Last week, we reported on a questionable offering in the Lexis-Nexis Rewards Program store: an “Asian Angels” calendar.
Shortly after our post went up, the calendar came down. It seems that legal research companies respond well to media coverage.
But the calendar, despite being quickly withdrawn from the Lexis swag offerings, still incurred the ire of the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association at UC Berkeley.
Read their response, plus a statement from Lexis, below.
LexisNexis has a rewards program that allows loyal users to accumulate points for certain research activities and then to use them to “shop from millions of items.”
One of the items makes us want to give LexisNexis an “ex” rating. An ATL reader and loyal Lexis-Nexis user pointed the item out to us, writing:
Search for it in the rewards store. It’s available for 1261 points. Pretty shocking if you ask me. The calendar that is, not the price.
We’re red-flagging this. Check it out, after the jump.
By day, Jarriette Richie was a legal secretary. By night, she was one of the small business entrepreneurs who are so important to the vitality of the American economy. Not only that, Richie’s business provided services to a critically underserved community. Richie was the proprietor of Show ‘N Tell Entertainment — which arranged erotic male dancers for ladies exclusively.
But you know how difficult it is to get credit in this economy. And Richie needed to fly dancers and guests down to Puerto Rico for an “event.” So, she had to improvise.
The Washington Post picks up the narrative, after the jump.
We’ve written extensively in the past about law students and lawyers taking their clothes off for the camera. For whatever reason, most have been women. For example:
an associate from Thacher Proffitt (& Wood — hehe), who previously posed for Playboy;
a U. Miami law school graduate, who also posed for Playboy;
a UNC law student, who auditioned for Playboy’s pages; and
a Brooklyn law student, who appeared on Playboy TV.
But we are equal opportunity oglers here at Above the Law. We’re more than happy to write about naked male hotties (or clothed male hotties, at Davis Polk).
Meet “Jacob” (surely not his real name). He’s a male law student who has turned to performing in gay pornography to pay his tuition. NOTE: We’ve included a screencap. It is safe for work, but it does include shots of a shirtless man, which some may find risqué. Accordingly, we’ve posted the image AFTER THE JUMP.
Do NOT click on the “Continue reading” link below unless you are prepared to see some skin. Thanks.
Yesterday we told you about the firm Trial Lawyers For Justice asking job applicants to send in some non-standard information. Among other things, the firm asked potential employees to send in a family photograph.
We asked Nick Rowley — who wrote the ad asking for applicants to send in their personal story and political beliefs along with their picture — to explain how these factors affect his decision making process for new hires.
He furnished Above the Law with a full response. We’re publishing it full after the jump. Let Mr. Rowley know if you agree with his reasons in the comments.
We all know that it is difficult to get a job in this legal market. But an advertisement posted on the Minnesota state bar website makes it look like we are just one step away from genetic testing for junior associates. At least in Iowa.
The request for new talent starts off very earnestly:
DECORAH, IA plaintiff firm is seeking a brilliant hardworking lawyer who would rather do research and writing than be in court. Firm practices catastrophic injury, medical malpractice, and wrongful death and is seeking a lawyer licensed or in the process of becoming licensed in Iowa and/or Minnesota willing to get licensed in both with a possibility of Wisconsin and California, who is willing to relocate to Decorah, IA. Position will be handling of the firm’s law and motion, discovery, legal research, and appeals (to work 50 hours per week, full time inside the office to prepare the firm’s trial lawyers who travel and spend most of their time in court). One month paid vacation per year, salary is negotiable and commensurate with experience and qualifications, the firm may be willing to provide housing in Decorah, IA. Writing samples, resume, and examples of briefs and projects worked on is required.
But then this plaintiff’s firm ad becomes … kind of creepy:
Much thought is going to be put into who will fill this very important position with the firm. Persons who are interested are requested to email a personal story of who the applicant is, what his or her political beliefs are, and what they believe about justice and personal injury litigation along with a recent personal and/or family photograph.
Political beliefs? A family photo? You know, this is one time where a little “X law firm is an equal opportunity employer …” tagline would be comforting.
What law firm put this advertisement together? Details after the jump.
Stalking, cat fights, cheating, assault, and a secret marriage. This is the scandalous news out of Vinton, Virginia (pop: 7,782) this week, thanks to a lawyer-lawyer-paralegal love triangle.
If you surf over to WDBJ to check out the tale, we advise watching the video and skipping the transcribed broadcast. It hurt our head to translate it. And it hurt our eyes to Photoshop the image at right — click to enlarge (if you dare).
Two bankruptcy law attorneys, Jeffrey Kessler and Ann Marie Miller (an Appalachian School of Law ’06 grad), had been partnering on cases and in the bedroom. Ick. Apparently, Kessler then started secretly dating a younger woman, paralegal Jennifer Kelley.
That’s when things got messy — and, allegedly, violent.
Pop quiz: You are a local prosecutor, and you’ve obtained pictures of an alleged rape. The pictures show the alleged violation taking place — the victim and the alleged assailant — as well as other teenagers drinking and partying. You should:
(a) Use the pictures as evidence when you prosecute the rapist.
(b) Put the pictures in a file and never look at them again (if you determine that the pictures show consensual sex).
(c) Do not charge the alleged rapist, but show the pictures to parents in your community.
Here’s a post devoted to the perils of “Reply All” and idealism among first-year associates. Brought to you by the attorneys of Quinn Emanuel.
The firm just celebrated a victory in its Washington Redskins case, reports the Washington Post:
A federal appeals court yesterday handed the Washington Redskins another victory in their long-running legal dispute with Native American activists over the team’s name.
The appeals court did not address whether the name was offensive but upheld a federal judge’s ruling last year that a Native American man had waited too long to challenge six Redskins trademarks.
AmLaw Daily reports that Quinn attorney Robert Raskopf, who has been working on the case for as long it has been since the Redskins have seen a Superbowl stadium, was pretty psyched about the victory:
Raskopf was in a good mood when we spoke with him about the appellate win. He’s been on the case since it started 17 years ago. “It’s a great win for the team,” said Raskopf, who had help from Quinn partner Sanford Weisburst on the brief. “I’m so happy for the Redskins and their fans.”
Raskopf was so happy on Friday that he sent out a firm-wide victory e-mail. But not everybody was thrilled. After bouncing around the firm and racking up some responses, the victory chain made its way to our inbox via a tipster:
This is too good not to share. This was sent to all Quinn attorneys.
— The First Year Associate Who Shat All Over Raskopf’s Victory Email OR The First Year Associate Who Repurposed the Redskins
After the jump, see the chain that culminates in a (soon-to-be-fired?) first-year associate’s plea for idealistic litigation at Quinn.
Every time you open a law school, somewhere a kitten dies.
The University of North Texas is pushing to open a new, mean green law school:
Dallas will be home to the state’s next public law school under a bill that won tentative House approval today.
Budget woes mean funding for the law school remains uncertain, at least for the next two years. At that point, officials could come back to the Legislature again for funding, or seek tuition revenue bonds instead. But for now, the budget the Legislature is poised to approve does not include the $40 million needed to establish the school.
Still, North Texas lawmakers said simply getting approval for the University of North Texas Law School — which already passed the Senate — is a great achievement. This is the third legislative session in which they’ve pushed for it.
This seems like a good time to mention that there are 200 accredited law schools already pumping out J.D.s like rabbits on fertility drugs. Compare that — as some commenters did last night — with the 130 or so accredited medical schools. In terms of exclusivity, the legal profession is on the beach at Bethpage Black, while everybody else is enjoying an excellent tee time at Winged Foot.
It’s not even like North Texas needed a law school. More details after the jump.
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:
• 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.
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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Last week, we reported on a questionable offering in the Lexis-Nexis Rewards Program store: an “Asian Angels” calendar.
