I once observed that federal judges are “the closest thing this nation has to an aristocracy.” If that’s the case, then justices of the United States Supreme Court are royalty — or maybe even deities, gods, and goddesses who walk among us (and occasionally crash into us, too).
Alas, it seems that two members of SCOTUS didn’t get the memo. They are comporting themselves in public in ways that are inconsistent with the dignity of the Article III judiciary.
This is a bipartisan problem. One of the offenders comes from the left side of the Court, and one comes from the right….
Continue reading “The Eyes of the Law: Justices Who Are Slumming It”
* The list of words that you can’t text in Pakistan. There are way more than seven. [Gizmodo]
* No charges have yet been filed against the Yale student who drove a U-Haul truck that killed a person at the Harvard-Yale tailgate. [CNN]
* Now more than ever, you should take time off between college and law school. [AOL Jobs]
* Money is speech for a corporation. But sleeping isn’t speech for a human. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* The Stephen Baum foreclosure mill is closing. The lesson: when you crush poor people, don’t look like you’re enjoying it. [Gawker]
* You know how sometimes guys get dumped by their fiancée and then sue to get the ring back? This guy didn’t have to go through all that, but he did have an awesome plan for the money. [Shortlist]
* Another lawyer joins the new-media world: Richard Chen, formerly of Arnold & Porter, joins the Hedge Fund Law Report as editor-in-chief. [Hedge Fund Law Report]
Businesses spend a surprising amount of time and effort protecting their brand and intellectual property from cybersquatters. It often takes the threat of litigation or creative domain name registry to prevent random people from registering websites like Pepsisux.com.
So, it’s kind of funny that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is in the process of introducing a new top-level domain — .XXX — built specifically for porn websites. In doing so, it may have created a cybersquatter’s dream come true.
Eighty thousand .XXX domain names have been registered in the past few months. A new lawsuit shows that some companies are registering even though they really don’t want to. Let’s find out why….
Continue reading “Nobody Likes Porny .XXX Domain Names, Except Cybersquatters”
At large law firms around the country, associates and counsel are eagerly awaiting their bonuses. But partners and chief financial officers have their minds on other things: namely, collections. The fourth quarter is when firms step up their efforts at shaking down clients for cash.
As we all know from the law-and-economics reasoning that was taught to us in law school, people — yes, this includes lawyers — respond to incentives. At one leading law firm, bonus anxiety is being shrewdly harnessed in service of collections efforts.
CHECK YOU TIME SHEETS….
Continue reading “You Want Your Bonus? We Want Your Time Sheets.”
Maybe Amora Rachelle missed the day they talked about fraud statutes at Hofstra Law?
There is a crazy story coming out of Long Island, my homeland, about Rachelle, a woman who was arrested for fraud for posing as a psychiatrist and billing insurance companies despite not having a medical license. Rachelle already made the news for secretly videotaping her ex-husband/rabbi meeting with prostitutes on the Sabbath.
But Hofstra students simply know her as the 1L who always wore green….
Continue reading “Former Hofstra 1L Accused of Impersonating a Psychiatrist”
Peter Huang
She told me that I had not only embarrassed myself, but also her, my entire immediate family, all Chinese people, all Asian people, all humans, and in fact all carbon-based life forms.
– Asian-American law professor Peter Huang of the University of Colorado, opining on the wrath of his tiger mother in an essay entitled “Tiger Cub Strikes Back: Memoirs of an Ex-Child Prodigy About Parenting and Legal Education.”
This is probably a fashion don't.
We’ve been down this road before, but society still seems to think that female lawyers and law students don’t know the basics of fashion. Maybe it’s true, especially given the number of events on this topic that repeat the same information ad infinitum. We’ve seen seminars on how to have fashion sense for the workplace, followed by lessons on fashion dos and don’ts. When will the madness end?
We thought that we had gotten the point across on this in October: ladies, if you dress like hookers, the only jobs you’ll get will be underneath a partner’s desk.
But apparently that message fell on deaf ears, because one law school’s Career & Professional Development Office had to co-sponsor an event with the school’s Women Law Students Association on how to properly dress for an interview….
Continue reading “A Message from Career Services: Ladies, Please Learn How to Dress Yourselves”
If you’re a newly departed Biglaw lawyer, that silence you hear is the absence of the email from the firm’s office manager asking you how many Christmas, sorry, “holiday” cards you need to send out this year. And if you’re in the first year or so of your own practice, I bet you can’t wait for the prize — your first shipment of gold embossed “HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM THE LAW OFFICES OF LOOK AT ME I HAVE MY OWN CARDS” holiday cards.
Christmas down here in solo and small firm land is much different. There are fewer meticulously planned escapes from the firm’s boring holiday “party,” and there’s no more relying on “the firm” to spend the bucks on gifts for its clients and referral sources. Now they’re your clients and referral sources, so make a list, and check it twice….
Continue reading “The Practice: It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like a Non-Biglaw Christmas”
How screwed up is legal education these days? One mainstream publication recently published an article suggesting law students should be paid to not go to law school, while the paper of record noted that nobody learns how to be a lawyer in law school anyway.
That’s what it’s come to, folks. Can you imagine Slate, which is owned by the Washington Post, publishing an article suggesting that we should pay M.B.A. candidates to stop going to business school? Can you imagine the New York Times publishing a feature article about how medical students don’t learn anything in medical school?
Welcome to law school, the red-headed stepchild of American professional schools….
Continue reading “Pay to Go to Law School or Get Paid to Quit: You Won’t Be Learning Anything Either Way”
When we write briefs, we show — we don’t tell — the reader that we win. Thus, we do not tell the reader: “This case is barred by the statute of limitations,” which is mere assertion. Instead, we show the reader why we win: “The accident in which plaintiff was hurt occurred on June 1, 2008. The two-year statute of limitations therefore expired on June 1, 2010. Plaintiff did not file his complaint, however, until August 15, 2011. This lawsuit is time-barred.”
At trial, it’s the same routine: We do not simply assert in an opening statement or closing argument: “My client should win.” (Nor do we beg: “Please, please. My client should win.”) Instead, we present the facts, and we let the jury conclude from the facts that our client should win. Show; don’t tell. It’s more persuasive.
What’s the equivalent for demonstrating legal expertise? What should law firms write (and say) on résumés and in responses to RFPs to show, not tell, their competence? And, as in-house counsel, what questions should we ask to investigate whether a firm is blowing hot air (which is what “telling” permits) or may actually be competent (which is what “showing” may suggest)?
Continue reading “Inside Straight: Showing, Not Telling, That You’re Competent”
* I guess it really doesn’t matter how much lawyers love Ron Paul if Biglaw firms keep emptying their seemingly overflowing coffers into Obama’s re-election campaign. [Washington Post]
* Congratulations to Yale Law School graduate Ronan Farrow, son of Woody Allen and Mia Farrow. Ronan probably isn’t shallow and empty with no ideas and nothing interesting to say, since he’s just been named a 2012 Rhodes Scholar. [ABC News]
* National drinking age laws: keeping women from killing themselves or being murdered since the 1980s. Now where’s the study on how many people actually obey these laws? [USA Today]
* A Florida woman has disappeared after battling it out with her ex-fiancé over an engagement ring on The People’s Court. As if you needed another reason not to be seen on that show. [Daily Mail]
* According to a new law in England, water might be wet, but that doesn’t mean it’ll fix dehydration. Not elementary, my dear Watson, but “stupidity writ large.” [International Business Times]
* The fall of the Third Reich fourth tyke? Poor little Adolf Hitler’s parents have lost custody of yet another child thanks to the state of New Jersey. [New York Daily News]
At 6:00 p.m. Pacific tonight, I’ll be one of the only black guys — excuse me, Redguards — in Skyrim. But if you took the California bar exam in July, you’ll be clicking around trying to figure out if you passed.
Don’t worry, it’ll be pretty simple to find out… and if you failed, you’ll have the whole weekend to prepare before everybody knows it….
Continue reading “Congrats, California Bar Takers; Or Condolences, as the Case May Be”
In happier times. Well, not happier for Bruce Willis.
* When you let anyone with half a brain into law school and key the bar exam at a level where most people can pass it, you’re going to end up with lawyers like these. [New York Personal Injury Law Blog]
* On Southwest, bags fly free, but you are going to pay for your own damn drink. [Contracts Prof Blog]
* Five legitimate ways to tell you are losing your sexual harassment suit. These are all PC ideas, so it doesn’t include all the usual reasons: you’re ugly, you’re a known alcoholic or drug addict, you’re actually terrible at your job. [LexisNexis]
* Here’s why, every now and again, it’s important to read (or even re-read) books, instead of just going on how they are referenced. [Simple Justice]
* I always thought that jargon was the lawyer’s way of saying “this is why my bill is so outrageous.” [An Associate's Mind]
* Mental health in the legal profession. [WSJ Law Blog]
* It’d be kind of funny if Demi Moore replaced Ashton with Charlie Sheen. [TMZ]
Not good times.
Earlier this week, we told you about the Northwestern Law student who made a joke about Thailand on the Northwestern listserv. The joke was in poor taste, especially given that it was in response to a solicitation for charitable donations after a deadly flood in Thailand.
I thought the penalty would be a chorus of “too soon” every time somebody saw him on campus. But the Northwestern Dean tells us that the kid is being punished….
Continue reading “Closing the Loop on the Case of Bro Versus Thailand”
I send my lawyers out unto the world.
I’m not sure it’s fair to call the Vatican “homophobic.” Homophobia contemplates a kind of fear. It’s a prejudice that, like so many, comes out of ignorance.
The Vatican is different. They think they’re at war with gays and lesbians — and who knows how many of these guys are at war with their own sexuality. And as opposed to a mere lack of understanding, there’s that annoying, Vatican-style, moral omnipotence that makes them feel they know exactly where gays and lesbians are going to end up. The Vatican isn’t homophobic so much as it’s homo-hating.
Given all that, I can’t say that I’m surprised that the Vatican is suing over a photoshopped picture of Pope Benedict XVI open-mouthed kissing another man. I’m sure surprised that the Unhate Foundation and an Italian fashion company had the stones to put the picture in an ad campaign all around Italy….
Continue reading “Vatican Sues Over Pictures of Pope Sucking Face”
Tom Wallerstein
Yeah, some people thought I might be nuts for leaving litigation powerhouse Quinn Emanuel. But the prospects of starting my own firm and building a practice from the ground up were too compelling to ignore. Nearly two and a half years have passed since Colt Wallerstein LLP opened its doors, and still not a day goes by when my partner and I aren’t humbled by our good fortune and our decision to “trade places”: that is, move from Biglaw to start a litigation boutique in Silicon Valley that focuses on high-tech trade secret, employment, and complex-commercial litigation.
I graduated from law school in 1999, and the legal market was very different then. Getting into a “top” law school pretty much guaranteed a job, and most of my law school friends and I had multiple offers and no real concern about landing a Biglaw job, if that’s what we wanted. Offer rates hovered around 100%, and of course the lucrative summers consisted mostly of long lunches at five-star restaurants, luxury box seats at baseball games, open bars, and very little work.
Those were the days….
Continue reading “From Biglaw to Boutique: Trading Places”
Earlier this week, we wrote about Natalie Hegedus, a young Michigan mother who claims she was “humiliated” after a judge called her out for breastfeeding in court. Women across the country were outraged that a judge would find this sort of behavior in his courtroom to be inappropriate.
As we noted previously, Michigan is is one of only five states that does not have a law that would allow nursing mothers to breastfeed anytime, anywhere. But some women in Michigan apparently don’t give a damn about the law (or lack thereof).
Later this month, an advocacy group called No Injustice Against Nursing in Public (NINJA NIPs, for short) will be staging a protest outside of the courthouse where Hegedus was shamed. What kind of a protest, you ask? A nurse-in….
Continue reading “NINJA NIPs to Stage a Courthouse ‘Nurse-In’ Protest in Michigan”
Last year, on November 17th, I asked where the Biglaw bonuses were. Cravath announced five days later.
So if the firms are waiting for a personal invitation to announce their 2011 bonus payments, they should feel free to RSVP to this post. We’re ready for the bonuses now.
The firms aren’t scared, are they? They’re not worried about Occupy Wall Street protesters objecting to mere five-figure bonus news, are they? Haven’t the Occupy people proven that they aren’t even paying attention to the Wall Street lawyers?
So let’s get on with the process of spreading the wealth around Biglaw….
Continue reading “The 1% Would Like Their Bonuses… NOW”
Welcome to the latest edition of Above the Law’s Grammer Pole of the Weak, a column where we turn questions of legal writing and English grammar and usage over to our readers for discussion and debate.
Last week’s vote was extremely close, but 51% of our readers thought that the Bluebook should be abolished. With the fall semester drawing to a close and brief deadlines approaching, we think that law students definitely had a hand in the outcome.
This week, we turn to a question of grammar. Have you been using the word “irregardless” instead of “regardless”?
Continue reading “Grammer Pole of the Weak: That’s Irregardless…”
