Are you a gay law student or lawyer? Are you thinking about possibly working at the New York powerhouse law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell?
Before you apply to S&C, you might want to first check out this complaint, filed today in the New York Supreme Court (a trial court, despite the misleading name).
Allegations of discrimination against gays AND Canadians (there’s a difference); a headshot of the handsome plaintiff; and a link to the full complaint. All this and more awaits you, after the jump.
We tend to think of Canadians as such softies progressives. They have universal health care. They allow same-sex marriage. They don’t have the death penalty, and their criminal justice system is kinder and gentler than ours.
At least most of the time. Sometimes individual judges go off the reservation. Last year, a judge in Canada instructed a jury “to retire to the jury room… and then to return to the court with a verdict of guilty.”
Now we get this story, via Criminal Review, a Canadian criminal law blog:
The accused had been charged with robbery and abduction of a child after hijacking and then driving off in the complainant’s car with the complainant’s child still strapped in the back seat. Apparently the trial judge thought this was enough to demonstrate the offences proven “as a matter of law.”
Not surprisingly, the appellate court saw things a little differently. From their opinion, ordering a new trial:
After the trial judge charged the jury, the jury returned with a question. It could be inferred from the jury’s question that they were concerned that [defendant] Maharaj was not aware of the baby in the car and that he did not have the requisite intention to commit the offences of abduction. However, the trial judge instructed them that “intention is proven,” thereby removing this element of the offence from their consideration.
Trial by jury isn’t the only way to run a criminal justice system. But if you’re going to bother with a jury, and drag citizens’ asses into court for it, you might as well give them something to do while over there (besides the crossword). R. v. Maharaj [CriminalReview.ca] R. v. Maharaj [Court of Appeal for Ontario] Earlier: Criminal Justice, Canadian Style
* Thou shalt not kidnap your child to keep her from getting married. [CNN]
* This really happened? [CNN]
* Supreme Court takes antitrust case involving investment banks. [New York Times]
* Specter introduces legislation designed to blunt the effects of the Thompson memo. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Same-sex marriage still legal, eh? [Reuters via Yahoo!]
At the White House:
* On the heels of Christopher Oprison and Cheryl Stanton, former Wilmer Hale partner Paul Eckert joins the White House Counsel’s Office. Lateral Moves:
* Nicholas H. Politan, to Gibson Dunn & Crutcher (NY), from Bingham McCutchen, where he served as co-head of the project and structured finance group.
(Wild guess: He’s the son of former federal judge Nicholas H. Politan (D.N.J.).)
* IP litigator Duane David-Hough, to Fish & Richardson, from Ropes & Gray (NY).
A few more moves, plus links, after the jump.
* A rather innocuous profile of New York’s new first lady, ex-attorney Silda Wall Spitzer (who was an up-and-coming corporate superstar at Skadden, but aren’t they all). She was previously married to a Harvard Law classmate for 29 days. Another HLS classmate, Jim Cramer, thinks she’s pretty, and the journalist probably does not understand the notion of billable hours. [New York Times]
* They’re much stricter about using office services for personal use up north. [The Globe and Mail]
* A headbutt is fined $15,000, and a groin-kneeing $25,000. If I were a pro athelete, I’d say that was an extra $10,000 well spent. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]
* You can still stand firm and refuse to hand over your taxes. After all, you have balls and they don’t. [Washington Post via TaxProf Blog]
The United States and Canada are playing “hot potato” with sex offender Malcolm Watson. Here’s the latest development in the story (which we’ve beenfollowing):
An American teacher allowed to serve probation in Ontario for a misdemeanour sex offence was never “exiled” to Canada as was widely reported, the U.S. judge who approved the deal said yesterday.
Even before hearing a motion seeking to amend Malcolm Watson’s probation terms, Judge Thomas Kolbert made a point of addressing the political firestorm ignited by reports that a U.S. sex offender had been “banished” to Canada.
“This court never banished nor exiled Mr. Watson to Canada,” Judge Kolbert said.
Nevertheless, because of the resulting media uproar, the prosecution filed a motion seeking to amend Watson’s probation terms — to make him do his probation in Erie County, New York. The motion is under submission; the parties have three weeks to provide the judge with more information.
How does Mr. Watson feel about possibly having to serve out his sentence in the United States?
Outside the court, defence lawyer Tom Eoannou warned that if Mr. Watson is forced to stay in the U.S., he might yet force a trial.
Last week we asked you for funny Halloween-related stories, including descriptions of wacky costumes or festivities. We were disappointed by your responses.
So we had to turn to our neighbor to the north. These days, Canada is ascendant. Canadians are beating out Americans for jobs at top U.S. law firms. They have Supreme Court justices cool enough to take nude cruises.
And now they’re winning the Halloween costume arms race. Check out this photo:
Who are these people? Why, they’re none other than the costumed clerks of the Tax Court of Canada. An explanation of their attire, from TaxProf Blog:
Back Row (from left to right): Captain Income Splitting, Canada Revenue Agency Collections Agent, the Proposed Tax Credit for Child Fitness, Scientific Research Deduction, and Farmer Gunn (of Gunn v. R., 2006 FCA 281).
Front Row (left to right): Valuation Day 1971, Tax on Royalties, and the Competent Authority for the Canada-Barbados Tax Treaty.
We’ve been on a bit of a Canada kick here at ATL. What can we say, those Canadians are teh funny.
Check out this story (robe swish: Paul Horwitz of PrawfsBlawg):
Some [Canadian] Supreme Court judges seek relief from work stress in the comfort of their families. Others love nothing more than to curl up with a good book. And could it be, for at least one of them, a nude romp on the high seas was just the ticket?
The anonymous judge’s alleged unconventional vacation choice — a nude cruise — came to light in a San Francisco Chronicle travel article in the spring. It quoted a co-owner of the Bare Necessities cruise line, Nancy Tiemann, as saying that its clientele include: “actors, bus drivers, Fortune 500 CEOs, soccer moms, doctors, teachers, priests and at least one Canadian Supreme Court justice.” * * * * *
The story came to the attention of Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, who swiftly launched an investigation into which, if any, of her eight colleagues was the alleged unrobed sailor.
Can Canadian judges, like our federal judges, be impeached for violating the norms of “good behavior”? Because we agree with Ann Althouse: “[A] naked cruise? It’s just so perfectly awful.”
Alas, the Chief Justice’s investigation ended inconclusively:
Speaking to an audience at the University of Toronto law school last week, [Justice Marshall] Rothstein read a tongue-in-cheek memo which Chief Justice McLachlin circulated to her Supreme Court colleagues on May 12.
Entitled “Re. Nude Cruising,” the memo said: “I made inquiries into the identity of the judge, but was rebuffed [by the article writer] on a claim of journalistic privilege. . . . All this is to say, that our secret is safe.”
Judge Rothstein assured his audience that, having been appointed only in March, he cannot be considered a serious suspect in the nude-cruise inquiry.
Yesterday we implied that Canada isn’t tough on crime. Maybe we should take that back. Check out this interesting case:
“Return to the Court With a Verdict of Guilty.” That’s what a Canadian judge told the jury in a marijuana possession case, where the defendant claimed he possessed the marijuana for medical reasons (though he apparently didn’t qualify for some reason for Canada’s medical marijuana exemption).
The judge instructed the jurors “to retire to the jury room to consider what I have said, appoint one of yourselves to be your foreperson, and then to return to the court with a verdict of guilty.”
Okay, they didn’t quite say that. But they might as well have. A quick update on a story we previously wrote about:
An American schoolteacher sentenced to three years’ probation — to be served in Canada — [was] detained at the border, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day has confirmed.
Malcolm Watson, who was convicted of a minor sexual offence concerning a 15-year-old girl, was arrested by Canadian border guards while returning from a court appearance Thursday in Buffalo, N.Y.
“We don’t want to see Canada become a haven for pedophiles or anyone else committing a serious crime,” Day said outside the House of Commons.
Ooooh, Canada’s going to get tough on Malcom Watson. Maybe they’ll take away his free health care!
Of course, it didn’t take long for Watson to get off:
An Immigration Review Board official [on Friday] freed Mr. Watson on a $5,000 bond, saying he poses little danger to Canadian society. The 35-year-old, earlier convicted of minor sexual offences in Buffalo and allowed to serve his three-year probation in Canada, is required to reside with his Canadian wife and children in their St. Catharines, Ont., home.
Canadian officials will try to get him shipped out of the country, but it may be an uphill battle:
[I]f a [Canadian] resident [like Watson] is convicted of a crime outside the country, the government must find an equivalent offence under Canadian law, according to Toronto immigration lawyer Lorne Waldman. That could prove tricky in Mr. Watson’s case, because his crime involved his relationship with a 15-year-old girl, and the age of consent in Canada is 14.
A college graduate without student loan debt is akin to reading a kind quote about Kim Kardashian in a tabloid—it’s rare.
In the past eight years, student loan debt has nearly tripled to a whopping $1.1 trillion, and in the past 10 years, the percentage of 25-year-olds with such debt has risen from 25% to 43%
It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that New York Fed economists warned last month that the burden of student debt could stilt consumer spending by twentysomethings, as well as further hamper the recovery of the housing market and economy.
To get a better idea of what massive student loan debt (we’re talking over $100,000 massive) looks like, we talked to an attorney who graduated with a large student loan debt. We also consulted LearnVest Planning Services CFP® Katie Brewer to see just how their repayment plans stack up.
S. Fischer, 36, Attorney Graduated: 2001
How Much I Borrowed: $100,000
What I Still Owe: $45,000
LexisNexis and OverDrive®, the digital library solutions provider chosen by 22,000+ libraries, schools and colleges worldwide, have joined forces to provide a library management solution that suits evolving legal research requirements mobility, simplified library management, and space and budget reductions.
Reduce your library costs and extend the budget.
With LexisNexis® Digital Library, overhead and administrative costs for maintaining a print library are reduced dramatically. Adopt an easy-to-use platform that requires minimal staff resources so your organization can make the most out of your library budget. Plus, multi-year purchase options let your library lock in savings.
Empower your librarians.
Your firm’s librarians will have more time to conduct value-added research. They’ll have greater insight into what resources the staff actually uses so they can make adjustments to the collection quickly using a single website. Librarians can gain greater control, which can lead to better library utilization and increased strategic value to the firm.
Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
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!
