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Would-Be Lawyers Take To Twitter To Scream At ExamSoft Over #Barghazi

Would-Be Lawyers Take To Twitter To Scream At ExamSoft Over #Barghazi

Biglaw Firm Ordered To Make A Video Apologizing For Discovery Abuses

Biglaw Firm Ordered To Make A Video Apologizing For Discovery Abuses

9 Easy Steps For Engaging Your Top 20 Clients

9 Easy Steps For Engaging Your Top 20 Clients

Don’t Go Into Debt, Become A Lawyer For Free!

Don’t Go Into Debt, Become A Lawyer For Free!

The Law Schools With The Highest LSAT Scores

The Law Schools With The Highest LSAT Scores

Someone Really Wants To Shut Up Judge Posner

Someone Really Wants To Shut Up Judge Posner

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Morning Docket: 07.31.14

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* “We’re in uncharted waters.” Following a split vote down party lines, the House of Representatives authorized Speaker Boehner to move ahead with his lawsuit against President Obama. [WSJ Law Blog]

* “Vultures! Don’t take our pound of flesh.” Despite last-minute settlement talks, it seems Argentina has defaulted on its debt for the second time in 13 years. Oopsie! [DealBook / New York Times]

* The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has added 19 additional schools to its law school clinic certification pilot program. IP is hot right now, so congrats if your school made the cut. [USPTO.gov]

* What are some of the pros of working before going to law school? Well, if you can’t get a job after you graduate, you can go back to your old field, so that’s a plus. [Law Admissions Lowdown / U.S. News]

* California probate attorneys’ hearts were all aflutter following Shelly Sterling’s win against her husband, specifically because of the new precedents the Clippers case left in its wake. [National Law Journal]

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Biglaw Firm Ordered To Make A Video Apologizing For Discovery Abuses

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Litigators get away with a lot of obnoxious stuff during discovery. For better or worse, the pre-trial discovery phase of civil litigation is every lawyer’s opportunity to relive those times when parents leave kids alone for the first time: every slight, disagreement, and jealousy on a slow boil explodes into anarchic back-biting once there’s no authority figure around to enforce civility. Bring on the mean-spirited letters and smack-talking RFAs.

When it comes to depositions, it doesn’t always reach “fatboy” levels, but a federal deposition isn’t a deposition until someone threatens to call the magistrate — though never does.

Which is why this benchslap, where a federal judge levies a sanction straight out of elementary school, is so appropriate….

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Non-Sequiturs: 07.30.14

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* Court needed a Chinese language interpreter. Rather than find a professional legal interpreter, the judge just told the lawyer to head down to the local Chinese restaurant and grab somebody. [Legal Cheek]

* News from former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell’s trial. As one tipster summed up the story: “Hon, I think I dropped my keys under that bus. Would you take a look?” [Slate]

* Everyone concedes Ted Cruz is smart. Why exactly? [Salon]

* A follow-up from a previous story: Connolly, Geaney, Ablitt & Willard shuts down after the foreclosure market that made them turned on them. [Mass Lawyers Weekly (sub. req.)]

* Interesting look at the volume of patent cases throughout history. Check out the troll phenomenon with charts! [Patently-O]

* More folks wasting time complaining about blog posts. [South Florida Lawyers]

* Clint Eastwood talks with Chief Judge Kozinski and Judge Fisher at the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference. These days it’s exciting whenever Clint isn’t talking to an empty chair. Video embedded below… [YouTube]

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Many Thanks To This Week’s ATL Advertisers

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Thank you to our sponsors here at Above the Law:

If you’re interested in advertising on Above the Law or any other site in the Breaking Media network, please download our media kits or email advertising@breakingmedia.com. Thanks!

9 Easy Steps For Engaging Your Top 20 Clients

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Social media is an excellent way for you to nurture relationships with your largest clients. But if you are like 99% of lawyers, you don’t do it.

Some of you have unfounded fears that engaging clients via social media could be unethical, some of you don’t know how to do it, and some of you lack the ambition to try.

Here are nine steps to engaging your top twenty clients via Twitter:

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The View From Up North: Phantom Of The Opera Disbarred

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Here’s something I’m envious of as a Canadian lawyer. The United States is filled with celebrity lawyers: Robert Shapiro, Gerry Spence, Harvey Levin (thank you, TMZ), Judge Wapner, Judge Judy, Judge Joe Brown, Judge Lance Ito.

Bobby and Teddy—lawyers.  John, Jr., a prosecutor.  Bill and Hillary and the current POTUS and FLOTUS, lawyers all.

And, of course, the most celebrated American lawyer, Geraldo Rivera (you forgot that, didn’t you?).

The U.S. loves to gawk at its lawyers, making them famous for defending ex-Hertz pitchmen, or for screaming at people on crappy daytime television where they make all judges look like arrogant cork smokers.

What about celebrity lawyers in Canada?

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Don’t Go Into Debt, Become A Lawyer For Free!

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J.D. = Just Debt? J.D. = Junk Degree? J.D. = Job Disabled?

There is very little that would entice me to go $100,000 or more into debt for a credential.

– Chris Tittle, a California man who is attempting to become a lawyer by “reading law,” just as Abraham Lincoln once did. Tittle never went to law school, and is in his first year of a four-year course of law office apprenticeship and study at the Law Office of Linda Alvarez.

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The Law Schools With The Highest LSAT Scores

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If you’re still searching for a law school to call your home for the next three years, then it would be wise to try to get one where you’ll be surrounded by the best of the best, academically speaking. If possible, you’ll want to attend a law school that’s located at the tippy top of the U.S. News law school rankings — one where those applying have high GPAs and even higher LSAT scores.

For those new to the law school game, the schools with the very best applicants are located in the Top 14 of the U.S. News rankings (and in the Above the Law rankings, too).

But which of those schools has the highest median LSAT scores? As it turns out, U.S. News has a handy dandy list, but not all law schools in the T-14 are on this list. Why? Let’s check it out…

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Someone Really Wants To Shut Up Judge Posner

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And you’d think it would be Justice Scalia. But you’d be wrong!

So what darkened this legal luminary?

If you guessed “shadowy intelligence services,” you’re right. Congratulations! ATL would like to send you your prize! You win ███████. Remember to ask for it by name.

Opinions get redacted or sealed all the time, but the latest from the Seventh Circuit is a doozy….

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3 Worthwhile Alternatives To Law School

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Many people consider going to law school because they think they have no other career options after college. For most of these people, their GPA wasn’t great, and they have an average or even bad LSAT score. So they resign themselves to going to an average law school with plans to do really well in their first year and then transfer to a top school.

We warn the noobs that going to law school on a whim is a bad idea. We tell them about the many law students who don’t make it to the top of the class and are unable to get a job after graduation. So they are back to square one. But our warning does not address a fundamental problem: what alternatives do these people really have?

While that is ultimately not our problem, I want to talk about some alternatives to law school that an applicant should consider:

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ExamSoft Debacle Aside, 5 Reasons Lawyers Should Embrace Technology

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Often times, lawyers get a reputation as Luddites. Refusing to be up to date with the latest technology, it takes only the smallest set back to have attorneys running back to old fashioned ways. So, I am sure many readers, even those of you not currently taking the bar exam, probably had a visceral reaction when you heard about the extensive tech issues surrounding the July 2014 exam. Lat even called it “the most serious bar disaster I’ve ever covered in the eight years since I started Above the Law.”

Yikes.

Unsurprisingly, if you followed the news on Twitter, there was also a fair amount of schadenfreude from more, ahem, established lawyers crowing about how the low-tech experience of their day was obviously superior. Elie even got into the mix.

But as bad as this whole debacle was (and continues to be) there are still reasons attorneys should reject the Luddite label and embrace technology.

Those of you directly affected by ExamSoftGate should probably wait until the sting wears off before reading…

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Would-Be Lawyers Take To Twitter To Scream At ExamSoft Over #Barghazi

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ExamSoft made many bar takers cry last night.

In case you’re not already well aware, last night the legal profession stood witness to the biggest bar exam disaster in history. Bar exam takers nationwide were absolutely enraged — as they rightfully should have been — because ExamSoft’s servers were overrun by thousands of aspiring lawyers trying to upload their essays before their state’s deadline came and went.

Instead of going about their business and exhibiting “forbearance with the situation” as requested by the bane of their collective existence, bar takers flocked to Twitter to shake their virtual fists in anger in tweets directed at ExamSoft.

As you can imagine, there were some very entertaining tweets being sent out. If you love schadenfreude and other people’s pain brings you pleasure, you’ll love this…

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