Sensible shoes are for liberal chicks. Say hello to fabulous Federalist footwear!

As you may have noticed, from our two posts late on Monday night and one from Tuesday morning, we’re engaging in some after-the-fact blogging of last week’s Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention.

As in past years, the social highlight of the conference was the Thursday night banquet (black tie optional; and many availed themselves of the option, ‘cause that’s how conservatives roll). The speaker at the dinner was none other than Justice Samuel A. Alito, who delivered an insightful and hilarious speech that was a delight to listen to. Just as one might say of, say, a newscast by Jon Stewart, much of the entertainment value was in the delivery — Justice Alito is so dry and deadpan, and yet his remarks make you bust out laughing.

Interestingly enough, we haven’t come across many news accounts of Justice Alito’s speech. There was also no video recording allowed at the address. So we feel we can add some value with this write-up, despite its belated nature.

There may have been some confusion over the ground rules governing reporting about the speech. From the BLT:

Justice Samuel Alito Jr. spoke to the Federalist Society [last Thursday] night, but photos of him doing so are hard to come by. That’s because photographers other than the Federalist Society’s own were barred from the event. Keith Appell, a spokesman for the Federalist Society, said cameras were prohibited by Alito’s security detail….

Kathy Arberg, the court spokeswoman, said “The justice’s policy was that the event was open to still cameras and pencil press,” and that the Federalist Society was informed of that policy before the event.

Well, photos from the event aren’t hard to come by on Above the Law. Nobody told us that we couldn’t take photographs — so we did. And, as members of the “pencil press,” we jotted down notes in our reporter’s notebook. (We left the laptop at the hotel that night.)

Check out a slideshow of our pictures, along with a discussion of Justice Alito’s highly engaging and entertaining address, after the jump.

Here’s a quick update on the “celebrity justice” beat. There has been a rash of break-ins in Los Angeles, targeting the homes of various stars. Is there a vigilante group of Robin Hoods lashing out at ostentatious displays of wealth during the recession? Not quite. Our sister site Fashionista reports:

While this is not surprising in itself, given that there would likely be some very nice goods found in any of the above, what is surprising is the news of who allegedly committed the crimes and why—a band of teenage girls obsessed with clothing and jewelry.

The older I get, the more I wish we could send all teenagers through some kind of Spartan-style education in discipline and respect before they are released back into the wild.

Click on the links below to read and comment, over at Fashionista and True/Slant.

Crimes of Fashion [Fashionista]
Paparazzi to blame for Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, and Orlando Bloom being burglarized? [True/Slant]

* Bank of America’s board votes to waive privilege and disclose the legal advice it received on the Merrill Lynch merger, which could spell trouble for B of A’s outside counsel at Wachtell (depending on the advice given). [New York Times]

* Meanwhile, B of A expands its team for the SEC litigation in the S.D.N.Y. by hiring Paul Weiss (which, along with Cleary Gottlieb, urged the bank to waive privilege with respect to the Merrill merger advice). [Dealbook / New York Times]

* Tort reform, in the form of limitations upon medical malpractice suits, could save up to $54 billion over the next 10 years. [CNN]

* Jon and Kate arbitrate… [People]

* Is everybody ready for the upcoming Bear Stearns trial? Here’s the pregame information you need to know. [Dealbook]

* In the matter of Jon v. Kate, maybe people don’t have enough sympathy for Jon? I don’t know, China’s “one child” rule looks better and better every day. [Double X]

* With all the talk about increased efficiency in legal services, you’d think that legal services have been ineffectively delivered up until now. [Technolawyer]

* How long should it really take to go from judicial misconduct to judicial apology? [Legally Unbound]

* Did you think my Obama-colored glasses were knocked off when he won the Nobel Peace Prize? [True/Slant]

* Meanwhile, they also give Nobel Prizes for other disciplines. Professor Bainbridge has some thoughts on this year’s winners in economics. [Professor Bainbridge]

* A 24-year-old woman tried to enroll in a high school as a 15-year-old boy. No pictures are available, but I have to assume that was one unattractive 24-year-old woman. [My Law Life]

* A Blawg Review to inspire all the would-be Emperors out there. [Popehat via Blawg Review]

On the media website Mediaite, we are erroneously listed as having an affiliation with the Late Show with David Letterman. We wish! If that were the case, then maybe we’d have inside dirt on one of the juiciest media scandals to come along in a while.

And it’s a media scandal with a legal angle — several, in fact. Last Friday, we named the woman at the eye of the storm, Stephanie Birkitt, our Lawyer of the Day. Birkitt — the former Letterman paramour whose ex-boyfriend, Robert “Joe” Halderman, stands accused of trying to extort David Letterman — is a lawyer. The blonde hottie is a graduate of Cardozo Law School, and she passed the bar exam twice — in New York and Connecticut. Very impressive, Ms. Birkitt!

Alas, Stephanie Birkitt may be a two-timer in more than one sense of the word. We previously stated, relying on other sources, that Birkitt’s sexual relationship with her former boss ended in 2003. Now we’re hearing otherwise, from the New York Post:

Pretty former “Late Show” staffer Stephanie Birkitt revealed in her diary that she continued having sex with boss David Letterman even after moving in with her CBS-producer boyfriend, who later allegedly tried to extort him over the affair, sources told The Post yesterday.

Letterman and Birkitt enjoyed romantic hikes last fall at his sprawling ranch in eastern Montana — where he was married in March — while her boyfriend, “48 Hours Mystery” producer Robert “Joe” Halderman, stayed home in Connecticut, the sources said.

At the time, Birkitt, 34, insisted to Halderman that she and the 62-year-old Letterman had just “a platonic relationship,” a source said.

“I’m his best friend,” Birkitt told the worried 51-year-old Halderman, the source said.

A friend with benefits? Like free law school tuition? Speaking of which, according to our reader poll, almost two-thirds of ATL readers would sleep with David Letterman in exchange for free law school tuition.

UPDATE: According to Maureen Dowd (gavel bang: commenter), Letterman’s company loaned Birkitt the money for law school, which she paid back. If true, this is disappointing. What’s the point of sleeping with the boss if you can’t get paid for it?

More law-related Letterman links, after the jump.

Jerry Maguire appeared as a guest lecturer at Harvard Law School last night. A HLS tipster tells us that Professor Bruce Hay invited Tom Cruise to talk to his Entertainment Law class on Monday night.

A most excellent guest, Tom Cruise is quite familiar with lawyers. He’s had legal star turns in The Firm and A Few Good Men. And he’s been involved in lots of litigation, including a suit filed by injured extras in Valkyrie, a RICO lawsuit against him and the Scientologists, and his plaintiff turn in that I’m-not-gay suit. (Insert “you can’t handle the truth” joke here.)

One HLS student sent us a link to this photo from last night. No word on whether or not Cruise jumped up and down on Hay’s lectern.

Our tipster was not in the class, but he did catch a glimpse of Cruise’s getaway.

To paraphrase this video, inspired by an Avenue Q song and submitted to Above the Law’s first-ever Law Revue Contest, “What can you do with a JD from Cardozo?”

Um…. David Letterman? From Bitten & Bound:

David Letterman was the victim of a $2 million extortion plot and we have now discovered that according to New York public records, Stephanie Birkitt, 34, a former intern on The Late Show, lived with the accused extortionist Robert Joe Halderman, a CBS 48 Hours producer, and may have unwittingly fed him the information through the pages of her diary, photos and personal correspondence….

According to TMZ, Birkitt is one of the women who engaged in an affair with her boss, but ended it in 2003, prior to the birth of Letterman’s son….

Birkitt began working as a page for CBS New, 48 Hours, and The Late Show while still in college [at Wake Forest] in 1996. She spent a short time as an associate producer on segments for correspondent Erin Moriarty but soon decided that she wasn’t a news hound. That was when Letterman hired her as a personal assistant. She was initially brought on to handle his charities and his Indy car racing team, but her duties expanded over time.

Apparently so. Anyway, here’s the legal connection:

Birkett went on to the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City beginning in 2005 and passed the Connecticut bar exam in February 2009.

UPDATE: As noted in the comments, Birkitt also passed the New York bar exam in February. Congrats on passing two state bars, Steph!

FURTHER UPDATE: Actually, Birkitt’s relationship with Letterman may have lasted much longer. See here.

Now, before the elitists among you start ranking on Cardozo Law, there’s something you should know.

We’ve already mentioned the recent arrest of acclaimed film director Roman Polanski (pictured at right, with uber-hottie Adrien Brody). But it’s a slow news day controversial, so we’d like to give you a chance to discuss it in more depth.

Over at the WSJ Law Blog, Ashby Jones has a nice write-up. He explains the background:

The Oscar-winning film director was arrested on Sunday in Zurich on a 31-year-old warrant issued in the U.S. for having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977. Polanski was arrested, at the request of the United States, as he jetted into Switzerland to collect an award for his life’s work.

Local police arrested Polanski at the airport upon his arrival in Zurich, where he was to receive a lifetime-achievement award at the Zurich Film Festival. Polanski was jailed pending a decision on whether to extradite him to the U.S., according to the Swiss Justice Ministry….

Polanski fled the U.S. in 1978 after he pleaded guilty to having had sexual intercourse with girl — the allegation was that he gave the girl alcohol and part of a quaalude before raping her. Since then, he has lived in France, where he was born. French authorities refused to extradite him to the U.S., claiming that his crime didn’t fall under those covered by treaties between the two countries.

According to ABC News, which obtained comment from Polanski’s French lawyer, the director plans to fight extradition.

Should the authorities keep pursuing Polanski? Some pros and cons, plus a reader poll, after the jump.

Apologies for not getting to this story earlier. Sometimes things fall through the cracks around here. (We were offline for much of Thursday and Friday, attending Lavender Law.)

Last week, a federal magistrate judge questioned the propriety of the U.S. Attorney’s Office moving to dismiss a marijuana possession charge against Andrew Sullivan. Yes, that Andrew Sullivan — the noted political pundit, author, and blogger (and proponent of marijuana legalization).

Judge Collings issued his saucy opinion (PDF) on Thursday. Later that day, the story was broken by The Docket. The case has also been covered by Gawker, Wonkette, and the WSJ Law Blog, among other outlets (links collected below).

So we won’t rehash what you’ve probably already read. But feel free to take our reader poll and to discuss the case in the comments.

Judge angered by special treatment for Andrew Sullivan [The Docket / MLW]
United States v. Sullivan [PDF] [U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts]
Andrew Sullivan’s Federal Pot Favors [Gawker]
Friendly D.A. Saves Andrew Sullivan From Life Sentence In Gitmo, For Smoking Marijuana [Wonkette]
On Marijuana, a Famous Blogger, and One Skeptical Judge [WSJ Law Blog]

Over at AmLaw Daily, Zach Lowe has revealed that Hogan & Hartson will be playing the part of Mr. Big’s office in Sex and the City 2, due out next year:

The atrium on the 25th floor of Hogan’s offices at 875 Third Ave. will be transformed into Mr. Big’s on-screen office, according to an internal memo that found its way to our in-box. (We have no idea what Mr. Big does for a living, but we know he’s played by the dreamy Chris Noth.)

Lowe, we’re flattered you’ve adopted the royal ATL “we.” We’re not sure what Big does for a living either, but we know he’s not a lawyer, which is perhaps why he has an atrium-sized office.

The Sex and the City crew will be at Hogan’s office on Sept. 2, but an internal memo — which we invite tipsters to send for posting — indicates that friends, family, and random Chris Noth-stalkers shouldn’t try to drop in. We wonder if they would make an exception for Justice Scalia, who may or may not be a SATC fan.

The internal memo says that Hogan employees might get to meet the stars and might get autographs, but it’s not guaranteed. And the memo reminds partners that on the day of the filming, their star wattage will be dimmed:

A few partners will also have to clean up their offices “so your boxes are not in the movie!” the memo says.

We talked to Hogan managing partner Warren Gorrell. He says he works on the 24th floor. “I’m not one of the partners with a messy office,” he told us. Gorrell’s take on Hogan’s Sex and the City 2 star turn, after the jump.

With royalties from Camp Wilder not the cash machine they once were, Jerry O’Connell has traded in the glamor of Samantha Who? cameos and a Crossing Jordan recurring role for something even less glamorous.

Reports Us Magazine:

Jerry O’Connell has gone back to [law] school, his rep confirms to Usmagazine.com.

O’Connell’s new career path comes as no surprise to fans. A $160,000 six-figure salary upon graduation would mean a substantial pay increase from his cumulative prior earnings.

But where does an actor of O’Connell’s star power go for his J.D.?

Yesterday we heard from legal ethics experts about whether Elizabeth Wurtzel’s referring to herself as a “lawyer,” despite not having passed the bar yet, could get her in trouble. The two we consulted, Professors Steven Lubet and Stephen Gillers, did not see it as a big deal.

There’s an interesting follow-up over at Gawker, which obtained the following comment from La Wurtzel herself:

This is my understanding: if you graduate from law school/receive a JD, you are a lawyer; if you are licensed, you are an attorney. That’s what I’ve always been told.

Not too many nice things to say about the Bar Exam. Every year, some very gifted people fail it (Hillary Clinton, Kathleen Sullivan of Stanford Law School)—and every year, a lot of real idiots pass it. Hard to know what to make of that ;-)

Regarding Wurtzel’s understanding of the difference between the terms “lawyer” and “attorney,” other folks have been told that too. See the comments to this post from last year on the subject.

But there is disagreement. Read more, and take a READER POLL, after the jump.

To those of you getting ready to take the bar exam this week, here’s some reassurance for you: even if you fail, life goes on. Consider this list of famous failures, people who didn’t pass the bar exam but went on to tremendous success anyway.

And here’s another boldface name who failed the bar: Elizabeth Wurtzel, the bestselling and critically acclaimed author, who graduated from Yale Law School last year and sat for the New York bar in July 2008 (and maybe in February 2009 too). In an interview with the New York Observer, Wurtzel shrugged off her bar failure.

In a more recent interview with Bitter Lawyer, Wurtzel once again breezed past that fact. From Gawker:

Wurtzel granted an interview recently to Bitter Lawyer, talking about how much she loves the law and how awesome it is being a lawyer and working at David Boies’s law firm. Except she’s not a lawyer! At least not in New York, where it seems to be unlawful to claim to be a lawyer if you haven’t passed the bar exam. Which she hasn’t.

In the Gawker post, John Cook parses Wurtzel’s Bitter Lawyer interview against the backdrop of New York rules and statutes regulating the legal profession. Cook suggests that Wurtzel describing herself as a lawyer violates New York Judiciary Law § 478, “Practicing or appearing as attorney-at-law without being admitted and registered.”

We forwarded the Gawker link to a pair of legal ethics experts, Professor Steven Lubet of Northwestern and Professor Stephen Gillers of NYU, and asked them to assess the situation.

Read what they had to say, after the jump.

We already mentioned the Erin Andrews situation this morning. The ESPN anchor was spied on through a peephole at a hotel. Andrews is considering her actions, and she has retained counsel. Bingham McCutchen will be taking on this high-profile case.

Here is the statement from Bingham’s Marshall B. Grossman:

While alone in the privacy of her hotel room, Erin Andrews was surreptitiously videotaped without her knowledge or consent. She was the victim of a crime and is taking action to protect herself and help ensure that others are not similarly violated in the future. Although the perpetrator or perpetrators of this criminal act have not yet been identified, when they are identified she intends to bring both civil and criminal charges against them and against anyone who has published the material. We request respect of Erin’s privacy at this time, while she and her representatives are working with the authorities.

One of these days, the people who snap this kind of footage and the publishers who make it available are going to get smacked down, hard.

Down in Miami, celebrity heiress Paris Hilton is charming the robes off of Chief Judge Federico Moreno (S.D. Fla.), who is hearing a film contract dispute in which she’s the defendant. Reports Davis Markus:

Paris Hilton is on the stand. And Judge Moreno is getting in the act. In one exchange, Moreno was puzzled by the title of Hilton’s current reality show, “My New BFF.” “What does that mean?” he said. After Hilton gave the full title “Paris Hilton’s My New Best Friend Forever,” the judge remarked “This will be my best case forever.” Without missing a beat, Hilton replied “You’re my best judge forever.”

Flirting with the judge? Well, this is a bench trial — and Paris is a trial lawyer in the making. Plaintiff’s counsel should be on the lookout for any ex parte contact between His Honor and Her Hotness.

Read more about the trial over at the Southern District of Florida Blog, which has been covering the proceedings quite closely.

Best blog post forever [Southern District of Florida Blog]
Paris Hilton insists she plugged sorority movie [AP]

Earlier: The American Legal System: We’ll Always Have Paris

Legendary entertainer Michael Jackson, aka the King of Pop, wasn’t a lawyer. But he certainly generated lots of work for them, thanks to his child molestation charges and financial woes. Not every pop culture icon has their own ATL category tag.

(Sure, MJ didn’t always pay his legal bills on time. But it’s the thought that counts.)

Michael Jackson was 50 at the time of his death. May he rest in peace.

Update: Read Marin’s thoughts on the Gloved One over at True/Slant (here and here).

Michael Jackson Has Beat It [True/Slant]
Michael Jackson Dies [TMZ.com]
Pop icon Michael Jackson is dead [Los Angeles Times]

Back in July, when we covered the nuptials of celebrity professors / Obama advisers Cass Sunstein and Samantha Power, we wrote: “We look forward to seeing the heights to which they will ascend, together, in the administration of President Obama.”

Well, now we know. Both have snagged important positions in the White House. As previously reported, Sunstein, a former colleague of Obama’s from the University of Chicago Law School faculty, was tapped to serve as “regulatory czar” — a big deal in an administration that will be cranking out lots of regulations.

And last night we learned that Samantha Power will be joining hubby Cass at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. From the Associated Press:

Samantha Power, the Harvard University professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author who earned notoriety for calling Hillary Rodham Clinton a ”monster” while working to elect Barack Obama president, will take a senior foreign policy job at the White House….

Officials familiar with the decision say Obama has tapped Power to be senior director for multilateral affairs at the National Security Council, a job that will require close contact and potential travel with Clinton, who is now secretary of state. NSC staffers often accompany the secretary of state on foreign trips.

See, Obama does have a sense of humor! Or, more likely, Obama always planned to give Power a plum position, despite “Monstergate.” Sure, it wasn’t her finest hour; but as a Harvard Law School grad, Power is entitled to a few undiplomatic moments. Speculates Gawker: “If someone really wants to hire you, he’ll make your future boss promise to be nice to you, in exchange for her job.”

Update: More good news for Samantha Power and Cass Sunstein. A tipster tells us: “They’re creating a super-child of the 21st century. She’s pregnant!”

A little more about the Power couple, after the jump.

We’ve previously reported on law firms having difficulty getting clients to pay their bills. It’s not just happening to firms working on deals that go bust; it has also happened to a firm representing a celeb after his marriage went bust. From Am Law Daily:

Blank Rome is suing rapper/actor/activist Mos Def for over $60,000 in unpaid legal bills stemming from his 2006 divorce from Maria Yepes.

The couple ended their 10-year marriage that year in a Brooklyn court, with Judge Sarah Krauss pleading with them to settle their differences outside her courtroom.

Reports say that the Brooklyn-born Mos Def (real name: Dante Smith) owes the money to Blank Rome in the form of unpaid fees and retainers. The Emmy, Golden Globe, and Grammy award-nominated entertainer retained lawyers from the firm’s well-regarded matrimonial practice, which advises high-end clients on divorce, mediation, property distribution, paternity, visitation rights, and trusts and estates.

This is Mos Def’s second month in a row of legal troubles. In November, Las Vegas police issued an arrest warrant after Mos got in a scuffle with a photographer. In more bad news, his portrayal of Chuck Berry in the recently released music biopic extravaganza Cadillac Records was panned by the Los Angeles Times.

We wonder if this will make him rethink the title of his upcoming album, rumored to be titled Ecstatic.

Some good news for Mos Def, after the jump.

Based on the anemic associate bonuses recently announced by Cravath, one might think that the firm is hurting. We hear that work at CSM is a little slow — and that there may be some anxiety over the staggering cost of the firm’s $900 million lease at Worldwide Plaza.

But don’t shed tears for Cravath just yet. The firm is still getting some high-profile engagements. From the New York Observer:

When agent Richard Leibner’s phone was ringing off the hook one night last week, everyone was asking him the same thing: Was his longtime client David Gregory the next host of Meet the Press, or wasn’t he? He called back, telling reporters he could neither confirm nor deny the report that first appeared on the Huffington Post.

Perhaps this was because his agency, N. S. Bienstock, wasn’t representing Mr. Gregory on the deal. So who exactly was aiding the ambitions of NBC’s robo-newsman? ….

On Monday morning, with the deal finally made public, white-shoe New York law firm Cravath, Swaine, & Moore posted a brief item on its Web site, crediting two of its partners — Eric Hilfers and Robert Joffe — for handling the negotiations.

This engagement probably didn’t generate the seven- or eight-figure fees that billion-dollar M&A deals generate. But it’s still a cool and interesting gig, the kind that stands out to 2Ls going through fall recruiting.

More after the jump.

Lindsay Lohan is kind of over as far as celebrity gossip goes: no more car accidents, no more sloppy drunk photographs, and in a relatively stable relationship. But now Lohan’s girlfriend, Samantha Ronson, is getting pulled back into the tabloids, and she’s dragging First Amendment attorney Martin Garbus along with her.

Martin Garbus prides himself on being “one of the country’s leading trial lawyers” and for “aggressively represent[ing] his commercial and criminal clients in both the courts and the public media.” He sounded like the perfect fit when Samantha Ronson decided to file a defamation suit against celeb gossip blogger Perez Hilton for calling her a “lezbot” and accusing her of selling access to Lohan to paparazzi.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the suit did not go well. Ronson didn’t want to pay Garbus’s exorbitant bills. She lost the suit. Now she’s on the hook for her and Hilton’s legal bills, to the tune of over $200k. Her solution was to sue Garbus for malpractice. He sued her right back for unpaid legal bills.

Ironically, the suit transformed Garbus, who had called celebrity blogs “trash,” into an unwitting comrade in Hilton’s quest for dirt on Ronson.

In order to defend himself, Garbus is going rooting in the garbage of Lohan and Ronson’s life together:

Garbus’ attorneys have identified Lohan as the most critical witness in the case besides the two litigants and have requested information concerning their relationship, finances, possible drug use and alleged rehab stays. In one measure of how far his defense plans to go, they have asked for copies of every text message and e-mail between the women over the last two years.

A trial is scheduled for May in Los Angeles. The parties spent the last few months squabbling over procedures for deposing Lohan and Ronson after lawyers for the women raised concerns that videotapes of the pretrial Q & As would be leaked to the media.

The only winner in all this seems to be Perez Hilton:

Watching from the sidelines, Hilton’s lawyer said he was stunned Ronson was pursuing the case. Coverage of the first suit had extended the life and increased the audience for a small blog item, he said, and the malpractice claim was making it even bigger.

Lindsay Lohan’s gal pal Samantha Ronson in big legal spat [Los Angeles Times/Newsday]