Tomorrow, March 15, the end will finally come for Howrey. Later this month, the law firm of David J. Stern, formerly known as Florida’s foreclosure king, will shut its doors.
This week, we’ve got another sizable law firm announcing its dissolution. Obviously not everybody is catching on to this economic recovery. While some firms are doling out the green, in the form of spring bonuses, other firms are handing out pink slips.
Today’s law firm obituary also comes from South Florida. Yes, we know, shocking that Florida is still suffering the effects of the recession. But there are another 280 people down there who will soon need to find new jobs….
* Marc Randazza wants to feed the members of the Westboro Baptist Church into a wood chipper, but he respects their First Amendment rights; accordingly, “the Westboro Baptist Church is the first entity to receive both the First Amendment Bad Ass award and the Asshat award in a single blog post.” [The Legal Satyricon]
* Everyone’s talking about the Westboro Baptist Church case, but don’t overlook Chief Justice Roberts’s hilarious opinion in FCC v. AT&T, rejecting a corporation’s claim of privacy rights under FOIA (contrary to the alarmist predictions of certain overwrought, Citizens United-obsessed liberals). [Slate]
* Speaking of noteworthy cases, check out the latest precedent of Zoopreme Court: Justice Under Paws. [Zoopreme Court]
* New New Hampshire motto: Leave my junk free or die. [Huffington Post]
* Meanwhile, on the South Side, UofC Law is encouraging young black high schoolers to go to law school. If B (# of black students) < P (Posner) + L (Liberals), then you've got to do some outreach. [University of Chicago Law School]
* If you enjoyed our recent post about Chief Judge Kozinski’s taste in movies, you can check out all of his mini-reviews over here. [IMDb]
* Some reflections by Jane Genova on politics, law firms, and the power game. [Law and More]
* Dude, you’re not getting a Dell. How about this crappy Compaq, selling for around $300? Well, Ted Frank, previously profiled here as the Class Action Avenger, won’t stand for it. [Point of Law]
* If you’re one of the 1.1 million people who didn’t file a federal income tax return for 2007, the IRS has your refund — but you must file by April 18 to get your money back. [TaxProf Blog]
* Speaking of tax law, don’t try to deduct your visits to a prostitute as “medical expenses.” Shouldn’t a lawyer know better? [CNNMoney.com]
* Stealing money from Alzheimer’s patients can’t be new. Then again, sending people who steal from Alzheimer’s patients straight to hell probably isn’t new either. [Dealbreaker]
Does this guy qualify as a 'pimp' in California?
* Now that the federal government has banned spice, I wonder if the Empire will release all of the political prisoners being held in the spice mines of Kessel. [Constitution Daily]
* California is going to define “pimping” much more clearly. And folks, that’s why we need states like California. [Legal Blog Watch]
* A JFK assassination expert testifies about one effective suicide method. [DNAinfo]
* You think lawyers get a raw deal in movie portrayals? You should check out accountants. [Going Concern]
* How did Howrey start to unravel? The trouble might have started in Europe. [Washington Post]
* Congratulations to Arvo Mikkanen, a Native American nominee to the federal bench in Oklahoma (and “an all-around great dude,” according to a tipster). [The Atlantic]
* Washington & Lee Law School, which we recently praised for its honesty to prospective law students, gets even more transparent — in an interview with Vault. [Vault's Law Blog]
* In a recent visit to USC, Justice Kennedy presided over a Shakespeare-inspired trial — something he has donebefore — and denied that the justices think about the news media when making their decisions. Methinks His Honor doth protest too much. [USC News]
'Please don't ship me in a box with no air holes.'
* Taxing alcohol to reduce crime? Sounds like that will lead to more muggings for alcohol money. [Going Concern]
* If you try to mail a puppy from Minnesota to Georgia in a box with no airholes, you don’t get your dog back. Also, you get shipped directly to hell. [Runnin' Scared / Village Voice]
* An interesting interview with Professor Benjamin H. Barton about his new book, The Lawyer-Judge Bias in the American Legal System, which demonstrates what many laypeople suspect: namely, that the legal system is rigged to benefit lawyers over the public. Professors Barton and Reynolds discuss why this might be the case and also compare the legal to the medical profession in this respect. [Instavision with Glenn Reynolds / PJTV]
* Eric Turkewitz channeling Mayor Michael Bloomberg: “Look, let’s be blunt here. Who is in a better position to pay the costs of an injury if a city bus injures people? Our strapped city budget, or the victims?” [New York Personal Injury Law Blog]
* Obama says drug legalization is worth a debate. For those scoring at home: we can talk about legalizing drugs, but we can’t talk about controlling guns. [Huffington Post]
* Meanwhile, Florida criminalizes… bath salts? Bonobo Bro has the winning blurb: “Check out this example of the brocist nanny state trying to get in the way of spring break, bath salts that have cocaine like effects and a few other of the principals this great nation was founded on.” [WJHG]
Fred Thompson
* Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana won’t seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. [Politico]
* Speaking of former Republican presidential hopefuls, Fred Thompson prepares to lobby on behalf of trial lawyers. Seriously. Cancel Law & Order and the universe starts breaking down. [WSJ Law Blog]
* The number eight proves lucky for one taker of the New Hampshire bar exam — and the number $140,000, not so lucky. After passing the NH bar exam on his eighth try, the debt-laden lad gets dinged on character and fitness — a familiar tale by now. [Legal Profession Blog via ABA Journal]
* Gotta love it when Jamie Dimon gets catty. [Dealbreaker]
* A corporate partner in the Moscow office of Baker Botts apparently took his own life. John Sheedy, R.I.P. [Am Law Daily]
* Professor Rick Hasen thinks the Illinois Supreme Court is leaning towards letting Rahm Emanuel back into the race for Mayor of Chicago. Hopefully this means that Emanuel’s lawyer, Kevin Forde, will get his family back really soon. [Election Law Blog]
* Have you ever seen a notary in a bar, drunk, with her notary kit? It’s actually kind of hot. [What About Clients?]
* David Freedman, the unemployed Chicago-Kent law review editor recently featured in these pages (with his permission), describes his day on Above the Law. [The Law Movie Review]
* Noorain Khan, a former student of Amy Chua at YLS, interviews the Tiger Mother herself. Chua sounds a bit hurt — but a high-six-figures book advance has great healing power. [Jezebel]
* We’d like to dedicate this blurb to Chubbs Peterson. Alligators on golf courses are dangers to all of us. [Legal Blog Watch]
* Is WikiLeaks responsible for the Tunisian revolution? [Business Insider]
* Speaking of Tunisia, MLK Day is important and everything — but maybe, just maybe, U.S. officials in Tunisia should GO TO WORK ON MONDAY. Give them a floating holiday or whatever, but given current events, the U.S. Embassy there should probably stay open. [Gawker]
* Meanwhile, Australian lawyers are getting a flood day. [ABA Journal]
* Lady Kaga issues her first single: a ruling against a Chapter 13 debtor, in favor of his credit card issuer, affirming the Ninth Circuit by a vote of 8-1. The lone dissenter: Justice Scalia. Weird, huh? [WSJ Law Blog; ABA Journal]
* How do you prosecute a deaf, mute, illiterate man? Please, please, please let the answer include pinball. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Should law school final exams use made-up hypotheticals or real-life cases? Professor Howard Wasserman assesses pros and cons. [PrawfsBlawg]
* Illinois State Senate takes a syringe stab at repealing the death penalty. [Reuters]
* Guns used to shoot off penises > Guns used to shoot at attackers. [Gawker]
* Congratulations to the 13 new partners at Bingham McCutchen. [Bingham]
* Lateral Link is teaming up with Frank Kimball, the former McDermott Will hiring partner who founded Kimball Professional Management, to focus on partner placements. (Disclosure: Lateral Link is an ATL advertiser.) [Am Law Daily; Lateral Link (press release)]
* Tom DeLay gets sentenced to three years. [WSJ Law Blog]
* If we want to ban threatening speech against Congresspeople, what will we really be banning? [Volokh Conspiracy]
* Apparently my final solution on guns could lead to the well-regulated militia rising up. [First One @ One First]
* Maybe it isn’t impossible to teach transactional practice in law school. [Concurring Opinions]
* Jared Lee Loughnerentered might enter an insanity plea, and it looks like his mug shot will be the first exhibit. [Slate]
And you thought the burger at DB Bistro was expensive....
* If you’re a mere law firm partner — as opposed to a Wall Street managing director or, better yet, a hedge fund mogul — you probably can’t afford the $5,000 hamburger at this Las Vegas resort hotel. [Dealbreaker]
* Bush 43′s dog lent a helping paw in the judicial nomination process. Laugh all you want, but Barney is better than a Ouija board. [Tex Parte Blog]
* Electronic health records can be great — but they present some legal risks, notes Ben Kerschberg. [Huffington Post]
* Elie here: Remember yesterday when I said that it was a prick move by the cop to issue that ticket on the mother of that comatose 13-year-old girl, and then all those commenters said the cops had no choice because issuing the ticket was an important matter in terms of the civil liability of the driver? Yeah, well, I stand by my initial analysis that the cop was a jerkhat. [New York Personal Injury Law Blog]
* How can lawyers dress to impress in 2011? [Lawyerist]
* So let me get this straight, it’s not okay for me to drink Four Loko and drive, but it’s okay for my car to do it? What’s up with that? [Alt Transport]
* Were passports biased against gays? Well, now they won’t be. [Huffington Post]
* If you’ve been following along with the most important news of today — which is obviously that the study showing that a crying woman is a total buzzkill — here’s an important counterpoint. Crying might be nature’s way of saying: “Stop beating on your wife you freaking a**hole. [Newsweek]
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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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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Tomorrow, March 15, the end will finally come for Howrey. Later this month, the law firm of David J. Stern, formerly known as Florida’s foreclosure king, will shut its doors.
Continue reading “Another Law Firm Dissolves. Do Bad Things Really Come in Threes?”
