0:00:04: B: I'm sorry, which of us went to law school? We don't have to work with any lawyer we don't want. And that means you're fired.
0:00:24: B: Why is it only the witnesses must swear to tell the whole truth? Why isn't the same oath administered to the attorneys? And there he is. He's nothing. It's the emperor without clothes.
0:00:41: B: Welcome to Opening Arguments, the podcast where a comedian takes lawyers to court. Don't take ethics advice from Alan Dershowitz.
0:00:52: A: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. I'm your host Thomas Smith. And boy, does that feel good to say. Says this is episode 861. That can't be right. Seems high. Anyway, this is weird, to put it mildly. I have to imagine, given my year of being locked out of the show unlawfully, this may come as a shock to some folks. It's impossible to know, but I imagine there could be members of the audience who don't even know who I am. Although I think many people upon this latest disruption went and sought that information out. I still have to remember that many people just listen to a podcast to listen to a podcast and they don't Google or go deep or go to the subreddit or go to the Facebook group and do all that stuff. So that makes this a bit odd to start out. This is also really difficult because I've gone through the worst year of my life, to put it mildly, and I have incredibly intense feelings of resentment and anger over it.
0:01:48: But I also know that for those listening who don't have that personal stake, because it's a podcast once again, I have to resist the urge to fully lean into that as much as I feel like I'm pretty justified in doing so. I will do my best on that, but just know that there is a year of just absolute hell behind this that I'm doing my best to keep in check. And so to those who are very confused and don't even necessarily know who I am, Hi, I'm Thomas Smith, the co-creator, rightful co-owner, and previous and now current host of Opening Arguments. Now obviously there's so much that I can't say right now, and I'm constantly made aware that the best advice is to say nothing all the time to anyone ever. which is one of the many inhumanities of our legal system.
0:02:36: But in super duper brief, one year ago, gosh, almost exactly, Andrew unlawfully seized control of this podcast. If you want to find out more on this, but by no means the comprehensive story, nobody knows that comprehensive story. I know more of it than anyone, but nobody knows everything. There is so much, so much that you all don't know. But if you want a start, you can look up legal filings, you can go to the subreddit, you can get caught up on a lot of why that happened. But after a series of victories in court, I'm back. The first one was not immediately relevant, but it was defeating Andrew's anti-slap because, among other things, I sued him for defamation. He attempted an anti-slap to have that dismissed and he lost. Then more recently and more immediately relevant to what's going on, we went to the court to seek a receiver.
0:03:25: And what that means is it's kind of a weird word for in this case, essentially a third vote because opening arguments, LLC never had a written contract, despite one of the members being a contracts lawyer and also had no provisions to resolve ties. This does not mean that the remedy for any ties is for one owner to unlawfully seize control of everything. Certainly not how that's resolved. And the court overwhelmingly agreed with our reasoning, with our arguments, and that's victory number two. Our receiver motion was granted. That was back in December when it was ultimately approved by the court, but the court decided to give Andrew's side a chance to nominate their pick. They did so and on January 25th, our pick of Yvette D'Entremont, also known as the Cy-Babe Online, you may be familiar with Yvette, was approved and appointed by the judge as receiver and the third tie-breaking vote in the company.
0:04:21: I cannot thank Yvette enough for taking on this task. She's a model of integrity and I know she's taking her duties incredibly seriously and will do a fantastic job. But for now to that segment of the audience who maybe just wants a legal podcast and doesn't care about any of this, you're in luck because it just so happens that I'm the co-creator of a very excellent legal podcast. and I intend to bring that back to you. And so if that's all you're interested in, truly, you can skip the rest of this episode if you'd like. Go to patreon.com slash law and get the first legal episode that will be out early for patrons. As much as this is my entire life, I know there's a lot of people who, hey, they just want a podcast. And you know what? I just want to give you a podcast, if that's you. It's going to be excellent. The first one is getting to know Matt Cameron, a lawyer who actually came on away back in the day.
0:05:11: He's the managing partner of a Boston law firm specializing in deportation defense, asylum, something called criminal migration, which we talk about in the first episode, and criminal defense. He's been practicing law since 2006. and he teaches immigration policy at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. I am so excited to bring Matt's perspective to the show. It's one way that I think OA will be better than ever, which is that Matt is a criminal defense attorney with real experience. He's also someone who, and this is very refreshing, is using the law to try to do good. Again, I can't wait for you here the first episode. We go through some of Matt's cases, some of that he's proud of, and some that are big regrets, and show you the tragedy that is our immigration system and the capriciousness involved in our criminal justice system.
0:06:02: He's got real experience with all of that and I cannot wait to bring it to bear on the most pressing legal news issues of our time. Many of which, you might note, involve the criminal trial, zeh, parentheses S, the criminal trials of one Donald J. Trump. So having an actual criminal attorney or two on the show is going to be invaluable for that kind of thing. But Matt is also someone like me who really values diversity and trying to highlight as many voices as we can that are providing valuable insight that you might not get other places. And so it is our intention to bring on a wide array of expert legal guests. I'm also really excited to announce the return of Thomas takes the bar exam. This is a segment that many online have been clamoring for. I miss it so much.
0:06:48: It's a lot of fun. Another improvement I'm really excited to make is to pull back a little bit, not entirely, but pull back from the constant focus on everything Trump and Trump trial. Obviously, Trump is always going to be a component of the show. But what I think really made OA great was not just coverage of the big legal stories in the news, but those deep dives, those sort of evergreen legal deep dives that were usually the Monday show that got into an area of the law. It might not be in the news now, but it's something relevant, something fascinating. I can't wait to get back to that format. And so the schedule going forward is going to be three episodes a week. Monday, the deep dive. Wednesday, T3BE standalone and patron shout outs, et cetera. We're going to give some time on that to let things settle, but I think we're going to experiment with how long that goes and add questions.
0:07:36: So it won't just be one T3BE. We can possibly do multiple and see how we want to run that format, but that'll be fun. Little standalone show in the middle. And then the rapid response Friday that will try to cover those stories that are the most relevant and that we see other people perhaps getting wrong. That's another thing OA did really well. And for that first Friday show back, I'm very excited to bring you not only Matt Cameron, but Matt's partner Casey, who is a prosecutor at the state level for more than 15 years. So experience from both sides, both defense and prosecution expertise on that. And that first Friday rapid response episode is about Fannie Willis and what's going on there. Allegations of impropriety. You've likely heard some of it, but really getting in deep to what that means, what happened, What we can expect going forward again from a place of real experience.
0:08:27: It's a great episode. Can't wait for you all to hear it. So if you are just here for the law podcast and again, no worries if you are I want to give you that that's what's happening going forward. I will be bringing you opening arguments primarily at first with Matt Cameron. but also looking to add in talent, find what works, broaden the scope of who you hear from. And we will be bringing you three episodes a week, Monday Deep Dive, Wednesday T3BE, Thomas takes the bar exam, and Friday Rapid Response. We're going to make it great. We're going to make this the show that you all deserve. And if you are someone who hasn't followed all this from like a deeply personal level, I would just ask you to give me the chance to make opening arguments for you. Again, I was half of it in its creation and I know what works. I know what made it good. So I hope you'll stick around, pledge at patreon.com slash law and let's move forward.
0:09:15: I have seen some folks online in various spaces making this into something that it absolutely wasn't. Here's what this never was about. This never was about who's a better podcaster. This never was about who did what on the show. People parrot language from Andrew's filings talking about how I didn't prepare content for the show as a knock against me in my role. I want to note that you won't see me do any such thing in my filings. I don't deny that Andrew was an immense podcasting talent. If you loved OA, with Andrew and Thomas. I'm not here to take that away from you. I loved it too. The show was great. A lot of people just on a human level need to rewrite history and try to knock down the other side as much as they can, maybe by claiming the other side had no role in the podcast's greatness.
0:10:05: You won't see me do that. I was a huge fan of opening arguments and the best outcome would have been if Andrew never did what he did. And if we could be making OA, classic OA how it always was, that would have been awesome. But that's no longer the best thing for the show or the company. I think there's a misconception among some, perhaps I don't know how many, but some online that this is some ego match between Andrew and I for who's the better podcaster. It's just not about that. It's about fairness and decency. Those are core principles of the show and they are things that we all thought Andrew stood for. We all thought he stood for fairness. The main conceit of the show was how much could I, just a guy, but with a sense of fairness and reasonably rational person, how much could I predict what the law, that was one of the main things we like to talk about.
0:10:54: How much could I predict what the law would be based on just reasoning it through from a fairness perspective. I loved that about the show. And often that gets you pretty far. Might not get you all the little technical minutiae, otherwise they couldn't charge so much for law school. But it would get you a lot of the way. I believed in that. I hope you'll trust me to do everything I can to recreate that lightning in a bottle. I know what made OA good. And the answer isn't me. I'm not going to try to be a legal expert for you all. That would be silly. But there are many legal experts out there. And I think we can rebuild better than ever. I think we can bring in more relevant experience. And furthermore, this awful year of fighting in this awful system has given me a little bit of perspective. And I'm looking forward to bringing that to you all, but also using that perspective editorially in what we cover.
0:11:44: The law can be awful. It can be a tool for abuse, oppression, you name it. It can be horrible. It can also be used for good, or maybe more accurately, in order to do good and to help people who need it, we need to understand how they are being abused by the law and how the system fails. So there's still plenty of room for optimism, for change, for making the world a better place, and for teaching the law and learning the law as a tool to do that and to have fun with it. There is still plenty of room for that. But I think there's also more room than perhaps was previously given for a little bit of educated cynicism about the law. or if not cynicism, realism about the law and how it's used and learning more about that angle of it too. And that's why Matt is so great as a first guest host expert.
0:12:33: He has seen it. He has seen and defended people being deported and otherwise abused by the system. And there is so much more to learn along those lines. I can't wait. to bring that to you all and to me. But opening arguments is back and I truly believe we can make it better than ever. I really hope you'll come along for that journey. We have a lot of damage to try to repair. We have a lot of trust to try to earn back here. I'm really excited to announce that for the time being, any and all profit above the cost of operating the show will go toward repair and accountability. I'm excited to work with the management of the company to flesh that out more in the future, but we are committing that for the time being any profit over and above the cost of operating the show will go toward rebuilding that trust.
0:13:18: More on that to come and we'll of course update you on any big donations or anything we do and I'm excited for that. I think it's absolutely necessary to rebuild your trust and it's the least we can do. Many times throughout this whole thing, I've been asked by some of you amazing listeners what you could do to help. And I appreciate that so much, even though it's likely I wasn't even able to respond to a lot of that outreach for various reasons. But I want to tell you, you can do something now. This is an ongoing dispute. It is my position that the patrons overwhelmingly showed us by voting with their wallets at the very least what Andrew did in seizing the show was wrong and in refusing to take a step back and give us any sort of real accountability. Help show the court, help show the receiver whose duty is to the business.
0:14:05: Help show that the right thing to do for the business was also the right thing to do morally. Please support the show at patreon.com slash law. Help show that Andrew Torres was not opening arguments. Opening arguments is more than that. You can have a hand in making that case. I hope you'll do that. I hope there's still time to reach many people who might've left. That's another thing you can do if you'd like to help. Please spread the word about the new direction of the show. Spread the word and please support the show. Patreon.com slash law. I promise I will also make it worth it to you content wise. We've got lots of plans. This dispute is ongoing and everything is evidence. So if you'd like to be a part of it, that's how you can do it. Patreon.com slash law.
0:14:51: Check out that first episode with Matt. We'll have it up for everybody very soon, but patrons as always will get an early peek and ad free shows, the usual goodies, lots of great stuff over on patreon.com slash law. Looking forward to it. And with that, I only have one thing to say.
0:15:07: B: This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved. It is produced and edited by Thomas Smith, who also provided the fabulous intro and outro music used with permission.