OA1: "The Story Begins" – Introducing the Show & Segments

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:01:18 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. How are you doing, Andrew?

0:01:22 Andrew: I'm great Thomas, how are you?

0:01:24 Thomas: I'm doing great. This is episode one. We, we had the, I had the brilliant idea, or was it Andrew's? I don't know. Somebody had the idea to do an introductory episode for people who are new to the show, new to us, might be finding us from not my 40 other podcasts, might becoming completely, you know, fresh to us. So I thought, let's do an introductory show.

0:01:51 Andrew: Yeah, I think that's a great idea, and Thomas, why don't you tell everybody a little bit about yourself, since they're not coming from one of your 40 different podcasts.

0:01:51 Thomas: Sure.

0:02:00 Thomas: Sure. Let's get me out of of the way. I don't have as much to say. I didn't go to an illustrious law school or anything, so it'll be quick. My name's Thomas Smith, and I have several other podcasts, Atheistically Speaking, Thomas and the Bible, Comedy Shoeshine. I've been podcasting for quite a while, and I would say in terms of any sort of qualifications, though, I don't really need to have any because Andrew has all of those. He's got the qualifications side covered. My qualifications are, I did go to, I actually do have a business degree and I did take a few business law courses. So I'm, I would say I'm a, if Andrew's an expert in legal matters and, and versus someone who is a complete newbie, I'm like a newbie 0.2 or something like a, just a very, just gently, slightly over toward to the right of that scale.

0:02:54 Thomas: So, but, but that doesn't really matter because I've forgotten it all. But uh, but you know, I am somewhat familiar with some of these concepts, but uh, and I, let's see, what else should I say? I started uh, my foray into podcasting was, I decided I wanted to read the Bible because I had never read it, and it was back in like 2010 when podcasts were still somewhat new, and I thought, well, you know, if I'm going to read it, I might as well read it and also just give my thoughts and record it, and maybe somebody will listen to it. And for a while, wow, that's about what it was. Like maybe someone was listening to it. It was just me reading it, like 15 people were listening. It was kind of funny. But I just always thought of it as like, I'll just do it and whatever happens, happens.

0:03:39 Thomas: And it really paid off because eventually the guys over at Cognitive Dissonance found me and that gave me a huge boost and just went from there. And then I wanted to start Atheistically Speaking because I wanted to talk about issues that weren't just limited to the boring Bible, the boringest of all books ever. And I would put the Bible against any sort of legal document too, because we could have an argument about that sometime. But at least a legal document has some use, like I might be able to, oh, I'm learning something. But so that's why I went into Atheistically Speaking. And from there, I had Andrew on and a star was born. And that's why we're here, because people were so thrilled by Andrew's episodes where he came and explained things like the Second Amendment, Scalia, and why he's actually an activist justice, even though he accused other people of doing that.

0:04:37 Thomas: Just really interesting stuff. So much demand for it that we wanted to start another podcast or people wanted us to. And so here we are. So that's me. That's a quick, get me out of the way. Now let's hear about our expert. Andrew, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?

0:04:52 Andrew: Sure, um, I thought the story of of how you and I got together, uh, was a great one, uh, and it it tracks how I found you, which was I started off at the T and the B podcast and really enjoyed that.

0:05:07 Thomas: Oh, you did. I was, I didn't know you'd heard that one.

0:05:09 Andrew: Yeah, yeah. And then I went from there and I said, boy, this guy's pretty good, and got into Atheistically Speaking, which, I mean, let me just plug, is one of the things you're doing that's really, really interesting. I don't know anybody else that has the range of guests that you have on Atheistically Speaking, and you really go out of your way to bring in experts to cover a wide variety of topics that are of interest, that really goes beyond sort of just atheism as a topic and goes to evolutionary psychology and goes to um, sorts of issues, I mean, that was a recent episode that I, I enjoyed a lot yeah you know the uh the Chicago policing episode. I mean, it was just, uh, you've done a lot of really really cool stuff, and and so I enjoyed being on the podcast. Um, what about me, uh, I am uh, a lawyer based in Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. I'm admitted in both Maryland and D.C. I graduated from Harvard Law School with honors in 1997, clerked, yeah,

0:05:51 Thomas: Right. Theoretical physics or yeah, no, totally. Law. Yeah.

0:06:19 Thomas: Hold on. I'm sorry. I'm going to do, I'm getting to slip into interview mode now. I just realized why not? So what, what made you want to get into law? When did you first know that this was something you wanted to do? Or when did your parents force you to? No, I'm just kidding.

0:06:19 Andrew: I know.

0:06:29 Andrew: So when I, no, neither of my parents completed college. They are both truly self-made professionals, professionals, and, um, it's, uh, I could, I could go on. I'm

0:06:37 Thomas: Wow. So you're telling me you're the first, your parents didn't go to college, didn't complete college rather, and you graduated from Harvard Law with honors. That's a pretty good step up, I'd say, And

0:06:43 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. It was, uh, I mean, they were, my parents were super supportive of me when I was a kid. I, I started school early, I skipped a grade, I was really, really young and really, you know, kind of geeky. I was 15 when I started my senior year of high school. Like it was It was crazy.

0:07:09 Thomas: Oh, wow. Huh?

0:07:10 Andrew: Yeah, and, you know, and I was straight a student and, and all that. And so getting into law school was kind of like what I thought as a kid that smart people did. Right. I didn't really know a lot about the practice of the practice of law, but, um. You know, that's that's kind of what I was doing. And my early life was really guided by that. So, you valedictorian at undergraduate college. I went to George Washington, got a degree in political communications and then went off to Harvard. Did well at Harvard, left that, had a clerkship for the Maryland State Supreme Court, which is called the Court of Appeals, and completed that. Went to Covington and Burling, which is one of the largest, most prestigious law firms in the country. Again, I'm not saying this to pat myself on the back, but that was sort of when I was up until my mid twenties, right? I was still in that straight A student kind of mindset, right. And it was less about understanding what I wanted to do with my life

0:07:24 Thomas: Yeah. How stupid of you. No, I'm just kidding.

0:08:13 Thomas: Right.

0:08:14 Andrew: And more about, you know, I still got to get an A. And all of a sudden I was three or four years in at Covington, and I was talking with a friend late one night, and there wasn't really any one question or moment, but that night it sort of hit me of, you know, I'm not in school. I'm not turning in papers anymore. There's nobody to give me an A anymore.

0:08:35 Thomas: Yeah.

0:08:37 Andrew: It's kind of a question of what do you want to do with your life? And so what I wanted to do with my life then was I wanted I wanted to the best lawyer I could. And I felt like the problem with being at Covington, it's a fantastic firm with some of the smartest lawyers in the universe. So I have nothing bad to say about them. But it is,

0:08:58 Thomas: Do they have a podcast?

0:08:59 Andrew: No, they do not.

0:09:01 Thomas: No, exactly.

0:09:02 Andrew: They have a, they I don't know who's stuck running their social media, but, uh, but they staff cases, right? Like, you know, there were 18 lawyers on a case and, you know, in going from first year to fourth year there, I moved up from lawyer number 18 to lawyer number 15. And I, I kind of wanted to be lawyer number one or lawyer number two, you know? So I left Covington and I went to a slightly smaller, but still, um, you know, really fantastic firm in both, uh D C and Baltimore. We've got offices in New York and Florida as well called Zuckerman Spader. And I spent 12 years there. I became a partner. I was listed, I'm still listed by Benchmark Magazine as one of the top lawyers in the state of Maryland. So, you know, really doing that, that part of professional building. And then I realized that as I was getting better at what I was doing, being in the big firm environment was really pricing me out of doing the kind of things that I wanted to do.

0:09:04 Thomas: Oh. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

0:10:07 Andrew: Right. So, yeah, no, I mean that like the firm was billing out my time at 600, 625, $650 an hour. Just, yeah. No, just, yeah it just outraged. And so I would meet, like I grew up just outside of Baltimore. So you know, my, my friends and my colleagues and people I know are all in the Baltimore area. And I would meet with people and they would say, wow, I think you can really help me out. You know, what do you charge? And I would say well, you know, the firm requires a $25,000 retainer and I charge $650 an hour and you know people would literally choke, right? They would have that reaction. Just So about almost two years ago now, right at the end of 2014, beginning of 2015, I very amicably you know wound up being a partner at Zuckerman, told them that I wanted to go off on my own, uh, and started my own firm, which is the law offices of P. Andrew Torrez. Um, And that's been great.

0:10:07 Thomas: Do you mean pricing it like time-wise? Oh, literally.

0:11:02 Andrew: And it's been great because I can do all the things that, uh I wanted to do. I can, uh be active in communities that are important to me. I can meet, uh business people, small businesses, and you know, I can say, hey, look, I get it that you're starting a business and, you know, the idea of giving a lawyer a $25,000 retainer to stick in a non-interest bearing account. I mean, that, I mean that's just crazy. You know, I had people who would say, I will pay you for your services up front, but you know we're a startup. I'm not, I can't give you 25 grand. And, and the firm wouldn't let me do that, you know? Um, and, and having the opportunity to say, you know, yeah, I want to, I want to work and I want to partner with, you you know, people sort of at every stage, you know. It's great, you know, and I have some big clients.

0:11:51 Andrew: And if, you know, if you're the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and you're out there listening and, you know, you're not happy with your current legal representation, I'm, I love working for big clients, I also love the opportunity and flexibility to work with people in my community. And I can do that now. So, yeah, yeah.

0:12:10 Thomas: Here's the thing. I have a bunch of stuff that I want to say, and I just realized I have legal question for you based on what you just said. I'm going to ask it because we're going to get to segments which are questions. We got a lot of cool segments for you in this episode, but I do want to ask, based on that, what is the legality of charging people different amounts for essentially the same thing? So with, if you and I, it seems like it must be fine because obviously there are deals made every day, you know, not everyone pays the same price for everything, but but if for you, example, for example, when you say to someone, so, oh, well, I can only afford this, you know, uh, and you essentially say, okay, I'll do it for that, and you're doing the same service for different amounts for different people, is that totally kosher, totally fine?

0:12:17 Andrew: Nice.

0:12:54 Andrew: Yeah. The ethical rule is that there must be open and full communication between the lawyer and the client. But in the legal world, you know, a lot of people are moving. One of the major trends of the last 20 years is people are going to be moving away from the traditional pay-by-the-hour arrangement, which is still, I mean, that's still my default.

0:13:17 Thomas: Well, let me, I suppose

0:13:18 Andrew: Fault, yeah. Go go ahead, yeah, yeah,

0:13:18 Thomas: I was trying to broaden it to like just commerce in general. I mean, can I sell a guy a product, one person a product for X amount and another person the exact same product, but I offer them a different price? You know, is that, is dat, does that border on price discrimination or whatever?

0:13:30 Andrew: I mean, So, so, so long as that differentiation does not discriminate against a protected class, right? Like, yeah, so that would be a real problem if, you know, you charged, you know, African Americans one rate and, you know, other races another rate, or, you know, you charge men one rate and women another rate. But But discounting your services is, uh, is perfectly legal.

0:13:39 Thomas: Oh, but if, but so we could find some not protected classes to discriminate against though. So if I would, if I want to charge gamers like a billion dollars, cause I don't like gamers or something, there's nothing anyone can do. Huh.

0:13:58 Andrew: Well, and sure. I mean, in that, you know, we've talked about this in some of our past episodes, but I mean mean that's where our economy sort of draws the line between that libertarian principle of we want you to be able to do business with whomever you want to do business versus from a social perspective we don't want to entrench discrimination, right?

0:14:25 Thomas: Right.

0:14:26 Andrew: So, and the way you look at that is yeah, if you, you know, so you could easily form a class if you said you could not discriminate against any class of persons, right? Then, um, I mean that would be, you know, an incredible level of micromanagement in the economy because, you know, does, when you buy a hotel, you know, the day of, because they're underbooked and you get it, you get the room for half price because they'd rather have that than say, you know, are they, are you now discriminating against the people who could afford to pay full freight? You know, I mean, airlines obviously are the masters of that. They have entire algorithms of, you now, how they can sell three seats in a row for three different prices.

0:14:49 Thomas: Right? Yeah. Yeah.

0:15:06 Andrew: I mean wildly different prices, um, I, I don't, I don't view it that way in, in, terms of the market for legal services. Um, but, uh, yeah,

0:15:08 Thomas: So that. Right, So this is this is a perfect example of why I love the show and I can't wait going forward is this. I just, I am genuinely interested in this stuff, and I think a lot of people are too. Too. So I want to ask you this. This may, now I get it, this may be a weird sort of hypothetical. But what if, OK, you're P. Andrew Torrez, you're operating as a lawyer, you strike some deals with different people because you're trying to accommodate whatever.

What if a year goes by and it just so happens, it turns out total accident from you, but the people you happen to charge less for happen to fall into one category that's a protected class, and people you just so so happened to charge more for didn't or something like that. What's the level of, do you have to have like intent?

Do you have prove, you know, like you were doing it on purpose, or is it just like, oh shoot, I gave three people in a row a bargain, they all happen to be white or something, for example, you know, like what's the burden of proof there?

0:15:15 Andrew: Yeah.

0:16:06 Andrew: Yeah. And and in that situation, the lack of intent would not be an absolute defense. Right. Like if if you have if you are systematically discriminating against a group of people or in favor of a group of people, the fact that you didn't intend to do that is not an absolute bar. I mean, the actual, you know, evaluating that question, I think, you you know, would require a pretty in-depth answer that we don't need to get down. But I think that's sort of where you were going is, you know does intent trump everything else?

0:16:29 Thomas: Hmm. Sure. Sure. Right.

0:16:40 Andrew: And in that case, no it doesn't. And I think rightfully so because we recognize that a large aspect of discriminatory behavior is, unconscious racism that we need to engage in consciousness raising. And the law to to some extent, reflects that. I mean, believe me, in no way am I saying that the law is not lagging behind society in a lot of ways, but it also does reflect.

0:16:55 Thomas: Right. Right. All right. I will stop trying to sidetrack us, but I will say, cause We are running out of time, but I can relate so much to your story, actually. More than you might think, because maybe we had, I don't know, who knows, maybe we had similar parents or something. But I definitely felt the same thing of, okay, I'm just doing whatever I can in school that makes my parents think I'm good at school or achieving. And the only difference, like I actually, besides I doubt I would have had the talent that you have for law, but the only different is that I don't think my parents or anybody ever gave me the idea that law was what smart people did. But like that might be the only difference, really, because I went into business and accounting because I thought like, oh, that's the way that that's that's what a smart person would do to make money, you know, but like that's all it was is like, well, I'm doing really well in school.

0:17:06 Andrew: Yep. No, no, no. Good.

0:17:56 Thomas: What do I do? I guess I do this. And it's funny because I had the same thing. And I bet you I would be having more of a kind of an existential crisis if it weren't for the fact that podcasting has really given me an outlet to say, oh, okay, I can just do this as my hobby and one day maybe it'll be my main job. But if not for podcasting, I would be sitting in some job or my current job or whatever and thinking, wow, did I really just do all this because I thought this is what I should do and whatever and didn't really give any thought to what I wanted to do. So I really related to that. I just wanted to say that.

0:18:30 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean I think you have a tremendous talent podcasting, for interviewing, viewing for sharing your opinion, I mean, I, it uh, I don't know, not, I don't know, I know that I would not want to be sitting talking into a microphone expressing my opinions to nobody, uh, and willing to and willing to put it out there.

0:18:53 Thomas: It does get a little little tough sometimes. I would say the shows where I express a lot of opinions, that's when I dread kind of the next morning waking up to all the notifications. Like, I'm just like, oh, great. Let's see what, let's see if I accidentally said something wrong or, you know, it is a little tough. But I think we got to get to our awesome segments.

0:19:05 Andrew: Like that's Okay. Yeah.

0:19:16 Clip: He who questions training, only trains himself at asking questions. What?

0:19:24 Thomas: Here's our first segment. We're going to kind of introduce the segments to we're introducing all the segments we currently have planned. Then we may add more. We'll see. But first segment, pretty simple. Listener questions. I mean, that's a basic one right there. And it's a perfect one for this show because Andrew always has a good answer. And its stuff that people honestly are just wrong about. Do you find that people are just wrong? Do you think people are wrong about

0:19:26 Andrew: Well, You Know, no, no more than, uh, than then anybody is, you know, wrong about an area where they lack expertise. I mean, the areas that I think we're going to get into are that, you know, there's a lot of media about the law. So a lot, you know, there are TV shows and movies and books and everything else. And I don't really know why that is because, I mean, it's not that fascinating a profession.

0:20:16 Thomas: Right. Well, they always exaggerate and make it more fascinating than it is.

0:20:19 Andrew: Well, right. But I mean if you can exaggerate, I I mean, you could take accounting and be like, you know, we're going to we're going to go through extreme forensic accounting. And, you Know, why? I mean. But see, right.

0:20:20 Thomas: Yeah. Hey, you know, that would be kind of interesting, actually.

0:20:30 Andrew: I mean think about like, You know, you've you've got you're following a divorce case. And instead of following instead of doing Kramer versus Kramer and you follow the lawyers like, you know follow the forensic accountant who is, you know, digging through to figure out where the assets are being hidden and that sort of thing. And, it would require creative

0:20:30 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:20:46 Thomas: Would you say, I would say the, what is it, the untouchables? Is that the closest?

0:20:48 Andrew: Liberties, but right.

0:20:52 Thomas: Although that was kind of an afterthought. The guy's just like, hey, we can get them on taxes, and then that was was it. But yeah, yeah.

0:20:56 Andrew: Right. It, it is, it is, uh, that area is, is actually true. I took my, my criminal law class, uh my substantive, uh criminal law class was taught by Dershowitz and, um, so there's a name drop for you. Um, and I vividly remember we had a full day of class that was dedicated to the question of, um, you are a drug dealer, uh, and how do you avoid, uh, getting caught for taxation?

0:21:20 Thomas: Yeah. Ooh, we did that too. But in my tax class, see? Tax accounting. Wow. That's so funny. We talked about that a lot. And I formed a plan.

0:21:26 Andrew: Uh-huh. There you go. And did they, did they tell you the Dershowitz? Did they tell You the Dershowitz solution?

0:21:32 Thomas: Oh, what's the Oh no. Shoot. Should we, I don't know if we have time for this today. Should we tease this for later or should we?

0:21:37 Andrew: Uh, yes. Let's tease it for later. That's an excellent idea. This is a, this is another recurring feature of Opening Arguments, uh, that we will tease questions

0:21:40 Thomas: Okay. Perfect. Later episode. Episode. Hey, that's just a sign of a good podcast. I'm telling you, there's a lot of podcasts where you're not necessarily itching for there's going to be another great... This one is not that. There's always another great topic. Okay, let's get to our listener question. It's so easy to just talk nonstop with Andrew. It really is. But Eric Brewer asks, is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the constitution.

0:22:11 Andrew: And and the short answer to that is no, it's in the Declaration of Independence, but but part of why I took the question was, um, to clarify the roles

0:22:19 Thomas: Yeah, we all knew that, Eric. Definitely.

0:22:20 Andrew: Yeah no no, no, and I, and Eric was, Eric was setting us up, he is, uh, part of the reason he's got the first question here is, you know, he's been He's been an early supporter of the show and a longtime participant. He's engaged with us on social media.

0:22:36 Thomas: And I mix up the two documents all the time. I think I've done that on my show and been like, oh yeah, crap, you're right. I meant the other one.

0:22:43 Andrew: Yeah. And so that's why I seized on it, because those words are in the Declaration of Independence. And the Declaration of Independence is a document of zero legal force. You can cite it for persuasive reasons. You can site it because historically it embodies certain principles and values. And I think that's true. But it has absolutely zero legal effect. And it's something that you will see in debates when one side is trying to win a debate in the court of public opinion over a legal topic saying, you know, well, but the Declaration of Independence says X, Y or Z is is often a recourse that that people will go to when when they don't have a specific.

0:23:35 Thomas: A last ditch effort.

0:23:36 Andrew: Specific. Yeah, because it because it sounds good. And you think about it and you think like, well, it at least legally, you know, separated us from. No, no, no. It's just I mean, literally, it's just a letter. Right. And and it and it, you know, it means nothing. And it was not it was not ratified or in or included in uh our constitution or our founding documents.

0:23:37 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah?

0:23:57 Andrew: Uh In Any Way

0:23:56 Thomas: Well, this is a topic for a later date, but separation of church and state, possibly similar idea, right? But we won't to talk about it now. Another teaser.

0:23:58 Andrew: Yep Yep Another teaser, correct.

0:24:07 Thomas: Excellent. So that answers that question. It's not in there and it doesn't really have, even though it's in a document, it doesn't really have any legal standing, sounds like. You can't use it to adjudicate anything. All right. Well, that's great. I like that. Keep those questions coming. Thanks, Eric. Eric's been very supportive. Definitely. I want to echo that. And also everybody, like we've gotten, you've started a a few threads on Facebook. And we've gotten tons of questions. I'm so excited to tackle all of them. And, we'll have to get to another one on a later episode in this segment. So, Ahead.

0:24:20 Andrew: Yeah.

0:24:40 Andrew: And and hit Hit us, hit us with those, uh, you know, wherever you see us asking, you can also send an email to openarguments@gmail.com, uh, and Thomas and I both read that and we will go through and uh add you to the hopper. And we are closing in our Patreon goal, I think it's our $300 Patreon goal that we are closing in on, is that we will answer at least one legal listener question for as long as we have them. We want to reach out to you that way, reach out to us.

0:25:00 Thomas: Absolutely.

0:25:10 Thomas: All Yeah, there's a million ways to contact us. Any of them work. I'll track it down.

0:25:17 Clip: Thank you, Dr. Hibbert. I rest my case. You rest your case? What? Oh, no. I thought that was just a figure of speech. Case closed.

0:25:27 Thomas: All Right. Here's a segment that we're calling calling closed arguments. I also wanted to call it the OA no-brainer because I thought that had a nice sound, but we'll go with closed arguments either way. These are going to be things where it's just things we found a couple examples of, and so it seems like we'll be able to do a segment on it. We'll see. Maybe people will get smarter and we won't. I guess they could eventually put that segment out of business, huh? But it's things that we've seen in the news that Andrew's seen where, for some reason, people are still debating something that they shouldn't be debating. Like, it's an obvious legal question that has an obvious answer, and still there's debate somehow.

0:26:08 Thomas: Right? Is that essentially the meaning of closed arguments?

0:26:08 Andrew: Yes, I wanted to call the segment, duh, but I was overruled.

0:26:15 Thomas: So, we've got three names. The three-name segment overruled. I like, well, duh, could be just the end of the segment. So, our first Closed Arguments segment is New Jersey. Now, how should we phrase this? Are you allowed to have a license plate that says atheist with an eight instead of an A, I guess. Atheist on your license plate. Are you aloud to get an atheist vanity plate? Or is someone allowed to block you from getting an atheist vanity plate? I guess would be another way of putting it.

0:26:51 Andrew: And this is a story, this was carried by the Associated Press. We've got the link to a New Jersey, uh nj.com, uh news site in the show notes. But there was a woman named Shannon Morgan in New Jersey who went online to pay for a vanity license plate and she wanted atheist. Why she didn't want atheist, I'm not sure, but she wanted the eight. Maybe.

0:27:16 Thomas: It's probably already taken.

0:27:18 Andrew: Yeah. Well, I mean, probably not.

0:27:19 Thomas: So that one got through somehow. Yeah,

0:27:21 Andrew: Yeah, probably not. Because she typed it in and the automated computer server said, no, you can't have that. That is may carry connotations offensive to good taste and decency. And so then Then Morgan, who really, really smart woman, decided that she was going to type in Baptist instead. And and the website said, sure, go right ahead. And so as a bright young woman, she said, I'm going to sue the state of New Jersey because obviously, you know, you're discriminating on the basis of religious beliefs here. I can I can put Baptist on the back of my car, but I can't put atheist. Atheist. That was two years ago. And a couple of days ago, the state and Ms. Morgan entered into a settlement. And as a result of the settlement, not only can she get her atheist license plate, but, quote, combinations that are substantially similar, such as secular, rational, humanist, atheism, godless, heathen, LGBTQ, pride. You know, there's like 30 or 40 of these that are Or the same kind of wheelhouse, state decided that they were going to allow as well.

0:27:39 Thomas: I'll say. Yeah.

0:28:35 Andrew: And this lawsuit was brought on behalf and supported by the Americans United for Separation of Church and State. I have supported AU in the past. They're a group out of Washington, D.C. that takes on cases like this. And it really is a no-brainer that if the state is going to allow you to express your religious beliefs on your license plate, that they can't say it's perfectly fine to say I'm a Baptist, but no way, it's offensive to basic human decency to say that you're an atheist. Question, I

0:29:09 Clip: If you ask a cop if he's a cop, he's like obligated to tell you. It's in the Constitution. Constitution of America?

0:29:19 Clip: So, I should go ahead and ask. You a cop?

0:29:24 Thomas: All right. Our next segment is going... Now, this is great. I like this because it's sort of like a self-titled album. You know, it's like when a band... Let's see what's a good example of a self title. I have to think. Blind Melon. See, that's one of my favorite bands from the 90s. Like when Blind Melon releases their first album and it's called Blind Melan, that's like, okay, there you go.

0:29:43 Andrew: And I was going to say, I was going to do the same thing with Boston. So that helps. So

0:29:47 Thomas: Perfect. So this segment is the self-titled, "Are You a Cop?" So the segment essentially is about a legal myth, something that the public, or probably me, maybe in some cases, has bought into as a myth about the law. And "Are You a Cop" is a perfect example, so let's do it. Debut album. I,

0:29:47 Andrew: Are you a cop? There was a long standing belief that although undercover police officers are allowed to engage in illegal conduct, and they can do whatever they can to insinuate themselves into a gang or, you know, group of drug dealers or whatever, that if you ask them point blank, "Hey, are you a cop," that they're required to answer honestly? And and this is, it's been a trope in TV shows and movies, and it just is completely false. An undercover police officer is allowed to lie to you. And in fact, that's their job, is to lie to you, uh, it

0:30:51 Thomas: Wonder if it's the cops that started this rumor, you know, in order to be, yeah, see

0:30:54 Andrew: It would not, it would not surprise me. The only line that they can't cross is they can't cross the line, uh, into entrapment, which I'll

0:31:02 Thomas: So Are you a cop, you can say no all you want, doesn't matter, because you're not a cop, but an actual cop can't also.

0:31:04 Andrew: Correct. Correct. I am. Keep listening.

0:31:10 Thomas: Or is Andrew an undercover cop? We don't know. We can't tell because if I ask him directly, he's still allowed to lie. So he might, yeah, he might be undercover. All right. And for our final segment of the day, breaking down the law. And And this is going to be a segment where we talk about something like a legal term or something, something like that, where we're just defining, I say we, where Andrew is defining a term for us, something like to that effect. So, the one for today is a question of law versus a question of fact, right?

0:31:28 Clip: The law breaking down

0:31:53 Andrew: Yes. And this is something that, you know, you will hear on TV shows, you will hear if you are unfortunate enough to be in our legal system a lawsuit. But a question of law is a question for the judge to decide. And it is given that the facts are a certain way, how does the law apply to those facts? And a question of fact is a dispute over whether something actually happened. So if I sue Thomas for assault, a question of fact, is did Thomas hit me? A question of law is once we've established that Thomas has hit me, does this sufficiently constitute assault? And the reason that it's important is at the moment that there are are no remaining questions of fact, then either party can move for summary judgment and say, look, there's nothing left for a jury to decide.

0:32:49 Andrew: We want a judge to decide this case. And that takes you out of the courtroom. And so you can imagine that, you know, particularly in tort cases, in cases where you have, you knows, a sympathetic victim and you really, really want want to be in front of a jury, if the defense is able to get to a point where there are no remaining questions of fact, they can take that case away from the jury. And so a large part of what goes on in, you know, particularly in my arena of commercial litigation, is the jockeying to try and get a case decided on summary judgment. Because, you Know, from a lawyer's perspective, perspective, always have some uncertainty about what a judge is going to do, but you always have much more uncertainty about What a jury is going to do. So if you can narrow and eliminate those questions of fact, and leave nothing but questions of law. That's what that's what I try and do in every case where I'm a defense attorney.

0:33:16 Thomas: Really? Huh. Sure.

0:33:48 Thomas: That's so interesting. I didn't know that. That, that's really cool. So well, while we have plenty more we could talk about, that does it for today's episode. And for our segments that we've introduced, they're going to be a lot of fun going forward. Andrew already has plenty more material for all of those segments. So I just want to let you guys know we went a little over time today, but we're generally limiting to 30 minutes until we reach a future Patreon goal, which will allow us to podcast for an hour each episode. So if you wish we could go into a little more depth on some of these things, hey, maybe make a pledge, get us to that goal, and we'll do an hour every week. So that's it for me today. Today. Anything more from you, Andrew?

0:34:29 Andrew: No, thank you very much. Keep the suggestions coming. Continue to visit our Patreon page patreon.com/law and uh and we appreciate all the support we've had so far and we have big plans for the future.

0:34:42 Thomas: All right. We need a fancy sign off. Like, well, until next time, stop breaking the law. We should have you seen liar, liar. That could be a good quote we could use for that. So until next time, start breaking the lie. Wait, do we decide? Are we an explicit podcast or not? We better decide that now. Clean, clean podcast.

0:34:45 Andrew: Right. Well, Since Since Since the first word in Bush v. Gore one is shit, I think we're, I think we're an explicit podcast.

0:35:11 Thomas: I don't know. Well, Well, we'll have to look at the legality of that, whether or not that qualifies. All right. Until next time, stop breaking the law, a-holes.

0:35:14 Andrew: Yeah, Yeah, Stop Breaking The law, asshole.

0:35:22 Thomas: We'll see you guys next time.