Across The Bar Podcast

We recorded this one the morning after, and yes, Laura brought champagne. Voters sent a message on Tuesday, and this week we get into what it actually means for the people who still have to show up to work on Wednesday.Political strategist, lawyer, and author Maya Rupert (The Real Ones) joins us, along with her 18-year-old cat Cuomo, whose name has aged in interesting ways. Maya breaks down the administration’s plan to scale back protections under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, and why a self-described “pronatalist” government would make it harder for pregnant women to keep their jobs. (Spoiler: it was never about the babies.) With Democrats taking both chambers, she walks through the tools Congress actually has now (oversight hearings, subpoenas, the power of the purse), and leaves the historic class of incoming “firsts” with advice worth taping to the wall: don’t let first become last.Peter shares what he’s hearing in his practice that hasn’t made the papers yet: career EEOC staff quietly turning up the heat on employers. Then Peter and Laura  trade theories on why Tuesday happened, and what it means for corporate leaders who got very comfortable with zero accountability.Plus: Canva shows how to do a layoff without torching morale, Anthropic’s IPO filing reveals it’s spending over $100K a month per employee, and a listener asks whether a weekend holiday party is ever okay. Peter and Laura do not agree. Laura does, however, have a genuinely great party-planning hack. Please listen to, subscribe and share this week's episode of the Across the Bar Podcast!

Microsoft offers 60,000 employees a buyout, and Weil Gotshal shuts down after more than 90 years. Peter and Laura get into what buyouts really pay, how a powerhouse law firm collapses, and the St. Louis company that has never laid anyone off. Also this week: Anthropic’s H-1B problem, Marissa Mayer’s AI startup Dazzle, Hollywood’s vanishing women executives, and why young chefs are skipping their dues. Plus Heroes & Zeros.

Peter spotted Midtown office workers waiting half an hour for frozen yogurt at 3 p.m. on a weekday, and he has thoughts. Laura thinks it might be the new dating scene. That’s just the warm-up.This week, a listening device allegedly found taped to a TV in an OpenAI conference room kicks off a conversation about how far corporate espionage has gone: foreign operatives landing remote jobs, honey traps in the park, and employees told not to wear company merch in public. Peter also confesses that a room full of lawyers at a conference had no screen protectors, so anyone could read their potentially privileged work.Then: McKinsey now makes first-round candidates interview with a bot pretending to be a client. Peter objects on two fronts. Plus the Princeton chemical engineering PhD with 2,300 interviews and no job, a Cambridge professor arguing we should abolish business school (Peter’s Duke classmates won’t love his take), and why law school should be two years.From there: ultra-wealthy households making the pool guy sign a 15-page NDA, and Peter’s advice for billionaires (hint: use an agency). With midterms two weeks out, a refresher on what employers can and can’t regulate when it comes to political speech, at work and outside it.Please like, share and subscribe to The Across the Bar Podcast!#work #workplace #nda #trump #billionaire #billionairelifestyle #frozenyogurt #spy #surveillance #ai #chatbot #jobinterview #jobinterviewtips #businessschool #lawschool #tuition #midterms #politics #freespeech #podcast #privacy

A McKinsey partner went on LinkedIn to announce that the “glass cliff” isn’t real. He kept his job and lost his leadership role. He’ll also have that post as his top Google result for the rest of his life. Peter and Laura explain why LinkedIn is the one platform where your hot takes come with your employer’s logo attached. They also suggest what he should have done, which was host the authors for an internal company event, not a public pile-on.Speaking of lunch: Ancestry’s CEO says the best leadership move is eating with your employees wherever they actually eat. That means the break room, not the executive dining room. We agree, mostly. Laura has a frequency note, and both hosts have NYC cafeteria stories, including some Gayle King salad-bar diplomacy.Then there’s Kimberly Guilfoyle, now the former ambassador to Greece, after Wall Street Journal reporting on wealthy businessmen allegedly covering her Amex bills, flights and a trip to Davos. The career lessons are not complicated. Don’t embarrass your boss. Don’t assume something is fine because everyone around you is doing it. And for the love of God, don’t put it in an email.Colts owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon is wearing a headset on the sideline and taking frantic notes on every play. Is she an engaged leader, a distraction, or a woman being held to a different standard? Peter and Laura disagree. Plus: evaluation apprehension, and Laura’s blood pressure.Some AI companies want to buy your company’s Slack history for training data. Peter walks through why that is a confidentiality nightmare for employers. It also hands employees a great counterargument the next time a company tries to enforce a non-compete. A listener asks whether her son should keep his fraternity leadership role on his résumé after the Cornell incident.Your weekly drink with a lawyer and a journalist.#slack #ai #mckinsey #trump #guilfoyle #work #careers #lunch #boss #managing #manager #employees #colts #nfl #oprah #gayleking #podcast

Remember when AI agents were supposed to take work off your plate? Journalist Laura Brounstein admits that she gives hers a performance review at least once a week (“we’ve talked about this, only use these sources”), while Attorney Peter Rahbar remains proudly agent-free and firmly on the cautious end of the spectrum. Together they get into why so many people who handed work to bots ended up promoted to full-time bot manager, why agents need as much feedback as Gen Z employees, and the new industry push to make AI agents identify themselves as bots. Peter’s takeaway tracks the 20-60-20 rule: the people who become best at directing and handling the results from AI, lawyers included, are the ones who’ll come out ahead.The episode opens with Tony Romo’s exit from CBS, and Peter explains what likely happened behind the scenes: a guaranteed contract, a very public DWI, a “for cause” clause, and a network in the middle of a merger that didn’t want the distraction. It’s a useful reminder that what you do off the clock can still cost you your job. From there, Peter and Laura take on companies announcing layoffs on earnings calls with no details about who or when, a move Wall Street loves and employees dread. Nike is the latest example. Laura has lived it from the inside at WeWork. Then it’s Citi cutting its analyst program to two years to keep Gen Z from defecting to private equity, hedge funds, and AI startups, right as Wall Street heads for record bonuses.Things get serious with a listener question about what to do if you’re sexually assaulted at work, why HR isn’t your advocate, and how to find the right lawyer. Your weekly drink with a lawyer and a journalist. Link in bio 🎧#AcrossTheBar #AIatWork #AIagents #FutureOfWork #WorkplaceLaw #EmploymentLaw #CareerAdvice #Layoffs #TonyRomo #Podcast #work #wallstreet #career #mamdani #finance #bots #ai #nfl #football #cbs

Laura Brounstein is back, it's her birthday, and she brought a prop: an iced matcha, in honor of the hottest workplace debate on TikTok. Is walking into a job interview holding an iced coffee a harmless habit or a dealbreaker? Co-Host Peter Rahbar has an opinion, even if it might be an "old guy take." Laura brings receipts from her Anna Wintour interview.Peter and Laura also discuss how tech bros are hiding where they work to get a date. The Wall Street Journal says Gen Z wants its feedback sugar-coated, but Peter argues what they actually want is just more of it, more often. Laura explains why companies can't demand personalized management without actually training their managers. Hedge fund giant Millennium is giving 7,000 employees AI "digital twins" that learn how they work, which Laura compares to chickens teaching people how to fry. And the Protect College Sports Act has Peter, a self-described sports obsessive, genuinely torn.Finally, a serious conversation about Cornell University: the alleged sexual assault at a fraternity, the DA who declined to prosecute, the student journalists at the Cornell Daily Sun who broke the story, and what universities owe their students. Peter (a former fraternity president) and Laura debate whether abolishing Greek life is the answer.🎙️ Across the Bar is your weekly drink with a lawyer and a journalist. New episodes every week. Subscribe for workplace law, career advice and the headlines that matter for your success at work.#WorkplaceLaw #CareerAdvice #GenZAtWork #cornell #icedcoffee #jobinterview #interview #podcast #ai #digitaltwin #management #manager #work #ncaa #nil #sports #collegesports #law #Harvey

This week on Across the Bar, guest co-host Liz Baker Plosser is back from a week embedded in the international sauna scene, and she and Peter have plenty to say about the people in charge.They start with the White House pulling press credentials from CNN, MSNOW, and Politico. Peter explains why that fight will almost certainly be lost in court and why the real goal may be profit, not just payback. Then they turn to leadership. That means Governor Pritzker going public about his GLP-1 use, Adam Grant's argument that the best way to survive AI is to be more human, and why wiping out middle managers leaves everyone worse off, including the CEO.Of course, it wouldn't be a week without CEOs behaving badly. This time it's a protein bar founder who skips the stroller because he likes to suffer, and Lululemon's Chip Wilson heading into a divorce without a prenup. Please watch and subscribe to the Across the Bar Podcast! Liz Plosser writes the Best Case Scenario Substack newsletter and is the former editor-in-chief of Women's Health.#trump #press #media #lawsuit #whitehouse #glp1 #pritzker #manager #management #work #career #managing #lululemon #protein #firstamendment #podcast #lawsuit

Liz Baker Plosser is back in the co-host seat this week and we brought in Adam Rapoport to talk about the do's and don'ts of office lunches. Bring your own bowl. Clean the dishes. Do not, under any circumstances, microwave fish or crack a hard-boiled egg within smelling distance of another human. Adam's got the full rulebook, and Peter's ready to write it into every employee handbook in America.Then we get into the legal stuff: what a manager should do when an employee's writing reeks of AI (spoiler — the fix doesn't require ever saying the letters "A" and "I"), the Hyrox Beijing scandal that turned an elite athlete's worst day into an international controversy with real workplace-safety implications, and the growing list of employers getting called out for what they owe their people — Cigna employees petitioning to get GLP-1 coverage reinstated, and Amazon quietly tripling its number of warehouse workers on food stamps while profits climb. We close it out with the CFDA president's very physical, very filmed confrontation with protesters at a fashion show — and what happens to an executive's career when there's no security team standing between him and a bad decision.Please watch or listen, share and subscribe to the Across the Bar Podcast!

This week, Peter and guest co-host Liz Baker Plosser are back from summer and diving straight into the work issues confronting everyone as they return to the office. They start with a reader comment that hit a nerve: workplace acronyms and AI-speak have gotten so bad people are starting to sound like robots in their own performance reviews. Peter gives his advice on how AI should (and shouldn't) touch your writing, and it might be a little blunt. From there, they unpack the new jobs report and the strange new normal it reveals: people are staying put, wages aren't moving, and the old stigma around job hopping — or not job hopping — has basically disintegrated.Then, Business Insider's "best dressed lawyers" list gets the skewering it deserves, before Peter breaks down Mayor Mamdani's brand-new Office of Worker Power and why he thinks it's a political play dressed up as policy. Liz and Peter also settle the debate on whether LinkedIn has quietly turned into a dating app (the Wall Street Journal seems to think so; Peter thinks everyone should log off), and close out with Hyrox's jump from scrappy hybrid fitness race to $700 million private equity darling — plus where companies cross the line pushing employees into team workouts.Please watch, subscribe, comment on and share this week's episode of The Across the Bar Podcast!

Should employers be covering menopause benefits? Peter and guest co-host Liz Plosser (Best Case Scenario) take on a listener's question this week — and it opens up a bigger conversation about the legal tightrope employers walk when choosing employee benefits, plus the real fear a lot of women have about whether even asking for support quietly marks them as a liability. Also, Liz's tips on how to survive the current estrogen patch shortage happening right now.From there the episode swings hard — a business school for eight-year-olds, EY paying employees up to $25K to be more human in the age of AI slop, and the great "cool boss" debate, which Peter is fairly convinced misses the point entirely. Employees don't care if you chug a beer standing on your head; they care if you actually have their back.Then things get heavier. The Met Gala trustees overrule Anna Wintour on John Galliano as this year's honoree, and it becomes a case study in what happens when nobody around a powerful person is willing to push back. The Good Good Golf CEO is gone after that Callaway ad. And Uber's layoff memo manages to make 3,300 job cuts sound like something employees asked for — which Peter is not going to let slide.