* An analysis of Vijay Singh’s suit against the PGA. Any legal analysis that requires that much use of the phrase “deer antler spray” is worth it. [Sports Law Blog]
* The highest paid state employee by state. If you’re a lawyer, you want to live in Maine. [Deadspin]
* A visual representation of every Federalist Society event. [UChiLawGo]
* Cheez-Its are really, really good. [Legal Juice]
* “The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a bear cub with a gun. Or something.” [Bear Lawyer]
* Professor Nick Rosenkranz wonders if a 50/50 quota is appropriate to generate intellectual diversity at law schools since Harvard Law seems to think that gender diversity merits a 50/50 quota. The answer is no. Thanks for playing. [Volokh Conspiracy]
Ed. note: Apologies for the technical difficulties that have prevented us from posting until now. Thanks for your patience!
* Attention prospective law school applicants: affirmative action, at least as we currently know it, may not be long for this world. A decision in the Fisher v. University of Texas case is expected as early as this week. Stay tuned. [Reuters]
* Justice Stephen Breyer had to get shoulder replacement surgery after having yet another bike accident (his third, actually). Please — somebody, anybody — get this man some training wheels. Justice is at stake! [New York Times]
* “We’re not going to take it, goodbye.” That’s what retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wishes the high court would have said when it came to the controversial Bush v. Gore case. [Chicago Tribune]
* Thanks to the sequester, the Boston bombings case may turn into a “David and Goliath” situation. Sorry, Dzhokhar, but your defense team may be subject to 15 days of furlough. [National Law Journal]
* George Gallantz, the “founding father” of Proskauer’s sports law practice, RIP. [New York Law Journal]
* Leo Branton Jr., the defense attorney at the helm of the Angela Davis trial, RIP. [New York Times]
* Roger Ebert has died at the age of 70. A great critic (his audio commentary track on the Citizen Kane DVD is amazing), whose work with the late Gene Siskel basically defined film criticism for a generation. At least now we know how we will be judged when we die — a simple thumbs up, thumbs down from Gene and Roger. [Chicago Sun-Times]
* Exploring the link between baseball’s antitrust exemption and Roe v. Wade. It’s more than just saying the Royals are an abortion of a team. [Concurring Opinions]
* “Bring me the head of the person who did this”: the best closing to a C & D letter ever. [Popehat]
* A Rutgers-Camden 3L breaks down the looming sh*tstorm at Rutgers over basketball coach Mike Rice’s treatment of players. [The Legal Blitz]
* If you’ve pulled off a successful robbery, don’t taunt the victim from a traceable phone. I mean, act like you’ve been there before, man. [Legal Juice]
* It is a little funny to say that a city is looking for weaker swimmers to serve as lifeguards, but ultimately this represents the simplistic nature of the anti-affirmative-action argument: no one is saying lifeguards shouldn’t be qualified, just that a system that only privileges a strong swimming résumé will always result in affluent white kids with 10 years of swim classes getting these jobs. [Volokh Conspiracy]
* Lawyers are often jerks, but this is a new twist. Help out a lawyer trying to make it in the small-batch, artisan jerky business.[Kickstarter]
* Maybe there aren’t actual Commies at Harvard Law School, but the ratio of liberals to conservatives/libertarians on the faculty is still extremely high. [Nick Rosenkranz]
Two straight articles about Senate confirmation powers from me. Using @recessappt as my Twitter handle is looking pretty prescient.
This time we’re talking about the New York State Senate, where Governor (and world’s least discreet White House aspirant) Andrew Cuomo found out that the Judiciary Committee has begrudgingly allowed Cuomo’s nominee for the New York Court of Appeals, Jenny Rivera, to move to the floor without a recommendation. A bold move, but at least Rivera made it out of the committee, because the committee had enough ticked-off GOP members that it could have killed the nomination outright — and the committee has never rejected a governor’s nominee before. As is, a few Republicans voted to let the nomination move forward with recommendation rather than kill it.
So there you go Democrats! Cuomo can get bulldozed by a Senate like a champ.
But at least the whole affair provides us with highbrow commentary on the state of affirmative action….
* Who will represent General David Petraeus as he continues to battle the fallout from his scandalous affair with Paula Broadwell? None other than Williams & Connolly partner Robert Barnett, a lawyer for Washington, D.C.’s most elite. [Blog of Legal Times]
* Just in case you weren’t somehow aware, it costs quite a pretty penny to make bankrupt Biglaw firms go away. For example, more than 40 firms have paid off Brobeck, Coudert, Heller, Howrey, and Thelen with settlements of more than $35.5M. [Am Law Daily]
* Hostess and the striking Bakers’ Union have agreed to go to mediation to prevent the company’s wind down. Judge Drain should force feed them delicious Ding Dongs to make them see the error of their ways. [Wall Street Journal]
* “Even without a so-called affirmative-action ban, law schools aren’t doing great in terms of diversity.” That’s probably why admissions officers are so worried about the verdict in Fisher v. Texas. [National Law Journal]
* For the last time, going to law school isn’t the solution for having no idea what you want to do with your life after college. And you don’t need a JD/MBA, either. [Law Admissions Lowdown / U.S. News & World Report]
* Sometimes, when people from LSAC deny you extra time on the LSAT, you sit back and deal with it. Other times, you sue their pants off because your dad is a power litigator — and then you settle. [New York Post]
Is there anything more American than an argument at the Supreme Court about affirmative action?
It combines so many things unique to our country: an obsession with elite institutions (including both the Supreme Court and the University of Texas, one of our best public schools); passionate arguments about our nation’s long and complicated relationship with race; the relentless striving for success and attainment familiar to so many of us who want to be a named plaintiff in a Supreme Court case (or get into college, depending); and, of course, protests outside a government building.
My fellow lawyers, Alexis de Tocqueville was right — “[s]carcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.” Surely this form of American exceptionalism should be the most celebrated by the noble readers of Above the Law.
If there is any advantage to the way some in our nation attempt to affect the presence of minorities in elite colleges — through litigation rather than, say, appropriations — it’s that it leads to an awesome spectacle at One First Street NE.
* “I don’t think that we even need to have a race box on the application.” Abigail Fisher is getting even more time in the spotlight thanks to this media interview, which is sure to be the first of many. [New York Times]
* “[T]hey didn’t do anything wrong civilly — and they certainly didn’t do anything wrong criminally.” Tell that to the prosecutors who are looking into the circumstances of Dewey & LeBoeuf’s epic fail. [Wall Street Journal]
* Lateral hiring in midsize/regional firms seems to be up for those with “real-world experience,” but the starting salaries aren’t anything to write home about — they’re still on the “low” side. [Connecticut Law Tribune]
* Jerry Sandusky’s sentencing hearing is today, and in addition to the tape he already released, he’s planning to read a statement before he receives what’s likely to be a life sentence. WE ARE… kind of tired of hearing about his supposed innocence. [CNN]
* “There are fewer interviews and fewer schools interviewing.” This week, would-be law profs who attend the AALS “meat market” will get a taste of what recent graduates have been experiencing. [National Law Journal]
* Sarah Jones, aka “The Dirty Bengals Cheerleader,” reached a plea agreement in her sexual misconduct case. She won’t get jail time, but she wants to go to law school. Same difference, amirite? [Washington Post]
Right now is a great time to be a Supreme Court aficionado. There’s a big new book out about the Court, Jeffrey Toobin’s The Oath (affiliate link). And the new SCOTUS Term starts in just a few days, on Monday, October 1.
Given the time of the year, it’s not surprising that SCOTUS preview events are as common as Ninth Circuit reversals pro se cert petitions. I attended one sponsored by the Federalist Society earlier this month, where Kannon Shanmugam of Williams & Connolly offered excellent insights into October Term 2012. Our Supreme Court correspondent here at Above the Law, Matt Kaiser, went to a preview talk sponsored by the American Constitution Society (which he turned into Kaiser’s Guide To Bluffing Your Way Through Knowledge About The Supreme Court’s New Term).
That sounds like more than enough SCOTUS previews. But I couldn’t help myself from attending one more, due to the starpower of the panelists: Paul Clement, the former solicitor general who’s now a partner at Bancroft, and Tom Goldstein, the noted Supreme Court advocate and founder of the invaluable SCOTUSblog.
What did Messrs. Clement and Goldstein have to say about OT 2012?
October first is the start of the new Supreme Court term!
If, like many readers, you’re a few years out of law school, this may strike you with a mild sense of dread. You remember the heady days of law school when you followed every argument, opinion, and cert grant from One First Street Northeast with an excitement rivaled only by your enthusiasm for the starting salaries for first-year associates.
Alas, the years since law school haven’t been kind to your pants size or your level of engagement with the Supreme Court.
Now, I suspect, you worry that soon — at a family dinner, dropping off your kids at preschool, or anywhere else you interact with non-lawyers — someone will recognize that you are a lawyer, and ask you what to make of the new Supreme Court term.
You have three options for how to deal with this, now, before the media frenzy over the new Supreme Court term starts.
First, you can admit to yourself that you’re no longer the gunner you used to be. You can tell people that just don’t follow the Supreme Court anymore, since you’ve gotten really interested in your exciting new life doing document review for a municipal bond arbitration.
But you’re not going to do that. If you were that good at being honest with yourself, you aren’t likely to be the kind of person who went to law school in the first place.
Second, perhaps, you can wade through the volume of information out there about the new term. Go through SCOTUSblog with the same passion you now spend tracking whether your friends from law school have better careers than you do. Maybe go to one of the OT 2012 preview events that clog every convention hall and small town library starting in mid-September.
That takes time and energy. Tom Goldstein sometimes uses really long paragraphs, and you really wanted to spend more time Googling for topless pictures of Kate Middleton.
Instead, you could let me to one of those events for you. For the truly efficient, follow the jump, sit back, and enjoy Kaiser’s Guide To Bluffing Your Way Through Knowledge About the Supreme Court’s New Term to Non-Lawyers….
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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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:
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The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
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* An analysis of Vijay Singh’s suit against the PGA. Any legal analysis that requires that much use of the phrase “deer antler spray” is worth it. [Sports Law Blog]
