Judicial Notice (02.16.26): An Embarrassing Distraction

I wish you a Happy Presidents’ Day. Some of you are fans of our current president, and some of you are not. If you are not, I remind you of a saying that was popularized by an indisputably great president, Abraham Lincoln: “And this, too, shall pass away.”

I also hope you had a great Valentine’s Day. Or as outgoing Goldman Sachs general counsel Kathryn Ruemmler wrote to her longtime pal Jeffrey Epstein, “I hope you enjoy[ed] the day with your one true love. :-)”

Speaking of Epstein, I spent much of last week reporting and writing two stories related to the late financier/sexual predator, Paul Weiss’s Firm Culture Fell Victim To The Vampire Rule and 5 Takeaways From Brad Karp’s Emails With Jeffrey Epstein. If you haven’t read them, I do think they’re worth your time, especially if you missed the footnotes (which didn’t appear in the Bloomberg Law version of my “vampire rule” column). I’ve also added updates to both stories that you should check out.

Here at OJ, which isn’t focused on breaking news, I’m rarely the first to cover a story. But I like to think that when I do cover something, I add a depth of reporting and analysis that’s hard to find elsewhere. To my subscribers, your support makes that possible—otherwise, I’d be juggling my writing with a day job—so I thank you.

On a related note, perhaps you can give me some career advice. I write about both the courts and law firms, but sometimes I wonder if I’d be better off focusing on one or the other. Please take my poll:

Now, on to the news.

Lawyer of the Week: Kathryn Ruemmler.

Last Thursday, Kathy Ruemmler (finally) announced that she will resign as GC of Goldman Sachs (eventually—effective June 30). “My responsibility is to put Goldman Sachs’s interests first,” she said in a statement. And the interests of Goldman were clearly being disserved by the Epstein-related controversies swirling around Ruemmler, who appears more than 10,000 times in the Epstein files.

The mentions are often embarrassing—such as thanking “Uncle Jeffrey” for lavish gifts, like a $9,350 Hermès handbag, or asking for his advice about an affair she