[Ed. note: This is the farewell post of MARIN, who was recently eliminated from ATL Idol, the "reality blogging" competition that will determine ATL's next editor. It is marked with Marin's avatar (at right).]

Marinheads:

Bad news. Our plot to take over ATL and transform it into a site about celebrities and my Jewish dog has failed. Mission aborted. Repeat, mission aborted. Return to the mother ship.

- Original Marinhead, a/k/a Mongoloid Marin, d.b.a Clay Aiken

See below. You know what to do.

Voting for round 2 will end on MONDAY, AUGUST 11, at noon (Eastern time). The two contestants with the fewest votes will be eliminated, and the remaining two will duke it out in the final round.

GOOD LUCK!!!

Happy Friday! You know what that means: time to hear from the celebrity judges in ATL Idol, the "reality blogging" competition in which you will select the next editor of Above the Law. And time to vote, when the polls open later today.

Your judges need no introduction, but for the record:

[Ed. note: This post is by SOPHIST, one of the finalists in ATL Idol, the "reality blogging" competition that will determine ATL's next editor. It is marked with Sophist's avatar (at right).]

Thanks to all who participated in rounds one and two of the Lionel Hutz Invitational. Today we crown the most unrealistic fictional attorney of the past 18 years (subject to other completely arbitrary disclaimers and conditions, stated and imaginary).

The finalists share one thing in common; they represent clients far dumber than they.

Congratulations to readers' choice winner LeBron James. He played LeBron James on brain steroids in the popular commercial, entitled "I'm pretty sure we can get idiots to purchase water with food-coloring in it if we call it Super-Water."

Vote in the final poll after the jump.

[Ed. note: This post is by FROLIC & DETOUR, one of the finalists in ATL Idol, the "reality blogging" competition that will determine ATL's next editor. It is marked with Frolic & Detour's avatar (at right).]

Many thanks to those who wrote in about their creepy, sadistic, and otherwise entertaining legal bosses.

Our first nominee, Judge Suzanne B. Conlon, earned her place in bossal history by firing a clerk for complying with an evacuation order on Sep. 11, 2001.

Read about her competition, courtesy of some long-suffering ATL readers, after the jump.

Welcome to the first half of this week's "head-to-head" round in ATL Idol, the reality-TV-style talent search for Above the Law's new editor. The second half of the head-to-head round will published later this afternoon.

To refresh your recollection, here's how this round will work:

The head-to-head round is designed to serve as a test of pure writing ability. We'll publish the contestants' different takes on two similar stories. Two ATL Idols were randomly assigned one story, and two were randomly assigned another.

The head-to-head round is designed to show how the bloggers write up the same or similar stories, to eliminate any advantage from story selection. Story selection is an important skill for bloggers, but it's one that the contestants have demonstrated in their features and freestyle posts.

Just like last week, this round will be reviewed by ATL's panel of celebrity judges: Ann Althouse, Tom Goldstein, and Dahlia Lithwick.

Check out the first half of the head-to-head round, in which MARIN and ALEX write about the same story, after the jump.

[Ed. note: This post is by FROLIC & DETOUR, one of the finalists in ATL Idol, the "reality blogging" competition that will determine ATL's next editor. It is marked with Frolic & Detour's avatar (at right).]

Demanding bosses come with the territory in our line of work. Several less-than-loving legal employers have been profiled here on ATL, and you've shared some fine examples of bossal abuse. But until today, we've never undertaken a search for the worst boss in the legal profession.

This week, we want to find the ultimate briefcase-hurling, insult-spewing master of the legal boss's art. ATL will get the ball rolling by offering the first nominee:

Senior Judge Suzanne B. Conlon, a living legend of the Northern District of Illinois, is a true judicial diva. She even fired a staff member who refused to carry the judge's lunch up 17 flights of stairs on a day when the elevators weren't working. But those in the know tell us that Judge Conlon didn't reach the pinnacle of her achievements in bossery until September 11, 2001.

Judge Conlon is famous for her punctuality and for her ruthless enforcement of deadlines. So when federal marshals evacuated the Dirksen courthouse that sunny morning, she stayed put in her chambers. One clerk began to make made preparations to leave, per the instructions of the guys with guns. Judge Conlon decreed [paraphrasing]: "It is a TUESDAY, you are here till SIX, and if you leave, don't come back."

So he left and didn't come back.

Can you top this, readers? We bet you can. Tell us why your boss (or former boss) deserves the Worst Legal Boss honor at frolicndetour.atl.idol@gmail.com or in the comments. We'll select the most outstanding candidates and post the full list of nominees on Thursday.

[Ed. note: This is the farewell post of EXLEY, who was eliminated yesterday from ATL Idol, the "reality blogging" competition that will determine ATL's next editor. It is marked with Exley's avatar (at right).]

When I was a teenager, some of my classmates and I got bussed to a public high school 40 minutes away. We were part of a program for social outcasts who scored well on a couple of standardized IQ tests, and we applied all of our angst and intellect to harassing our bus drivers -- we bellowed Queen's "We Will Rock You" at the top of our lungs, we threw our lunches and snowballs at other cars to try to cause accidents (sometimes successfully), and once on our way home we all stared stonily at the bus driver by way of his rear view mirror until he finally cracked, turned the bus around, and drove us back to school.

Through my brief stint as an ATL Idol contestant, I've come to appreciate both what Lat does, and how those poor high school bus drivers must've felt. You guys are as unruly as a centaur's dark and frothy pubes.

Read more, after the jump.

Thanks to everyone who voted in Round 1 of ATL Idol, the "reality blogging" contest that will determine the next editor of Above the Law. The polls just closed, at noon. Voter turnout was strong, with almost 1800 votes cast.

It was a competitive race. The top three finishers were within a few points of each other (and the top two were especially close). Here are the results:

Congratulations to MARIN, SOPHIST, ALEX, and FROLIC AND DETOUR, who will all move into Round 2 of the competition. Saying farewell is EXLEY (who plans to pen a farewell post that we will bring you later).

Here's what to expect from your ATL Idols this week:

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for. The polls in ATL Idol, our effort to find this site's next top blogger, are open. You can text your vote to Ryan Seacrest vote for your favorite Idol in the online poll, below.

Polls will remain open over the weekend. Voting for round 1 will conclude on MONDAY, AUGUST 4, at noon (Eastern time). The one contestant with the fewest votes will be eliminated. The remaining four will move into round 2.

GOOD LUCK!!!

Earlier: Prior ATL Idol coverage (scroll down)

Later today, we will open the reader polls in ATL Idol, the "reality blogging" competition in which you will select the next editor of Above the Law. Before we do that, however, we'd like to give our panel of "celebrity judges" the chance to weigh in on the contestants.

Reader opinions on the competitors have been all over the map, as well as overwhelming in volume, with hundreds of comments posted in total. So hopefully this concise commentary, from experts in legal blogging, will be clarifying.

To refresh your recollection, the distinguished judges are:

Here's the second half of the "head-to-head" round of ATL Idol. If you're not up to speed on what's going on, background information is available in this prior post (or just scroll down the front page).

You can check out the second half of the head-to-head round, featuring the blogging of FROLIC AND DETOUR, SOPHIST, and MARIN, after the jump.

Earlier today, we announced that the new editor of Above the Law was going to be picked by you, the readers of the site, through a "reality blogging" competition. We provided some initial information about the contest over here.

We urged you to check back later in the day for the contestants' bios. "Later" is now; the short intro posts of the competitors are finally available. We apologize for the delay.

Check out the six contestants' capsule biographies, after the jump.

Six lawyers, currently or formerly at large law firms, hoping to make the jump to the writing life (read: working in pajamas). One leading legal tabloid, in need of its next lead editor. A mass of angry anonymous commenters, looking for someone new with whom to have a love-hate relationship.

"THIS.... is ATL Idol."

It's a reality-show-style competition, in which site readers will pick the new editor in chief of AboveTheLaw.com -- the recipient of some 3 million page views a month, described by the Washington Post as "a must-read legal blog." We believe it to be the first time that a full-time blogging gig -- one with a salary you can live on, health insurance, and even a 401(k) -- has been awarded through a "reality blogging" contest.

Back in May, we posted a help wanted ad for a new full-time writer here at Above the Law. Over the weeks that followed, we received a slew of excellent applications. We also located additional prospects through personal networking. All in all, we probably considered almost 100 talented candidates.

We narrowed the list down to six highly impressive finalists. But we found the prospect of choosing just one of them to be agonizing.

So we've decided to outsource this task to you, the readership of Above the Law. Over the next three weeks, the finalists will blog on ATL, for your consideration. Just as they would on a true reality TV show, the "assignments" will vary from week to week (details about them to follow).

Each Friday, we will open the polls, allowing you to vote for your favorite -- the blogger you'd like to see take the helm at this venerable legal tabloid. At the end of week one, the bottom two out of six finalists -- the pair of contestants with the fewest votes -- will be eliminated. Next week, the reader vote will take four finalists down to two. In the third and final week, the two finalists will go head to head, in a legal blogging deathmatch. Your votes will determine the winner, Above the Law's new leader.

ATL readers are an opinionated bunch, so we expect you to have strong views about the contestants (which you should feel free to share in the comments). But to those of you who need more guidance when voting, fear not. Just like American Idol, ATL Idol will provide you with three "celebrity judges," to offer their expert opinions of the contestants' blogging, and to inform and guide the electorate.

Our judges, who are all leading legal bloggers in their own right, need no introduction. But we'll introduce them anyway, briefly. They are (in alphabetical order):

A clear winner emerged from the 2499 votes on ATL's Tighty-Whities caption contest:

The man in the photo is David Remes, a partner at Covington & Burling -- but not for long, as reported by the Legal Times. From the WSJ Law Blog:

David Remes, who made Law Blog headlines last week for removing his pants at a news conference in Yemen, is leaving the firm, according to the Legal Times, which reported the news over the weekend. Remes will reportedly devote himself exclusively to human rights litigation.

Last week, we reported that Remes (Columbia, Harvard Law), who's representing 15 Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo Bay, removed his pants at a news conference in Yemen. Remes was attempting to demonstrate what he feels are the inappropriate body searches that detainees are undergoing several times per day.

"At the press conference in Yemen -- this is a society where the rule of morality is so strict -- I wanted to drive home the degree of humiliation that these searches cause by illustrating a typical body search," Remes told the LB.

Biglaw doesn't like seeing those kinds of briefs.

Remes Resigns from Covington & Burling [BLT]
David Remes, Who Dropped His Pants in Yemen, to Leave Covington [Wall Street Journal Law Blog]

Earlier: 'Tighty-Whities' Caption Contest Finalists

We're currently running a caption contest for the photo at right. We're not the only ones with an ongoing legally-themed caption contest. If one flips to the back of the current infamous New Yorker issue, the cartoon for their caption contest (Contest #153) is set in a courtroom. We'll keep an eye on that contest, and issue an opinion on the finalists when they are announced.

We prefer not to give you the context for caption contest photos, but the background on this one is as exposed as the lawyer in the photo. It's up on Yahoo! News, the WSJ Law Blog, and the ABA Journal, among other places. It got more publicity over the weekend, with the news that David Remes, the pants-dropping partner in the picture, is leaving Covington & Burling (as reported by the Legal Times; see also the WSJ, via New York magazine).

We're pushing on with the contest, since we had over 200 entries. These are our finalists:

A. "Ladies and gentlemen, I'll be brief..."

B. "Million Dollar Pants Lawsuit: Part 2"

C. "Ya know, John, I think the school board had something else in mind when they asked for an assembly on the how the penal system works."

D. "Having been found guilty of malpractice, the lawyer literally had his pants sued off."

E. "Another unsuccessful effort to get 'junk' science before the jury."

F. "And now my junior partner has something he'd like to say..."

G. "[Y]our honor, i thought you said you wanted to take a closer look at the briefs."

H. "You think that jury was hung?"

I. "Counsel, the phrase 'may it please the court' is NOT a literal request."

J. "Other Van Winkle Law Firm partners have expressed concern that Joe represented his favorite extracurricular activity a little too enthusiastically in his 'Meet Joe' bio photo."

Okay, they're not really "new"; they were issued last month, which is when we started getting blast emails from law firms touting their strong showings. But as TaxProf Blog recently reminded us, the influential Chambers USA rankings, of law firms and individual attorneys, are now available.

If you're not familiar with them, the Chambers rankings are explained well in this New York Observer piece, from 2005, by Anna Schneider-Mayerson:

In a market choked with legal directories consisting solely of the dry vitae and coordinates of the top practitioners, the [Chambers USA guide], a real doorstop at nearly 1,500 pages, has a colorful Zagat-style take on the field. It not only ranks the top dogs in each field of law, pitting them against each other in neat little blue charts, it also assesses the lawyers who make it onto its lists, complete with coddling commentary from clients and peers.... It's perfect for lawyers: rational and ordered, yet gossipy in its own guarded and libel-checked way. And taken as a whole, it's becoming the field guide par excellence to Manhattan's legal set.

If you have any thoughts on this year's rankings -- who was justly praised, who got shafted, who's overrated, who received amusing / snarky comments from reviewers -- feel free to share, in this open thread.

Chambers USA law firm and lawyer rankings [official website]
Law Firm Corporate Tax Rankings [TaxProf Blog]
I'll See You in Chambers! Lawyers Ga-Ga for Guide [New York Observer]

Because we only had two LEWW winning couples for May, we're throwing this week's runners-up -- also very strong contenders -- into the mix for your consideration.

If you're ready to vote, here's the poll.

If you don't know who the heck these people are, click on the link below to read all about our fabulous finalists.

Over 3500 votes are in, and the winner of the Lady Justice ATL caption contest is...

The setting is the Shreveport federal court in Lousiana, and the man taking a moment to reflect is Caddo District Judge Michael Walker. Unfortunately, he and fellow judge Vernon Claville were not as intimate with Lady Justice as they should have been. They were convicted last month on racketeering charges. From the Shreveport Times:

Walker, who oversaw the drug section in Caddo District Court, and Claville, a juvenile judge, were convicted of racketeering charges stemming from a corruption investigation that began nearly five years ago. The government said the pair took cash payments from Travis McCullough, an informant, to lessen the cost for inmates to be released from jail.

Both judges have been sent to correctional facilities. But KSLA News reports that they will still receive state pensions when they "retire" on July 2. Good old Louisiana.

Federal jury convicts two Caddo judges [Shreveport Times]
Two Caddo judges on trial [Shreveport Times]
Convicted Caddo judges now in federal jail, will still get pensions [KSLA TV]

Earlier: ATL Lady Justice Caption Contest Finalists: Time to Vote!

We had over 200 entries in the ATL Lady Justice caption contest. We've narrowed the field to our ten favorites, and listed them in order of posting time. You get to vote for the best one.

A. "One more push and we'll have room for that ten commandments statue..."

B. "Lady Justice, I sued my drycleaner for $5M and lost. What should I do now?"

C. After being screwed so much by the Bush administration, a doctor confirms that Lady Justice has become pregnant.

D. "I don't care who you are, nobody gets into this building with a headscarf."

E. Upholding justice, literally...

F. I'm sorry, but as the hiring partner at Paul Hastings, I have to check.

G. It's about time somebody pushed back against Justice.

H. The DC Circuit just ruled in our favor. We will soon be able to use paper money without needing everything to be in singles.

I. Attempted statutory rape.

J. I'm sorry; we don't permit justice in the Texas court system.

Earlier: ATL Caption Contest: Lady Justice