'Aspiring' Law Student Claims Reputational Damage From Leaked Lingerie Photos

Wanna-be law student claims leaked photos are preventing her from following her dreams...

I’ve spent some time this morning pondering the definition of “aspiring law student,” in the context of what could be done to ruin somebody’s aspirations to go to law school. Murder would put an end to a person’s aspirations. Perhaps a massive head wound of some kind. But given the state of American law schools, there is very little that could happen to a person that would prevent an individual from following their dream of going to law school.

Certainly, leaking lingerie photos and being the subject of a case of mistaken identity on the internet wouldn’t prevent a person from going to law school. It wouldn’t even get someone dinged during the character and fitness process after passing the bar exam.

I ask this question because the suddenly hot story of Shana Edme — an “aspiring lawyer” whose lingerie photos were “leaked,” leading her to become the subject of some internet rumors for a day or two — seems to rest on the premise that there is some nexus between her leaked photos and her (as yet unrealized) legal career. Edme has filed a complaint claiming that because her lingerie photos were leaked, her “future career plans to apply for and attend law school have been placed in jeopardy.”

That seems totally bogus to me. But maybe the difference between “aspiring” to go to law school and going to law school involves not inventing fake hurdles to stand in the way of your dreams….

Shana Edme filed a lawsuit against ModelMayhem.com, Media Takeout, and Bossip. Edme uploaded pictures of herself wearing lingerie to her Model Mayhem profile. She claims that the profile was not to be shared with anybody without her consent. From her complaint:

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Well, as most of you know, rule number one of the internet is that if that if you upload half-naked pictures of yourself, eventually everybody will be able to see your half-naked pictures. (I’m not touching it; if you want to see pictures of this random chick who wants to have a law degree someday, you can Google that mess yourself.)

Somehow the pictures leaked to a couple of gossip sites who mistakenly believed that Edme was the half-sister of Kimora Lee Simmons. I don’t know who that is. I think it’s a corollary of one of Einstein’s laws of space-time that one cannot both know who Kimora Lee Simmons is and at the same time know who Harold Koh is.

The gossip sites were not exactly kind to Ms. Edme when comparing her to Simmons. Here’s some commentary:

(Note to self: must use the line “TTT law students look just like regular law students, only thick.”)

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And here’s some mean-ass s*** that I’d never say about a subject of an Above the Law story:

Haha. Oh, sorry, I mean, what an awful thing to say about an aspiring lawyer.

Look, this lawsuit is clearly about a person being butthurt that her pictures got out and people said mean things about her. Her complaint (posted in full on the next page) makes numerous references to the comments about her on the gossip sites, comments that were “derogatory and sexual in nature.” She’s suing for invasion of privacy and wants $3 million. I haven’t seen the Model Mayhem contract or privacy policy, so who knows whether her claims have merit.

What I do know is that nothing that has happened to young Edme that will in any way affect her ability to go to law school. It’s not like she’s going to get five points docked off her LSAT score because she looks like she could be a thicker version of Kimora Lee Simmons’s younger sister. Her Google footprint, festooned though it may be with lingerie photos and nasty comments, is not something that admissions committees are really going to care about.

They might raise an eyebrow at her decision to file a silly lawsuit, trying to get $3 million dollars because somebody confused her for the relative of somebody marginally famous. But hey, if law schools didn’t have anything to teach anybody, they’d go out of business. Right?

Check out the full complaint of Shana Edme on the next page.