The current New Yorker has an interesting piece by Jeffrey Toobin on President Obama’s judicial picks. Toobin took part in a live chat about the piece at NewYorker.com right now earlier today if you’re interested. (Try not to crash their website.).
UPDATE: The chat’s quite interesting. Toobin reveals why he likes Justice Souter best and answers this young wannabe judge’s question:
11:31 Guest: I’m a 25 year old law student, I want to be a judge, and my roommate smokes pot. How worried should I be? Do you think people will still care when I’m older?
11:32 Jeffrey Toobin: Don’t inhale! I’m kidding. I don’t think it will make a bit of difference. Our president has more or less admitted he was a pretty big pothead in his day, and it’s been a non-issue. Certainly the fact that your roommate smokes — not you — is irrelevant.
Toobin’s piece is available online to non-subscribers here. If you don’t feel like clicking through seven pages, here’s the ATL reader’s digest version:
Aging liberal judges hung on through the Bush era, but once a Dem took over, they were ready to hang up their robes. Additionally, since 2006, Senator Patrick Leahy has prevented Bush’s nominees from getting through the Judiciary Committee. Now vacancies abound in the federal judiciary.
Bush kicked ass in choosing judges; Obama is taking his sweet time. In the first eight months of their respective terms, Bush nominated 52 judges while Obama has chosen 17.
Obama says he’s looking for “experiential diversity” in his judicial nominations: “not just judges and prosecutors but public defenders and lawyers in private practice.” But his first batch of nominees are mainly former judges, like SCOTUS justice Sonia Sotomayor and Indianapolis federal district judge David Hamilton, nominated by Obama to the Seventh Circuit.
More bullets, after the jump.
Continue reading “Peering Into The Crystal Ball for Obama’s Judicial Picks
(Plus a live chat with the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin)”
Yesterday, we talked about a Boston College Law professor, Scott Fitzgibbon, who went up to Maine to shoot an anti-gay marriage commercial. John Garvey, Dean of Boston College Law, didn’t respond to us, but he did send around an email to the BC Law community. As many predicted, Dean Garvey defended Professor Fitzgibbon. Here is the pertinent part of Dean Garvey’s letter:
Professor Fitzgibbon, as a member of our faculty, is free to express his views. His public statements represent his own opinions, as the advertisement makes clear, and do not state any official position of Boston College Law School. We also have faculty members who hold a contrary view, which they too are free to express publicly. Many have done so while referring to themselves as BC Law professors. One of them has publicly led the fight to oppose the Solomon Amendment on the grounds that it is an affront to gay and lesbian students and prospective members of the U.S. military. Others have taken controversial positions on such subjects as abortion, euthanasia, and the treatment of detainees.
I believe that free expression is central to our mission as a law school committed to public
discourse and the free exchange of ideas and opinions. We have faculty and students from many different backgrounds, and with many different points of view. It is our expectation that they will continue to engage in public discourse, and argue their positions with passion and civility, with the intellectual freedom that an academic institution affords to us all.
Dean Garvey is clearly right insofar as academic institutions must be grounded on the free exchange of thoughts and ideas, even when those ideas are controversial.
But as NYU Law Dean Richard Revesz found out, the gay marriage issue isn’t always as simple as a mere intellectual debate. If you believe that marriage is a basic civil right, then the issue can transcend the normal bounds of academic discourse.
Not surprisingly, Above the Law readers have some opinions on whether Dean Garvey is taking the correct stance here. We present Dean Garvery’s full letter and some of the best comments and emails, after the jump.
Continue reading “Boston College Defends Anti-Gay Marriage Professor”
* Happy Constitution Day. [Concurring Opinions]
* Georgia judge Clay Land reprimanded an attorney and threw out an Army captain’s “birther movement” lawsuit, which opposed Iraq deployment based on Barack Obama’s supposed illegitimacy to be president. [Ledger-Enquirer]
* What else could Congress do to Joe Wilson? [Slate]
* Pace Law is offering an accelerated degree program, so that new students can start this January and finish at the same time as those starting now. Because we need more lawyers and we need them fast! [Pace Law School]
* The lab technician, taken into custody yesterday in connection with the killing of Yale graduate student Annie Le, is now under arrest and charged with her death by suffocation. [New York Times]
* We suspect Washington, D.C.’s massive population of young lawyers is to blame for this. [Yahoo News]
* Jones Day wants to apply the whiteout to Lehman’s bankruptcy order. [American Lawyer]
Just last week SCOTUS Justice Sonia Sotomayor was spotted cutting a rug at the Irish Channel Pub in Washington, D.C.’s Chinatown. This week, she’s on the dance floor again, but this time the location is a bit more upscale.
From the Reliable Source at the Washington Post:
The annual gala of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts is known for drawing the stars — but a D.C. luminary outshone the Hollywood kind Tuesday night. Justice Sonia Sotomayor would have been the belle of the ball even if she had never left her table, so the room exploded when actor Esai Morales pulled the Supreme Court’s first Latino member onto the dance floor for an impressively confident salsa.
See the dance video, and the other legal stars at the party, after the jump.
Continue reading “Nobody Puts Baby Sonia Sotomayor in a Corner”
There has been so much talk about the death of Biglaw that the term has become a cliché. These are challenging times, to be sure. But many firms are in the process of adjusting to the market, by making long-term plans to revise their business models so they can thrive in the future.
One such firm is O’Melveny & Myers. About a month ago, the firm released a five-year strategic plan to its associates and counsel. At a time when some firms are keeping their employees in the dark about long-term issues, O’Melveny — to its credit — decided to let its people know what management is thinking.
Above the Law has obtained a copy of this five-year plan. The document outlines how O’Melveny intends to compete going forward. Instead of aiming for marginal cost savings by making a few cutbacks here and there, the O’Melveny memo tries to rethink the firm’s overall business model — and gives us a chance to talk, once again, about the long term viability of Biglaw.
Let’s take a look into the O’Melveny’s — and perhaps Biglaw’s — future, after the jump.
Continue reading “The New Biglaw Business Model, According to O’Melveny & Myers”
* Another signal that Justice Stevens might be on his way out. [The BLT: Blog of the Legal Times]
* Are Alabaman men threatened by sex toys? [Quiz Law]
* Oh, health care reform is unconstitutional now. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Can you get a better grade by stalking your professor? [True/Slant]
* Ms. McMahon (wife of WWE founder Vince McMahon) wants to be the Republican nominee for Senator from Connecticut. This is what family values are all about. [The Fix]
* “So, you know, honestly, the thing when I read [anonymous message boards] is, I feel terrible for them because there’s no way they’re happy. They’ve got to be some of the most unhappy people in the world, and I feel bad because we just made them less happy. And I hate to be a part of making someone less happy. I mean, they’re already miserable and to make them less happy, I’d feel bad.” — Ohio State Coach Jim Tressel. [Cleveland Plain-Dealer]
Ed. note: Welcome to the latest installment of “Notes from the Breadline,” a column by a laid-off lawyer in New York. Prior columns are collected here. You can reach Roxana St. Thomas by email (at roxanastthomas@gmail.com), follow her on Twitter, or find her on Facebook.
The news that filters down to the breadline these days can be confusing. “The recession is over!” some sources promise blithely. The recession may not be over, warn others, but “even stagnation would be better than recent history.” (Anecdotal evidence of stagnation — blessed, welcome stagnation — follow, substituting for tales of hope.)
In the legal press, though, the forecast is decidedly more circumspect. Bloodletting may have slowed at the nation’s law firms, but, between rumors of the billable hour’s demise and free-floating anxiety about the future of associate pay, the recession is far from receding into the distance in our collective rearview mirror.
I have been seeing a new recruiter, one in a string of casual liaisons which — like online dates — offer much promise initially, but usually stall after the second or third encounter. (Like the others, she was relentlessly positive and showered me with complements, and … well, I ended up showing her my résumé on the first date.) I decide to ask her whether she thinks the end of the recession has come to our corner of the professional world.
“Well,” says the recruiter (whose name, fortuitously, is Faith), “a lot of my clients are back to running ads and soliciting resumes. But they’re not necessarily hiring.” A long pause follows, and she adds, “Yet.”
“Are they interviewing?” I ask. She answers carefully, telling me brightly that, yes, “some people have gone on interviews, here and there!” In other words, I translate silently: no.
Continue reading “Notes from the Breadline: Always Seem to Get Things Wrong (Part I)”
Law firm mass emails can be a bitter pill to swallow. Nobody wants to be publicly accused of, say, taking craps on the bathroom floor. In that instance, a simple multiple-choice survey on bathroom habits followed by a marksmanship competition would have sufficed. One legal administrator recently learned the hard way that sending inflammatory mass emails is rarely the route to popularity or success. Or is it?
Jordan Reid (née Berkow) is your typical NYC born and bred jerkhat. She went to Dalton private school and then moved on to Harvard, where she got her undergrad degree in cognitive neuroscience. (Ed. note: that’s in the psychology department, nice try.)
Perhaps prompted by her voice coach and by a successful run in a summer camp production of “The Pajama Game,” Jordan went to L.A. to seek fame and fortune. After a few small roles and the requisite appearance on Law & Order, she abandoned ship and returned to NYC, where her she lived in an apartment partially paid for by her parents. As a matter of course, her mom, who worked in a law firm, hooked her up with a job as a legal administrator there. It’s not clear exactly where she worked, but Jordan describes the firm as “a fairly depressing” place, where she sobbed at her desk. If this sounds like your office, join the club email us at tips.
A flip-flop and an email, after the jump.
Continue reading “Those Who Can’t Mass Email, Blog”
For those who have been following the Supreme Court case American Needle v. NFL (previously blogged about in more detail here, here, and here), this Friday clothing manufacturer American Needle Inc. will file its opening brief, arguing that the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals was wrong to define the NFL as a single-entity under Section 1 of the Sherman Act.
As many of you know, I have long agreed with American Needle’s view that the NFL should be treated as a collection of 32 separate clubs, and not as a single entity. To me, this issue was best resolved by the Second Circuit back in the 1982 case North American Soccer League v. Nat’l Football League, in which that court held “the sound and more just procedure is to judge the legality of [sports league] restraints according to well-recognized standards of our antitrust laws rather than permit their exemption.”
Currently, the Second Circuit’s view remains in the overwhelming majority, as seven previous courts have upheld this view and rejected the NFL clubs’ single-entity argument. The Seventh Circuit meanwhile remains alone in its iconoclastic position that single-entity status should be determined one league at a time, one function at a time.
American Needle’s counsel on this matter in the law firm Jones Day. The National Football League meanwhile is represented by Covington & Burling LLC–a firm where former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue serves as Senior Of Counsel.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Marc Edelman is a Professor at Barry Law School in Orlando, FL. He previously was a Visiting Professor at Rutgers School of Law-Camden. His bio is available here, and his publications, here.
Some of you, especially the straight males, may recall Stephanie Shimek (née Stephanie Haney). She’s the University of North Carolina law student who tried out for Playboy, to wit, the “Girls of the ACC” issue. We wrote about her in a post entitled “Career Alternatives for Law Students: Playboy Bunny.”
Multiple ATL readers — who read Playboy just for the articles, we’re sure — have alerted us to the good news: Stephanie made it into the magazine! WCHL reports:
A UNC student has had her dreams of being featured in Playboy magazine come true in the 2009 October ‘Girls of ACC” issue.
Twenty-four year old Stephanie Christine says ever since she first picked up a copy of the magazine at her aunt’s house, she wanted to be like one of the Bunnies.
That’s one open-minded aunt! (Based on an interview with Stephanie on the WCHL website, however, it seems that the issues belonged to her uncle — no lesbianic aunt here.)
Stephanie is a 3L, and as we’ve discussed, 3L recruiting is a nightmare this year. But don’t worry about Steph; she has backup options. According to WCHL, she aspires to work in entertainment law — but if that doesn’t work out, “[f]uture involvement with Playboy has been extended to her.” In addition, “her parents and family have been really supportive.”
As diligent journalists, we went out to a local newsstand and picked up a copy of Playboy’s “Sex on Campus 2009″ issue. After showing photo ID — we got carded (yesss!!!) — and plunking down $5.99, we took the plastic-wrapped periodical back to the office, where Elie gave us a brief tutorial in female anatomy. (We’ve never seen a woman’s private parts in real life, except this one time we went to a nude beach in France.)
After the jump, we present you with pictures of Stephanie, plus one other young woman who aspires to a legal career. We have carefully redacted the photos — drawing on skills honed during document review years ago, before online doc review became commonplace — so they are safe for work. Enjoy.
Continue reading “Law Student of the Day: Playmate of the Month?
(Plus: An aspiring law student in Playboy’s pages.)”
We’ve been doing a lot of coverage on Dorsey & Whitney. The firm canceled its 2010 summer program and only had a 56% offer rate to its 2009 summers.
But we don’t want to forget about another Minneapolis powerhouse firm, Faegre & Benson. Earlier this month, we learned that the firm had decided to cut the starting salaries for its new associates. Faegre & Benson has confirmed to Above the Law that the new starting salary for its Minneapolis associates will be $110,000. That’s down a little less than ten percent from the firm’s previous starting salary of $120K.
One upper Midwestern tipster had hoped Faegre was taking advantage of the troubles at Dorsey & Whitney to surge past them in the Minneapolis market:
Faegre is the largest law firm in Minneapolis, and the general vibe is that it has surpassed Dorsey & Whitney in this market in terms of prestige and quality. So it’s sad to see Faegre take a step back. Especially since Faegre claimed that its layoffs earlier this year solved all its financial troubles. Will other Minneapolis firms follow suit to $110K???
I’m not sure that Dorsey & Whitney people would agree with the tipster’s “general vibe.” Regardless, rolling back to $110K for 2010 is something no offered Dorsey & Whitney summers would take in a heartbeat.
Read the full Faegre & Benson memo about its salary cuts, after the jump.
Continue reading “Nationwide Salary Cut Watch: Don’t Forget About Faegre & Benson”
A quick word of thanks to this week’s advertisers on Above the Law:
Harvard Business School – Business Strategy for Partners in Law Firms
Kinney Recruiting
Lateral Link
LexisNexis
Quimbee: The case brief database
If you’re interested in advertising on Above the Law or any other site in the Breaking Media network, download our media kits, or email advertising@breakingmedia.com. Thanks!
The gay marriage debate continues to rage in New England, and now a Boston College Law Professor wants to weigh in. The state of Maine has a ballot proposition about gay marriage this fall, and BC Law Professor Scott T. Fitzgibbon decided to shoot an anti-gay marriage ad.
Just to be clear, this is not a Dr. Li-ann Thio situation. Thio was invited to teach at NYU Law this fall and later declined the invitation under a hail of student protests. But Thio seemed to go out of her way to disparage gays and lesbians and the very practice of homosexual sex.
Fitzgibbon at least tries to stick to the legal issues surrounding the systematic denial of civil rights to gays and lesbians.
After the jump, check out the ad for yourself.
Continue reading “Boston College Law Professor In Anti-Gay Marriage Ad”
* The DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel has given President Obama the green light to ignore a law forbidding State Department officials from attending certain U.N. meetings. [New York Times]
* Sir Allen Stanford gets a public defender. Let’s hope this is just a way station en route to his going pro se. [Dealbreaker; WSJ Law Blog]
* An elegant explanation of why English defamation law sucks so much. [The Wild Side]
* A 24-year-old Yale lab technician has been taken into custody in connection with the killing of Yale graduate student Annie Le. [New York Daily News]
* The House voted, largely along party lines, to rebuke Rep. Joe “You lie!” Wilson (R-SC). [Washington Post]
* Barring something unforeseen, Cyrus Vance Jr. will replace the legendary Robert Morgenthau as New York district attorney. [New York Times]
* The FCC wants to take a second look at Janet Jackson’s breasts. [How Appealing]
Last week, we reported on a questionable offering in the Lexis-Nexis Rewards Program store: an “Asian Angels” calendar.
Shortly after our post went up, the calendar came down. It seems that legal research companies respond well to media coverage.
But the calendar, despite being quickly withdrawn from the Lexis swag offerings, still incurred the ire of the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association at UC Berkeley.
Read their response, plus a statement from Lexis, below.
Continue reading “No More Asian Angels For Loyal Lexis Users”
Last Thursday, we posted a photo of VP Joe Biden enjoying some good ol’ blueberry pie at his alma mater, Syracuse University College of Law. It was up to you to come up with a caption for the picture, and now it’s time to choose the best one. Here’s the photo once again:
After the jump, check out the finalists.
Continue reading “ATL Caption Contest Finalists: American Pie”
* What kind of world do we live in where you can’t get a tax deduction for prostitutes and porn? Socialist America certainly has a downside. [Tax Prof Blog]
* The shoe-hurler has been set free. He’s been invited for tea over at Joe Wilson’s house. Just kidding. [MSNBC.com]
* If you’re a girl who wants to succeed in the legal profession, you are better off with a masculine name. There is no profession where a man is better off with a girl’s name. Trust me on this. [Legal Blog Watch]
* When keeping it real (online) goes real wrong. [Expert News]
* I’ll admit it. Sometime when I am done with work for the day, I will log and spend hours judging other people’s problems on this website. And I won’t be sober. [Instant Jury]
* I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe it’s the uncanny principle. But “Bodies” having sex is quite possibly the most monstrous thing I have ever seen. [Transracial]
Those law students at Fordham University have a new tidbit to add to their dossier on SCOTUS Justice Antonin Scalia. He made an appearance last night at the Friendship Heights Village Center in Chevy Chase, Maryland, to talk about his book, “Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges.”
Politico reports that he gave out some pieces of advice, namely:
- “Don’t beat a dead horse.”
- “Be brief. And when your time expires, shut up and sit down.”
- Avoid acronyms in brief writing and oral arguments.
- Lawyers should study a judge’s background and likes and dislikes before they appear in court. “At the very least, these details will humanize the judge before you, so that you will be arguing to a human being instead of a chair.”
That last bit of advice can be taken too far, of course. Nino was annoyed when he found out about Fordham Law’s background research on him earlier this year.
Justice Scalia was willing to add to the files, though, revealing his favorite legal movie. What is it?
Continue reading “Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Hates Acronyms, Loves Marisa Tomei”
Way back in June, Above the Law heard rumblings about issues regarding the incoming first-year class at Baker & McKenzie. The class had already been deferred until January 2010, but in June some tipsters reported that Baker was “rescinding” offers. Others claimed that the firm was simply “strongly encouraging” incoming associates to consider alternatives.
Still, some associates poised to start at Baker hadn’t heard anything at all. At the time, we brought these reports to the attention of Baker & McKenzie management. In June, the firm said:
As we’ve already communicated, we have had to make some difficult decisions in a difficult economy. But we haven’t taken the actions you suggest, and our start dates remain January (and, in some cases, earlier).
But that was back in the heady days of early summer. Now, as autumn approaches, Baker seems to be preparing its incoming class for economic reality. This morning, tipsters reported that deferral extensions — or worse — were coming down on at least some members of Baker’s would-be incoming class:
Last night at 10:30, we received an email from the [redacted] simpleton, asking to set up a phone call for this morning. Phone call from hiring partner was as follows:
Economy blah blah blah limited amount of work blah blah blah majority of you will not be starting in January. Starting in January, 5k stipend plus benefits for up to six months. at ANY time during six months, MAY get a call from b&m, have 1-2 weeks to report to work, but absent a major bump in work, not likely to happen. If after June, no call from b&m, “the relationship will end.”
Twelve of 18 incoming associates got this lovely treatment
“The relationship will end” does not sound promising. After the jump, Baker responds to these reports.
Continue reading “Baker & McKenzie: For Some, Deferral Extensions Could Lead to Offer Revocation”
We mentioned this in passing yesterday, but in case you missed it, please take note of this event in D.C. next week:
On Wednesday, September 23, the Georgetown Federalist Society will be hosting a panel event on New Media & The Law at 7 PM in Hart Auditorium [at Georgetown University Law Center, 600 New Jersey Ave. N.W., Washington, DC].
The panel will feature David Lat from Above the Law, Tony Mauro from the National Law Journal, and Matt Welch from Reason Magazine. Eileen O’Connor, adjunct professor at Georgetown and former reporter and bureau chief at CNN, will moderate.
The event will be followed by a reception.
The event is sponsored by the Georgetown Federalist Society. Hope to see you there!
New Media & The Law Event at GULC [Georgetown Federalist Society Blog]
