions order issued by a Michigan court against the intellectual architects of the so-called "Kraken" lawsuits that sought to invalidate the official results of the 2020 US Presidential election.
Episode 24: The Scapegoat (Part Two)
In the second and final part of their review of the U.S. government's unprecedented persecution of the Holy Land Foundation, Andy, Tarik and Tim -- again joined by podcast friend Rhiannon of fivefourpod.com -- analyze the two criminal trials that led to virtual life sentences for most of HLF's principals.
Episode 23: The Scapegoat (Part One)
Just days after the 9/11 attacks, a scrambling Bush administration -- using tools gifted it by the Clinton administration's triangulated response to the Oklahoma City bombing -- needed to seem tough on terror. It set its sights on the Holy Land Foundation, then America's largest Muslim charity. Andy and Tim, joined by our good friend Rhiannon of fivefourpod.com, chronicle the first of several brut
Episode 22: ALAB at the Movies - Michael Clayton
Andy, Michael, Tarik, and Tim reflect on the 2007 Oscar-nominated film Michael Clayton. While the movie has been hailed as a masterwork of the legal thriller genre, how true to life is its portrait of the evil corporate lawyer?
Episode 21: The Racism's Baked Right In
Andy, Michael, Tim, and Tarik discuss "race norming" and related statistical shenanigans being used in courts today -- most famously in the NFL's concussion class action settlement -- to disadvantage women and people of color, a facially indefensible practice that somehow goes virtually unchallenged.
Episode 20: Let's Lawyer Our Way Out
In a companion piece to their episode on the plot to assassinate the governor of Michigan, Andy, Tarik, and Tim arrive three weeks late with their ill-informed, and in places ill-considered, takes on the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot and its fallout.
Episode 19: Gerontocracy
Andy, Tarik, and Tim are joined by guest Leo to discuss the crisis of aging, Alzheimer's, and dementia on the state and federal bench, an issue looming larger at all levels of government, and for which the judiciary is entirely and perhaps uniquely unprepared.
Episode 18: These Things I See and More
With the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the ascension of Amy Coney Barrett, a 6-3 right-wing majority appears locked in at the Supreme Court potentially for decades. To comfort grieving progressives, Andy, Tarik, and Tim take you on a mind journey to an alternate Earth where Hillary won and a plucky Dartmouth lad named Neal Katyal achieved his greatest dream: Supreme Court Justice Neal Katyal.
Episode 17: Liberate Michigan!
In their jumbo 17th episode, Andy, Tarik, and Tim review the disturbing case of the Wolverine Watchmen and their arrest for the planned kidnapping and/or arrest of Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer. They review the details of the case and then ponder the larger issues, including whether the plotters’ stated goals of founding a new society based on the Bill of Rights passes Constitutional muster,
Episode 16: The Bully (Part Two)
In the second part of their study of the greatest lawyer to ever live, Alan Dershowitz, Andy, Tarik, and Tim delve deeper into the master's central art: the smear campaign. His scorched earth tactics and relentless smear jobs spare no one's reputation, perhaps not even his own.
Episode 15: The Bully (Part One)
In what is worst in the human soul can be found the most powerful tools of a lawyer's toolkit. Thus do Andy, Tarik, and Tim begin their studies at the feet of the Greatest Lawyer of All Time: Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. Part one examines the free speech warrior's years-long and ultimately successful campaign to destroy an academic who dared to publicly embarrass him.
Episode 14: Epstein's Bank
Andy, Michael, Tarik, and Tim teach you how to run an effective Anti-Money Laundering operation, by exploring all the myriad ways that Deutsche Bank failed to do so, breaking the rules again and again in its stunning relationship with pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Episode 13: There Will Be Knots
Michael, Tarik, and Tim explore the "Omegaverse" and find, among its other natural treasures, a nefarious tale of a plundering capitalist hell-bent on using the derricks of the law and courts to extract this magical land's value, to the exclusion of the communities that have tilled its soil for years.
Episode 12: Lawyer Brain, Pt. 4 - A Different Kind of Epstein Brain
Andy, Tarik, and Tim discuss NYU law professor Richard Epstein's one-man crusade to defeat COVID-19 using the powers of logic and debate, and the frightening things the resulting debacle says about the American legal academy.
Episode 11: Under Siege 2: Dark Territory
Back in the innocent days of Episode 7, Andy, Michael, and Tarik thought that US economic sanctions policy had reached its apex of stupidity. But COVID-19, as it has with so many things, shows them that no, things can always get stupider. A lot stupider. Join them as they explore the "might makes right" underpinnings of international law from the American perspective.
Episode 10: Hard R
The struggling BDS movement under legislative assault. The First Amendment increasingly used as a cynical deregulatory tool for big business. What's a legal scholar obsessed with free speech to do? That's right: drop the Hard R.
Join Andy, Tarik, and Tim as they examine the current state of free speech in America.
Episode 9: Mike's Charnel-House for Children
Sure, presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg's apologies for his "stop and frisk" policies ring hollow on their face. But they're even worse when placed in the context of the systemic brutality of New York's street-to-Rikers Island pipeline. Andy, Tarik, and Tim walk through the morass of hard-fought litigation Bloomberg waged to defend that pipeline
Episode 8: Lawyer Brain, Pt. 3 - The Counterclerk
Andy, Michael, and Tarik marvel at the spectacular rise, dizzying fall, and curious redemption of Ian Samuel, a legal yarn humming with powerful energies.
Episode 7: The Modern-Day Siege
Andy, Michael, and Tarik look at United States economic sanctions laws, and in particular the decades-long embargoes imposed on Cuba and Iran.
Episode 6: Lawyer Brain, Pt. 2 - The Sandpit of the Soul
Andy, Michael, and Tarik look at the Office of Legal Counsel, the elite unit within the US Department of Justice where the most elite legal minds in the country go to exchange their very souls for the promise of a life of ease and riches.
Episode 5: Weeb Wars, Pt. 2
Weeb Wars concludes with a massive double episode - Tarik, forced to flee his home after being doxed by Law Twitter, joins Andy and Michael remote from an undisclosed location to finish their review of Vic Mignona's dismissed grudge lawsuit and where it goes from here.
Audio engineering courtesy Aaron Oppenheim, find him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/gib_gab
Episode 4: Weeb Wars, Pt. 1
Andy, Michael, and Tarik play on the astroturf that is one of the more ill-considered lawsuits any ostensible lawyer has ever pushed a "client" to file: Vic Mignona's doomed lawsuit against the #metoo movement. (Part 1 of 2)
Episode 3: Faketoshi - The Perfect Client
The perfect crime. The perfect criminal. The Perfect Client.
Join us as Dr. Craig "Faketoshi" Wright's overweening self regard and cavalier disregard for truth careens headlong into a brick wall and he learns a costly lesson: that he is decidedly NOT the smartest man in the courtroom.
Original intro theme courtesy Calming Chamber. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/gloomfather and on
Episode 2: Lawyer Brain, Pt. 1 - Be Like Brett
Do you want to go to law school? Do you have a terminal case of Lawyer Brain? Andy, Michael, and Tarik describe the most optimal route to catching this debilitating affliction.
Episode 1: Old Dirty Bastards
Tarik, Andy and Michael discuss Giuffre vs. Maxwell, the defamation case at the eye of the Jeffrey Epstein media storm.
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