One of the most popular recurring features on ATL is the intentionally (or unintentionally) funny lawyer letter. Cease-and-desist letter responses famously offer lawyers the most freedom to let their comedy flags fly, but we’ve profiled some pretty entertaining C&D letters, rants to executive agencies, settlement offers, and cover letters. They’ve covered intellectual property, political speech, and throwing porn stars off roofs.
With years of these hilarious letters piled up, it was time to revisit the archives and determine a champion….
* The D.C. Circuit struck down a key component of Obamacare while a few miles away, the Fourth Circuit disagreed. This sets up an intriguing circuit split that will be resolved as soon as the D.C. Circuit takes it up en banc. Until then though, let the mainstream media talking heads freak out about what this all means. [NBC News]
* Professor Thane Rosenbaum writes in the Wall Street Journal (natch!) defending the deaths of civilian Palestinians using the same logic that Osama bin Laden used to justify 9/11. He probably should have done a little more research. [Slate]
* Amelia Boone, a Skadden Chicago bankruptcy associate, is a world champion Tough Mudder and Spartan Race runner. Because who says cruelly abusing yourself has to be limited to the work week? [Outside]
* Elie thinks we should all get drunk and go for a bike ride! [ATL Redline]
* From purveyor of justice to purveyor of donuts. [USA Today]
* Congratulations to Professor Mariano-Florentino Cuellar of Stanford Law on his nomination to the California Supreme Court. If confirmed, maybe Stanford can start advertising about all the state judges they’ve produced. [San Jose Mercury News]
* We’ve heard that Bingham is looking to merge. Lee Pacchia talks to Casey Sullivan about what’s next. Video after the jump… [Mimesis Law]
No major breaks have been announced in the investigation of the tragic death of Professor Dan Markel. Law enforcement authorities have not publicly identified any suspects. Dan’s former wife, Wendi Adelson, is working with the police and is both devastated at his loss and fearful for herself and their children, according to her lawyer. We extend our condolences and sympathies to her and to all of Dan’s family and friends at this time.
Until there are further developments in the case, let’s focus on Dan’s life rather than his death. I shared some of my own memories of Dan yesterday. Here are additional recollections of Dan from around the country….
Dropbox is one of my favorite programs. It certainly changed the way we share files and collaborate on cases. Another one of my favorite programs is TrialDirector, the best program for presenting evidence in trial. It’s got great tools for organizing and annotating evidence. Both programs have their pluses and minuses in terms of price and features.
When those two programs have a baby, that baby is awesome. The baby’s name is TDNotebook.
What Is TDNotebook?
TDNotebook is a cloud-based evidence management tool for collaboration between your office, co-counsel, vendors, and experts. It’s free like how Dropbox is free – you get a certain amount of free storage, and for anything above that, you have to pay.
My experience with federal court is limited to three months externing for a district judge after first year of law school (that and testifying in a homicide case, but that’s another column). The time was occasionally depressing (can you say “pro se”?), always sobering (you mean the judge is actually going to rely on my legal research??), and ultimately a decent dose of reality after enduring nine months of the alter-world that is being a 1L.
There’s another story today about the soft market for law school applications. According to the National Law Journal, law school applications are down 8 percent this year, and a shocking 37 percent since 2010.
But one law school is experiencing a boom in applications. It’s a new law school, one that probably shouldn’t exist in the first place. But it is doing one thing right that other law schools still resist: it’s dirt cheap….
We’ve written from time to time about senior judges, the most senior of whom was Wesley E. Brown of the District of Kansas, who remained on the bench until his death at age 104. We’ve even written about lateral moves made by nonagenarians to highly esteemed Biglaw firms, likely performed with the aid of a walker. We’ve never written about centenarian Biglaw attorneys, presumably because there are very few of them, but that’s about to change.
Fear not, clients, for that’s not a blood stain on your legal documents. It’s prune juice, because a 101-year-old lawyer was working on your deal, and he needs to stay regular to keep his billable hours up.
Which Biglaw firm is keeping this extremely senior counsel on its payroll?
We overuse the word “childish” when discussing the behavior of lawyers. This dispute though is so utterly childish it can be summed up as “Teacher! Denise swore!” and “But, Dan did it first!”
Rare is the opinion with the word “a**hole” (though without the wusstrisks we use on this site) in the opening sentence. But that’s what you get when a judge levels a benchslap against one side for “intemperate language,” which is apparently a thing that lawyers shouldn’t use.
Now lawyers can be a salty bunch, so it takes a serious outburst to earn the ire of a federal judge. And this woman doesn’t disappoint, allegedly drafting an aggressive email peppered with “intemperate language” combined with shady tactics and outright lying. It’s a cocktail of behavior that deserves consideration if you’re looking for case studies for a professional responsibility course. As the judge writes in his opinion, this is one where the lawyer should have hit “delete” instead of “send.”
If you need it, build it. We needed help. And we saw an opportunity. So we took action, and now have another business as a result. I’ll explain. The need was simple. Because of our work with investors interested in understanding how patent litigation events impact on their investments, we found ourselves needing to monitor many active patent cases, in addition to the cases we were litigating ourselves. At one point, we considered hiring an intern to help with this specific task, at least during the trading day. But we quickly realized that solving this problem required a software-based solution. So we set out to build one. We looked for something available that would do the job, and failed to find anything useful.
Thanks in no small measure to the talent of our programmer, what we built worked. We were able to get automated alerts of new docket entries and opinions directly to our email. And we could do so for multiple cases, alleviating the concern that we would miss an important opinion. Because our clients tend to have sizable investments, there is a premium placed on our ability to let them know of litigation events quickly and to interpret those events for them, so that they could protect their positions or initiate new ones, based on the recently released publicly available information. As a fail-safe, we began having the alerts sent directly to subscribers of our consulting services. And now we have decided to offer it publicly (www.litigationalpha.com) to fellow lawyers, retail investors, and whoever else can benefit from automated alerts generated based off District Courts docket entries and opinions….
* From Big Government to Biglaw: Our congratulations go out to Benjamin Horwich, most recently of the Office of the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice, as he joins Munger Tolles & Olson as counsel. Nice work. [Munger Tolles & Olson]
* The number of law school applicants took a nose dive for the fourth year in a row, this time by 8 percent, summarily crushing the hopes and dreams of law deans praying for a change of their otherwise most dismal fortunes. [National Law Journal]
* Considering the latest slump in applicants, whether a law school evaluates your average LSAT score or highest LSAT score matters little. Admissions officers will jump for joy that you have a pulse. [Law Admissions Lowdown / U.S. News]
* “You don’t have to convict on every count to have a win.” Azamat Tazhayakov, friend of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was convicted of obstruction and conspiracy to obstruct justice. [Bloomberg]
* Per documents filed by a lawyer appointed to represent Philip Seymour Hoffman’s children, the actor didn’t set aside money for them because he didn’t want them to become “trust fund kids.” [New York Post]
Many of you may remember Sex and the City, a sitcom that followed four women’s lives and relationships through good sex and bad. The show’s most ardent viewers found it easy to identify with one or more of its main characters. There was Carrie Bradshaw, the self-deprecating, too hopeful writer; Samantha Jones, the highly confident and highly oversexed vixen; Charlotte York Goldenblatt, the conservative prestige whore searching for true romance; and Miranda Hobbes, the often masculinized, debbie downer lawyer.
There have only been four women justices on the Supreme Court in the history of its existence — Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan — so it’s fitting that we’d someday see an episode of SCOTUS and the City.
Which justice would you assign to each of these character roles? You’re about to find out…
Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past seven years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
It’s that time of year again when JDs are starting to apply for 2L summer jobs and 2L summers are deciding which practice area to focus on.
For those JDs with an interest in potentially lateraling to or transferring to Asia in the future, please feel free to reach out to Kinney for advice on firm choices, interviewing and practice choices, relating to future marketability in Asia, or for a general discussion on your particular Asia markets of interest. This is of course a free of cost service for those who some years in the future may be our future industry contacts or perhaps even clients.
For some years now Kinney’s Asia head, Evan Jowers, has been formally advising Harvard Law students with such questions, as the Asia expert in Harvard Law’s “Ask The Experts Market Program” each summer and fall, with podcasts and scheduled phone calls. This has been an enjoyable and productive experience for all involved.
The choices a JD makes during their IL and 2L summers and 2L falls can have an enormous affect on their future marketability in Asia, should they be interested in such a move.
Whether you’re fresh off the bar exam or hitting your stride after hanging a shingle a few years ago, one thing’s for certain: independent attorneys who start a solo or small-law practice live with a certain amount of stress.
Non-attorneys would think the stress comes from preparing for a big trial, deposing a hostile witness, or crafting the perfect contract for a picky client.
But that’s nothing compared to the constant, nagging, real-life kind, the kind you get from the day-to-day grind of being a law-abiding attorney.
Connecticut plaintiffs-side boutique litigation firm (12 lawyers) seeks full-time associate with 2-4 years litigation experience, top tier undergraduate and law school education. Journal or clerkship experience a plus; highest ethical standards and strong work ethic required. Familiarity with Connecticut state court legal practice is preferred, but not required.
The firm handles sophisticated, high-end cases for plaintiffs, including individuals and businesses with significant claims in a wide array of matters. Our cases often have important public policy implications, and are litigated in state and federal courts throughout Connecticut. Representative areas of practice include medical malpractice, catastrophic personal injury, business torts, deceptive trade practices and other complex commercial litigation, and products liability.
Additional information can be located on our website, at www.sgtlaw.com.
To apply, send cover letter, resume, and law school transcript to recruiting@sgtlaw.com.
One of the most popular recurring features on ATL is the intentionally (or unintentionally) funny lawyer letter. Cease-and-desist letter responses famously offer lawyers the most freedom to let their comedy flags fly, but we’ve profiled some pretty entertaining C&D letters, rants to executive agencies, settlement offers, and cover letters. They’ve covered intellectual property, political speech, and throwing porn stars off roofs.
