first to say first

I can't believe Ropes is expanding.

The Who is a great band, though we were always England's loudest band. But shame on you Elie for promoting copyright infringement by posting that YouTube material. You should instead be defending the rights of musicians and artists like me. Take it down from your site.

We need to bomb Halloween back to the stoneage!
-DOJ Secure

This reminds me of the time that Dave Miller yelled at the Indians

Davis Wright deserves to get hit, but their malpractice carrier probably paid most of it. Firms like Davis Wright will do anything to please a client involved in a large transaction like this. In normal times, lawyer screw-ups and lawyer lies never get discovered, because the deals just bump along. In bad economic times, the shit hits the fan, and this kind of crap comes floating to the top.

I am an associate at a bankruptcy mill. I make $44k per year. I compensate for this by living in a really poor section of town. I appear to be rather prosperous to the downtrodden slobs in my ghetto.

I wear a Joseph A. Banks tuxedo and drive a used Toyota Corolla. There are a few homeless guys who live outside of the laundromat on my block. The other day I heard them discussing whether or not I work at a peer firm.

PE claims that the dream is dead for lawyers. He is wrong. You just have to look for it where you least expect to find it. I am a white collar, professional hero in my universe.

*glad to see elie back to his old ways, don't let lat keep you down*

it's Orrin Hatch, not Orin Hatch.

*gives elie, a flying fist bump*

-nervous T-10 2L

I passed the bar, but now I get to go to my real job tending bar.

I like ATL. However, the Who video has been, to date, the best thing I've seen here. Rock On.

Tim Tebow OWNS the Heisman!

Lat deserves greater protection from crimes of violence than I do because of the type of sex he has. Makes sense to me.

I hurdled a homeless man on my way to bankruptcy court- I was late.

The "Southeast Conference"? Watch much football. Seriously though, word is those refs from the UF/Ark. game are now at Guantanamo

The SEC is God's conference, just ask Tim Tebow.

You can discriminate against WiccanS, or A Wiccan, or maybe even Wicca. But not what you wrote, Elie.

SoutheastERN...

Each shtick is progressively more stupid. I don't know why these people think they're funny.

8, in a few years, $44K per year will seem like a whole lot to even BigLaw asswipes. There's nothing like living at home without a job to change one's perception of what consitutes a good job.

Tim Tebow OWNS Lat's anus.

Elie -

You work pretty hard and you obviously do a lot of stuff behind the scenes that we don't see. You are almost certainly not a lazy guy. So can you explain something please: why is that you cannot be bothered to proofread your posts? You are literally the only legitimate blogger I can think of who routinely makes egregious spelling and grammar mistakes. Why?

- Honestly (non-bi) curious

22, not to speak for Elie, but what's the big deal about typos on an internet message board. Who really gives a damn, other than some anal-retentive asshole who has doubt about his own sexuality.

I have to believe Elie is just baiting Lat at this point. There is no way he really thinks it "Southeast Conference."

23:

Not to speak for 22, but what's so massively inappropriate about expecting a professional journalist to comply with basic rules of the language in which he writes? Who really get so incensed at the suggestion, other than some sloppy shit who himself can't write a coherent sentence?

"shit hits the fan . . . crap comes floating to the top"

I love it 7

@ 13 "Lat deserves greater protection from crimes of violence than I do because of the type of sex he has. Makes sense to me."

Whether or not you agree with hate crime laws, the law protects everyone with a sexual orientation, including people who don't have the type of sex Lat has. So if a lesbian gang beats you for not having the same type of sex Lat has, you can take advantage of this new law.

Tim Tebow is the model athlete, and I would love to have him join my organization for two reasons: the kid is a winner, and the kid wants to win. Not like some of the prima donnas I've been forced to work with. Prima donnas that have cost the organization through penalizations, holdouts, and intolerable antics like crying in public.

Sodomy can lead to asslobsters.

Orrin Hatch

4 - it's ironic that you claim a violation of IP rights, since you've hijacked Nigel's personality and violated his IP rights yourself.

30 - Noncommercial, parody is a protected use. Go to IP class.

13

Nobody is tying you to a fence and beating you to death because of the type of sex you have, so what protection do you need exactly?

- A straight guy

27,
This is rank political pandering to a special interest group. It is wrong. I object to subsidies to U.S. sugar growers on the same grounds.

If a gay guy or a straight guy is beaten because of his sexual proclivities or his baseball allegiance, let's enforce the law. Is the guy any less injured because he roots for the wrong team?

Stop with the political statements.

-5
We are currently investigating the threat that Halloween poses. If, after our committees and Czars report back to us, Halloween indeed does pose a threat then we will consider bombing it.
-White House Secure

Leave Elie alone you SEC nitpickers. I've watched SEC football games on CBS and ESPN where the announcers have referred to the conference as the "Southeast Conference." And you expect Elie to be more precise? Lighten up and love your brother.

I love people like 25 who post nasty comments complaining about typos without correcting their own typos first. Stay classy, 25.

But what I really love is the Who's drummer. Anyone who duct tapes those big headphones to his head is alright in my book.

32,
People commit crimes of violence for any number of reasons. I need the same level of protection as every one else.

If someone kills me or gravely injures me because I denounce legal inequality and political favoritism or for any other reason, do you want to tell my survivors that my life deserves less protection because I do not belong to a politically active special interest group?

If crimes against gays were unenforced (as was the case with blacks in the South), I'd listen to you. But gays' assailants are prosecuted to the same extent as other victims' assailants.

You want to deter crime? Aggressively enforce the laws and don't tolerate criminals. It takes a lot of work but it is not rocket science.

32, Matthew Shepard's assailants received consecutive life sentences and narrowly avoided the death penalty by plea bargaining. There was also evidence that the killing was motivated by drugs and not homosexuality. So what more protection do victims who happen to be gay need exactly?

The SEC is the PAC 10's bitch.

37, but to reiterate a previous poster, sexual orientation *in general* is protected. You're straight? Fantastic. Yay for you. If someone beats you for it, you are protected under the law. Are you gay? Fantastic. Someone beats you for it, you are protected under the law.

By all means rail against hate crime legislation in general. But you seem to be railing against the notion that gay men and women will be protected by the law, rather than all hate crime laws.

So, tell me, are you also angry that straight men and women would be protected? Does that bother you just as much? Are you railing against the hate crime laws that protect race, religion, etc.? Or is just those darn gays you object to?

38 = Virginia Foxx (R-Of Course)

33 - whether or not you agree with hate crimes laws was not my point. I was responding 13's false assertion that hate crime laws only protect people who have sex the way Lat has sex. In fact, the law protects anyone with a sexual orientation.

To be specific, the law *also* now makes it a federal crime to attack U.S. military personnel because of their service. Yet people are only focused on complaining that sexual orientation was added to the hate crimes law. Gee, I wonder why.

Congrats to all who passed the Nevada Bar. Now you just need to avoid being permanently deferred by Lionel Sawyer.

HUGE kudos for The Who video. Phenomenal.

Elie FAILS again. The SEC is leading the charge against the current BCS and toward a tournament, which is what Hatch would presumably prefer.

Your reporting skills, as usual, are nonexistent.

"Nobody is tying you to a fence and beating you to death because of the type of sex you have."

I've been out of law school for a while and don't exactly remember the rule here, but I'm like 80% sure it's already illegal to tie someone to a fence and beat them to death.

I just want to wish Justice Ginsburg good luck- we're all counting on her.

39, In what universe is the PAC-10 better than the SEC? The SEC has the highest bowl win percentage of any conference and leads in all-time head-to-head games against the PAC-10. Not to mention winning the last three national championships.

47 is my favorite meme on this waste of a blog.

I want hate crime protection for all non-Raiders' fans. If you get your ass kicked in the Oakland Coliseum for wearing a Broncos jersey you should have federal protection.

I'm not surprised to see that the idiots who post here don't understand the purposes of hate crime legislation (and yes, I suppose I'm an idiot for posting too).

Hate crimes legislation doesn't provide increased protection for the particular victim of the crime, it provides protection to the other members of the group targeted. If somebody kills you because you're sleeping with his wife, I may think that's a terrible and shocking crime, but it doesn't put me in fear for my life, because I am presumably not sleeping with that guy's wife. If somebody kills you because you're black, and I am also black, I now have to live my life in fear, because I may be the next victim. That's why people commit hate crimes, to send a message to the other members of the targeted community that they are not safe, and that they had better "know their place." Although not precisely the same as terrorism, it is in the same vein. That violent threat to an entire community is a crime in addition to the particular murder/assault/whatever that has been committed, and so it merits additional punishment. Why is this so hard to understand?

13 and 38- it's especially abhorrent in our society when one is targeted for a crime because of who they are. We can wrap our brains around crimes committed in passion, crimes committed for drugs or turf, but when someone is assaulted because they're gay, it's especially humiliating to a civilized society. I understand yokels in they fly-over-and-ignore states make a Friday night hoe-down out of beatin' up the local queerbait, but on the civilized coasts we look down on that sort of thing.

Oh, and 31 PWND 30. Very nice, Nigel.

By just a quick count, 240 people or so passed the NV bar. At 63%, that means about 380 people took the NV bar. There were almost as many people in my graduating class. There were 380 people sitting at in my section alone of the giant room in San Mateo.

Anyone know how many people sat for the CA bar in July?

OMG it's "Davis Wright Tremaine." Elie, we thought Lat had a talk with you.

52 - How about assaulting someone because you don't like their face? Because they have a nice house with an unlocked front door? Some other reason that essentially amounts to "no reason at all"?

You are full of shit - it's all politics and you know it.

The Who is the greatest band that ever lived. (But in this video, Keith Moon looks like Mike Myers immitating Keith Moon).

Nevada's Bar Examination is a piece of cake compared to California's.

Is Ropes & Gray learning nothing from "Mad Men"?

55- assaulting someone because you don't like their face falls in the category of attacking someone because of who they are.

Entering an unlocked building for the purposes of committing a crime is good ol' burglary. (Yeah I know assholes CL says it has to be at night) It's a crime of opportunity, not a crime of directed aggression.

There are fine lines- like what if you're having a heated debate about gay marriage, and you lose your temper and shove the other person- they fall and hit their head and are severely injured? That's when the boundary gets blurred, and that's why we have learned judges who decide if they get a sentence enhancement. I believe some states have additional charges that juries handle. Does anyone know if the federal hate crimes legislation is fact or law?

I take it no one actually read the story about Ropes. They picked up two of the biggest names in Private Equity (formerly co-chairs of PE at White & Case). The fact that they're opening a London office is secondary to the lateral news.