Ed. note: Welcome to Letter from London, a weekly look at the U.K. legal world by our London correspondent, Alex Aldridge. Alex previously covered the London riots and the royal wedding for Above the Law.
“Thank God” Britain didn’t join the Euro, said U.K. chancellor George Osborne last month, as the debt crisis in Greece began to spread to the much larger economies of Italy and Spain. But with the fortunes of the U.K. tightly bound to the rest of Europe (its biggest trading partner), the reality is that we’ll be hit almost as hard as our single currency-sharing neighbours if, as many expect, the crisis worsens.
Last week, as I did the rounds of the U.S. law firms in London in preparation for the commencement of these regular installments from across the pond, I asked various managing partners what European debt contagion would mean for large law firms in the U.K. And, predictably, they reeled off the standard recession line about law firms being “well placed to handle the anticipated wave of restructuring work.”
Doubtless there’s some truth to this. Indeed, Skadden and Linklaters are already riding the wave, with the pair currently advising on the merger between Greece’s second- and third-largest banks. Such are the demands of the deal that much of Skadden’s relatively small London office has apparently been required to temporarily decamp to Athens.
The worry is what happens after the restructuring is complete, with experts predicting that Eurozone sovereign debt defaults could precipitate a decade-long depression. This would be especially bad for the legal profession….
Continue reading “Letter from London: On the Brink of a Double Dip?”
A bright, 23-year-old woman is thinking of going to law school. Should she do it?
Let’s learn about the particulars of her case….
Continue reading “Should This Young Woman Go to Law School?”
Voulez vous coucher avec moi ce soir? You’d think that when women ask that question of men in France, they’d be receptive. In fact, in my experience, French men are overly amorous. When I was a French exchange student at the ripe old age of 15, an older guy approached me at a club and tried to woo me with this line: “Did you know zat Frenche men make ze best loveurs?” I didn’t care to find out.
Well, times have changed, because apparently the French aren’t such great lovers anymore. A 2010 poll taken by the French Institute of Public Opinion found that 76% of people surveyed were having relationship problems due to a poor sex life. And it seems that a poor sex life was what brought about a divorce between Jean-Louis B. and Monique, a middle-aged couple in the birthplace of the language of love.
But after enduring 21 years of a near sexless marriage, a divorce was simply not enough for Monique. Mrs. B. wanted to be compensated for the lack of sexual rendezvous with her ex-husband, so she sued him for it….
Continue reading “Putting the ‘French’ in ‘Kiss’: Man Sued By Ex-Wife Over Lack of Sex”
Luis Mijangos: Sextortionist Extraordinaire
* According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 100 new jobs were added to the legal industry last month. About 40,000 students graduated from law school this spring. You do the math. [Am Law Daily]
* This Maryland law school dean thinks that the U.S. News rankings “generalize about things that are not generalizable.” Come on, lady, don’t bite the hand that feeds you. [College Inc. / Washington Post]
* Did you get an email from Paul Ceglia about enlarging your penis? If so, it’s because lawyers at Gibson Dunn exposed the fraudster’s passwords in a court filing last week. Oops. [Bloomberg]
* A computer hacker in California got six years for sextortion and cyberterrorism. Ladies, this is just another reason to save your nude pictures on your flash drive, not your hard drive. [CNN Justice]
* An Ohio man who stopped paying into the office lottery pool is suing for a share of his co-workers’ $99M jackpot. You get what you pay for, and in this case, it should be nothing. [Fox News]
There are 64 open jobs in occupational therapy for every 100 working in the field, the [SimplyHired.com] site’s data show. Yet online job listings for these positions get 50 times fewer clicks than the hardest-to-place industry — the legal field. Meanwhile, unemployed lawyers now find themselves in the country’s most cutthroat race for a job, with less than one opening for every 100 working attorneys.
— from a recent Wall Street Journal article, Where the Jobs Are.
Judge Peggy Ableman
Ed. note: Due to the Labor Day holiday, we’ll be on a reduced publication schedule today. We’ll be back to normal tomorrow. A restful and happy Labor Day to all!
* More about the Delaware benchslap that we covered last week (including the news that Judge Peggy Ableman’s pajama party did not go forward as proposed). [Delaware News-Journal]
* The federal government is suing 17 banks for almost $200 billion, blaming the banks for mortgage-backed securities that went bad. [Bloomberg]
* An interesting dissection of the legal fees that Dewey & LeBoeuf is running up as counsel on the Los Angeles Dodgers bankruptcy. [New York Times]
Roger Clemens
* Roger Clemens will face a second trial next year. Lester Munson, the esteemed legal analyst, explains why. [ESPN]
* “From One Bankrupt Firm to Another: Brobeck Asks Heller For $471,000.” [Am Law Daily]
* AT&T faces a tricky balancing act in dealing with the Justice Department’s challenge of the T-Mobile deal. [New York Times]
* If you’re confused about the current role of lawyer-turned-entrepreneur Michael Arrington over at AOL, in the wake of AOL’s acquiring his TechCrunch site, you’re not alone. [Digits / Wall Street Journal]
Judge Ginsburg: back to school.
* Judge Douglas Ginsburg (D.C. Cir.) is taking senior status and joining the NYU Law faculty. Query how this will affect his feeding (and no, we’re not talking about New York versus D.C. restaurants). [The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times]
* “Two Examples of Things Not to Say When You’re at Your Local IRS Office.” [Going Concern]
* Speaking of efficiency-challenged government entities, how can the U.S. postal service be fixed? Professor Gerard Magliocca floats some ideas. [Concurring Opinions]
Madonna: going to court.
* Should you rinse religion from your résumé? Reflections from Professor Paul Horwitz. [PrawfsBlawg]
* The Material Girl is going to trial — over the trademark to “Material Girl.” [Fashionista]
* It’s not just law schools that are getting sued for fraud; it’s happening to art schools too. [PetaPixel]
* Elsewhere in litigation land, Quinn Emanuel is making bank — by suing banks. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* What’s the deal with high-frequency trading algorithms? Fear not; the SEC is on the case. [Dealbreaker]
There was no rational foundation to do [the spring bonuses]. It was not as if suddenly all the law firms in The Am Law 100 were minting money.
— Ralph Baxter, longtime chairman and CEO of Orrick (shortly before he was overheard screaming at the Wheeling career associates to mint more money).
Happy Friday, and welcome to the latest edition of Above the Law’s Grammer Pole of the Weak, a column where we turn questions of English grammar and usage over to our readers for discussion and debate.
Last week, we discovered that 82% of our readers are willing to strangle, maim, and kill over the use of the serial comma. Take that, AP Stylebook heathens!
This week, we’re turning to a more contentious issue: the use of gender-neutral language in law practice and legal writing. Interestingly enough, experts disagree on the matter.
Bros, should you be kind to the ladies when you’re using indefinite pronouns?
Continue reading “Grammer Pole of the Weak: Gender-Neutral Language and You”
Peggy Ableman
Earlier this week, we reported on the latest benchslap from Judge Sam Sparks (W.D. Tex.). In his order, Judge Sparks invited attorneys to a “kindergarten party,” to address what he perceived as childish behavior.
Judge Sparks eventually called off the party. That makes sense, since he had already achieved his goal of publicly shaming the attorneys appearing before him.
Other judges have apparently taken notice. Now comes Judge Peggy Ableman of Delaware. She has called for attorneys appearing before her to attend “a ‘special’ emergency refresher course in first year ethics and civility.”
UPDATE (5:20 PM): Darn it. Delaware Superior Court Presiding Judge James T. Vaughn Jr. has taken over the case and canceled the “refresher course,” as reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer.
What’s really going to make the allegedly childlike attorneys squeal is that Judge Ableman scheduled her remedial class for the middle of Labor Day weekend….
Continue reading “Judge-Ordered Remedial Civility Classes = The New Killing It”
The Am Law Midlevel associate survey came out yesterday. Satisfaction among 3rd, 4th, and 5th year Biglaw associates is down for the second year in a row.
That’s a trend people should get used to. The midlevel survey should be renamed the Survivor’s Remorse Report for the next few years. The thing will be a snapshot of the few who made it through the great winnowing of 2009, or the lucky who got into Biglaw as the industry massively scaled back new associate hiring. As demand for legal services picks up, all we’re going to be looking at here are people working extremely hard on inadequately staffed cases.
My favorite quote from the Am Law piece is from a DLA Piper associate (the associate will be played by Miranda from the Tempest in my mind) who said: “Firms got too lean [after the recession] and consequently realized that associates will work more and more if asked. Quality of life has therefore decreased.”
Oh, brave new world.
These midlevels who are whining right now are slightly missing the big picture. They might have to work long hours, but they are going to make serious bank for the rest of their legal lives….
Continue reading “The Watchword Is ‘Labor’ in This Year’s Am Law Midlevel Survey”
Lauren Serafin and Robert Leighton
Chicago sounds like a tough town for romance. Check out the first Courtship Connection date that went down in the Windy City. Let’s hope that future dates go better.
Chitown was also the venue for Serafin v. Leighton. In this lawsuit, a lovely young lawyer, Lauren Serafin, sued her handsome ex-fiancé, Sidley Austin associate Robert Leighton, for “breach of promise” to marry. Serafin alleged that Leighton cheated on her during his Las Vegas bachelor party, with a woman named “Danielle,” and then broke off the engagement — saddling Serafin with almost $63,000 in wedding- and honeymoon-related expenses.
We now bring you an update on this saga….
Continue reading “An Update on Chicago’s Runaway Bridegroom and Jilted Bride”
Here at Above the Law, we frequently publish stories about law students who have been accused of doing pretty bad things. Take, for example, the law students and recent law school graduates who have graced our pages in the past few months:
- Tammy Hsu (authored an arrogant blog and insulted her classmates)
- Stephen McDaniel (accused of murder and child pornography possession)
- Ilan Grapel (accused of being a spy by Egyptian authorities)
- Reema Bajaj (accused of prostitution)
- Johnathan Perkins (admitted to fabricating a tale of racial harassment by the police)
Enough with the law students gone bad. Today, we thought we’d change it up a little bit and bring you a story about a law student who did something good. Actually, this particular law student did something great.
On August 31, a law student rescued an orphaned baby. Who is this remarkable heroine and where does she go to school?
Continue reading “Future Lawyer of the Day: Law Student Rescues Orphaned Baby”
Joran van der Sloot
* Bob Morse announces that new jobs data may be used to change the methodology for calculating law school employment rates. Because Bob Morse has to do the ABA’s job for them. HIYOOOO! [U.S. News & World Report]
* And speaking of employment (or lack thereof), it looks like UDel and SUNY Stony Brook have given up their plans to build new law schools. Did they smarten up and start worrying about jobs like we do? [Washington Post]
* Joran van der Sloot: rolling his eyes at murder charges since 2005. More than a year after his arrest, he’s been charged with the murder of Stephany Flores. [CNN]
* Representing a private company, Cadwalader’s antitrust case against Google got tossed. Even Biglawyers can fail to meet their burdens of proof. [CNET]
* ‘Cause tonight we’re robo-signing like it’s 1999? Mortgage paperwork screw-ups aren’t as new as you think – they’ve been around since flannel was still cool. [Associated Press]
* Remember that Oscar de la Hoya lawsuit? The settlement allegedly included $20M in exchange for getting his heels and fishnets back. You can’t keep a good crossdresser down. [New York Post]
Elie the bloggAARRRR!
Well, I’m alive. And, more importantly for you guys, I can see. Which means I can resume some of my writing duties. Mwahahaha.
But before we get back to our regular reindeer games, I need to ask you for some help. Without going into too many details, the picture on the right captures me on the first day of my recovery. Lined up behind my head are all the drugs I was told to take to get me to the point where I could half sit up and kind of smile ten days after I initially presented with “a cough and some labored breathing.”
Trust me, being a patient in an episode of House is no fun. The whole “nearly killing the patient three times” thing gets old quick. For regular watchers of the show, my episode was one of those: “He has this and that??? And the stuff we were giving him for the first thing exacerbated the other thing he had? My doctor, you’re brilliant because nobody could have possibly expected one person to have two things go wrong at the same time!” And like a patient in one of those episodes, I’m pretty thankful for my doctors overall. I can talk. I have still have two eyes. They figured it out in the end. No med mal suit coming from me (assuming no changes for the worse).
But, I was a lawyer. And I want to sue somebody because health care is not free and finding things to blame is just good sport. I want to go after my landlord, but I need some help in making it all fit together.
Let me explain….
Continue reading “Help Elie Sue”
Judge Sam Sparks
* Remember the “kindergarten party” that Judge Sam Sparks (W.D. Tex.) was planning to hold? His Honor has canceled the festivities. [WSJ Law Blog]
* John Althouse Cohen — yes, son of La Althouse — discusses one way in which Texas might be emulating… Europe? [Jaltcoh]
* Professor Paul Campos opens up a can of whoop-ass on people who say students go to law school — and take on six figures of debt — “for the chance to make a difference.” [Inside the Law School Scam]
* Musical Chairs: Mr. Quinn Goes To Washington (with the help of three Alston & Bird partners). [ABA Journal]
* The latest news on Stephen McDaniel / Lauren Giddings: if the blue gloves don’t fit, you must acquit? [Macon Telegraph]
* Above the Law — of animal cruelty? Steven Seagal, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a dead dog, and a rooster massacre. [TPM Muckraker]
Steven Seagal
* After a judge shot down the effort by NBA star Gilbert Arenas to stop “Basketball Wives: Los Angeles” from airing, Arenas’s ex-fiancee, Laura Govan, was allowed to strut her stuff on television — and it wasn’t pretty. [Sister2Sister]
* Congratulations to super-mensch Stanley Levy, senior counsel at Manatt, on winning Am Law’s Lifetime Achievement Award for 2011. [American Lawyer]
* And congrats to Masimba Mutamba, a 3L at Miami Law, who has just been awarded an apprenticeship with Waller Lansden’s innovative Schola2Juris program. [University of Miami School of Law]
Last night we wrote about a high-profile lawsuit: 3M v. Lanny Davis. Yes, that’s right: the maker of Post-its and Scotch tape is going after Lanny J. Davis, the noted D.C. lawyer and lobbyist, along with his client, Porton Capital (a group of private investors).
It’s a strange lawsuit, but the allegations in it aren’t new. Similar suits were filed by 3M in June and July, in New York state court. (And one of them is still pending, despite the filing of an action in D.C. federal court.)
The primary parties, 3M and the Porton Group, have crossed swords before. In fact, they’re litigating against each other right now in merry olde England, before the High Court in London. In the U.K. litigation, 3M is being sued by Porton Capital and by the British government (in the form of Ploughshare Innovations, an entity owned by the U.K.’s Ministry of Defence).
According to the Wall Street Journal, Porton and Ploughshare allege that 3M failed to diligently develop the BacLite testing technology, “a product already proved and used in Europe as a cheap and quick way of detecting methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, commonly known as MRSA, a hospital infection.” The reason this is so upsetting to Porton and Ploughshare is that they were contractually entitled to receive royalties from 3M’s sales of BacLite. The plaintiffs in the U.K. case claim that 3M abandoned BacLite less than a year after buying it — after botching the BacLite trials, and declaring the testing technology non-viable — “in order to protect a 3M-developed detection product known as Fastman from the less expensive rival posed by BacLite.”
Got that? Okay. Now, some updates to our prior coverage….
UPDATE (9/2/11, 9:30 AM): An update to our updates: a statement from William A. Brewer III, counsel to 3M, has been added below.
Continue reading “3M v. Lanny Davis: For the Record”
With OCI coming to an end at most law schools, now is the time to sit back and assess the interview process. While you may be tempted to tune out until you receive an offer (or rejection), don’t.
In addition to reviewing your performance in the interview, you should critique the performance of the law firm.
Furthermore, be sure to consider the following tips from Lateral Link’s Frank Kimball before you accept an offer….
Continue reading “Career Center: Assessing the OCI Interview Process”
