Cited Authorities

Cited Authorities Conversations with accomplished attorneys and the leaders who shape their field. Hosted by Alexander Powell.

Episode 13 of Cited Authorities. A conversation with Ben Tompkins, former DOJ Tax Division trial attorney and former Ass...
08/21/2026

Episode 13 of Cited Authorities. A conversation with Ben Tompkins, former DOJ Tax Division trial attorney and former Assistant United States Attorney in Los Angeles.

Tompkins is now a partner at Nardiello Turanchik Tompkins. We talked about why he left class-action defense for the Tax Division, a high-profile Internal Revenue Code § 6103 donor-disclosure case, and teaching trial lawyers at the National Advocacy Center.

We also discussed the DOJ's recent structural changes, the National Fraud Enforcement Division, eggshell audits, the move from government to defense work, and advice to newer attorneys considering a government job.

Listen to Cited Authorities on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite platform today.

08/18/2026

Stanford Graduate School of Business professor and MasterClass instructor Jeffrey Pfeffer on the just-world phenomenon.

People want to believe the world is fair, so they treat success and failure as earned. They hold that belief because it gives a sense of control.

Pfeffer teaches the rules of power so people can escape that illusion and be agentic.

Episode 12 of Cited Authorities. Full conversation in the first comment.

08/18/2026

Stanford GSB professor Jeffrey Pfeffer wants senior health insurance executives held responsible when reckless coverage denials kill people. He says, “People are dying because care is being denied to them.”

He believes prison sentences would change that. Until that happens, he expects little will change.

This clip is from the Subscriber Edition of Episode 12. Listen and subscribe at the link below:

https://bit.ly/4x8qTp1

08/07/2026

Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer discusses why power is a neutral tool, like fire.

Hear the full conversation: https://citedauthorities.substack.com/

08/07/2026

Universities and other large employers pay hundreds of millions of dollars for medical benefits. That is the top of the funnel.

At the bottom of the funnel, doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, and drug manufacturers receive the money.

In the middle is what MasterClass and Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer calls “leakage.” Intermediaries stand between employers and providers, receiving part of the payment stream.

Pfeffer wants ambitious lawyers to find out who is siphoning off that money and where it goes.

His advice to attorneys: “Follow the money. That’s where you’ll find the corruption. That’s where you’ll find the suits that need to be filed.”

Link to the episode is in the comments.

07/23/2026

Terry Lemons had a choice in 1998. Stay in journalism or reinvent himself.

He had covered a presidential campaign from the ground floor and run his newspaper's Washington bureau, reporting on Congress and the White House.

Then, he took a job at the least loved agency in America, on purpose, because it needed someone who could talk to regular people.

He stayed at the IRS for 26 years. He built the annual tax scam warning list you've probably seen in the news. He helped that feared agency enter the social media age and gently poke fun at itself on Instagram. His goal: "to try to humanize the agency."

This year, he followed another passion and wrote a book about the 1926 St. Louis Cardinals, because the reporter in him never left.

Episode 11 of Cited Authorities is one of the great career reinvention stories. Full episode on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Links in comments.

07/10/2026

Cited Authorities Founder and Host Alexander Powell is co-hosting the new season of the ABA Tax Section's People in Tax podcast.

During the season premiere, co-hosts Alexander Powell, Crist Malekyan, Michael E. Romero introduced themselves to the audience.

They talked about how they found their way into tax law, why the Tax Section is worth joining, and where the podcast is heading.

There's a strong slate of guests lined up this season. Follow the ABA Tax Section on your favorite social media platforms to stay updated.

07/09/2026

C. Evan Stewart started practicing law before document production meant anything digital. Back then, document production was more literal. You went to a warehouse and picked out documents to copy.

He watched the internet upend that process during his career. Now he says AI is doing something bigger, and practically no one saw it coming five years ago.

Evan and Alexander Powell also discussed where the billable hour goes from here, and whether AI gives smaller firms leverage they've never had before.

07/09/2026

Most lawyers who try Wall Street securities cases come up through a U.S. Attorney's office first. C. Evan Stewart didn't. Nearly fifty years in private practice instead. That's rare. He's also a historian and a prolific author, which is rarer still.

On the new episode, Evan talks about the "blinding insight" from watching the best public speaker he ever saw get nervous before a talk, juries' need for cognitive consistency, and why his new book argues the Civil War wasn't inevitable.

New episode. Links in comments.

Solo practitioners and small law firms pay Westlaw and LexisNexis a fortune every year, often for features that should b...
07/01/2026

Solo practitioners and small law firms pay Westlaw and LexisNexis a fortune every year, often for features that should be more affordable.

We're building tools to change that, starting with CiteMatch.

CiteMatch checks your legal citations and quotations against the sources.

It is private, secure, and priced for lawyers who are entrepreneurial and in the arena.

Introducing CiteMatch.

Coming soon.

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