Wall Street Journal

"The other problem of the lawyerly society is a systematic bias toward the well-off. Lawyers are too often servants of the rich. They help wealthy homeowners block construction projects or get creative with their taxes. It is sometimes puzzling to follow along intellectual property cases, many of which seem to be a thrilling game invented for lawyers. American judges have to deal with bewildering disputes, like hedge funds pursuing sovereign governments on debt payments. Litigation offers endlessly tantalizing possibilities for settling scores. And motivated parties are willing to pay top dollar for superstar lawyers. Lawyers aren’t just defenders of the rich; many of them *are* the rich. “[On Wall Street, Lawyers Make More Than Bankers Now](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor290)” was a headline from the *Wall Street Journal* in 2023. “[Pay for Lawyers Is So High People Are Comparing It to the NBA](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor291)” claimed the *New York Times* in 2024."

"As senators fought against the findings of their own committee, Koch put another piece of its plan into place. The biggest threat wasn’t emanating from the Senate but from the courts and the US Attorney’s office, two institutions that could not be influenced by campaign donations or lobbyists. In response, Koch initiated a long-term plan to reshape America’s judiciary system. Ron Howell founded an obscure nonprofit group called Oklahomans for Judicial Excellence. It did something unheard of: it started grading local judges based on their fealty to free-market economic theory. The group created scorecards for state judges, measuring how well their verdicts conformed with the teachings of Hayek and von Mises. The group publicized these rankings with public opinion articles published in places like the Daily Oklahoman. The grading system created a way to embarrass judges in the local press by publicizing their low scores. Koch Industries also offered them a way to escape this embarrassment: the company sponsored a series of free seminars that judges could attend if they received poor grades from Koch’s rating system. The seminars were not held in stuffy classrooms. Koch Industries paid for judges to travel to a ski resort in Utah or a beachfront condominium, among other locations, relaxing places where the judges might be more open to Koch’s message. The company held lectures that emphasized the importance of market forces in society, and warned against the consideration of things like “junk science” that plaintiffs often used to prove corporate malfeasance. The seminars were well attended, sometimes by more than sixty judges at a time. A Kansas state district court judge named Michael Corrigan attended a Koch-sponsored seminar at the Sundial Beach Resort in Sanibel, Florida, and another at the University of Kansas; in between these seminars he handled two cases involving Koch Industries without disclosing the potential conflict of interest, according to an account later published in the Wall Street Journal. The junkets that it organized might have been disclosed or even regulated if they were enjoyed by other public officials, such as members of Congress. But there were no such restraints on treating judges to all-paid vacations, perhaps because no one had thought to organize such events on such a large scale before. Koch’s efforts to sway judges evolved over many years. By 2016, it had transformed into a new program that offered free seminars to judges called the Law & Economics Center, which was housed at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, along with Koch’s free-market think tank, the Mercatus Center. The Law & Economics Center claimed to have hosted more than four thousand state and federal judges from all fifty states at its seminars."

"As senators fought against the findings of their own committee, Koch put another piece of its plan into place. The biggest threat wasn’t emanating from the Senate but from the courts and the US Attorney’s office, two institutions that could not be influenced by campaign donations or lobbyists. In response, Koch initiated a long-term plan to reshape America’s judiciary system. Ron Howell founded an obscure nonprofit group called Oklahomans for Judicial Excellence. It did something unheard of: it started grading local judges based on their fealty to free-market economic theory. The group created scorecards for state judges, measuring how well their verdicts conformed with the teachings of Hayek and von Mises. The group publicized these rankings with public opinion articles published in places like the Daily Oklahoman. The grading system created a way to embarrass judges in the local press by publicizing their low scores. Koch Industries also offered them a way to escape this embarrassment: the company sponsored a series of free seminars that judges could attend if they received poor grades from Koch’s rating system. The seminars were not held in stuffy classrooms. Koch Industries paid for judges to travel to a ski resort in Utah or a beachfront condominium, among other locations, relaxing places where the judges might be more open to Koch’s message. The company held lectures that emphasized the importance of market forces in society, and warned against the consideration of things like “junk science” that plaintiffs often used to prove corporate malfeasance. The seminars were well attended, sometimes by more than sixty judges at a time. A Kansas state district court judge named Michael Corrigan attended a Koch-sponsored seminar at the Sundial Beach Resort in Sanibel, Florida, and another at the University of Kansas; in between these seminars he handled two cases involving Koch Industries without disclosing the potential conflict of interest, according to an account later published in the Wall Street Journal. The junkets that it organized might have been disclosed or even regulated if they were enjoyed by other public officials, such as members of Congress. But there were no such restraints on treating judges to all-paid vacations, perhaps because no one had thought to organize such events on such a large scale before. Koch’s efforts to sway judges evolved over many years. By 2016, it had transformed into a new program that offered free seminars to judges called the Law & Economics Center, which was housed at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, along with Koch’s free-market think tank, the Mercatus Center. The Law & Economics Center claimed to have hosted more than four thousand state and federal judges from all fifty states at its seminars."

"Apple’s messaging wasn’t public, but if it had been, it would’ve turned received wisdom on its head. In 2017, a *Wall Street Journal* article had opined: “Longer term, though, Apple’s business is out of step with the Chinese government’s goal to reduce its dependence on expensive foreign technology, and facilitate the development of homegrown competitors like Huawei.” In fact, the opposite was true. The technology transfer that Apple facilitated made it the biggest corporate supporter of Made in China 2025, Beijing’s ambitious, anti-Western plan to sever its reliance on foreign technology."

"Take Your Questions to the Experts I use a three-part methodology for my research: I educate myself on the industry as thoroughly as possible, compile a list of questions that matter, and then do my best to get in front of the most knowledgeable experts I can find on each topic. It’s not a perfectly linear process, because more questions arise as I continue my research, but that’s the basic structure. I start by reading everything I can get my hands on—journals, periodicals, newspapers, trade publications, employee reviews on web-based recruiting sites, you name it. I look at all the websites and social media of the major players and the up-and-comers in the industry. I set Google Alerts for industry CEO names or other keywords, and I watch lots of YouTube interviews with CEOs. I also use paid services like Bloomberg, AlphaSense, and Thomson Reuters. In addition, I look at analyses from sell-side and buy-side analysts and search the SEC database—www.sec.gov/edgar—which has large amounts of information on every publicly traded U.S. company, including IPO documents, financial reports, and proxies. I also scope out the most valuable industry conferences and attend them if I can. Events like the Wall Street Journal’s The Future of Everything Festival and the Consumer…"

"Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the Economist, Barron’s, Fortune, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Forbes, along with more abstruse publications like American Banker and the International Railway Journal."