It wasn’t that long ago — just back in August 2008 — that the ABA changed its rules to allow the outsourcing of American legal work. In the midst of the recession, a lot of people are still trying to figure out if outsourcing will cause a more fundamental change to the nature of the Biglaw business model than anything we’ve seen during the credit crunch.

Now, the ABA is asking its lawyers to share their opinion on outsourcing. This week’s ABA Intellectual Property Law section e-letter contains a link to a very interesting survey. Here’s the description from the e-letter:

Outsourcing Task Force Seeks Survey Input From You

The American Bar Association’s Outsourcing Task Force is conducting a survey on outsourcing. The objective of the Task Force, at the Request of ABA President-Elect Steve Zack, is a Report with Recommendations to the House of Delegates on the subject at next year’s Annual Meeting.

An important means of collecting input from a broader cross section of the
ABA is an online survey which can be accessed at: http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB229LAVJNGRM.

As input from the broadest possible range of American lawyers is critical, the Task Force would greatly appreciate if every member could take a moment to complete this survey.

Immediate Past Section Chair Gordon Arnold is a member of the Task Force and serves as its Liaison to the Section of Intellectual Property Law. He strongly encourages all to complete this survey.

IP lawyers, here is one chance to voice your opinion.

After the jump, some we post a couple of the questions the task force is asking.

You know how much we love rankings around these parts. But apparently there is a list of law firm rankings out there that actually matters. The National Law Journal reports:

An Association of Corporate Counsel law firm rating system unveiled last month has triggered a lot of interest from the association’s in-house lawyer members, who have submitted 1,500 firm reviews. Lawyers at firms are less enthused. …

Since the ACC initiated its “value index” last month, its members have shared their opinions about the performances of 500 law firms. The ACC has used the mainly anonymous input to rank firms on a five-point scale.

Unfortunately, there is one humongous catch:

The evaluations and ratings are viewable only by ACC members.

Why, Association of Corporate Counsel? Why? Why produce a new juicy list of clients actually rating the quality of legal services they receive, and then keep it private? We all want to know what you think.

Sorry. “All” is probably a little bit strong. Law firm managers don’t seem to like this list very much. Details after the jump.

* Has Justice Sotomayor put Clarence Thomas over the edge? While speaking at the University of Alabama, Justice Thomas said he wishes that the other justices would STFU during oral arguments. He also complained that there are too many Ivy Leaguers on the SCOTUS bench. [Associated Press]

* One of the beneficiaries at the top of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme was found on the bottom of a pool Sunday. [New York Times]

* Who has the rights to the treasures of the Titanic? [Associated Press]

* Proposition 8 proponents have to turn over their campaign strategy documents. [San Francisco Chronicle]

* An anarchist social worker believes his constitutional rights were violated during the G-20 meetings in Pittsburgh. Police raided his home for breaking an anti-riot law via Twitter. [Wired]

Squire, Sanders & Dempsey already deferred its incoming class of 2009 to January 2010. Yesterday, the firm informed half of those incoming associates that they were getting the Bird — i.e., the firm indefinitely deferred half of its incoming class.

But before the firm decides what it will do with half of its incoming associates, Squire Sanders needs to make a decision about whether to keep its current associates. SSD’s chairman, James J. Maiwurm, told associates to expect layoffs over the next 45 days.

Above the Law has received the official Squire Sanders statement. Take a look after the jump.

Think back to taking law school exams as a 1L. Remember the IRAC method — Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion?

One horny creative female law student in Los Angeles has decided to deploy IRAC towards carnal ends. Via craigslist, she recently filed a brief in the matter of You & Me Doing It v. You & Me Not Doing It (2009).

Read her brief, an eloquent attempt to get inside a classmate’s briefs, after the jump.

In a speech last night before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the chief justice of the California Supreme Court, Ronald M. George, criticized his state’s reliance on the initiative process. His remarks focused on how that process, direct democracy taken to the extreme, has paralyzed state government, especially when it comes to fiscal matters.

You all know me here. I’m the guy that has relentlessly pushed for the government to do something about the crushing level of student indebtedness in this country. I have argued that students should be more easily able to discharge their debts through bankruptcy. I’ve implored law schools and universities in general to stop bilking their own students and saddling them with nearly insurmountable debt obligations.

But in the immortal words of Switch from The Matrix: “Not like this.”

This morning, the New York Post reported on a situation that even I cannot support:

Trina Thompson gave it the old college try, but couldn’t find work. Now she thinks her sheepskin wasn’t worth her time, and is suing her alma mater for her money back.

The Monroe College grad wants the $70,000 she spent on tuition because she hasn’t found gainful employment since earning her bachelor’s degree in April, according to a suit filed in Bronx Supreme Court on July 24.

She graduated in April, hasn’t been able to find a job in a scant five months during the worst recession since the Great Depression, and now she wants a refund on her education?

No. This is not what we have been fighting for. This is a horrible bastardization of the entire student loan bailout philosophy.

After the jump, I feel like Marx (or Engels) rolling around in a grave while Lenin turns communism into a totalitarian proposition.

We sometimes like to think of the figures we write about in these pages as characters in a novel. Viewed in this way, Dr. Li-ann Thio, the visiting NYU law professor who apparently isn’t a fan of gay rights, is one of the most compelling we’ve come across recently.

We have a weakness for strong, outspoken Asian women — hi Mom! — and this description fits Dr. Thio to a T. Our only disappointment: Dr. Thio was whiny when attacked. (We agree with Professor Brian Leiter — playing the victim card was weak, Dr. Thio.)

Now, meet an even more compelling character — one who wouldn’t have responded to a random IT guy by playing victim, but by treating him like Obama treated that fly. She’s the original Dr. Thio: Li-ann Thio’s mother, Dr. Su Mien Thio (pictured), who taught Thio the Younger everything she knows (e.g., that gay sex is evil).

From a tipster:

It looks like Dr. Thio’s mother — a former judge who inspired Li-ann Thio’s own rise in politics — was involved in some serious anti-gay drama this year, after battling what she saw as a conspiracy to generate a “generation of lesbians.”

It all started with unrest over a screening of Spider Lilies, a lusty Taiwanese movie about an Internet cam girl [Ed. note: A cam girl? Like SexyLexus?] falling in love with another girl. The elder Dr. Thio, filled with the same heroic indignation as her daughter, filled with the same heroic indignation as her daughter, ended up locked out of a building after a failed takeover of a feminist organization.

And the trailer for the movie is totally hot!

Update: Not surprisingly, given her staunch opposition to homosexuality, Dr. Thio Su Mien is also against abortion. A headline from Roll on Friday: “Leading Singaporean lawyer blames abortion for SARS.”

More about the Spider Lilies controversy and Dr. Su Mien Thio’s impressive résumé, after the jump.

We hope you’ve been enjoying our liveblogging of Day 2 of the Sotomayor confirmation hearings. If you missed the morning session, you can check it out here.

To bring you up to speed. The “wise Latina” comment has indeed been the big ticket item of the day. Sotomayor has backtracked from it all morning. She stated clearly that she didn’t mean to imply that Latina’s were better at judging than other ethnic groups. She then doubled down and said of the comment: “It was bad.”

Pretty high rhetoric from a potential SCOTUS Justice, don’t you think.

Sotomayor hasn’t apologized for the remark, so there’s still something for Lindsey Graham to do when he gets his turn.

Meanwhile, on the Ricci front, Sotomayor has been sticking to the point that she was simply applying the law and that SCOTUS changed the law when it reversed the Second Circuit’s opinion on that front. So far, the Republican Senators seem massively underwhelmed by that proposition. I don’t recall a Senator asking her flat out if she thought that the test administered to the New Haven firefighters was racist. She probably wouldn’t answer, but isn’t that really the heart of what people want to know about her opinion here?

Coming back from lunch at 2:00 p.m., Chuck Grassley is up first. He should provide the first serious discussion of a woman’s right to choose. But let’s hope he suggests that somebody should hang themselves again.

Check after the jump for live updates of the hearing.

Now it gets fun. Yesterday, we liveblogged the opening statements from the Senate Judiciary Committee and Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Today, it’s time to get real with questions, answers, and more questions.

And we’ll be liveblogging it all for you again.

I’ve done a full preview for non-lawyers over on True/Slant. But regular Above the Law readers should be already prepared for all of the hard hitting substantive questions about constitutional interpretation.

To the extent that our U.S. Senators actually care about constitutional interpretation. It’s much more likely that we are in for a full day of “wise Latina” quips and a whole bunch of talking about one case (Ricci v. DeStefano) from Sotomayor’s 18 year judicial record.

Which is totally fair of course. This is the Senate’s one chance to ask questions of a person who is appointed for life and won’t ever need another promotion.

It should be fun. Check back throughout the day for updates, after the jump.

NYU Law gays, consider yourselves warned: Dr. Li-ann Thio is not afraid of you. The outspoken professor, who vehemently opposed decriminalizing gay sex as a member of the Singapore parliament, is ready to rumble:

We can be united in commitment to this principle [of academic freedom], without slavishly bowing to a demanded uniformity or dogma of political correctness set by elite diktat. I cannot say I am impressed by this ugly brand of politicking which I hope is not endemic….

I am disappointed at the intolerant animosity directed at me by strangers who do not know me and have decided to act on their own prejudices, forged from whatever sources, I am nonetheless glad that there are still some at NYU, who uphold a commitment to academic freedom and who entertain dissent with respect. As a recent NYU graduate, a Muslim friend of mine said, one must have courage in the face of bullying.

Dr. Thio can’t be prejudiced. Some of her best friends are Muslim!

Although her defense of the Singaporean statute against gay sex has been dismissed by one prominent American law professor as “dumb” and “embarrassing[],” Dr. Thio is not unaware of U.S. Supreme Court decisions in this area:

[C]ertain Americans have to realize the fact that there are a diversity of views on the subject and it is not a settled matter; there is no universal norm and it is nothing short of moral imperialism to suggest there is. Correct me if I am wrong, but there is no consensus on this even within the U.S. Supreme Court and American society at large, even post Lawrence v. Texas.

Dr. Thio is fighting political correctness with political correctness, accusing LGBT activists of cultural imperialism. Yikes! Find something to bite down on, kids, ‘cause she’s not planning to use lube pull her punches.

Meanwhile, the NYU Law School administration has (finally) issued a public statement on L’Affaire Thio.

Read the statement, after the jump.

The dean of the DePaul University College of Law, Glen Weissenberger, has been removed. But this doesn’t sound like your ordinary law school administration shuffle. Dean Weissenberger alleged that there was a significant mistake in the documents DePaul sumbitted to the ABA for its accreditation review, and now he is gone.

The university provost told the faculty and staff yesterday:

Dear College of Law Faculty and Staff,

I write today to inform you that there will be a change in leadership at the College of Law effective immediately. At my recommendation, the president and I have removed Glen Weissenberger as dean and hired a new interim dean who will be announced soon.

I can assure you that this decision, which is being made in the best interests of our students and the College of Law, was made only after long and careful thought and consideration. I respect all you have accomplished under Glen’s leadership. However, the working relationship between the dean and the administration had deteriorated to the point where it had become difficult to accomplish the college’s work, hence my recommendation to the president for this action.

Our faculty and staff are the lifeblood of the College of Law, and I recognize that you have a right to be informed about why I made this difficult decision. I invite all faculty and staff to attend a private meeting at [Redacted] where I will answer questions to the best of my ability, recognizing that this is, in part, a personnel matter and I will not be able to answer all inquiries.

We have selected a highly qualified and respected member of the legal community to serve as interim dean, ensure a smooth transition and continue the momentum you have given to the college. I look forward to making an announcement about the candidate in the very near future.

Sincerely,

Helmut Epp
Provost

We reached out to Dean Weissenberger and his response suggested that this situation is far beyond a mere administrative disagreement.

Details after the jump. And an update.

Today we sat down with Gururaj Potnis, director of Manthan Legal, who was in New York to attend a legal conference. Manthan is an Indian company that describes itself as a “leader of offshore Legal Process Outsourcing.” According to Potnis, Manthan has roughly 280 lawyers — 140 senior attorneys, and 140 more junior colleagues who do paralegal-type work — and they stand ready to help law firms cut costs (and increase profits).

Potnis thinks a “tectonic shift” is taking place in the legal industry, and he believes his company is well-positioned to take advantage of the new market. According to him, he’s got law firm clients on his side: “For the first time, the large law firms are being asked by their customers: ‘Are you efficient?’” The market change that we are now seeing “is 99% being driven by customers.”

Manthan Legal is positioned differently from its Indian competitors in legal outsourcing. It works primarily for law firms rather than in-house counsel:

Right now, 90% of the [outsourcing] industry is being driven by corporate counsel [i.e., in-house lawyers]. At some point in time, they’ve been exposed to the concept of having to get the maximum amount of work from the minimum budget….

[I]n the short term, the corporate counsel will drive [the outsourcing trend]. But in the long term, the law firms will have to develop an alternate billing model.

And under these alternative billing models, outsourcing may have an important role to play.

What can outsourcing firms offer? Junior associates might not like it, but managing partners will have to start paying attention. More after the jump.

The California Supreme Court might have upheld Proposition 8, but those who are trying to use the courts to promulgate a notion of fundamental fairness for gays and lesbians are not done. In fact, the battle has just begun:

In a bold move that takes a new approach to achieving marriage equality, two attorneys who argued opposing sides of the 2000 Bush v. Gore lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court have filed a challenge to Proposition 8 in federal court, …

Theodore B. Olson, the U.S. solicitor general from 2001 to 2004 under President George W. Bush, and David Boies, a high-profile trial lawyer who argued on behalf of former vice president Al Gore, filed the suit May 22 in U.S. district court on behalf of two California gay couples

This is like Professor Charles Xavier and Magneto joining forces to stop the federal government, only if the movie was any good.

But will it work? ABC News has this quote from Mr. Olson:

Olson said that recent US Supreme Court rulings “make it clear that individuals are entitled to be treated equally under the Constitution. I’m reasonably confident that this is the right time for these [injustices] to be vindicated.”

Paging President Obama after the jump.

* Save the date. David Lat will be trying to help people restart their careers in a couple of weeks. [New York City Bar]

* Many of you know that our own Kashmir Hill has been exploring privacy law over at True/Slant the past couple of months. I’m getting into the mix over there too, as I continue my Quixotic quest to really annoy white people. [True/Slant]

* Really, Alfred P. Doolittle had it right all along when he said: “I’m ain’t pretending to be deserving. I’m undeserving, and I mean to go on being undeserving. I like, and that’s the truth.” [What About Clients?]

* We close the book on Prop 8, for now … [Law Dork 2.0]

* Okay, domestic violence is bad. So, if you are going to make an ad discouraging domestic violence, is there really a need to be confusing about your point? [Copyranter]

* Important safety tips for creating a practitioner’s website and want to generate business. [New York Personal Injury Law Blog]

* When teenage girls attack. [Popsquire]

* Towel Day is finally here. I’d have sent in a pic but, I air dry. [Cyberlaw Central via Blawg Review]

In about 15 minutes or so, the California Supreme Court will issue its decision in three cases challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in that state. The decision will be posted on the court’s website at 10 a.m. Pacific time (or 1 p.m. Eastern time). We’re putting up this post now, to get the discussion going, and then we’ll update once the decision comes in.

Update (1:10 PM): The court’s website is still down, but there’s this from the San Francisco Chronicle: “The California Supreme Court upheld Prop. 8 by a 6-1 vote but ruled that the same sex marriages performed last year can stand.”

Update (1:15 PM): The Los Angeles Times has this write-up, which notes:

The California Supreme Court today upheld Proposition 8’s ban on same-sex marriage but also ruled that gay couples who wed before the election will continue to be married under state law.

The decision virtually ensures another fight at the ballot box over marriage rights for gays. Gay rights activists say they may ask voters to repeal the marriage ban as early as next year, and opponents have pledged to fight any such effort. Proposition 8 passed with 52% of the vote.

Although the court split 6-1 on the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the justices were unanimous in deciding to keep intact the marriages of as many as 18,000 gay couples who exchanged vows before the election. The marriages began last June, after a 4-3 state high court ruling striking down the marriage ban last May….

Only Justice Carlos R. Moreno, the court’s sole Democrat, wanted Proposition 8 struck down as an illegal constitutional revision.

So much for Justice Moreno as a possible U.S. Supreme Court justice (although, having missed out on the Souter seat, he’ll probably be too old anyway when the next vacancy comes up).

Update (1:20 PM): Here is a link to the court’s opinion (PDF).

Background and links about the case, after the jump.

Last month, K&L Gates fired 115 people: 36 associates and 79 staffers.

But since then, K&L Gates has made a number of smaller staff cuts in a number of its offices, including Pittsburgh and Chicago.

The firm refused to comment on its latest reductions. But our sources report that around 20 staffers have been let go from the firm today and over the last couple of weeks. The cuts are coming in the departments you’d expect when a firm is trying to reduce costs. Mailroom staff, the floating secretarial pool, these are the people getting hit right now.

Tipsters also report that in Chicago at least, the recent cuts are Bell Boyd & Lloyd legacy staffers.

Still, it’s got to be particularly tough to survive the K&L Gates March cuts, only to be caught on the backswing now. Nobody is truly “safe” in this economy, but you’d like job security to be a little more than a month-to-month proposition.

Kilpatrick Stockton fires associates after the jump.

Despite the skepticism of Above the Law commenters, David Post, writing for the Volokh Conspiracy, decided to do some research into possible legal claims available to deferred or laid -off incoming associates.

A particularly litigious incoming first-year will be happy to see the fruits of Professor Post’s efforts:

[I]t turns out things are a little more complicated than one might have thought (or than the folks on ATL might have realized, had they not been so busy mocking ideas into silence). Turns out there have been a bunch of cases on this very question, and the outcomes, perhaps surprisingly or perhaps not, go in both directions. A good ALR annotation collects the cases together [1 ALR 5th 401 (“Employer’s state-law liability for withdrawing, or substantially altering, job offer for indefinite period before employee actually commences employment”)].

It would be nothing short of fascinating if — instead of unleashing rats on the Lipstick Building on May Day — an associate actually took on their former firm based on a theory of promissory estoppel.

Not that anybody should actually try, but the best available arguments after the jump.

Vermont has become the latest state to legalize same sex marriages. And just in time for Passover/Easter. The Wall Street Journal reports:

The state legislature voted Tuesday to override Gov. Jim Douglas’ veto of a bill allowing gays and lesbians to marry. The vote was 23-5 to override in the state Senate and 100-49 to override in the House. Under Vermont law, two-thirds of each chamber had to vote for override.

The list of states where gays and lesbians can now enjoy all of the Revolutionary Road misery of married life now includes: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, and now Vermont. That’s eight percent of the states in the nation. Federalist paper #10 is in the house.

The debate is sure to rage on, but isn’t California’s Proposition 8 starting to look suspiciously like the Dred Scott decision? The defeat at the polls seems to have electrified the pro-gay rights movement.

Feel the love.

Vermont Legalizes Gay Marriage [Wall Street Journal]

Earlier: Iowa Supreme Court Strikes Down Gay Marriage Ban
Connecticut Shows California How We Roll On The East Side

* The vultures are circling around Dreier LLP’s Park Avenue office—an auctioneer’s website reads “everything must be sold,” but Dreier’s indictment last week says he must forfeit the firm’s assets—the prosecutors and bankruptcy trustee will have to fight it out. [The National Law Journal]

* “U.K. regulatory lawyers advising clients on the financial crisis and scandals bill as much $1,440 an hour.” “It’s our time in the sun,” says regulatory lawyer Darren Fox—alright Fox, wipe that smug look off your face—just because former M&A lawyers in the states can’t even get volunteer jobs—doesn’t make it OK to gloat. [Bloomberg.com]

* The Connecticut Attorney General got aggressive about AIG bonuses over the weekend. The outrage continues with new information that AIG payed out $218 million in bonuses, more than the $165 originally reported.[The Los Angeles Times]

* Enron executive Scott Yeager will be the first to bring his case before the U.S. Supreme Court. [The Houston Chronicle]

* SCOTUS will review “Hillary: The Movie,” and decide whether the scathing documentary should have been regulated as a campaign ad. [The Associated Press]

* A specialist on law firm finances says New York firms need to follow each others lead and re-shape associate pay—replacing “lockstep” with merit pay. [The Lawyer.com]

* An interesting case for the judge’s probable ruling to uphold Proposition 8 from a progressive gay marriage supporter. [The Washington Post]