Is there a contender waiting in the wings?
Contender for what exactly? Simply having a legal channel and surpassing Rekieta in subs?
I can suggest two that are experiencing positive growth, and that
aren't connected to Lawtube, but I dunno if it's they are exactly what people are looking for in terms of a Rekieta replacement.
I could see John C. Bryan surpassing Rekieta some day, but he mainly focused on cases where people are fucked by the government (namely law enforcement), and not much else. He is a practicing attorney (as in he often covers his own cases) and his politics might be best described as constitutionalist in nature.
Steve Lehto is even closer to surpassing Rekieta in subs. He also does civil rights stuff, but goes into other civil and criminal litigation too.
The problem with throwing out suggestion is I think there's a lot of people looking for "long-form" legal analysis like Nick used to do ages ago, but that's fairly rare in general. Leonard French still does it, but French is widely perceived by the Farms as a shitlib (personally, I think he's okay when he keeps it to IP law).
I suppose Emily D. Baker already surpassed Nick during Depp, but her audience and content is very normie and strict.
This is true, but given the dregs that make up Nick's remaining audience, and the sorry ass state of his content now (
when he even does it at all), I'm not sure that's a bad thing. Do you want your legal show to be educational and insightful, or do you want the Jerry Springer show with lawyers?