California

Morning Docket: 12.29.11

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I know why the caged bird tweets.

* Here’s a nice round-up of some of the most controversial laws that will be enacted in 2012. Looks like California is going to have some fabulously multicultural litigation. [Associated Press]

* What do you get when you cross an artist with a penchant for Rastafarians with the son of a Boies Schiller name partner? The biggest copyright fair use appeal ever. [New York Times]

* A Massachusetts town paid Phoebe Prince’s family only $225K to settle. With lawyer’s fees, it’s almost not even worth suing if your kid gets bullied to death. [ABC News]

* Everyone is going cuckoo over Iowa’s conservatives, even the Eighth Circuit. Iowa Law’s former dean is facing a political discrimination suit. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Apparently, this PhoneDog Twitter account case is a pretty big deal in the world of social media law. I’ll turn discussion of this issue over to our social media expert, Brian Tannebaum. [CNN]

* An employee at a presumably small law firm in New York had her jaw shattered while a thief ransacked the office. Give this woman a bonus. Hell, give her a raise, too. [New York Post]

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Morning Docket: 12.27.11

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Paul Clement

* If defending unpopular clients is cool, consider Paul Clement Miles Davis. He’s the lead lawyer in three politically charged cases going up before SCOTUS in the new year. [LA Times]

* Joe Arpaio’s going to have a tough time racially profiling Hispanics in 2012. What’s a man to do without verification powers and the ability to detain people on suspicion alone? [WaPo]

* A summary of the NLJ’s 2011 year in review round-up: all of this was a preview of what’s to come in 2012. And what’s to come? Same sh*t, different docket number. [National Law Journal]

* C&F fail: the California Supreme Court is busy worrying about Stephen Glass, a guy who took his “creative writing” efforts a bit too far. [San Francisco Chronicle]

* The Hollywood actress suing IMDb for revealing her age has to reveal much more thanks to this ruling. She’s got two weeks to amend her complaint to include her name. [The Wrap]

* “Oh my God, the law school has gone crazy.” Don’t blame the messenger, but UVA Law’s headlines on ATL are totally self-inflicted. Here’s Elie’s take on the collar-poppin’ action. [C-VILLE]

* Larry Ribstein, partnership law guru, business law blogger, and Associate Dean for Research at the University of Illinois College Law, RIP. [Truth on the Market]

* Robert Morvillo, New York trial lawyer and white-collar defense pioneer, RIP. [WSJ Law Blog]

* John Lawrence, plaintiff in the landmark LGBT rights case of Lawrence v. Texas, RIP. [NY Times]

California Firm Puts the ‘Ghetto’ Into ‘Re-Gifting’

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After stealing all the Whoville toys, the Grinch planned to re-gift them to his army of lawyers.

I’m much more likely to throw away a gift or give it to charity than to regift something I already have or don’t want. I think I’d live in fear of the original gift-giver meeting up with the regift recipient and talking about how I was a bad friend for orchestrating the whole mess. I’d rather those two people meet up and say, “Did Elie get you anything? No? Too bad. I was hoping he did and you could tell him it sucked. That’s what he told me when he opened my present.” There’s something intangibly sneaky and dishonest about regifting. It’s just not classy.

Of course, people do it all the time. And not because they lack class so much as they lack money. Even if it’s tacky, regifting usually comes from a good place: you want to give presents to more people than you can afford to shop for.

But there’s nothing laudable (or forgivable) about how one small law firm in California goes about re-gifting. They want to send gifts to their clients — so they commandeer the gifts sent to their secretaries and staff, and regift them.

I think this firm missed the “spirit” part of this holiday season….

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Morning Docket: 12.13.11

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No glove, no love.

* The Supreme Court will hear Obama’s challenge to Arizona’s immigration law. Upside: we can probably expect a decision by June. Downside: Lady Kaga has to sit her ass out. [New York Times]

* Depressing fact of the day: unless you’re earning six times your law school’s annual tuition, you’ll probably never be able to afford a home. Thanks a lot, student loan debt. [National Law Journal]

* Wilson Sonsini has announced its 2011 partnership class. Of ten new partners, only three are women. At least they’re beating Cravath’s partnership diversity scale. [DealBook]

* Los Angeles is suing to block an initiative that would force porn stars to wear condoms. Why? It wastes taxpayer money, and would be disastrous to spank banks nationwide. [Courthouse News]

* Stephanie Van Groll may be the “tall, young, hot nymph” whose sexting lawsuit against Kenneth Kratz survived a motion to dismiss, but he is still the prize. [Appleton Post-Crescent]

Morning Docket: 12.08.11

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* In an unprecedented move, Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has overruled the FDA. Looks like the Obama administration thinks that Plan B will turn little girls into promiscuous prosti-tots. [Wall Street Journal]

* Due to this ruling, Occupy Boston protesters will probably have to STFU and GTFO. Bring out the brooms, because this will be the only sweep that Red Sox Nation gets to see for a while. [Bloomberg]

* Hopefully UVA Law student Joshua Gomes has some transcript paper stashed away, because with a bond hearing on December 12, he’s probably going to be missing some finals. [The Hook]

* The spouses of the Supremes have published Chef Supreme, a cookbook dedicated to RBG’s husband, famed tax lawyer Martin Ginsburg. Better title: Article III Gourmand. [Blog of Legal Times]

* Lovely Hooters ladies in California will no longer have to pay for their uniforms thanks to this class action settlement. Stay tuned for smaller, tighter uniforms in light of budgetary constraints. [KCRA 3]

Benchslap of the Day: What Not To Do If You’re A Prosecutor

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Judge Matz

[T]his Court is compelled to find that the Government team allowed a key FBI agent to testify untruthfully before the grand jury, inserted material falsehoods into affidavits submitted to magistrate judges in support of applications for search warrants and seizure warrants, improperly reviewed e-mail communications between one Defendant and her lawyer, recklessly failed to comply with its discovery obligations, posed questions to certain witnesses in violation of the Court’s rulings, engaged in questionable behavior during closing argument and even made misrepresentations to the Court.

– Judge A. Howard Matz of the Central District of California, benchslapping federal prosecutors — and vacating the convictions, and dismissing the indictment — in a high-profile Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prosecution. (Gavel bang: Daniel Fisher.)

(Additional links and information about this case — if you do FCPA or white-collar criminal work, this may be of interest to you — after the jump.)

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Can Somebody Break a Hundred for John Quinn?

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John B. Quinn, founding partner of Quinn Emanuel, is one of our favorites here at Above the Law. We like people who have personality.

We also like people who are so rich they just don’t give a f**k. Quinn seems to have gotten to the point where he can legitimately start a Twitter account called “rich people problems.”

We have evidence of his tribulations from the the San Francisco reception desk of Quinn Emanuel….

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Judge Kozinski Occupies Oakland

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These days, mentioning the California city of Oakland conjures up images of tear gas and violence. It’s not a place that people associate with innocent fun right now.

But Oakland isn’t all protesters and police. We bring you a report from a recent visitor to that city, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit….

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Congrats, California Bar Takers; Or Condolences, as the Case May Be

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At 6:00 p.m. Pacific tonight, I’ll be one of the only black guys — excuse me, Redguards — in Skyrim. But if you took the California bar exam in July, you’ll be clicking around trying to figure out if you passed.

Don’t worry, it’ll be pretty simple to find out… and if you failed, you’ll have the whole weekend to prepare before everybody knows it….

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From Biglaw to Boutique: Trading Places

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Tom Wallerstein

Yeah, some people thought I might be nuts for leaving litigation powerhouse Quinn Emanuel. But the prospects of starting my own firm and building a practice from the ground up were too compelling to ignore. Nearly two and a half years have passed since Colt Wallerstein LLP opened its doors, and still not a day goes by when my partner and I aren’t humbled by our good fortune and our decision to “trade places”: that is, move from Biglaw to start a litigation boutique in Silicon Valley that focuses on high-tech trade secret, employment, and complex-commercial litigation.

I graduated from law school in 1999, and the legal market was very different then. Getting into a “top” law school pretty much guaranteed a job, and most of my law school friends and I had multiple offers and no real concern about landing a Biglaw job, if that’s what we wanted. Offer rates hovered around 100%, and of course the lucrative summers consisted mostly of long lunches at five-star restaurants, luxury box seats at baseball games, open bars, and very little work.

Those were the days….

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The Berkeley Beatings

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Dear police officers: next time you simply must beat unarmed protesters who are not threatening you, maybe you shouldn’t do it in front of a law school.

Many of you have heard about the beatings that took place at UC Berkeley’s Occupy Berkeley protests on Wednesday night. The police brutality wasn’t particularly brutal, so much as it was entirely uncalled for.

The Berkeley legal blog Nuts & Boalts sums up what should be the feeling of any person concerned about the laws of this country: “Regardless of how you feel about the Occupation, this behavior by police against unarmed, non-violent protestors is not only illegal, but is shameful.”

If you haven’t seen the video, it’s below. Just as disturbing as the actual footage is the facile message Berkeley Law students received before the event that was a warning that the police were going to be totally unreasonable about the situation….

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Career Center Survey Results: Top Partners to Work For – California (Part 2)

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Today we wrap up coverage of the top California partners to work for, as selected by our readers (see Part 1 here).

These six partners have diverse practices that range from real estate, to labor and employment, to IP, and work at some of the nation’s finest firms: Cooley, DLA Piper, Sheppard Mullin, Jones Day, Bingham McCutchen, and Best Best & Krieger.

Let’s find out why associates are thrilled to be working for these partners….

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