Noam Scheiber envisions a scenario in which Sen. Elizabeth Warren threatens the inevitability of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016:

Which brings us to the probable face of the insurgency. In addition to being strongly identified with the party’s populist wing, any candidate who challenged Clinton would need several key assets. The candidate would almost certainly have to be a woman, given Democrats’ desire to make history again. She would have to amass huge piles of money with relatively little effort. Above all, she would have to awaken in Democratic voters an almost evangelical passion. As it happens, there is precisely such a person. Her name is Elizabeth Warren.

The story that will make you reconsider law school. Scheiber goes deep inside a big Chicago law firm, Mayer Brown, to examine the problems plaguing the legal profession—including consolidation, cost-cutting, layoffs, infighting, and further degradation of quality of life:

“Bob Helman realized the firm would go under if his partners sat around waiting for business to walk in the door. Hereafter, he decreed, each partner’s compensation would depend heavily on the amount of business he or she drummed up.

“Helman’s plan may have worked too well. Ever since it went into effect, partners have competed aggressively not just against lawyers at other firms, but against one another. Chicago partners would fly into New York to poach clients from their Manhattanite counterparts, holding clandestine meetings in which they would pitch themselves as less expensive and a mere two-hour plane ride away.7 When the New Yorkers invariably caught wind of these plots, they would remind clients that they were far more efficient than their Midwestern cousins. ‘What we would end up saying is … “Chicago will staff you with four partners on something we’d staff with one or two,”‘ recalls a former partner. ‘It’s crazy that I have to go in and have a conversation about it. Denigrating.'”

Books by Scheiber on Amazon