Jay Bybee
* An interesting look at the role played by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and his S.D.N.Y. colleagues in the recent Russian spy swap. [New York Times]
* The government’s obscenity case against porn purveyor John Stagliano has climaxed… in a dismissal. [Politico via First One @ One First]
* Now that the damn hole is plugged, at least for the time being, all eyes are on BP compensation fund czar Kenneth Feinberg. [New York Times]
* The Justice Department has launched the largest health-care fraud sting in U.S. history. [Washington Post]
* Still on the DOJ, here’s the interesting backstory on how Jay Bybee came to head the Office of Legal Counsel. [Main Justice]
Earlier this month, we provided you with a fairly complete listing of Supreme Court law clerks for October Term 2010. The OT 2010 clerks are starting up at the Court this month, staggered over a few weeks. To get a sense of what they’ll be working on this summer, see this SCOTUSblog post, by Lisa McElroy.
If you had any doubts about the accuracy of our list of OT 2010 clerks, consider them dispelled. The Public Information Office of the Supreme Court has kindly provided Above the Law with the official list of incoming law clerks, and the list is consistent with what we’ve previously reported. There’s just one name that we didn’t previously have: the law clerk to retired Justice David H. Souter.
Find out who he is, and check out the official list — we know you’re dying to learn the middle initials of the newest members of “The Elect” — after the jump.
Continue reading “Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: The Official List for October Term 2010″
Carte Goodwin
* Studying for the bar? Here are the top 10 people you want to kill. [Legally Noted]
* Are the Mel Gibson tapes admissible in court? Here is one lawyer’s opinion. [Blogonaut]
* Goldman Sachs won’t take a tax deduction on its $550 million settlement with the SEC. [TaxProf Blog]
* Holy Hotties, Batman! West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin will appoint his hunky ex-GC, Carte Goodwin, 36, to the Senate seat formerly held by the late Senator Robert Byrd. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Rod Blagojevich’s crassness has been established beyond a reasonable doubt — but what about his alleged corruption? [Chicago News Cooperative]
* The courthouse is not a boxing ring. Except maybe in Scranton. [Allentown Morning Call]
Real Housewives of New Jersey son Albie Manzo may be slow, but he’s determined. He flunked out of Seton Hall law school, but he still wants his law degree, and met with a lawyer in the show’s last episode to figure out how he can get it.
Manzo says that the culprit behind his poor law school performance — reflected in his GPA of 1.9 — is a learning disability that causes him to take three times as long as normal people to absorb information. Some may question whether LDs and JDs go together. Said one ATL commenter:
If he has a learning disability, he really shouldn’t be a lawyer. It takes him three times as long to absorb information? Are clients going to be ok with paying him three times as much to get something done? The legal professions is a skilled profession and requires a certain amount of intellect. If one doesn’t have the required intelligence, then it is not right for them… it would be like making exceptions and giving special treatment so ugly people can be supermodels.
But his mom told him he should go for it anyway, become an attorney, “and show Seton Hall the mistake they made.” In the show’s last episode, Manzo met with a lawyer who told him he needs a letter from the school attesting to the fact that they made a mistake. Otherwise, Manzo has to wait two years to reapply to law school….
Continue reading “Albie Manzo v. Seton Hall Law School?”
A reader drew our attention to a mildly amusing “help wanted” ad on Craigslist. Says our source: “Now that I’m a lawyer myself, who previously worked for an a**hole boss, I find this ad for a new legal assistant pretty funny. You can tell he thinks his boss is an anal-retentive douche, but doesn’t know how to say that.”
“I also like that he wants the applicant to send a photo and résumé but redact all personal information except the phone number — isn’t the entire résumé personal info? Also note the e-mail address…. Anyway — enjoy.”
So here’s the ad….
Continue reading “A Passive-Aggressive Craigslist Ad”
Ed. note: Have a question for next week? Send it in to advice@abovethelaw.com.
Dear Above the Law,
I’d like your insight on a recurring event at my firm. It seems that several partners love to hit the “reply all” button in response to mass emails.
Here’s an example:
Email: Is anyone familiar with an attorney named John Doe? If so, can you contact me?
Partner Response (to entire firm): “Yes, I’ve worked with Doe on several occasions on substantial, important matters.”
Is it a requirement that partners send such emails to prove that they are relevant?
– Reply One
Dear Reply One,
Unimaginative associates daydream about becoming partner one day because they think it’s all ski chalets, steak dinners and upscale hookers. To be sure, it is all these great things, but the downsides to being a partner far outweigh any of the perks….
Continue reading “Pls Hndle Thx: It’s A Partner’s Life”
We took a muscular view of presidential authority. We were offering a bottom line to a client who wanted to know what he could do and what he couldn’t do. I wasn’t running a debating society, and I wasn’t running a law school.
– Ninth Circuit Judge Jay S. Bybee, testifying to the House Judiciary Committee about his authorization of aggressive interrogation methods as head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.
David Cowling, Mathews, Dinsdale & Clarke partner and alleged booty dancer
Sometimes law firm after-hours parties get pretty wild. The Great Recession didn’t put a damper on one Toronto firm’s celebrations last year. In January 2009, Mathews, Dinsdale & Clarke threw a rager in honor of its annual labour law “moot” competition for Canadian law students. (We mentioned this story briefly in yesterday’s Non-Sequiturs.)
After awards were given out at a dinner, the lawyerly crew headed to Toronto night club Cheval, for bottle service and dancing. Things got a little crazy. One senior associate got so hammered that “he left the club without his coat or keys and vomited in the taxi cab as it left the club.” And one partner, David Cowling, allegedly got too friendly with some of the female associates while grinding on the dance floor.
Two associates complained about his behavior to other partners, and now Cowling is suing the two associates (who have since left the firm) for defamation and intentional interference with economic relations.
So what did they allege?
Continue reading “Partner of the Day, Eh: Canadian Lawyer Sues Two of His Former Associates”
When times are tough, the tough get… whiny? A law student at Emory is frustrated by the lack of jobs being offered up by Career Services and circulated an email airing his or her discontent. Addressed to “My Fellow Emory Law Students,” it lambasts the employees charged with helping Emory grads land jobs.
It’s available in full after the jump, but here’s an excerpt:
This has gotten absolutely ridiculous. When we first entered Emory Law School, jobs were plentiful and career services could sit around and do nothing. Things are much different now. In 2008, the market collapse stunned the legal job market. Those $160,000+ jobs went from plentiful to a rare commodity, yet our tuition continues to rise and our loans accrue.
What has career services done? Nothing. Remember this item on Abovethelaw from exactly a year ago? Apparently, they’ve been a little too calm in this storm. Nevertheless, they still operate under their prior m.o. (sit in the office, do nothing but play solitaire, and expect jobs to walk into their office). Whenever students complain about the lack of OCI jobs (that will be discussed in another paragraph below), their response always references the down economy. When we ask for advice, we are told “Network.” Upon further inquiry about networking tips, we are told, “Talk to people.” They haven’t even attempted the extremes at Duke or SMU Law; options exist, but they don’t want to do the work.
Have Duke’s Bridge to Practice and SMU’s Test Drive set a new bar? Is it a fair expectation that part of your law school tuition go towards paying someone to hire you?
We reached out to Emory’s career services office for their response to the criticism. Assistant Dean of Career Services Janet Hutchinson took a break from solitaire to get back to us…
Continue reading “Emory Law Student Lament: ‘We don’t need donuts, we need jobs.’”
When I worked in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, I’d sometimes hear colleagues joke about handing over their Justice Department credentials along with their driver’s license if pulled over for a moving violation. It was a joke because it was generally understood that trying to get out of a speeding ticket by flaunting one’s status as law enforcement was a bad idea (setting aside the ethical issues). The police officer might give you a free pass, or he might get ticked off at your attempt to take advantage of your position. You could end up with a scandal on your hands — the kind of scandal that could derail career ambitions.
This is a lesson that Iowa attorney Lisa Jones-Hall learned the hard way. The Cedar Rapids Gazette reports:
A woman on track to become a Linn County prosecutor lost that chance after police pulled her over in Marion last month for having tinted windows. New dash cam video police released today shows Lisa Jones-Hall called the officer names and tried to use her new job to get out of the ticket. The officer asked Jones-Hall to sign a ticket because he said her windows were illegally tinted. But, she initially refused to sign it, called the officer names and then brought up the job she was supposed to start the following week.
“Ok. I want you to arrest me for having tinted windows. I start with the Linn County Prosecutor’s Office next Tuesday. I want you to arrest me for not signing this,” Jones-Hall told the officer.
After hearing about this incident, the Linn County Prosecutor’s Office decided not to hire Jones-Hall.
Ouch. Jones-Hall should have read our earlier post about how lawyers should handle traffic stops (which also involved the offense of overly tinted windows).
The police video is actually quite mortifying — the article doesn’t do it justice….
Continue reading “Lawyer of the Day: Prosecutor-To-Be Mouths Off to Officer — and Loses Job”
Seventh Circuit nominee, Victoria Nourse
* The Gulf gets a temporary respite from the oil flow. [New York Times]
* Dancing with the Lawyers: Erin Andrews sues the hotels that booked her stalker in an adjoining room. [CNN]
* University of Wisconsin Law School professor Victoria Nourse gets the Obama nod for the Seventh Circuit. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; State Bar of Wisconsin]
* Will the Treasury Department make an offering to plaintiff lawyers? [The Hill]
* Lynne Stewart, who helped her suspected terrorist client smuggle messages out of prison, is sentenced to 10 years. [Reuters]
* Judge says that the Dole banana worker sterility lawsuit and its $2.3 million award are rotten and throws them out. [Bloomberg Businessweek]
* Judge Richard Posner and Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook clash on Blago jury anonymity. [Chicago Tribune]
* Louisiana law firm’s ‘crack’ decision was the right one. [National Law Journal]
Based on our report about the UVA super-awesome-happy law student, a lot of people seem to be confused about how the internet works. So, as a public service, let’s go over the rules:
Rule 1: If it ends up on the internet, everybody can see it.
Rule 2: If everybody can see it, it’s possible everybody will see it.
Rule 3: After everybody sees it, all bets are off.
Are we clear? Okay then.
Tonight we have a story about a couple of kids in California who understood these rules. They tried to keep their beer pong exploits off the internet. But the internet never loses, and now they’re suing…
Continue reading “Lawsuit of the Day: Mad Beer Pong Skills Lead to Lawsuit”
* Goldman Sachs settles with the SEC — for $550 million dollars. That’s gotta go down as a big “LOSS” for GS. [Wall Street Journal via Dealbreaker]
* Former O.J. Simpson lawyer Robert Shapiro is the latest addition to Team LiLo. At this point, I’m thinking of going to jail for 90 days just to escape Lindsay Lohan legal updates. [ABA Journal]
* Another victory for gay marriage. Honestly, what are the opponents of gay marriage really hoping for at this point? History is on the march. [Metroweekly]
* Ain’t no party like a Toronto law firm party, because a Toronto law firm party don’t stop. [National Post]
* Associate general counsel of Lexmark has a beautiful mind and real artistic talent. And/or he’s totally freaking nuts. [Lexington Herald-Leader]
*Tucker Carlson now owns Keith Olbermann. [Domain Name Wire]
* Work-life balance is a thing of the past. [True / Slant]
* Scroll down to the last bullet on this page. It’s about a bra that can be used to smuggle wine. Yea that I have lived to see such wonders. [Fashionista]
In addition to her intellect, academic and professional qualifications, Kagan did just enough to win my vote by her answers that television would be good for the country and the court, and by identifying Justice Marshall as her role model.
– Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA), explaining in a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece why he will vote in favor of Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court.
Back in February 2009, we named the Honorable Joseph Wall a Judge of the Day. Joe Wall, at the time a Wisconsin trial court judge, used the term “baby mama” at the sentencing of an African-American defendant. He also made additional amusing quips — e.g., suggesting that “baby mamas” congregate at “a club” to find their unemployed, wastrel boyfriends.
An appeals court, finding Judge Wall’s comments to be inappropriate, held that the defendant was entitled to a new trial. But now the Wisconsin Supreme Court has reversed the appeals court, in a unanimous decision — a rarity on that utterly dysfunctional famously fractured court.
So, what did the Wisconsin court conclude?
Continue reading “Update: ‘Baby Mama’ Drama on Wisconsin Bench Reaches Resolution”
The University of Texas Board of Regents has agreed to rename Simkins Hall. Simkins Hall was named for a former UT Law professor and Ku Klux Klan leader.
The Board of Regents voted unanimously to change the name. The Houston Chronicle reports:
“There has never been any doubt in my mind about what direction they were going to go,” said regent Printice L. Gary of Dallas, the only African-American to serve on the board.
The new names will be Creekside Residence Hall and Creekside Park.
The hero of this story is former UT law professor Thomas Russell. It was his paper that forced UT to confront its past….
Continue reading “University of Texas Renames Simkins Hall”
In the aftermath of last week’s “LeBromination,” where we witnessed the Miami Heat become the basketball power equivalent of the SuperFriends, this was the response from a colleague of mine to a related story gaining steam in the media:
“Yeah, and I’m Shaq’s uncle.”
The last two weeks have been quite a whirlwind for Leicester Bryce Stovell. As first reported by TMZ, and followed by a slew of other media outlets (including this video from Headline News), Stovell claims that he is the biological father of basketball star LeBron James. In making his claim, he did what any of us would have done: he sued his son and baby’s mama (Gloria James) for $4 million dollars.
Sounds a bit sketchy, right? After he was named our Lawyer of the Day last Friday, I decided to reach out to Stovell for an interview with Above The Law. It turns out that the former SEC lawyer currently works as a contract attorney here in DC, which means we are practically brothers, in a non-DNA-test sort of way.
Stovell gave me some frank, interesting answers — along with a startling revelation….
Continue reading “An Interview with the Alleged Father of LeBron James
(aka Gloria James’s ‘Baby Daddy’)”
Now that we have kicked off the 2010 Summer Associate Satisfaction Survey, we wanted to share with you some of the highlights from the reports on the 2009 firm summer programs. If you are a current summer associate, click here to take our short survey about your experiences this summer at your firm.
- The summer associate program at this Silicon Valley firm begins with a kickoff weekend at the Seascape Resort in Aptos, California, where, in addition to social events, the firm holds trainings and various practice group workshops.
- This Washington, D.C.-based firm offers summer associates the chance to participate in its Public Interest Fellowship program, and split their time between the firm and local public service organizations for five weeks at full salary.
- Summer associates at this Philadelphia-based firm, which recently opened a Moscow office, are paired not only with a partner and associate guide, but also a writing mentor.
- All 14 of this "global" firm’s domestic offices have summer associate programs, and summer associate positions are also available in locations outside the U.S.
Additional summer program highlights, which might give you some good ideas to use at your firm, after the jump.
Continue reading “Career Center: A Report on 2009 Summer Programs”
A group calling itself “Concerned Citizens of the United States” has compiled and published a list of 1,300 allegedly illegal immigrants living in Utah. In addition to names and addresses, the list goes into shocking personal detail about the people the Concerned Citizens group is concerned about, The New York Times reports:
Each page of the list is headed with the words “Illegal Immigrants” and each entry contains details about the individuals listed — from their address and telephone number to their date of birth and, in the case of pregnant women, their due dates. The letter was received by law enforcement and media outlets on Monday and Tuesday.
Hey, nothing says “America” quite like menacing pregnant women, right?
But the medical data released by this organization could make somebody liable for a felony….
Continue reading “Utah Citizens Form Their Very Own Secret Police”
