Casual Encounters of the Unwanted Kind
The people whose stories wind up in ATL’s pages aren’t always psyched to be here. Long-time readers may remember my getting punk’d by a Boston law school student upset about his email flame war with a female lawyer going viral.
The law student placed my photo and cell phone number in a Craigslist Casual Encounters ad on a Sunday afternoon. I always appreciate people setting me up on dates, but not like that. My phone was unusable for an hour due to incoming calls and text messages.
Some urged me to press harassment charges afterward, but I let it go, dismissing it as a stupid, though somewhat amusing, prank. A Massachusetts woman was not as easily amused forgiving as was I. After being pranked in the same way, she went to the police. And the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly Docket reports that a judge determined that fake Craigslist Casual Encounters promising sexy times can lead to criminal charges. One less non-criminal way you can punk a partner for keeping you at the office late…
Continue reading “A Reminder That Craigslist Casual Encounters Pranks Can Be Criminal Activity”
The class of 2010 at Brooklyn Law School decided to give themselves a plaque in the library for their class gift. Given the state of the legal job market, I’m impressed that this class gift phenomenon still exists, it’s a testaments to man’s ability to look on the bright side of getting screwed with your pants on.
At the risk of starting a flood of emails about stupid class gifts, a tipster sent us the picture of the Brooklyn Law plaque that simply begs to be mocked. In fact, other students at Brooklyn are mocking it already.
Take a look at the plaque, but then you have to get a look at the explanation the class of ’10 gave for going with a plaque…
Continue reading “Brooklyn Law 2010 Class Gift is More Like a Terrible High-School Yearbook Quote”
To borrow a line from Sharon Nichols, I judge you when you have a poor website.
Like it or not, we live in a superficial world where your website is judged on a daily basis — and not just by me. Friends, colleagues, potential employees and most importantly potentially paying clients are all looking at you — watching, judging.
Of course, there’s the old adage that one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but do you know why that’s an old adage? Because we all judge books by their cover, and by “book” I mean “your law firm.” But fear not, you of the static, monochromatic firm website that still lists now-departed associates. Your salvation lies in the hands of your beloved managing editor, David Lat — at least partially….
Continue reading “50,000 Reasons to Consider Revamping Your Small Firm Website”
* The Republicans’ strategy to roll back Obamacare will resemble “death by a thousand cuts.” Sounds painful, but it’s much gentler than the other strategy they considered, “death by uninsured syphilis.” [BusinessWeek]
* An assistant general counsel at the CIA asserts in a new law review article that U.S. law does not forbid rendition. I was going to say something about that Jake Gyllenhaal movie, but I never saw Brokeback. [Washington Post SpyTalk]
* A Baltimore dog owner is challenging that city’s leash law with a “novel” legal defense. Fido’s coming yo! [Baltimore Sun]
* The New York Times manages to write about the Iowa judicial elections without using the words “random dislike of gay love.” Amateurs. [New York Times]
* The Supreme Court heard arguments on preemption and the establishment clause yesterday. [National Law Journal]
* This story about Proposition 19 supporters begins with a sentence that uses both “blunt” and “spark.” Well played, Josh Richman. Well played. [Oakland Tribune]
To steal a line from Sports Illustrated, I must bring you this week’s sign that the apocalypse is upon us.
Law students are struggling to find jobs; this we know. But what I didn’t know until this very day was that law students are also struggling to find the basic professional necessities. Like clothes. That’s right, clothing drives are not just for homeless people and impoverished third-world children. Not anymore.
The good people at Duquesne University School of Law are putting together a clothing drive to help out their first year law students get the professional clothing they need for interview season. Don’t worry, it’s not too late to give your used clothing to distressed 1Ls in need of assistance…
Continue reading “Will You Help Clothe a Law Student?”
* As I tweeted last night, the Congressional subpoena power just got interesting again. [Gawker]
* Hey, Colorado, I think you and I might be able to work together. Interesting work on the “personhood” issue. [WSJ Law Blog]
* A small victory for privacy in Houston. [Instapundit]
* The Commodity Futures Trading Commission brought in a new Director of Enforcement, one from Skadden, to go along with its new mandate. [BLT: Blog of the Legal Times]
* A good man reaches a great milestone. Congratulations Erick Turkewitz, here’s to the next 1,000. [New York Personal Injury Law Blog]
* Partner fires other partner/brother for “abject laziness.” Too bad Prop 19 didn’t pass. We’d have more stories like this. [ABA Journal]
* In honor of the defeat of Nancy Pelosi, San Francisco has prohibited the sale of Happy Meals. (Okay, that’s not exactly what happened, but that’s how I’ll choose to remember it.) [Josh Blackman's Blog]
Ed. note: Have a question for next week? Send it in to advice@abovethelaw.com
ATL,
Here’s one that you probably don’t hear every day: I’m an associate and I frequently work with a junior partner (early 40s) who is married to a considerably younger woman. She and I have friends in common and we occasionally see each other out, although she apparently doesn‘t go out with her husband. Unfortunately, the last time we ran into each other at a friend’s party, we ended up making out then and then later hooking up.
We’ve been emailing and texting back and forth since then, but I am living in terror that this partner is going to find out, or she‘ll sabotage me or that someone will say something on Facebook, etc. If at all possible I want to get out of this situation without losing my job. Can you please give me some advice?
Jewel Thief
Dear Jewel Thief,
Let’s get one thing straight: you committed a robbery, one of the most heinous crimes known to Seaside Heights. You stole your boss’ wife, and though I don’t have my copy of the Bro Code handy, I’m pretty sure this violates it…
Continue reading “Pls Hndle Thx: You Should Have Just Given Her a Foot Massage”
If you’re in Biglaw, chances are that not all of the first-year associates currently working at your firm are of the fresh-out-of-law-school-and-still-tan-from-post-bar-trip variety. With many firms just now welcoming back some Class of 2009 associates after a yearlong deferral, Class of 2010 associates have to wait their turn to start work in 2011 or 2012. But now that the great recession is over, surely business has picked up enough so that there is plenty of doc review and due diligence to go around for first-year associates, right? Or is work still so slow that the more senior associates have to hoard all the grunt work?
In this week’s survey, we want to know whether the first-year associates at your firm are being welcomed with open arms, or viewed as the competition…
Continue reading “Career Center Survey: How are the First-Year Associates Faring?”
Mmm... gridlock.
If you like gridlock (and as lawyers, you should love gridlock) last night was a big night for you. Thanks to a divided Congress and a weakened President, we shouldn’t be seeing any national legislation for some time. And even as Republicans enjoyed gains in state legislatures around the country, in many cases the State Attorney General office landed in the hands of Democrats. So even if something does managed to get passed, expected it to be gummed up in the courts for a good long while.
Looking at the contested races for Attorney General around the country, we’re seeing that the Tea Party message will still hasn’t been developed into a coherent strategy as to how government lawyers should approach their jobs.
One of the biggest State AG races was in New York, where Democrat Eric Schneiderman scored a victory over well funded city Republican, Dan Donovan. The weakness of Tea Party darling Carl Paladino at the top of the New York Republican ticket didn’t help Donovan’s chances.
In California, a very close A.G. race is showing a slight lead for Democrat Kamala Harris, over Republican Steve Cooley. They’re still counting absentee ballots out there, it’s that close.
But whatever, it’s easy to discount Democrat resilience in New York and California. But outside NYC and L.A., where the ostensibly real Americans live, the top lawyer races were split and didn’t support the “tsunami theory” of Republican domination being pushed by the mainstream media folks…
Continue reading “Republican Momentum Stalls at State Attorneys General Offices”
Remember back in May when we told you that Kilpatrick Stockton was in merger talks with Townsend and Townsend and Crew? But we had to say they “might” be in talks because nobody would go on the record confirming them? Then in July we told you that they definitely had been in talks, but the firms said: no, no, no, those talks have fallen apart?
Well, here we are in November and, surprise, Kilpatrick Stockton is merging with Townsend and Townsend and Crew.
The lesson: you can believe Above the Law or you can believe the double-speak nonsense coming out of the mouths of firm leaders…
Continue reading “Law Firm Merger Mania: Kilpatrick Stockton Merges with Townsend and Townsend and Crew”
Ed. note: This post is written by Will Meyerhofer, a Biglaw attorney turned psychotherapist. A former Sullivan & Cromwell attorney, he holds degrees from Harvard, NYU Law, and The Hunter College School of Social Work. He blogs at The People’s Therapist.
For the record, a law degree is not “versatile.” Being a lawyer amounts to a strike against you if you ever decide to pursue another career.
So why do people keep insisting it’s an “extremely versatile degree”?
A bunch of reasons.
Law schools are in it for the money. Teaching law doesn’t cost much, but they charge a fortune – made possible by not-dischargable-in-bankruptcy loans. That makes each law school a massive cash cow for the rest of the university. Money flowing from the law school pays the heating bill for the not-so-profitable Department of Neo-Structuralist Linguistics.
Law students play along with the “extremely versatile degree” farce to justify the three years of their life and the ungodly pile of cash they’re blowing on a degree they’re not interested in and know nothing about. This myth is also intended to calm down parents. You need a story to explain why you don’t have a job, but that it’s somehow okay.
No one else cares. And that’s chiefly why this old canard still has some life left in it.
Time to put it out of its misery.
Continue reading “Extremely Versatile Crockery”
All things considered, I’m feeling pretty good this morning. It’s a lot easier to tear something down than to build something up. For over a year, the Tea Party has been like the developmentally disabled kid in kindergarten whose main talent is knocking over other people’s Lego creations. Now that they’ve got their own house of government, we’ll get to see what they can actually build. Seriously, let’s see them govern. Let’s see the actual legislation they pass. Yesterday was a loss for progressives, but it was also a loss for moderate Republicans. Obama can now continue to ignore his left, the TBD Republican nominee will be pulled to his or her right. Let’s see how that works out for the GOP in 2012.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not Christine O’Donnell, I know the difference between winning and losing. If you hate gay people and pot why do you live in California? I feel like Justice Anthony Kennedy went to Wisconsin and personally executed Russ Feingold. But at the end of the day, I live in New York. Cuomo, Schumer, Gillibrand, new A.G. Eric Schneiderman, I mean if Boehner and friends get too annoying we could always secede.
There’s only one result from last night that seems totally idiotic. The good people of Iowa ousted all three of the judges targeted by out-of-state, anti-gay groups. Way to go Iowa, nice of you to let your random dislike of gay love to motivate you all the way to the polls…
Continue reading “About Last Night: Iowans Truly Embarrass Themselves.”
* Proposition 19 lost in California. Your revolution is over, Mr. Lebowski. Condolences. The bums lost. [Associated Press]
* Would law school warning labels make any difference? Let me go snag another pack of delicious Parliament Lights and get back to you on that one. [The National Law Journal]
* Why is David Boies such a “clutch” litigator? He’s smart. Awesome book. [ABA Journal]
* Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do not care if you’ve won Lawyer of the Day. [Bloomberg]
* I think the Supreme Court is hearing this video game case strictly for the lulz. [WSJ Law Blog]
* A group of Kansas public school districts has sued the state, claiming that it has failed to fund schools adequately. I graduated from a Kansas public school, so you do the math. Because I can’t. [Reuters]
This could be Pelosi's last big night.
* So, where should liberals move to for the next two years? I vote Paris, nothing bad ever happens in Paris — you know, so long as the Germans are not involved. [Gawker]
* Did Nancy Pelosi start getting drunk before noon? [Politico]
* Mom shot by four-year-old son claims she’s not a bad parent. Well, I don’t think she was “I need to kill my mom” bad, but she was definitely “what kind of negligent idiot lets their four-year-old get their hands on a gun” bad. [ABA Journal]
* Firesheep. Run! Run for your lives! [Huffington Post]
* Speaking of fleeing, a bunch of Dewey partners jumped to Katten today. [WSJ Law Blog]
* How many arbiters are enough? Well, it depends on how badly you need to soak your client. [What About Clients?]
* A very spiritual way of dealing with a traffic stop. [Underdog]
And now there’s this election day tidbit from the Philadelphia Daily News:
We’re told that the polling place at the Mummer’s Museum at 2nd Street and Washington Ave. has been shut down and that police are on the scene. “It’s Our Money” blogger Ben Waxman is down there and tells us that the shut down came after a screaming match between competing judges of elections. The District Attorney is reportedly on his way to the scene.
I think by “judge of elections,” they’re talking about election monitors (who are often lawyers) hired by major political parties to make sure there’s no funny business at the polls.
The polls reopened later in the day, by the “minority judge” (the Daily News doesn’t tell us which party) was complaining that he was being kept out of the polling place, despite having a court order.
There’s a pretty interesting Senate race in Pennsylvania, and you know what they say about Pennsylvania: “it’s Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between.” So far, no reports of shenanigans in Alabama…
Earlier: Election Day Shenanigans Watch: So Long As You Can Avoid the Pigs, You Should Be Golden
If you talk to law firm partners who are in charge of collecting fees, they’ll tell you that getting clients to pay has become a real hassle ever since the recession started. Clients are trying to make their books look as palatable as possible, and if that means avoiding or delaying payments to their lawyers, well, then that’s what they are going to do. Collecting fees from clients is one of the top concerns of Biglaw managers.
And it should be a top concern for Biglaw associates. Nobody is going to be getting a bonus when the firm cannot realize its profits.
You’d think every practicing attorney would be on the same page with this by now. You’d think, at the very least, every person would be diligently putting in their time to give their firm the maximum opportunity to collect on their billable hours. But apparently some people haven’t gotten the memo that putting in your hours in a timely fashion is critical in this environment.
Well, at Simpson Thacher, they want to know your hours, now. And the firm is threatening to bring the hammer down on attorney timekeepers who are putting off this important paper work. Put in your hours, or STB will hit you where it hurts — the wallet…
Continue reading “Simpson Thacher Threatens to Withhold Salary For Delinquent Time Keepers”
This man's closet is very lucrative.
Here’s a fun one. Lawyer owes $72.5 million. Lawyer claims he has $50,000. Lawyer conveniently forgets the $8.9 million in assets he has, and the nearly $1 million he has stuffed in his closet.
That’s the story of Harry Pavilack, a lawyer who is well known in South Carolina thanks to his television ads. The ABA Journal reports that Pavilack produced $994,000 from the closet of his Myrtle Beach office when a bankruptcy investigator impressed upon him the importance of full disclosure.
Why does he have that much cash sitting around? I was hoping it was because Pavilack is old (he’s 70) and doesn’t trust these gosh-darned electronic transactions. But sadly it appears far more likely that Pavilack was just trying to frustrate his creditors…
Continue reading “Lawyer of the Day: How Much Money Do You Have Including The Cash Stuffed in Your Closet?”
Until Cravath proves me wrong, I’m going to keep on believing that associate bonuses will be better this year than last. But this early indication from the notoriously secretive firm of Jones Day doesn’t bode well for my prediction.
Today Jones Day communicated to its administrative staff that it wouldn’t be paying them a bonus this year.
Actually, it’s worse than that for staff at Jones Day. Not only will they not be getting bonuses this year, but the firm’s entire “Year End Payment Program” has been terminated. Jones Day says that now it will only pay its staff based on “performance.”
Let’s take a look at the memo to staff, and shudder to think about what this might mean for Jones Day associates…
Continue reading “Jones Day Prepares for Bonus Season By Telling Staff They’ll Get Nothing”
Does the statute cover depictions of violence against Vulcans?
– Justice Sonia Sotomayor, asking whether video violence against “an image of a human being” could be extended to human-like figures, during oral arguments for Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association.
