The work was very rigorous, but very enjoyable. And I’m not done. I think I’m going to try law school next. I’m thinking about it. We’ll see.
– Shaquille O’Neal, commenting on his possible plans for the future after receiving his doctorate in education from Barry University.
(I expect that former ATL columnist Marc Edelman, an assistant professor of law at Barry University, will encourage Shaq to go to law school by directing him toward my endorsement of Ben Wallace’s law school dreams.)
* While “Dewey remains a great firm with terrific lawyers” for the time being, check back in after five percent of the firm’s attorneys have been laid off. Then tell us how great and terrific things are, we dare you. [DealBook / New York Times]
* The University of St. Thomas School of Law really “take[s] data accuracy very seriously.” That’s why the employed at graduation rate the school reported to U.S. News was off by 47.7 percentage points, right? [National Law Journal]
* John Edwards has a judge’s permission to use Rielle Hunter’s lawyers at his campaign finance trial. Mmm, there’s nothing like getting some legal sloppy seconds from your former mistress. [Bloomberg]
* After two days of deliberations, jurors in the Dharun Ravi privacy trial still haven’t reached a verdict. Just think, if he had taken the plea, he wouldn’t be worrying as much about deportation right now. [New York Post]
* If Hemy Neuman’s delusions about Olivia Newton-John were about getting physical, instead of getting murderous, maybe he wouldn’t have been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. [CNN]
* It’s the most wonderful time of the year: March Madness! Are NCAA bracket pools legal in your office? It depends. Either way, all I know is that I’ll be betting on Lehigh. Go Mountain Hawks! [Businessweek]
While most of America has been going gaga for God’s new chosen athlete, Jeremy Lin, I’ve been quietly lamenting the fact that my own hometown TTT excuse for an NBA team, the Golden State Warriors, were the ones who gave him up.
it seems like everyone wants a piece of the Linsanity, even on a legal level. Last week we wrote about a man with no actual connection to Jeremy Lin who tried to trademark “Linsanity.” That guy simply, “wanted to be part of the excitement.” Sure, by making money off of someone else’s name, whatever. Since then several more people have attempted the same absurd bandwagoning.
But finally, Jeremy himself has filed an application to trademark his own catchphrase. Shocking, right?
Jeremy Lin
The wife of an Upper West Side lawyer paid $42,388 in an intense online auction so that her husband could meet Jeremy Lin — and take home his game-worn jersey.
– the going price for a meet-and-greet session with New York Knicks star Jeremy Lin, along with his game-worn jersey, was noted in a New York Post article about the CharityBuzz.com prize that Pamela Schecter won for her husband, attorney Mitchell Schecter. The estimated value of the prize was $3,200.
If you think I'm not ordering Jeremy Lin's #4 Crimson jersey you haven't been paying attention.
Thank God Jeremy Lin didn’t have a Tiger Mother. Professor Amy Chua would have prevented Jeremy Lin from playing sports and he’d probably be in law school now instead of saving the New York Knicks.
If you haven’t been following Jeremy Lin and the #LINSANITY phenomenon, GTFO here’s a quick recap: Taiwanese-American kid from California plays basketball for Harvard, goes undrafted by the NBA, gets cut by two teams, ends up getting some run for the Knicks because of teammates’ injuries, and then scores more points in his first five starts than anybody else in the history of the NBA — helping the Knicks to win six (and counting) games in a row.
It’s a great story. Lin has overcome a lot to get here. I mean, the story of the kid who goes to Harvard and remains humble instead of becoming a self-important douchebag is a Lifetime movie in and of itself.
Basketball pundits have been dissecting his game like the kid is the second coming of Tim Tebow. Cowardly boxers with a history of anti-Asian bigotry are tweeting about Lin because they’d rather pick on the Harvard kid than take their ass-kicking from Manny Pacquiao.
And I can’t wait, I mean I literally cannot wait, for Lin to really get into it on the issue of Taiwanese LINdependence from China. Kid went to Harvard, you know he has a considered opinion. When the history of World War Three is written, will it say it started with a point guard on the New York Knicks?
There are so many angles to this thing, but we’re going to focus on the legal one. Who owns the term “LINSANITY,” which became the hashtag associated with the Lin phenomenon?
Continue reading “LINtellectual Property Concerns To Entertain Ivy League Grads Who Aren’t LINSANE”
* A tentative deal to extend the payroll tax holiday and unemployment benefits has been reached. Is anyone else having a serious case of déjà vu right now? Didn’t we do this already? [Washington Post]
* Investigators in Whitney Houston’s drug probe want her prescription records. We should take Tony Bennett’s advice: if all drugs were legal, we wouldn’t worry about stars ODing on pills. [New York Daily News]
* Paul Ceglia didn’t want to pay Facebook’s Biglaw bill for 177 hours of legal work, so the judge slashed the price to $75,776. At just $428 an hour, how will these lawyers feed their families? [Los Angeles Times]
* More and more law school deans and law professors keep jumping ship to run colleges and universities. Hey, it’s easier to milk the campus cash cow when you’re in charge. [National Law Journal]
* Chris Christie took a break from complaining about New Jersey’s gay marriage bill to complain about how his nominees for the state Supreme Court haven’t been confirmed in record time. [Star-Ledger]
* Jeremy Lin fever has reached the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as people try to file applications for the mark “Linsanity.” Weird, doesn’t Lindsay Lohan already have dibs on that? [Businessweek]
Herman Cain: Do you miss him yet?
* It’d be easy to say “a former Tea Party candidate posted about assassinating the President.” But it’s probably more accurate to say a crazy, racist, loony person scrawled something naughty on Facebook and is now in trouble. [Huffington Post]
* I’d like to buy this, and then use it to TP Herman Cain’s house while screaming, “It’s less complicated than your sex life!” [Tax Prof Blog]
* I wonder if, a generation from now, people will look back on Citizens United like Plessy v. Ferguson. Like, there will still be a few holdouts saying, “money is speech now, money is speech forever,” but most of society will have moved on to a more enlightened state. [Congressman John Yarmuth]
In my lifetime, Kobe has been one of the most fun players to not like.
* Maybe all we need is a simple Constitutional amendment clarifying that “only people are people.” Corporations are not people. Animals are not people. Artificially intelligent robots who one day rise up to threaten humanity’s existence are not people. [Miller-McCune]
* Oh, Kobe. When you beat a rape rap yet still have to publicly admit you bang hoteliers in Vail, you should just get divorced right then and there. No number of diamond nor championship rings is going to put that back together. She’s still going to kill you in the divorce, and all you’ve bought yourself is a few extra years of living with a woman who openly hates you. [L.A. Now via ABA Journal]
* You think bloggers suffer from group think too much? I vote for 2012 being the year when the mainstream media stops stealing story ideas from the blogs (without credit), and does some actual original reporting again. You know, like they are supposed to with their huge staffs and massive budgets. [What About Clients?]
* Apparently Gloria Allred will only take male clients if they’re controversial enough to keep her in the limelight. She’s representing the alleged sex abuse victims in a suit against Syracuse and basketball coach Jim Boeheim. [CNN]
* Law School Transparency breaks it down for the guy who believes that the “apocalyptic” views of the legal market are “overblown.” Of course, that guy just so happens to be a Cooley Law dean. How convenient. [The Careerist]
* Pleasure you want. Protection you trust. Unfortunately, DLA Piper blew its load all over the FTC’s antitrust probe of Trojan condoms. [Blog of Legal Times]
* Nanny state alert: texting while driving is already illegal in a majority of states, but what about talking while driving? Be prepared, because the NTSB says that’s a big no-no. [Bloomberg]
* You can blame Canada for this one. In February, the world will see the first ever moot court competition play out on Twitter. #noseriously [West Coast Environmental Law]
* You know what, screw the neighborhood. There goes the freakin’ country. Congress’s bipartisan, not-so-super committee has failed to reach an agreement for a deficit reduction deal. [CNN]
* “When the government takes action . . . there are legal limits to what they can do.” And one of those limits is that they can’t screw over any of the AIG shareholders, right, Maurice? [New York Times]
* While NBA players were busy consolidating their antitrust suits in Minnesota, David Boies was being called out by the NBA’s general counsel. Keep it on the in court, Buchanan. [USA Today]
* Remember that time we got arrested at an Occupy Wall Street protest and then sued over it? Probably not the kind of story you want to reminisce about with your future husband. [Bloomberg]
* There are only so many jokes one can make about Justin Bieber. Bottom line: this fetus took a paternity test, and we’re going to find out soon if he’s a baby-daddy. [New York Daily News]
* Only in Texas can a judge get paid leave after a video of him beating his daughter’s ass goes viral. Makes you wonder about the kind of crazy sh*t you’d need to do to get stuck with unpaid leave. [KRIS TV]
* A federal judge has ordered Paul Ceglia to return from Ireland to produce more of his hidden destroyed missing evidence. Oh, Facebook, always trying to steal his lucky charms. [paidContent]
* Memo to the NBA: you know you’re playing on the wrong court, right? On the bright side, at least we don’t have to worry about this happening with the WNBA. Or anyone caring about it if it did. [Bloomberg]
* Bar passage rates for first-time takers in New York were up by half a percentage point. Biggest contributing factor: I didn’t take the New York exam. Yeah, you’re welcome. [New York Law Journal]
* Joe Francis is suing over a debt dispute and vows to take the it to the Ninth Circuit if he loses. He needs to realize that no one cares about what he does unless it involves boobs. [Washington Post]
* Don’t be fat and then smush a lawyer at Shea Stadium. You’ll break her back, she’ll sue, and you might be known as the guy who got fat people banned from the upper deck. [New York Post]
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 »
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
The proper hair styling product might just be the only thing standing between you and your dream job. And the best way to find what works for you is to try the best stuff on the market. Join Birchbox Man for $20 a month and you’ll get customized shipments of the best grooming and lifestyle gear on the market every month—everything from haircare and shaving supplies to style accessories and tech gadgets.
As the leading discovery commerce platform, Birchbox is redefining the retail process by offering consumers a unique and personalized way to discover, learn about, and shop the best grooming and lifestyle products out there. It’s a full 360-degree process: try, learn, buy. Once you sign up and fill out your profile, head over to Birchbox Man’s online magazine to find article and video tutorials on how to get the most out your monthly box products. Pick up full-size versions of anything you like in the Birchbox Shop and earn points for every purchase.
Gift with Purchase: Use code TRYFECTA1 at checkout when you spend $40+ in the Birchbox Man Shop. Includes a stylish Areaware bottle opener, a sample of TOWELDRY’s Paste Styler, and a sample vial of Atelier Mistral Patchouli cologne.
The traditional job application and interview process can be impersonal, and applicants often struggle to present themselves as more than just the sum of their GPAs, alma maters, and previous work history. ATL has partnered with ViewYou to help job seekers overcome this challenge. ViewYou NOW Profiles offer a unique way for job seekers to make a personal, memorable connection with prospective employers: introduction videos. These videos allow job candidates to display their personalities, interpersonal skills, and professional interests, creating an eDossier to brand themselves to potential employers all over the world. Check it out today!
