A brief tour of things we don’t have room to explore in this double edition of LEWW:
- This bride is foxy and forty-eight; this bride is twenty-six and hyper-annoying.
- Some MoFo lesbians have made a match of it.
- Graduating cum laude from Harvard wins you admission to a tier-4 law school.
But on to our five featured couples:
Some fashion advice for Arab-Americans traveling by plane: leave the Arabic-slogan t-shirts at home.
Unless you want to become the plaintiff in an ACLU lawsuit. Consider this recently filed case:
The American Civil Liberties Union and New York Civil Liberties Union today filed a federal civil rights lawsuit charging that a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) official and JetBlue Airways illegally discriminated against an American resident based solely on the Arabic message on his t-shirt and his ethnicity.
JetBlue and the TSA official, identified as “Inspector Harris,” would not let Raed Jarrar board his flight at John F. Kennedy Airport until he agreed to cover his t-shirt, which read “We Will Not Be Silent” in English and Arabic script.
According to the complaint, Harris told Jarrar that it is impermissible to wear an Arabic shirt to an airport and equated it to a “person wearing a t-shirt at a bank stating, ‘I am a robber.’”
* Banned children’s book about Cuba, “Vamos a Cuba,” now in court. [Miami Herald]
* “Hit Movie ‘Knocked Up’ With a Lawsuit.” [WSJ Law Blog]
* Should Libby be pardoned? [LA Times via BLT]
* More pardoning analysis from NYT. [New York ]
* Cleared Duke lacrosse players given extra year of eligibility. [New York Times]
* ACLU v. Boeing over alleged CIA torture flights. [Jurist]
* Save it for the field, fellas. [Reno Gazette-Journal]
* Milberg partner may plea in class-action kickback case. [WSJ Law Blog]
* There was a time when a TV writer strike meant something, but if recently, you’ve found yourself watching the Pussycat Dolls reality show, you too might welcome a return to more scripted programs. [Los Angeles Times]
* I’d pay for license plates that read “God is Dead”–Nietzsche (front) and “Nietzsche is Dead”–God (back). [Indy Star]
* CBS just defended itself by claiming it can’t be racist since Les Moonves’s wife is Asian. And that they’re upholding free speech or something. [New York Times]
* I would totally convert for non-decrepit, hot media mogul Edgar Bronfman Jr. I wouldn’t even care that he was just an entitled dabbler before he was handed the reins of the Seagram Company and pummeled Napster into submission. [CNN Money]
* Like you, this attorney and concerned citizen opted for law school because science just wasn’t her thing. [J-Walk Blog]
* Kettles Retailers are being told they’re black warned not to infringe upon Kate Moss’s much-hyped and copyrighted “Pot”-shop Topshop collection. [Fashionista; Retail Week]
(An explanatory note for those of you who couldn’t care less: Topshop is an H&M-esque retailer that rips off designs from everybody so that broke girls and boys can swath themselves in sweatshop-produced crap and still have money left over for cigarettes.)
* Power may be the great aphrodisiac, but in my experience, sexual harassers in the professional workplace are just pervs or losers who couldn’t find a date in high school. Sometimes it’s that simple. [Feminist Law Professors]
* In these violent times, “Red Asphalt” just doesn’t do the trick in scaring the bejesus out of high school drivers. [Central Ohio]
* School lunches + biometrics = ACLU. Of course. [Turn to 10]
* With tax law, the sky’s the limit. Seriously. [CNN; TaxProf Blog]
* Slow… Typist… Sues… His… Law… School. Must have taken forever to type the complaint (especially with a last name like “Zachariasewycz”). [WSJ Law Blog]
* ACLU seeks disclosure on NSA wiretaps in the Sixth Circuit. [SCOTUSblog]
* Vote Roberts for Chief Justice! [SCOTUSblog]
Move over, Fire Island. See ya later, Provincetown. Rehoboth Beach, you’re all washed up.
The gay destination of choice for summer 2007? This may come as a surprise to you, but it’s 125 Broad Street, New York, New York — home of the estimable law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell (plus the ACLU’s LGBT Rights Project).
From Aaron Charney, the plaintiff in Charney v. Sullivan & Cromwell:
I am informed by numerous sources that David Braff (at right), on behalf of certain gay S&C partners, circulated a memorandum stating that such partners are pleased with the work environment at S&C.
What exactly makes Sullivan such a fabulous workplace for gays? Is it the subsidized gym? The proximity to S&C client Goldman Sachs, home to countless cute banker boys with seven-figure incomes? The complimentary cosmos served in the firm cafeteria?
If you have a copy of this memo, please send it our way, by email.
We’re looking forward to seeing it. But Charney seems less than impressed:
Braff’s memo directly misses the point. My complaint concerns the discrimination and retaliation perpetrated by S&C against me. S&C clearly has no defense against the allegations enumerated in my Complaint and instead seeks to muddy the waters by trying to divert people’s attention away from the issue at hand. S&C’s campaign of diversion is the latest example of S&C’s unwilling[ness] to enforce the firm office manual’s anti-discrimination policy and confirms why I was left with no choice but to pursue this legal matter.
Charney’s willingness to speak freely about the case — or to try it in the court of public opinion, as his critics claim — may explain why he seems to be winning the PR war, at least at the current time. In our reader poll, which is still ongoing, about two-thirds of respondents support him over S&C.
(But that is down somewhat from the 75 percent support that Charney enjoyed earlier in the afternoon. Could an anti-Aaron backlash be developing?) Update: One of you has posted what appears to be the gay partners’ memo in the comments. Thanks! Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of Charney v. Sullivan & Cromwell (scroll down)
* I have been remiss in not updating you on the legal woes of the blogger everyone loves to hate. And if you still think Paris Hilton when you hear Perez Hilton, well, I wish I were you and had never discovered the e-crack that is the gossip blog. [Los Angeles Times]
* Professor Volokh expresses his indignation at an entire generation of selfish bastards. Holla. Also cf: this for proof that academics may have too much time on their hands. [Volokh Conspiracy]
* The high school’s zero-tolerance policy for weapons may ironically save this senior (at right) from getting his ass kicked. And keep alive a glimmer of hope that he will not die a virgin. [New York Times]
* I think people who take LSAT prep classes or 1L Boot Camp before law school are lame. So you can guess what I think about law students who buy other students’ outlines, and for that matter, the students who sell their outlines (who might not be so cash-strapped had they not taken the LSAT prep classes or 1L Boot Camp in the first place). [The Conglomerate]
* I think this is funny, and rest assured, the baby is okay. But I still feel like someone is going to be sued, especially if the baby ends up growing a different set of genitals. [AP via Forbes]
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.
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.
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