Last week, we asked readers to submit possible captions for this photo:
On Monday, you voted on the finalists, and now it’s time to announce the winner of our caption contest….
Continue reading “Caption Contest Winner: The Man, The Myth, The Legend, The Law Dean”
Next Friday, barring last-minute action from Congress, the series of crippling automatic budget cuts known affectionately as “sequestration” will go into effect, immediately slicing 8.2 percent off non-defense spending for 2013. It’s the continuation of the so-called “fiscal cliff,” which was supposed to hit January 1st, but Congress moved this component to March because two potentially disastrous political showdowns are more fun than one.
If you haven’t heard about the sequestration, here’s a good primer, and you’re officially working too hard.
If sequestration is implemented next week, the likely negative impacts range from knocking expected GDP growth down 10 percent or so in 2013 GDP, to setting back medical science for a generation.
The legal field will be especially hard hit…
Continue reading “Next Week, Congress Will Ruin The Country In The Following Ways”
Beyoncé
* “All My Justices” may soon be coming to daytime television station near you. In a close vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill that calls for television access to Supreme Court proceedings. [Legal Times]
* A former Cravath associate’s law license has been suspended as a result of a DV assault charge. For every day spring bonuses go unannounced, another CSM attorney will do something to embarrass the firm. [Am Law Daily]
* Duncan Law wants wants a judge to reconsider an injunction, claiming “eight students have withdrawn” since its accreditation was denied. In other news, only eight students at Duncan Law have half a brain. [National Law Journal]
* If you liked it, then you should’ve put a trademark on it. Jay-Z and Beyoncé have filed a trademark application for their daughter’s name. Nothing says love like exploitation. [New York Post]
* Remember the siblings involved in a nationwide manhunt last summer? Stripper and bank robber extraordinaire Lee Grace Dougherty pleaded guilty, and now faces up to 28 years in jail. [New York Daily News]
Taylor Swift
* Snowtober was a treat for some, but a trick for many more. Let us know how your firm is handling this Halloween horror. Email us or send a text to (646) 820-TIPS. [Reuters]
* Will the legal profession continue to be a slave to ethical rules of the past? Only if lawyers can’t profit from it. And if they can, then say hello to an ABA resolution in 2012. [New York Times]
* Pot trafficker: add this one to the list of career alternatives for attorneys that aren’t working out so well. But if you don’t mind giving up your Benz and getting disbarred, then go for it. [Times Union]
* Yo Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’mma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best topless trademark lawsuits of all time. One of the best topless trademark lawsuits of all time! [Daily Mail]
* Urine trouble, lady. Here’s some proof that next time things aren’t going your way in court, you should try peeing all over yourself. [New York Post]
Earlier this week, the federal government got some heat for allegedly violating the common man’s electronic privacy by snooping around in email and the like. Today we have a lawsuit from Kentucky accusing a tech company, specifically Facebook, of doing nearly the same thing.
What is going on? It’s almost like there’s no privacy anywhere anymore! (I’m kidding, of course: Privacy completely disappeared years ago.)
The suit, filed by an average Facebook user like you or me (well, most of you are lawyers, so not quite like you), claims a class of 150 million people, and damages of hundreds or thousands of dollars per class member. Exactly what heinous offense has Facebook supposedly committed?
I’m so glad you asked….
Continue reading “Did Facebook Illegally Wiretap 150 Million People? Maybe! Probably Not”
* Guys in my law firm used to wank it on a webcam for undercover officers pretending to be teenage girls all the time. It was no big deal. Seriously, “millions of people do this every day, and they don’t get charged with crimes.” [National Law Journal]
* A baseball fan’s lawsuit over spectator safety got thrown out yesterday. How about not being a Mets fan? Admitting to that alone could get you killed. [Wall Street Journal]
* Dashing through the snow, on a one-horse open sleigh, Christmas time is ruined now because of Beyonce. You’re not Sasha Fierce, you’re just a grinch. [Daily Mail]
* For this famous chef, Chopped isn’t just a television show, it’s a litigation strategy. Geoffrey Zakarian cut his losses and declared bankruptcy to avoid a $1M class action suit. [New York Times]
* Why did the stoner cross the road? To get to his dealer on the other side. As a PSA to parents, pot makes you think it’s a good idea to eat a pound of McDonald’s, not walk across a highway at night. [San Luis Obispo Tribune]
* Knock it off: being a fashion victim in New York City may soon cost more than the designer bags at the heart of this proposed law. [New York Post]
Mmm... lunch.
When I first got this job, I thought that it might be a good idea for me to hook up a Breathalyzer to my laptop to prevent me from posting drunk. Then I realized people enjoy this site more when at least one of us is drunk, and so I sacrifice my liver for you fine readers.
Of course, making internet pronouncements about which law schools should be avoided is one thing; it’s not like I’m sitting on a bench wearing a black robe and banging a gavel. I’m not a judge (or a driver), only my shrink needs to know how many Bloody Marys it takes before I feel like dealing with commenters.
In short, I’m not Judge W. Kennedy Boone III, a Washington County Circuit Court judge in Maryland. In November 2009, Judge Boone got into a car accident where his BAC was .18 — twice the legal limit in the state of Maryland. In March he pleaded guilty to a DUI. And now the Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities is making him submit to a Breathalyzer twice a day when he goes to work.
So yeah, Maryland can’t trust the guy to remain sober for an entire work day, but as long as he can prove that he’s sober he is allowed to be a judge, with power over people’s lives…
Yonni Barrios and his mistress Susan Valenzuela. It's going to be awesome when Angelina Jolie plays her in the movie.
I don’t normally follow the news, because that’s how I roll. But stories that involve “miracles,” “tests of courage” and the “triumph of the human spirit” have my name written all over them. Such was the case with yesterday’s rescue of the Chilean miners.
The premise of 33 sweaty, sex-starved men entombed 20,000 leagues under the earth’s surface is itself an automatic made-for-tv-movie starring Mario Lopez and Tony Danza. Throw in some of the rich details that have come out of this underground vacation from hell, and you have surefire Oscar gold.
There’s the preposterous Lord of the Flies-esque ascribing of a persona to each of the miners (medic, scribe, ingénue, happy, sleepy, dopey, etc.); the amazing eBay crap that they sent down to the miners, which included dice, pocket bibles, signed Barcelona soccer shirts, game consoles, and a photo of Elvis; the hilarious subplot of avarice and entitlement (sending back a dessert of canned apples, requesting pillows); and, finally, the pièce de résistance, the priceless vignette of miner Yonni Barrios’s wife and secret mistress discovering each other at the makeshift vigil-city.
So, what should the movie be called?
Continue reading “Fame Brief: Chilean Miners Lawyer Up for Media Deals”
Ed. note: Have a question for next week? Send it in to advice@abovethelaw.com
I am just starting law school and I have a boyfriend from college who’s in a different state now going for a degree in architecture. I like him a lot, but now that I’m here I’m wondering if I should rid myself of the distraction (especially during 1L first semester) or whether I should just start with a clean slate and see what the guys are like here. You’ve been around law school guys, do you think they are worth my time or should I hang on to my current guy unless/until something better comes along?
– Sophie’s Choice
Dear Sophie’s Choice,
This reminds me of those people who roll up to college with framed pictures of their “serious” high school boyfriends / girlfriends (who invariably were still seniors in high school) and leave parties early to return to the dorm to fight on the phone with them at 2 a.m. The primary purpose of these relationships is to provide a security blanket just in case they don’t make any friends in college, and when they inevitably DO make friends in college, the college person breaks up with the high school bf/gf because they finally realize that dating someone from high school is embarrassing and lame and going to prom in the cafeteria via limo is simply out of the question. This applies to everyone except for my parents, who prudently stayed together through high school, college and graduate school, in order to bestow upon this planet myself and two inferior siblings…
At first we were of the opinion that Balenciaga’s “Lego shoe” was too hideous to merit copying. But then we learned that Beyonce has been spotted in a pair. If it’s good enough for Beyonce, it’s good enough for the rest of us, right?
That was apparently the thinking of Steve Madden, which produced a very similar-looking shoe. Balenciaga’s original is on the left; the Madden version is on the right.
But Balenciaga’s not taking this sitting down. Earlier this week, the company sued Steve Madden.
What claims are being made in the lawsuit? Come up with some guesses. Then read more (and comment) over at our sister site, Fashionista.
Balenciaga Sues Steve Madden [Fashionista]
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 »
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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