Perhaps the winner of our Fictional Lawyer contest was never in doubt. Perhaps it was always obvious that the main character from the longest-running legal drama in the history of television was going to win this thing.
Perhaps, it was all about the eyebrows.
The most popular fictional lawyer in the past 30 years is Jack McCoy from Law & Order. Here’s the updated bracket.
Our CEO here are Breaking Media had a bracket that looked a lot like the final version. Mine? Not so much…
CHECK YOU SAMOSAS.
* Should innkeepers with religious beliefs be able to turn away same-sex couples seeking marriage reception venues? [Burlington Free Press]
* What are the best law firms in different cities and regions of the country? Check out the Vault regional rankings. [Vault's Law Blog]
* I bet she bites off the next thing he forces in her mouth. [Runnin' Scared / Village Voice and Gizmodo]
* The Tiger Mom should send the senators to bed without dinner until they vote on the stalled Seventh Circuit nomination of Professor Victoria Nourse. [National Law Journal]
* Was there a Brady violation at the Casey Anthony trial? The state says no, arguing that defense lawyer Jose Baez received the potentially exculpatory information. [Legal Ethics Forum]
* Where’s the beef in this lawsuit? Unfortunately, inside the supposedly vegetarian samosas. [Porzio Appellate Law Blog]
* What is the difference between marketing and sales, and why does it matter to law firms? [Ross's Law Marketing Blog]
Thanks to this week’s advertisers on Above the Law — some of the best brands in the legal world and beyond:
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Ex-Judge Thompson: not looking well.
Oh goodness. Today is shaping up to be “Misbehaving Judges Day” here at Above the Law.
One judge, new to these pages, is accused of a serious crime: rape. And supposedly there’s a video of the alleged act.
A second judge (or former judge), who should be familiar to many of you — Donald Thompson, aka the “penis pump” judge — has been hit with fresh criminal charges.
Let’s look at the allegations against the two men….
Continue reading “Judges Behaving Badly? A Slew of Lurid Allegations”
I don’t know who Janofsky and Walker angered, but they are off the marquee at Paul Hastings. Yep, this Friday, “Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & LLP” will officially become “Paul Hastings.”
We’ve already noticed that Paul Hastings has a snazzy new logo.
But did you know that Paul Hastings also has a video to go along with their rebranding? Oh yes they do! Clearly, Messrs. Janofsky and Walker were just way too inside the box for the new and exciting Paul Hastings…
Continue reading “Paul Hastings To Become… Paul Hastings. But Now It’s ‘Official.’”
Chief Judge Alex Kozinski (sans robe).
Immigration is a hot topic these days. It was the subject of a recent Supreme Court case, Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting (a rare loss for the Chamber, which fares well at SCOTUS). It’s getting implicated in the LGBT rights movement, as gay and lesbian binational couples fight deportations caused by the Defense of Marriage Act. And as Election 2012 gets underway, we’ll surely be hearing more about immigration in the weeks and months ahead.
As the immigration debate continues, let’s keep in mind the important contributions made to our nation by immigrants. For example, one of our most distinguished federal judges — Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, of U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit — is an immigrant. He was born in Bucharest, Romania, in 1950, and he immigrated to the United States with his family in 1962, at the age of 12.
Chief Judge Kozinski recently sent me a great story relating to his naturalization, which I will now share with you (with His Honor’s permission)….
Continue reading “Citizen Kozinski: A Cool Coincidence, and an Inspiring Story”
One of the things you learn as a college president is that if an undergraduate is wearing a tie and jacket on Thursday afternoon at three o’clock, there are two possibilities. One is that they’re looking for a job and have an interview; the other is that they are an a**hole. This was the latter case.
– Larry Summers, former president of Harvard University, describing his first meeting with the Winklevoss twins. Evidently Summers had no problem with the dramatization of their meeting in The Social Network.
So we’ve put together quite a group of people for the Legal Technology Leadership Summit. These speakers have already said they’ll be coming to Amelia Island, Florida, from September 6 – 8 — and more are on the way.
With all of these interesting people gathered together, we’re hoping that practicing attorneys will come join us and have a field day. Do you want to make partner at your law firm? Make rain. Do you want your small practice to survive and thrive through a challenging economy? Make rain. Two days at a resort in Florida jam-packed with potential clients is how you put fish in a barrel without angering PETA.
If you want to attend the Legal Technology Leadership Summit, you can sign up here. We’ve applied for CLE, so you’ll hopefully be able to pick up a few credits while you are meeting people and making connections.
For more information about the Summit, click here. We hope to see you there.
Arkansas town attempts to bring back totalitarianism.
Most people would expect that a post discussing unconstitutional behavior from a town in Arkansas would have something to do with religion. And in fairness, new ordinances from the city council of Gould, Arkansas do raise First Amendment concerns.
But the Gould city council isn’t trying to impose its view of God upon the public sphere. Instead, Gould just decided to ignore the protections for freedom of association. Apparently things have gotten so contentious between the city council and the mayor that the council has prohibited the mayor from meeting with people without the council’s approval.
And then the council decided to make it illegal to form any kind of group, whatsoever, without city council approval.
So yeah, Gould, Arkansas: Now technically home to one of the most totalitarian regimes in the Western Hemisphere…
Continue reading “Exasperated Arkansas Town Ignores Constitution”
Recruiting athletes isn’t just for sports coaches. Many law firm hiring partners like to acquire athletes as well. The thinking is that successful athletes possess many of the traits sought in talented attorneys.
Athletes are disciplined, hardworking, and mentally tough. They are focused and strategic thinkers. If they play a team sport, then they probably excel at teamwork too.
So it shouldn’t come as a shock that Williams & Connolly, a firm full of fearsome litigators who love to win, has a great athlete among its 2011 summer associate class. This individual, who has traveled around the world playing his sport, is our latest celebrity summer associate. (We’ve previously profiled actor Wai Choy, a former co-star of Lindsay Lohan, and Phil Alito, son of Sam.)
Who is this star athlete turned Williams & Connolly summer associate, and what sport does he play?
Continue reading “Celebrity Summer Associate: A Star Athlete”
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
Keep reading »
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We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
Also, we have the two below in-house openings:
Keep reading »
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