November 2011

Law School Fee Waivers: We Won’t Touch Your Children Edition

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Prospective law students always get excited when they’re offered application fee waivers. Law school application fees can run high, and getting tossed a freebie is a nice way to give your bank account a break. Normally, these kind of fee waivers aren’t that out of the ordinary. Offering application fee waivers is standard practice at most law schools.

But what happens when a law school offers prospective applicants a fee waiver after its undergraduate institution is involved in one of the biggest college sports scandals of all time? Talk about bad timing….

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Above the Law Holiday Party: RSVP So We Know Whether or Not to Wear Pants

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As we told you last week, the Above the Law holiday party is going to be held on November 30th at Bar 29. The bar is located at 29th and 3rd, and the open bar runs from 6:00-9:00 p.m. The party is sponsored by our friends at Practical Law Company — you might remember them from yesterday’s article about training alternatives for students who graduate from law school with few practical skills.

Please RSVP below. We’re trying to get a sense of our numbers. If it’s a smaller, more intimate gathering, I’ll show up in my usual blogging attire of a black robe and a badass medallion like Caiaphas. If there are a bunch of you coming, I’ll have to shave and put on a shirt or something.

Let us know if you are coming. It should be a fun time.

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A Justice Department Round-Up: Gloomy News

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Thanksgiving is just a few days away. But at the U.S. Department of Justice, there might not be a lot to be thankful for. Most of the DOJ-related news floating around right now is depressing.

A court-appointed investigator, Henry F. Schuelke, just issued what the New York Times described as a “scathing” report on one of the DOJ’s most prominent prosecutions in recent years. Schuelke concluded that the prosecution the late Senator Ted Stevens “was ‘permeated’ by the prosecutors’ ‘serious, widespread and at times intentional’ illegal concealment of evidence that would have helped Mr. Stevens defend himself at his 2008 trial.” Ouch.

(The good news, from the Department’s perspective: a recommendation against criminal prosecution of the DOJ officials involved in the case. That’s something to be thankful for, I suppose.)

Alas, that’s not all for depressing dispatches out of the Department. Let’s discussing the hiring freeze, and the state of Honors Program offers….

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Have You Signed Up for the Research Corner?

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For Students at Top Chicago Area Law Schools, It’s All About the Pie

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It’s almost Thanksgiving, an entire American holiday centered around gluttony and based upon the kindness of people we later tried to exterminate.

And football.

And pie. Lots of pie.

Now, normally pie is an unqualified good (unless you are on a diet, which I never am). It’s hard to see how this all-American treat could be overcomplicated. But leave it to a group of law students to ruin pie….

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Letter from London: Pompous, Jargon-Addicted… Sound Familiar?

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Down on your luck? Feel like cheering yourself up by, say, arresting a judge? Or perhaps you just fancy seizing a courtroom for the day? Well, the “Freeman-on-the-land” movement could be for you.

“Freemen” argue that the law can be circumvented by, for example, evoking an ancient text and then sending an affidavit to the Queen.

Here’s a clip of them in action (go to 4:21 for the hilarious pseudo-legal speech)….

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Morning Docket: 11.22.11

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* You know what, screw the neighborhood. There goes the freakin’ country. Congress’s bipartisan, not-so-super committee has failed to reach an agreement for a deficit reduction deal. [CNN]

* “When the government takes action . . . there are legal limits to what they can do.” And one of those limits is that they can’t screw over any of the AIG shareholders, right, Maurice? [New York Times]

* While NBA players were busy consolidating their antitrust suits in Minnesota, David Boies was being called out by the NBA’s general counsel. Keep it on the in court, Buchanan. [USA Today]

* Remember that time we got arrested at an Occupy Wall Street protest and then sued over it? Probably not the kind of story you want to reminisce about with your future husband. [Bloomberg]

* There are only so many jokes one can make about Justin Bieber. Bottom line: this fetus took a paternity test, and we’re going to find out soon if he’s a baby-daddy. [New York Daily News]

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The Eyes of the Law: Justices Who Are Slumming It

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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….

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Non-Sequiturs: 11.21.11

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* 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]

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Nobody Likes Porny .XXX Domain Names, Except Cybersquatters

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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….

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