Modern Law Library

Discover books and stories that explore the law in new and surprising ways through eye-opening conversations with their authors. Whether it’s fiction or non-fiction that you seek, Modern Law Library features today’s top legal authors and delves into legal theories, historical events, true crime, and law-inspired storytelling. Join Lee Rawles twice a month as she opens up a new legal publication on Modern Law Library, a Lisagor Award-winning podcast.

Modern Law Library is a arts podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 268 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Unknown Host hosts Modern Law Library, a arts show with 268 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #267

  Where are America's hate speech laws?

  Sep 23, 202642 minS1

  "In most other countries, there are laws, criminal laws that prohibit the expression of racial hatred or incitement to racial hatred," says Samantha Barbas, author of Hate Speech: The Legal and Cultural History of an American Dilemma, in this episode of the Modern Law Library. "There are no hate speech laws in the United States, and that makes the U.S. a true exception, a true outlier in the world. And so my book was trying to get to the question, why did the U.S. take this unique path? How do we explain that historically? Where and when and why did we diverge from the path that was taken by most other countries?" World War II prompted a barrage of hate speech legislation after it ended, but not in the United States, Barbas tells host Lee Rawles. "We had just seen how totalitarian governments establish themselves through censorship," Barbas says. "There are two really important ideals that seem to be clashing in the post-war era. Many hate speech laws are proposed, but they are rejected or struck down on free speech grounds. So at this moment when Europe is adopting hate speech laws, America is going the other way: Proposing them, but then rejecting them, and that consensus in favor of freedom of speech is going to hold for several decades." In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Barbas and Rawles discuss how American courts and society have dealt with hate speech issues in the past, and how the growing awareness of psychological harm has impacted public attitudes about hate speech. They also explore Henry Ford and the Dearborn Independent, D. W. Griffith and Birth of a Nation, the Streisand Effect, and a series of cases about Illinois Nazis.

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  Episode #266

  Are you getting paid what you're really worth?

  Sep 9, 202641 minS1

  Vanessa Ugatti is the True Worth Expert, a UK-based international keynote speaker, transformational trainer and coach, and author of How to Get Paid Your True Worth Ethically, Without Selling Your Soul. Through her unique True Worth™ Methodology, Vanessa helps forward-thinking law firms and sole practitioners get paid their true worth ethically, without over-servicing, discounting or losing clients. “Lawyers are quite fearful people, certainly in the UK, and I’m imagining it’s probably not that much different in the States,” Ugatti tells Modern Law Library host Lee Rawles. "They're driven by fear. Fear of losing the client, fear of getting in trouble with their board. Just fear. And so they'll tend to focus on doing the legal work at the expense of the business–that comes second–and the expense of themselves." In her new book, How to Get Paid Your True Worth Ethically: Without Selling Your Soul (and Keeping Your Clients Happy!), Ugatti shares her methodology, based on the acronym TRUE WORTH. "Getting paid your true worth is not just about making enough revenue to have a sustainable life and business," says Ugatti. "It's also to make sure that you are well, you can supply the right work to your clients, and you can give them the level of service that they need." In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Ugatti outlines what each letter of TRUE WORTH stands for, and discusses her own journey towards having the confidence to value herself properly.

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  Episode #265

  We need to rein in Silicon Valley unicorns, says law prof

  Aug 5, 202654 minS1

  In Silicon Valley, a "unicorn" is a private startup with a net worth of $1 billion. As the term suggests, these were once incredibly rare creatures. Most startups would go public within 4-7 years, long before they had a $1 billion valuation. But two key pieces of legislation made the rare into the rampaging, starting in 1996. In her new book, Untamed Unicorns: Why Startup Finance is Broken and How to Fix It, Renée M. Jones warns that by staying private and shielded from oversight and disclosure, these startups could be endangering the stability of our financial system. Jones, who served as the director of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Corporation Finance under President Joe Biden, shows how these tactics were used (and misused) by startups like FTX, WeWork, Uber and Theranos. "One of the big concerns is that startups are taking advantage of the secrecy to engage in, we could call it 'antisocial' or 'unsocial' behavior, but there are not really any mechanisms for the public to really see what's going on," Jones tells Modern Law Library host Lee Rawles. "If Theranos's investors and directors understood that they were going to have to go public and prove that the product worked, they would've been more demanding on Elizabeth Holmes most likely, and they wouldn't have been able to get away with all of those lies." A big concern Jones has is with the recent push by private equity companies to allow regular retail investors and 401K plan managers to invest in these opaque and risky private startup companies. "That includes private equity, it includes infrastructure. It could even include crypto. Again, these are illiquid assets," says Jones. "There's no ready market for those shares. And they're high risk assets and there's not a lot of information to even know, 'What am I actually invested in?' " "If the Department of Labor's plans are adopted, you're going to have to really work hard to avoid having any private equity in your 401k plans," Jones warns. "There's a risk that these overvalued assets are going to be transferred from professional investors who can act to protect their interest to sort of your average, unsophisticated 401k saver." In this episode, Jones shares her advice for reforming the oversight of these companies, warning signs that financial novices should be on the look for, and introduces a new creature to the financial bestiary: the centicorn.

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  Episode #264

  Summer Reading and Still Perplexed About AI?

  Jul 31, 202655 minS1

  For this year's summer reading recommendations, host Lee Rawles shares three recommended reads, three books on her to-be-read pile, and three TV shows she's enjoyed. The recommended reads are all fiction this time around, ranging from a spooky contemporary, to a historical novel about the Black Death, to a frothy sweet romance novel. Her to-be-read pile includes a Danish book about time loops, a history of the world in 12 shipwrecks, and a romantic fantasy book with the tag line: "Two heroes. One brain cell." After her pop culture picks, this episode includes a re-airing of a May 2025 interview with Richard Susskind about his book How to Think About AI: A Guide for the Perplexed. There have been so many developments in the AI landscape in the year since it first aired that it's worth listening back to Susskind's predictions and warnings to see what's already come true and what has changed. Recommended Reads: The Children, by Melissa Albert The Last Hours and The Turn of Midnight, by Minette Walters The MASH Up, by Laura Marie Meyers To Be Read: On the Calculation of Volume I, by Solvej Balle A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks, by David Gibbons Bromantasy, by Maire Roche Recommended Watches: Star City, on Apple TV Silo, on Apple TV The Other Bennett Sister, on Britbox

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  Episode #263

  Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the body in the well

  Jul 23, 202657 minS1

  In January 1800, Elma Sands's dead body was found in a New York City well. The case has captivated people ever since, not least because in the resulting trial, defendant Levi Weeks was represented by Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and a future Supreme Court justice. The Girl from Greenwich Street: A Novel of Hamilton, Burr and America's First Murder Trial is a historical fiction novel by Lauren Willig. On this episode of the Modern Law Library, she explains how four years before their fatal duel, Hamilton and Burr came to be co-counsels on a murder case. "The New York Bar was perishingly small in 1800. And in fact, Burr and Hamilton were co-counsel on a complex commercial litigation at the exact time," says Willig. "So people were constantly–it's like swing your partners, do-si-do. They were always working together, working against each other. It was just the way the bar worked in 1800." The defendant, Levi Weeks, lived in the same boarding house as Sands, a hatmaker whose cousin owned the house. The prosecution contended that Weeks had seduced Sands with a promise of marriage, then dumped her body in the Manhattan Well. His trial was the first murder trial in America to have a court transcript, thanks to a clerk who'd recently learned shorthand. This transcript gave Willig a wealth of witness testimony to draw on when fleshing out her characters. "One of the things that drove me nuts when I was researching this case was how little attention has been expended over the years in trying to figure out anything about Elma Sands, the murdered woman," Willig tells Rawles. "There are some big personalities and really big names involved in the trial itself. And people are so eager to get into the courtroom with Hamilton and Burr that they just trample over Elma. And she gets flattened into one of two archetypes. Either she's the innocent young maiden who's been seduced and betrayed, which is how the prosecution portrays her in the trial, or she's a melancholy laudanum-addicted nymphomaniac, which is how the defense tries to portray her." "And I think the reality of Elma was a lot more complicated than those flat depictions would have us believe." Willig and Rawles also discuss her time at Harvard Law, where she signed a contract to write her popular Pink Carnation series as a 1L, and then her time at Cravath, Swain & Moore, trying to balance being a published romance writer and lawyer. "I had to make a choice, try to continue to juggle or go all in on being an author. And I left Cravath and my partner mentor came up to me and said, 'Well, what took you so long? I would've left sooner.' "  

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