Welcome to Part II of First One @ One First‘s Guide to Scoring a SCOTUS Seat. My name is Mike Sacks and I am a Georgetown 3L and proprietor of F1@1F, where I write about my adventures from the front of the general admission line for the Supreme Court’s oral arguments in cases of public interest and political salience.
Last week, I gave you all the information you need to be at the head of the line. But getting there is only the start of the full experience. After the jump, I give you some tips to maximize your morning.
Continue reading “First One @ One First’s Guide to SCOTUS Seats, Part II: What to Expect?”
* Harvard Law Professor Jonathan Zittrain embraces the future of the Internet to stop his mysterious illness. [Los Angeles Times via ABA Journal]
* A reason to make sweet, softer, and, most importantly, quieter love. [New Jersey Law Journal]
* A 2008 law grad finds a way to make money. [San Francisco Chronicle]
* Is Clarence Thomas planning a presidential run or something? [Dallas Morning News]
* Auction giant eBay hates deaf people? [Media Post]
* Guantanamo detainee lawyers respond to Liz Cheney’s attack. [Chicago Tribune]
ATL’s March Madness starts today. We want you to crown the best cities for practicing law.
We’re jumping right into the Sweet Sixteen. Some people weren’t happy with the sixteen cities that made the cut. Even though their populations are sizeable, cities like Phoenix and Miami didn’t get invited to the Big Dance. If retirees outnumber lawyers in your town, you were disqualified from the tournament.
Here is the bracket for the “Best City to Practice Law” competition:
The first two regions, with some commentary from your Vitale-channeling editors, after the jump.
Continue reading “ATL March Madness (Round 1): Best City to Practice Law. The South and East Matchups.”
* Come on, what man hasn’t tried to use his penis to hit a police officer in the face? [BBC News]
* The heat is still on NALP and Biglaw firms to reveal their equity/non-equity partner distinctions. [Law 360]
* No one expects the Spanish Inquisition. At least not from undercover DOJ agents on Facebook. [The Smoking Gun]
* 70% of HR professional are doing google checks on prospective employees, but only 15% of potential employees think their online footprint matters to employers. So, just how stupid are 85% of job seekers? [Concurring Opinions]
* Can’t we come up with a better way to impeach judges? Right now we’re one step removed from weighing them down, throwing them in a river, and seeing if they float. Granted — that’s a pretty important step, but still. [Huffington Post]
* Deem and pass sounds a little bit like legalese for “chicken” and “s***.” [Althouse]
That’s the question essentially posed in a barn-burning op-ed piece in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, written by Debra Burlingame and Thomas Joscelyn. Burlingame is the sister of Charles Burlingame III, pilot of the American Airlines plane that was crashed at the Pentagon on September 11; Joscelyn is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Burlingame and Joscelyn begin their opinion piece, Gitmo’s Indefensible Lawyers, by discussing Paul Weiss partner Julia Tarver Mason (who, by the way, is rather attractive; she looks like a cross between Kristin Davis, aka Charlotte from Sex and the City, and Andie MacDowell). The WSJ op-ed writers claim that Mason improperly used “legal mail” — “privileged lawyer-client communications that are exempt from screening by security personnel” — to provide one of her clients, a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, with inflammatory propaganda from Amnesty International (a brochure, written in Arabic, depicting alleged abuse against Arabs and Muslims by Americans).
Writes one of several ATL readers who brought this article to our attention:
Wow. I didn’t know that Paul Weiss was involved in such potentially dubious acts.
But did Paul Weiss actually do anything wrong? Let’s discuss….
Continue reading “Is Paul Weiss in Bed With Terrorists?
Leading law firm attacked in controversial WSJ op-ed.“
We’ve got another public university in New England looking to acquire a third tier law school. But don’t worry, we’re not looking at another Southern New England School of Law/UMass situation. There, UMass acquired the unaccredited Southern New England under the guise of making a place for public interest lawyers in Massachusetts — at the tune of $23,565/year.
In contrast, the University of New Hampshire wants to form a partnership with Franklin Pierce Law Center — a New Hampshire institution that has been accredited since 1974. Here’s the top news from the FPLC press release:
University of New Hampshire President Mark W. Huddleston and Franklin Pierce Law Center President John D. Hutson announced today that the two institutions have approved an affiliation agreement, the first step in a multi-year process toward full merger. The Pierce Law board unanimously approved the affiliation March 4 and the University System of New Hampshire Board of Trustees approved it March 15.
As you parse through the press release, you’ll note that there’s not a lot of the disingenuous public interest lawyer rhetoric that UMass/Southern New England tried to sell.
Continue reading “Franklin Pierce Law Center In Talks to Merge with University of New Hampshire”
Working from home is one of the perks of living in the Internet age. The downside is that work more easily intrudes into the rest of your life. But being chained to your BlackBerry is better than being chained to your office chair.
A partner in the Miami office of an AmLaw 50 firm doesn’t like the idea of his associates being out on the beach with their BlackBerrys, though. He wants them in the office. He wants to see their faces, and the only tan he wants to see on them is the kind from the office’s fluorescent lights.
This partner whom we are not outing from a firm that we are not naming gave a speech last week that left many of his associates even less excited about spending time at the office than before…
Continue reading “Blind Item: Biglaw Partner Likes Your Faces”
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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!
K&L Gates is cutting salaries, again. This time the cuts seem directed at K&L Gates associates in the firm’s Boston office. But more importantly, these appear to be tactical cuts that will hurt associates currently at the firm, while doing as little damage as possible to K&L’s recruiting brochures.
A tipster reports the headline news:
K&L Gates slashed salaries last week, at least in their Boston office .. all associates who didn’t meet the billable target (1950 hours) last year saw their salaries cut by 10%. The best part? First year associates–who started with the firm in January, 2010 (two months ago) still retain their starting salary of $160,000. Translation? Most, if not all second year associates are now making 10% less than the first years who have been practicing for 2 months. The second year associates were told that they had their “free pass” last year, which is why the salary disparity is justified.
Yeah. Morale in this office sucks right now.
Multiple tipsters sent in reports similar to this one, all of them were pissed. Not just the second years …
Continue reading “K&L Gates: A Boston Salary Cut Makes for an Interesting Mob Mollification Strategy”
The Court’s extensive review of these pages serves as a useful reminder that loaded guns, sharp objects and law degrees should be kept out of the reach of children.
– United States Magistrate Judge Paul Cleary of the Northern District of Oklahoma, from the Opinion and Order in AG Equipment Company v. AIG Life Insurance Company.
Late last week, Chicago based Chapman & Cutler released its 2009 bonus news. It’s not that impressive. But the firm also previewed what it will pay in bonuses for 2010. It’s … not that impressive. A tipster reports:
[T]his year the vast majority of associates did not receive any bonus whatsoever. So apples to apples, we fell way short of our competition (which management likes to tout as Mayer Brown but in reality is other second-tier Chicago firms). As an encore, they have already released next year’s bonus numbers and they’re still low for our peer group. They have the nerve to note they are meeting the 2008 bonuses like it’s a good thing, which is ridiculous as those bonuses too were low since they went out just after the economic crash. As upset as we are, I would be irate if I were a second year. Though it’s somewhat hidden in the memo, they have decided to completely eliminate all hours-based bonuses for second years.
Actually, screwing over second-years is not at all buried in the memo. Chapman makes it pretty clear….
Continue reading “Chapman and Cutler Brings Next Year’s Bonus News Today”
Ed. note: We apologize for the late docket. Technical difficulties, rather than oversleeping, are to blame.
* Yale Law School student Michael Seringhaus wants to put your DNA in a national database. [New York Times]
* Judge goes heavy on the prison time and light on the restitution for the man who peephole video-taped ESPN sportscaster Erin Andrews. [True/Slant]
* Toyota class action plaintiffs rev their engines. [Kansas City Business Journal]
* Former McGuire Woods partner Louis Zehil pleads guilty to securities fraud and trading shares in the companies for which he was doing P.E. work. [Business Week]
* General counsels are happy to scavenge Biglaw layoffs. [ABA Journal]
* Eric Holder is not having a good month. [Daily Beast]
* If you see a story about a deadly giraffe attack, don’t believe it. [Houston Chronicle]
* One Darby & Darby refugee finds shelter at Fenwick West. [ABA Journal]
* If Legally Blonde makes your list of Top Five Movies “about the law” you kind of deserve to be beaten about the face and neck. [It's Just Movies]
* … Instead, check out “The Good Wife” which is really knocking out some quality programming. Or, as many readers have pointed out, last week’s Modern Family was simply brilliant: “I’m used to nice things!” [Law and More]
* My only preparation for callback interviews was to stay sober the night before. I met that goal with only moderate success. Now, thanks to the recession, people might need a drink before a callback interview more than ever. [Law.com]
* Even federal magistrates make typos. [Suits & Sentences]
* A reader reports: “Not really very much of a legal angle. But it’s always fun to beat up on her.” Man, I do my best but I can’t seem to hold a candle to Elizabeth Wurtzel when it comes to pissing people off. [Elle]
* The Ides of March is a perfect opportunity to reflect on just how much better things are now than they were at this time last year. Law Shucks puts that into stark statistical relief in today’s Blawg Review. [Law Shucks via Blawg Review]
In our recent caption contest, there were quite a few captions that alluded to the members of the Supreme Court being in bed with conservatives. As we reported this morning, Clarence Thomas is most definitely in bed with a conservative. Ginni Thomas is the President and CEO of the newly launched 501(c)(4), Liberty Central Inc., with the mission statement to “serve the big tent of the conservative movement.”
Since the judiciary prefers the appearance of nonpartisanship, the Los Angeles Times found her Tea Party-inspired group worth covering:
“I think the American public expects the justices to be out of politics,” said University of Texas law school professor Lucas A. “Scot” Powe, a court historian.
He said the expectations for spouses are far less clear. “I really don’t know because we’ve never seen it,” Powe said. Under judicial rules, judges must curb political activity, but a spouse is free to engage.
Not shockingly, Clarence Thomas has nothing to say about this. Eugene Volokh points out that Ginni Thomas is far from the first politically-engaged judicial spouse:
Of course, Justice Thomas is not the only judge to have had a spouse in a prominent political role. Ninth Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt’s wife, Ramona Ripston, has just stepped down from being head of the Southern California ACLU. Third Circuit Judge Jane Roth’s husband was a U.S. Senator; Third Circuit Judge Marjorie Rendell’s husband is a governor. So I’m not sure that there’s really a judicial norm that judge’s spouses should stay out of politics, whether partisan politics, advocacy group politics, or public interest litigation (itself a form of politics, at least when done effectively).
All this talk of justices’ second halves made us think it was time for a rundown of the other Supreme spouses. The Honorable Husbands and Wives, and their careers, after the jump.
Continue reading “The Supreme Spouses”
Do you want to sit for the New York Bar Exam without spending three years in an American law school? Now you can. But you’re not going to be saving a whole lot of time, and we’re not sure if you’re going to be saving any money.
The Lawyer reports that the College of Law has made a move to accelerate the time it takes for U.K. lawyers to get licensed in the U.S.:
The College of Law (CoL) has announced plans to offer the New York Bar Exam to UK students, allowing them to qualify as American lawyers without having to complete a training contract.
Full-time GDL students who go on to complete CoL’s Legal Practice Course (LPC) or Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC) will be eligible to sit for the New York Bar Exam following an additional 22-week study programme.
Previously UK non-law graduates would first need to qualify as a lawyer in the UK and then complete an LLM degree in the US before being able to sit the New York Bar Exam.
The program is also open to people educated in the U.S., though it doesn’t look like you’ll save a whole lot of time hopping across the pond and back …
Continue reading “The College of Law — London, Makes Move in U.S. Market”
Here at Above the Law, we’re experts at bringing you breaking legal news. For a change of pace, we decided to try something in which we don’t necessarily have expertise: matchmaking. We invited single New Yorkers to hand their dating lives over to us and had over 160 people take us up on the invitation.
We sent two of them out on a date last week. In our set-up, people are truly going on blind dates — no names or descriptions, beyond an identifying item. There is no advance Facebook-stalking or Googling. The only thing these two knew going into the date is that they are both Above the Law readers. We had them meet at Olive’s in the W Hotel in Union Square on Thursday evening.
In our Courtship Connection survey, we asked people to tell us what they would be doing if they weren’t in law. He said he would be an investment banker or consultant. She says she likes to deal with rich executives. Both in the 26-30 age range, graduates of top law schools, he in Biglaw and she in marketing, what could go wrong?
Continue reading “ATL Courtship Connection: “Good Luck To You””
Thanks again to the people at Caesar’s Atlantic City, Harrah’s, and the people at Stockings and Bonds for inviting me to their poker tournament over the weekend. I didn’t win, mainly because God hates me. But I didn’t embarrass myself either. I finished 20th out of 91 players.
And I learned some important lessons about playing poker with bankers that I’d like to share with the lawyers out there, if you’re interested.
Continue reading “Poker: What Lawyers Can Learn About Bankers at the Table”
The administration at the University of Idaho, College of Law, is dealing with a spate of hate inspired incidents. The news coming out from Idaho is all fairly grotesque; federal authorities have been alerted to the potentially dangerous problems on campus.
In an email to all Idaho law students, associate dean Elizabeth Brandt explains that the problems started in August:
Dear Students,
I am writing to give you the details of a series of events that have occurred in the law building since last August.
The first incident occurred shortly before school started in August. At that time, students discovered that someone had gouged out the eyes of a student in a photo posted on the ACLU bulletin board next to the elevator on the ground floor near the café. The person whose picture was defaced is an LGBT rights and ACLU activist. At the time, we believed that this might be a prank, but that it also might be malicious. Dean Albertson-Ploucha and I sent an email at the time letting you know that items on the ACLU bulletin board had been defaced, cautioning that such conduct was unprofessional, threatening and potentially illegal, and encouraging support for the diverse law school community.
As we understand it, there is no evidence that the tasteless acts were committed by Idaho law students.
But sadly, whoever is frightening the community didn’t stop in August …
Continue reading “Hate Abounds at University of Idaho College of Law”
There was an article in the New York Times this weekend that jumped off the page and kind of smacked me in the mouth. The headline reads: “The New Poor — In Hard Times, Lured Into Trade School and Debt”
Oh, the New York Times is finally starting to notice law schools that are profiteering during the recession? Not quite:
One fast-growing American industry has become a conspicuous beneficiary of the recession: for-profit colleges and trade schools.
At institutions that train students for careers in areas like health care, computers and food service, enrollments are soaring as people anxious about weak job prospects borrow aggressively to pay tuition that can exceed $30,000 a year.
That sounds like exactly the kind of scam many law schools are running.
But shockingly, a professor at Seattle University School of Law actually mocks these trade school programs. It’s a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black …
Continue reading “Hypocrisy on Stilts: Law School Professor Calls Out Trade Schools Over Student Debt”
When we’ve heard in the past about Virginia Lamp Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, it was usually as his fellow RV road warrior. But Ginni Thomas is now much more high-profile. The Los Angeles Times reported this weekend that she has launched Liberty Central Inc., a conservative non-profit inspired by the Tea Party movement.
From the organization’s website:
LibertyCentral.org will serve the big tent of the conservative movement and assist all viable individuals and organizations with education and engagement. The site’s primary focus will be on emerging and new citizen activists – helping them discover a viable path to effective and efficient activism, along with an understanding of why their participation matters in accordance with founding principles and limited Constitutional governance.
Experts tell the L.A. Times that Thomas’ work doesn’t violate ethical rules for judges, but that it could give rise to conflicts of interest for her husband.
People are already pointing out that the 5-4 decision in Citizens United cleared the way for Liberty Central to fill its coffers with corporate cash.
Continue reading “Mrs. Clarence Thomas Hosts Her Own Tea Party”
