Legal Talk Network - Law News and Legal Topics

When Tracy Thomas first joined the faculty of the University of Akron School of Law, the dean assumed she must know all about their local heroine, Judge Florence Allen.

"She was literally staring at me from my classroom," says Thomas. "There was a picture of Florence Allen on one of our old concrete wall classrooms."

Born in 1884, Florence Allen would chalk up many firsts. In 1918, she became the first female prosecutor in Ohio. In 1920, she became the first female judge in Ohio when she won election to the Cuyahoga County Common Police Court in Cleveland. In 1922, she was elected to become the nation's first woman to serve on a state supreme court. And in 1934, she was appointed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, the first woman to be a federal appellate judge. She even came within a hair's breadth of being nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, by two different presidents.

But who was Florence Allen, and why did it take so long for her successors to make it to the bench? After her retirement in 1959, the next woman to be appointed to the 6th Circuit was in 1979. Although she joined the Ohio Supreme Court in 1922, another woman wouldn't serve on that court until the 1980s.

In her new book, The First Woman Judge: The Life and Legacy of Florence Allen, Thomas delves into Allen's suffragette connections, her political ambitions, and the two women who would be her life partners. She shares how Thomas navigated in a world of men, and built a base of support from women of both political parties.

In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Thomas and host Lee Rawles talk about the responses of Allen's judicial colleagues to her ascending the bench (one took to his bed for two days); her defense of another female judge during the Lavender Scare; and why she ended up having to hear so many tax and patent cases.

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As Virginia marks 250 years since its lawyers helped shape American democracy, Susan Bradford Tarley, President of the Virginia State Bar, is framing her term around what that legacy still demands of the profession today. A real estate and business law partner at Tarley Robinson PLC, she's built her presidency around four priorities: foundational ethics, attorney wellness, the bar's strategic plan, and Virginia's shortage of lawyers in underserved areas, detailed in the bar's own EGAD Report on where new attorneys are and aren't landing. She also weighs in on attorneys caught submitting briefs built on AI-hallucinated cases, some of whom doubled down even after a judge flagged them, arguing it's a symptom of skipping the work rather than a problem with the tool itself. Tarley closes on wellness as the precondition for everything else, arguing that lawyers can only take the small steps that sustain the rule of law if they put their own oxygen masks on first.

Proving once again that ALPS Insurance puts the "treat" in retreat, they gathered leaders in law from across the country this summer. These sit-down conversations reveal flavors of leadership and legal trends from a variety of perspectives. Cool takes, one scoop at a time, recorded live at the 2026 ALPS Bar Leaders Retreat in Missoula, MT.

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In this episode of the Un-Billable Hour’s Seat at the Table:

Being a great lawyer is important, being able to afford to be a great lawyer also matters. Billing and collections are an important part of your firm.

How much time do you spend understanding how you run your business vs. How much time you spend “working.” You’ve got to bill as well as produce results. Take control of how you’re paid and when.

Cash crunches happen. But you can navigate them if you plan, prepare, and keep an eye on your bottom line, every day.

The money often shows up later than the work does. Nobody told you that. Practicing law and producing results that help real people with real problems are wonderful things. But you are also a business, and people depend on you, and cash flow matters. Here’s where it gets tough.

So how do you know from looking at the bottom line, how a firm – your firm – is really doing? Is it making money? What percent of revenue should go to payroll or marketing, where are your leaks?

This episode of Seat at the Table features money experts Amira Hasenbush, Brooke Lively, and Joy Lutz as they share insights with Christopher T. Anderson and get into the nitty gritty of running a law firm that not only produces results for clients but also produces profits for the owners.

Hear how a firm can look profitable on paper but still not produce profits. Taxes, expenses, debt, billing “slippage,” and collection slowdowns all add up. Are you seeing the big picture? Cash flow, payroll, unintended outflows, and bookkeeping are all vital to your bottom line. Learn how to train yourself for profit.

Mentioned in This Episode:

Clio Legal Trends Report

Lawpay

ClioCon 2026, Oct. 26-27, 2026

Legal Talk Network Unbillable Hour

…And of course Wimpy!

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Bobby Williams is passionate about helping legal professionals find the truth in data. His lengthy career traces back to his natural curiosity in college for all things technical. He taught himself how things work and how digital tools can be applied to data analysis and reveal the clues.

“My job is connecting people to insights,” Williams says, sharing how facts buried in the digital jungle can unearth underlying truths. The hard part is helping everyday people – attorneys, judges, and jurors – understand the process. “My job is to educate them.”

As a paralegal professional, you may not need to manage the digital trail. But Williams shares tips for learning about what’s out there and the available services so you can help your team understand what they need and the kind of experts who can help.

The digital tools around us are here to stay. Cell phones, laptops, cloud storage, digital records management, and even AI hold clues and are part of our lives. That means they are now part of your legal process. If you (and your firm) aren’t keeping up, you’re falling behind.

Mentioned in This Episode:

Black eDiscovery Network

“The Journey to Becoming a Digital Forensics Expert with Bobby Williams,” iDSTalks YouTube

Perplexity AI

NotebookLM

Notion

Claude AI

Dashboard AI

NALA, The Paralegal Association

NALA Conference & Expo 2026

Subscribe to The Paralegal Voice: https://play.megaphone.fm/sq1e-saoq6ga2fue1-y_qw

Statistics show that 90-98% of both civil and criminal cases across the nation are resolved before trial. With seemingly fewer cases reaching a jury, how do we, as legal professionals, preserve a deep appreciation for the jury’s role in our systems of justice? Rocky Dhir welcomes Judge Les Hatch and litigator Cade Browning to discuss our Constitutional right to trial by jury and its enduring importance in our society.

They discuss the virtues of jury trials and their function in our judicial system, then share best practices for jury selection and trial preparation.

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