When you are given an FBI BlackBerry, it’s for official use. It’s not to text the woman in another office who you found attractive or to send a picture of yourself in a state of undress. That is not why we provide you an FBI BlackBerry.
– Candice Will, Assistant Director for the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility, commenting on a “rash of sexting cases” detailed in an FBI disciplinary report.
(After taking a look at this report, the Federal Bureau of Investigation ought to consider changing its name to Frat Bros International. Let’s check it out.)
Biglaw used to be the Kingdom of BlackBerry. Every attorney had one. You had to check it every 90 seconds or the world would explode — and you’d get fired.
The last part is still probably true, but many lawyers use other smartphones now. Like iPhones and Droids and technology invented after the Paleolithic era.
The American Lawyer recently published a survey of how far the mighty have fallen. It looks like lawyers have kicked their CrackBerry habit, and moved onto hipper, designer drugs phones….
Well, clearly, the biggest technology news today is that Mark Zuckerberg bought a home in the second hippest neighborhood in the country. This means we’re neighbors, and it means I’ll probably have to move soon because my rent will probably double by dinnertime.
Other than that, the global Apple v. Samsung battle royal continues. This week, a British appellate court ruled on the European incarnation of the case. So what’s the score between these tech titans?
Thus far, Apple has done alright in the U.S., but not so much in Japan. And now, let’s just say our European brethren may like Apple products as much as the rest of us, but they don’t worship at the altar of holy rounded corners as devoutly as Americans….
As a reminder, I will be out of the office starting this Wednesday 8/29, returning on Monday 9/24. I am gone for my wedding in Maine, followed by my honeymoon. I will be checking my blackberry very infrequently, as that is the only remaining grounds for at-fault divorce under Maine law.
– an anonymous Paul Weiss associate’s out of office reminder this week. Go get ‘em, tiger!
Ekaterina Rybolovleva: 'But daddy, I want an $88M apartment now!'
* No dowry, no problem: Dewey we have a suitor for this imploding Biglaw firm? Rumor has it that Greenberg Traurig was seen whispering sweet nothings into D&L’s ear about its possible interest. [Am Law Daily]
* BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has hired Milbank Tweed to work out a restructuring plan. Just think, maybe if your product didn’t suck so hard, you wouldn’t be in this position in the first place. [Reuters]
* Sex, money, and betrayal… it sounds like another failed TV series about lawyers on ABC, but in actuality, it’s just a preview of the John Edwards campaign finance trial set to begin this week. [Los Angeles Times]
* Technophobes beware, because this copyright battle over code is getting serious. Oracle v. Google turned into Larry v. Larry in court last week as the CEOs for both companies gave testimony. [Bits / New York Times]
* George Zimmerman thought he’d have to stay in jail longer because he was having trouble coming up with his bail money, but he was released in the dead of night. Bet he looked pretty suspicious. [CNN]
* “There are [fewer students] coming in and crying. I haven’t had a crier yet, which I have had in the past.” Given the legal hiring market, that’s a real accomplishment for a career services official. [Charlotte Observer]
* Who gives a sh*t? Not this Russian fertilizer tycoon. When you’re a billionaire, buying an $88M apartment for your kid is just a run-of-the-mill transaction. Come on, he’s not hiding his assets for his divorce. [Telegraph]
It’s the same, but it’s different. It’s like when you buy a fine rum or a BlackBerry or an iPhone. They have a different price.
– the high-end Colombian escort at the center of the Secret Service sex scandal, explaining to the New York Times why she charges so much more than a common streetwalker.
(Some interesting legal tidbits about prostitution in Colombia, and a reader poll on whether prostitution should be legalized in the United States, after the jump.)
* French prosecutors have dropped another yet another rape charge lodged against Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Seriously? It looks like nothing sticks to this man except money. [CNN]
* Recognizing that it’s really hard to get someone to pick up a partner from the drunk tank when there’s a Blackberry outage, DLA Piper is thinking about switching to iPhones. [Reuters]
* RajRaj was literally the biggest target in the Galleon case, but one of his buddies was sentenced, too. On Wednesday, Michael Kimelman got 2.5 years at the luxurious Club Fed. [Daily Record]
* Food fight! Things are getting really dirty in this Food Network lawsuit. Guy Fieri not only likes to cook with alcohol, but he allegedly speaks like an angry drunk behind the scenes. [City Pages]
Like many of you on the East Coast, I’ve been spending my Sunday without power, thanks to Hurricane Irene. As I write this Sunday night, we’re in our eighth hour without electricity. Thankfully, other than losing some small branches and a bunch of leaves, we fared pretty well in what was left of the tropical storm. And the Red Sox swept their storm-related Saturday doubleheader, so there’s that.
But without electricity, I’m writing this post by candlelight and quill pen. OK, not really. Candlelight and iPad. But consider that I’m sacrificing one of my ten hours of iPad juice for this instead of beating my kids at Cut the Rope, or whatever. I know: you can thank me later.
Actually, losing power got me thinking about just how much I rely on electricity and computers and iPads and iPhones, and also how much that reliance has increased since I started law school, 20 years ago this week. And over the years, I came to appreciate just how much technology has allowed small firms to compete with our Biglaw colleagues.
What are the five biggest ways that technology has empowered (if you will) small firms?
Ed. note: This post has been updated from the original version. Please see below.
The only thing worse than being tied to your BlackBerry at all hours is missing something important because you were not tied to your BlackBerry the hour you were needed.
Wait, this just in. There is something worse than missing a crucial request because you weren’t checking your BlackBerry. That would be when the partner you are working for emails all of the firm’s associates reminding them to compulsively check their BlackBerries because of your mistake.
Welcome to the world of a Quinn Emanuel associate. The associate apparently didn’t send a fax because he hadn’t been checking emails after business hours. QE partner Bill Urquhart decided to use the incident as a teaching moment for the entire firm….
There are certain staples that tend to be recession-proof: alcohol, toilet paper, Spam. You can add smartphones to that list, reports the New York Times. Sales of BlackBerrys, iPhones and other smartphone models are projected to increase by 25% this year.
In case you’re thinking about contributing to that increase, Gizmodo has a guide to the latest and greatest models: the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3G S, the Palm Pre, the HTC Magic, and the BlackBerry Storm. The tech savvy folks at Gizmodo compare the hardware, software, and cost of these little electronic extensions of ourselves.
Check out the Gizmodo piece for tech love poems and detailed charts. Here’s the short version:
To summarize: iPhone OS claims advantages in ease of use, its burgeoning App Store, and a respectable core feature set, but falters on multitasking and its lack of ability to install unsanctioned apps. The Pre’s WebOS is extremely slick and friendly to multitasking, but its App Catalog is light on content, and its development SDK is somewhat restrictive. Android and BlackBerry OS are both more laissez-faire, letting users install apps from whatever source they choose. Neither of their app stores is spectacular, but Android’s is markedly less anemic.
Last month, we did a post on the best iPhone apps for lawyers. If you chose to download Black’s Law Dictionary, we’d love to know if it’s worth its hefty price tag. We included some polls in that post about which smartphones you all prefer, and what’s on offer at your firms. Results after the jump.
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:
• 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.
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