Archive for September 2010

Morning Docket: 09.27.10

By Morning Dockette

Maj. Margaret Witt

* Is Lindsay Lohan getting special treatment? Money talks, and $300,000 says she is. [Los Angeles Times]

* At least federal judges know that DADT violates the civil rights of openly gay service members. Major Witt will get her job back — maybe — if this ruling isn’t appealed. [New York Times]

* A California judge got benchslapped after converting her courtroom into an audition for a comedic role. Judge Judy she is not. [WSJ Law Blog]

* What’s more controversial than breastfeeding at work? Switching to beetle-infested baby formula. Can you say class action? [Lousiana Record]

* This convicted murderer didn’t want The Rock creeping into his cell to put money under his pillow, so he’s suing the government for $75K. [Chicago Tribune]

* A megachurch pastor has allegedly sexually abused teenage boys in his congregation. I’m not touching this one with a ten foot pole. [New York Daily News]

* Paris Hilton settles her “That’s Hot” lawsuit with Hallmark for an undisclosed amount. Too bad most of it will go up her nose. [MSNBC]

* The Gobbler’s screenplay gets a sequel: Obama officials file a motion to dismiss, invoking the state secrets privilege. [Washington Post]

Non-Sequiturs: 09.24.10

By Elie Mystal

* Lindsay Lohan is going back to jail. At least she’ll be in a place where her breast implants can’t hold her back. [Gawker]

* A law firm’s naked team building exercise might have made some people uncomfortable. I can’t imagine why. [The Careerist]

* More raving, threatening email from the guy who is all kinds of angry at Avvo. [Avvo]

* Ah, popular election of judges, long may she continue to cause problems for our system of justice. [What About Clients?]

* Is the DOJ racist towards white people? [WSJ Law Blog]

* Larry Lessig v. Corporations. [Fix Congress First]

The Rundown: The Week in Legal Technology 9.24.10

By Gabe Acevedo

We are at the end of another busy week in the world of legal technology. A major acquisition of a legal technology company took place. The DC Bar is expanding its interest in e-discovery. I do a quick update on a conference I attended last week. There are also a few articles I want to mention — one on the interface of lawyers and technology, another on “perils and pitfalls,” and a third on prenups. Yep, prenups.

So, on with the Rundown…

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Duke Law School Asks: Why Do Black People Hate Us?

By Elie Mystal

This picture is worth a thousand diversity brochures.

Duke Law School is known for a lot of things: its top 14 ranking, 100% employment rate, and crown as douchiest law school in the nation. It’s not known as a friendly school towards black people.

Why? Well, that’s what Duke Law wants to find out. A tipster reports that Duke Law has been sending around a questionnaire to the few minority students currently at the school. It aims to figure out what recruiters should tell minority students thinking about matriculating at Duke Law.

You know what they say — there is no such thing as a stupid question…

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Facebook Status Update of the Day: But Were They Peep Toes?

By David Lat

Check out the shoes, by Stuart Weitzman, below….

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Pls Hndle Thx: Night at the Roxbury, With Partners

By Marin

Ed. note: Have a question for next week? Send it in to advice@abovethelaw.com

ATL:

So I was invited to a rock concert in California with a couple of young, “normal” partners. Presumably it was because I expressed interest in the music (and would have attended anyway).

What is the expected protocol for concert attendance in this type of social setting? Am I expected to pre-party with them or offer to drive? I don’t want to be known as the office Bogart.

– Rolling Another Billable

Dear Rolling Another Billable,

Make no mistake, these junior partners invited you to this “rock” concert to see if you have that je ne sais quoi it takes to make partner. After all, any schmuck with a pen can draft a purchase agreement, but only a true partner-track associate knows all the lyrics to The Scientist and can ROCK OUT to Ants Marching. This concert is the most important night of your law firm career thus far, and if you’re not going to screw it up, you’re going to need a few pointers…

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Job of the Week: An In-House Position — for Litigators

By Above the Law

Are you a litigator looking to move in-house? Do you have experience working on privacy and data protection issues? More in-house opportunities have opened up in recent weeks — Lateral Link is working on over two dozen in-house searches, and has recently helped six companies fill legal openings — and the latest Job of the Week is a rare in-house opportunity for a litigation attorney.

Position: Associate Counsel – Litigation, Privacy & Data Protection, and Risk

Location: Philadelphia metro area

Description: An international investment management company located in the Philadelphia area is seeking a senior litigation attorney to provide legal advice regarding risk avoidance and risk mitigation measures, global privacy and data protection law, and other issues. The ideal candidate should have a minimum of 8 years of experience handling complex litigation matters at a top-tier firm or government agency — securities, fiduciary, or consumer protection litigation preferred, but other experience considered. If you are currently a Lateral Link member, please see position #6901; if not, you can sign up for free at www.laterallink.com. You can also contact T.J. Duane directly at tjduane@laterallink.com.

How to Take Down the BCS? The Same Way We Got Capone: Tax Law

By Elie Mystal

I have friends who support the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) as an effective non-playoff means for determining the national champion of college football. These friends say that the BCS preserves the sanctity of the college football season (“Every game is a playoff”). They say it gives power conferences (like the Southeastern Confederacy and the Big Oil Alumni conferences) their due for their consistently tough conference schedules. And they say (somewhat counter-intuitively but almost certainly true) that a playoff system favors the team that gets hot at the right time, not the team that was the best in college football over the course of the season. They don’t say that the current system is perfect, but they don’t view a playoff as inherently better just because the champion will be decided “on the field” after a tournament.

Of course, these friends are elitist, anti-competitive pricks who support BCS teams and use their lawyer skills to avoid punishment from bar fights they start when their teams get their asses kicked.

Me, I’m a man of the people. Okay, not really. But I am a man who stands against the ridiculous accumulation of wealth by a cherished few. The BCS is just a huge pot of money that only a few conferences and athletic directors have access to. And as long as multimillion-dollar boondoggles are being thrown around, I think everybody should have a shot at getting in on the action.

Of course, it’s really hard to get rich people to give up some of their money for the greater good of a larger community. They won’t do it willingly. Thankfully, this is why God invented tax law. Our brother-from-another-mother, Caleb Newquist of Going Concern, explains how a political action committee is trying to use the tax code to stop the BCS….

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Student Loan Relief for Public Defenders and Prosecutors

By Elie Mystal

We have good news on the student loan front. Really good news if you are a public defender or prosecutor. The Blog of the Legal Times reports that the Department of Justice is making $10 million available in loan forgiveness for PDs and prosecutors.

So if you want to live the Law & Order dream, it just got a little easier.

The money was actually authorized two years ago by George W. Bush, but the money has been held up in appropriations. Bush authorized up to $25 million for FY 2009, but Congress is only giving out $10 million for FY 2010.

Still, it’s great news for the lawyers eligible, and it could encourage law school graduates to give government criminal law jobs a second look…

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Morning Docket: 09.24.10

By Juggalo Law

* The F.D.A. has moved to significantly restrict the sale of diabetes drug Avandia. Reached for comment, Wilford Brimley gruffly barked “DIABEETUS!” [New York Times]

* Teresa Lewis was executed in Virginia last night. [Washington Post]

* Texas children are getting all kinds of left behind. [Dallas Morning News]

* A Spanish court held that Google is not responsible for copyrighted material posted on YouTube. Commenters on YouTube immediately decried the decision as “fake”, “gay” and definitely “racist.” [Guardian]

* This week, jurors in the Anna Nicole Smith drug trial watched a video of Smith bathing nude with her daughter while slurring her words. I’ll just leave this one alone. [CNN]

* Some lawyers who took on the Catholic Church paid a personal toll for their efforts. They also got paid. Straight cash, homey. [Associated Press]

Racial Quotas? So Ordered! (Or, Judge of the Day: Harold Baer)

By David Lat

We’ve come a long way from the days when federal courts issued orders banning racial discrimination. Now federal judges hand down orders mandating, or at least encouraging, race-based discrimination.

As reported in the American Lawyer, earlier this week Judge Harold Baer (S.D.N.Y.) issued an unusual order. On Monday, Judge Baer directed two firms serving as lead counsel in a securities class action to “make every effort” to staff the case with at least one minority and one woman:

ORDERED that Co-Lead Counsel, Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP and Labaton Sucharow LLP, shall make every effort to assign to this matter at least one minority lawyer and one woman lawyer with requisite experience….

If federal judges can run school districts and prison systems, law firms should be a piece of cake, right?

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Non-Sequiturs: 09.23.10

By Elie Mystal

If Joe Miller had gone to HLS instead of Yale, he might have been able to get to and from class without packing heat.

* Maybe Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller learned his gun-toting behavior trying to survive on the mean streets of New Haven while he attended Yale Law School. [Salon]

* The editors of our sister site, Fashionista, are also wondering about Lindsay Lohan’s breasts today. [Fashionista]

* A New Yorker quiz seeks to test your knowledge of the Supreme Court. Excuse me, Democrats and Republicans, let me translate this into Tea Party talk: “Communist propaganda from New York, New York Saudi Arabia wants you to know about fancy-pants lawyers instead of the things that concern real Americans.” [New Yorker]

* Skipping out on school to go to a baseball game? Old school “cool.” Skipping out on school to write about a divorce case affecting ownership of a baseball team? All kinds of “dork.” [New York Times]

* Police officer accused of falsifying 79 DUI reports. Sadly for Jets fans, the officer is based in Sacramento, not NYC. [Alt Transport]

* Not sure where I stand on forced medication for inmates awaiting trial. On the one hand, my knee jerks out of its socket at the thought of forced bodily invasion. On the other hand, I don’t like getting stabbed by people who don’t take their meds. Elegant solution: entertaining people can’t be forced, but screaming assholes can be? [Underdog]

Biglaw Blind Item: Who Has Herpes?

By David Lat

Actually, we’re not sure that it’s herpes; that’s just a guess, based on context clues. But apparently some prominent, white-shoe law firm has been hit by an outbreak of a sexually-transmitted disease.

Check out this Biglaw blind item….

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The Whole Truth About, Well, The Whole Truth

By Morning Dockette

Another year, another legal pilot. But this year, ABC bet the farm on a new series called The Whole Truth, the only legal drama in its fall lineup. With Jerry Bruckheimer as its producer, the show promises to offer a novel twist on the typical courtroom drama.

How? “No one ever knows what really happened until the very last scene, when we learn… The Whole Truth.”

The show has received mixed reviews from the critics, but maybe you’ll end up liking it. It premiered last night, and featured Maura Tierney as Kathryn Peale, Senior Trial Assistant District Attorney in New York, and Rob Morrow as Jimmy Brogan, a senior partner at one of Manhattan’s up-and-coming criminal defense firms.

Each week, we’ll get to witness a new criminal law case from the perspectives of both the prosecution and the defense. And each week, the same exact prosecutors will be pitted against the same exact defense attorneys. But don’t worry, the entire cast hails from Ivy League law schools, for all of you prestige whores. Fourth-tier law grads can’t even get fictional jobs on television.

If you’re still interested in learning more about The Whole Truth, let’s do the hokey-pokey and turn the case for or against this show around, after the jump.

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Have Law Blogs Failed to Live Up to Expectations? Biglaw Partners Opine

By Adrian Dayton

“The secret to happiness in life is setting low expectations.”
– My Uncle Lyman

Over the past few weeks, in the comments to my ATL posts, there have been a number of questions about whether or not large law firms are bringing in real clients through their law blogs. While we have seen some instances of big wins that have come as a direct result of law blogs, these have been rare. What about the average law blogs? Have blogs lived up to the expectations of Biglaw firms?

My inquiry began by looking at all the law blogs of the Am Law 100 firms. Click here to see the full list. As you can see from the chart, the majority of the law blogs come from just a few firms. In fact, 5 percent of the firms account for 49 percent of the total law blogs of the Am Law 100.

So I went directly to these firms and asked them: Have the law blogs been worth it? Have they been worth the money, the effort, and the (expensive) billable time of the attorneys?

I spoke to several law firm partners and marketing officers to find out….

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Do Small-Firm Attorneys Care Enough About Their Own Agenda?

By Josh Dickinson

Some of you will recall that in my manifesto, I expressed the view that we need more clearinghouses for information on small law firms. Well, it turns out I’m not the only one hoping for a gathering of small law practitioners.

Over at MyShingle, Carolyn Elefant posted a great piece about the need for a stronger voice from solos and small law practitioners. While we are both trying to rally this group to a cause, I’ve been approaching the efforts of this column with an eye toward the need to get information out to law students and lawyers looking to transition into a smaller practice. Elefant, meanwhile, tackles the idea from a political clout perspective, issuing the following call to action:

[A]s someone who has been tracking the institution of solo practice for nearly eight years, I urge you to hear me out about why it’s more important than ever that we solos and small firms demand that the “powers that be” (in this case, the state bars, the ABA, the mainstream legal media and law schools) start regarding us as the main event.

Small law firms as the “main event”? I’m skeptical, but certainly interested. After all, the vast majority of lawyers in the U.S. are working for small firms or as solo shops. Why aren’t we the main event already?

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Fame Brief: Lindsay Lohan and Breast Implants, the Gateway Drug

By Marin

If you’re like most people who have an important drug test coming up — say, for a new law firm job or for probation (kind of the same thing) — you probably prepare by doing things such as guzzling water, sucking pennies, or ladling your roommate’s urine into a pocket flask.

A somewhat less effective way to prepare involves going on a cocaine and amphetamine binge hours before your drug test and hoping for the best. But that didn’t stop Lindsay Lohan from trying last week:

Lindsay Lohan’s probation has been revoked and a bench warrant issued for her arrest…. Although the bench warrant was issued, it’s being held — i.e., on hold — until Friday at 8:30 AM, when Lindsay is ordered to appear in court.

The move by Judge Elden Fox comes after Lindsay failed two drug tests recently … one showed the presence of cocaine and another showed amphetamines.

Under the terms of her probation, Lindsay could get 60 days for her latest misstep, and the bench warrant comes just weeks after Lindsay completed a 14-day jail stint and 23 days in UCLA’s in-patient celebrity-enabling sanctuary rehab for another parole violation.

As an occasional taxpayer (albeit in a different state), I’m annoyed California has to waste precious time and resources monitoring and jailing Lindsay, when they could be doing something useful, like banning Jay Leno. As a lawyer, I’m itching to blame someone or something(s) for her downward spiral, and I have found the proximate clause: her boobs.

Let’s take a closer look…

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Career Center: Are You Deciding Where to Summer?

By Above the Law

Summer associate survey results have been out for a while. If you’re trying to decide where you’d like to be a summer associate, be sure to check out the profiles below, to see which firms scored big with its summers — and which firms could use a little improvement. Before accepting that summer associate offer, visit the Career Center for some useful insider information on the firms that interest you.

  • Summer associates at this firm get tons of formal training and are even assigned a “writing advisor” who will assist them with written project assignments. The 2009 summer associates who were lucky enough to land offers started as scheduled in the fall of 2009.
  • Even though this firm cancelled its 2010 summer program in all of its California offices, summer associates say the firm is pleasantly laid-back, and they got to attend various social events — baseball games, cooking classes, dinners. Rather than rescinding offers to its 2009 summer associates, the firm gave new associates the option of voluntarily departing with a “go-away” stipend or joining its public interest deferral program with a monthly stipend.

More profiles, after the jump.

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Lawyer of the Day: Squattenfreude

By Juggalo Law

Back in 1961, a photographer snapped a picture of President Kennedy that would later be titled “the loneliest job in the world.” It was full of symbolism and it was black-and-white and Kennedy would be assassinated two short years later and Jesus, does anyone really care about all of this? Probably not. Sorry.

Anyway, earlier this week the New York Times published a photo that takes a dump all over the notion that President of the United States is the loneliest job in the world. It was an unassuming, and likely meticulously posed, photograph of a single lawyer. A single lawyer with the weight of the world — and a crumbling legal market — on his shoulders.

A single lawyer… squatting in the Empire State Building….

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Poor You! (Literally.)

By Legal Tease

Picture, if you will, my lawyer friend, Caitlin. She’s a mid-level finance associate at one of New York’s biggest lawyer factories. She’s been at the Big Law game long enough to be depressed on the good days and on the hunt for sturdy noose material on the bad days — which is to say most days. But, as luck would have it, after months of furtive interviews, she finally got an offer a couple of weeks ago to go in-house at a media company that most people I know, including me, would kill to work for.

So, when we went out to drinks last week to celebrate, I was expecting her to be ecstatic. I was expecting her to have quit the firm within five minutes of getting the offer. What I wasn’t expecting was three hours of listening to her waver, almost to the point of tears, about whether she should take the job.

I kept pressing her — what was it about this job offer that was making her so torn? The (awesome, non-billable) hours? The (cooler) people? The (less mind-numbing) work? Finally, after four Belvedere-tonics, she leaned across the table and lowered her voice.“It’s just… I’m just afraid…” She darted her eyes around and leaned in closer, lowering her eyes.

“I’m just afraid of what it’ll be like to feel…” she whispered, “…poor.”

The offered salary of the new in-house gig? $120,000 a year.

And now, a couple of weeks later, I’m still not sure what’s more disturbing: the fact that this friend — a worldly, educated, smart, able person — truly thinks that a single lawyer living in New York City on $120,000 could feel “poor” — or that fact that she’s absolutely right….

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