Disasters / Emergencies
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Biglaw, Disasters / Emergencies
How Are Biglaw Firms Dealing With The D.C. Snowpocalypse?
Do you want to build a snowman? You may have to in order to leave your house. Please stay safe out there! -
Biglaw, Disasters / Emergencies, Partner Issues
Biglaw Partner Rescues Stranger From Being Hit By Subway Train
Don't you wish you had partners like this working at your firm? - Sponsored
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Learn how emerging tools will likely change and enhance the work of lawyers for years to come in this new report. -
Airplanes / Aviation, Disasters / Emergencies
Well-Known Lawyer Killed In Fiery Plane Crash
A witness who saw the plane crash believes the passengers' last moments must have been truly horrid.
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Disasters / Emergencies, Small Law Firms
Law Firm Is Destroyed After Bus Crashes Into Building
Just when you thought the summer of 2015 could be no worse for lawyers, this happens. -
Disasters / Emergencies, Small Law Firms
Another Day, Another Law Firm Bombing
We're sad to report this news, but law firm bombings seem to be en vogue right now. -
Bar Exams, Disasters / Emergencies
The Bar Exam: Remember It Could Be Worse
Before you complain about your bathroom break, just remember that last year's test was an all-around epic fail. -
Disasters / Emergencies, In-House Counsel
The Road Not Taken: Triage
What happens when you've got a personal emergency during work? You learn how to triage and give up control. -
Bar Exams, Biglaw, Crime, Disasters / Emergencies, Health Care / Medicine, Law School Deans, Law Schools, Morning Docket
Morning Docket: 10.22.14
* Squire Patton Boggs may be lobbying for Ebola drugs, but Reed Smith has launched a Global Ebola Task Force. Don’t worry, folks, the firm doesn’t want to “sensationalize” the outbreak. [Washingtonian]
* Hong Kong is great for lawyers interested in corporate misconduct. “I’ve barely had a weekend off for the last eight months,” says this partner who’s really excited about a not having a life. [Bloomberg]
* As we noted, New York is considering adopting the Uniform Bar Exam. Touro Law’s dean thinks the format change could be “jolting” for students, but the head of the NY BOLE doesn’t agree. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Wayne State Law is freezing tuition and giving a scholarship to incoming student that’s equal to a 14 percent tuition cut. That’s one way to combat a 13 percent drop in enrollment. [Detroit Free Press]
* Whittier Law is one of the “most challenged” when it comes to its graduates’ ability to obtain legal employment. Just one in four students gets to be a lawyer after graduation. [Orange County Register]
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Department of Justice, Disasters / Emergencies, Election Law, General Counsel, Law Schools, Morning Docket, Prisons, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, SCOTUS, Supreme Court, Texas, Trials
Morning Docket: 10.20.14
* The Supreme Court is allowing Texas to enforce its strict voter identification law during the upcoming election, but Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, hero to the masses, wrote a rather scathing dissent in opposition. [New York Times]
* Michael Millikin, GM’s beleaguered GC, will be stepping down from his position while the Justice Department continues its probe into the company’s fatal ignition switch failures. A replacement has not yet been named. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Baltimore Law and Maryland’s HBCUs hooked up to assist underrepresented minorities get into law school. Full scholarships come with GPAs of at least 3.5 and LSAT scores of at least 152. [USA Today]
* Kent Easter, the lawyer who was convicted for planting drugs in a school volunteer’s car, was sentenced to serve six months in jail. His law license will likely be suspended (just like his wife’s was). [OC Weekly]
* Accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev isn’t doing well in court, and his trial hasn’t even started yet. Motions to dismiss his case and to suppress evidence were denied. [National Law Journal]
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Disasters / Emergencies, Intellectual Property, Technology
Stat Of The Week: This Is Exactly Why We Have Intellectual Property Rights
How much for a "disease domain"? -
American Bar Association / ABA, Biglaw, Disasters / Emergencies, Drugs, Federal Judges, Law Schools, Marijuana, Morning Docket, Student Loans
Morning Docket: 08.11.14
* Baker & McKenzie was bumped from the top spot in the Global 100 last year when DLA Piper swooped in to steal the firm’s glory. This year, B&M is back with a vengeance, and richer than ever. Take that, DLA dopes. [Am Law Daily]
* “I’m pretty sure I just got fired.” Before the bud business was big enough for Biglaw, the mere suggestion of going green was allegedly enough to warrant some pretty major disciplinary action from a leading law firm. [National Law Journal]
* Judge Thomas Griesa is toying with holding Argentina in contempt for saying that it didn’t default. Argentina struck back with the social media hashtag #GrieFault. Clever. [DealBook / New York Times]
* Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s defense team has an expert who says that any jury in Massachusetts will be tainted because of the “inflammatory” news coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing. [WSJ Law Blog]
* The ABA’s new Task Force on the Financing of Legal Education held its first public hearing to try to figure out why law school tuition is high. The ABA is so late to the party it’s not even funny. [ABA Journal]
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Airplanes / Aviation, Biglaw, Deaths, Disasters / Emergencies, Quote of the Day
Biglaw Firm Mourns Partner Killed In MH17 Crash
Was he the only lawyer aboard the doomed flight? -
Biglaw, Billable Hours, Courthouses, Disasters / Emergencies, Food, Free Speech, Morning Docket, S.D.N.Y., SCOTUS, Supreme Court, U.S. Attorneys Offices
Morning Docket: 06.27.14
* Funny that SCOTUS just struck down a law imposing a 35-foot buffer zone around abortion clinics, yet it heavily enforces its own buffer zone. Some call it “supreme irony.” [WSJ Law Blog]
* Despite the slacking demand for legal services — down by 8.8 percent in terms of billable hours — members of the Am Law 100 still managed to keep their heads above water. [Am Law Daily]
* Lorin Reisner, chief of the criminal division of S.D.N.Y.’s USAO and Preet Bharara’s right-hand man on Wall Street convictions, is leaving for greener pastures at Paul Weiss. Congrats! [Reuters]
* New York State’s highest court has rejected New York City’s ban on gigantic drinks that was previously proposed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Go on, have yourself a nice Quadruple Big Gulp. [Bloomberg]
* When the long arm of the law flushes the toilet, it sometimes explodes, raining down jagged shards of justice. But on a more serious note, we’re happy no one was hurt at this courthouse. [Billings Gazette]
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Biglaw, Celebrities, Disasters / Emergencies, Guns / Firearms, Law Firm Mergers, Law Professors, Law School Deans, Law Schools, Money, Morning Docket, Movies, Patton Boggs, Student Loans, Violence
Morning Docket: 04.03.14
* Dentons still has the urge to merge with a U.S. firm, and now it’s trying to tempt Patton Boggs away from Squire Sanders with a “serious overture.” Bow chika bow wow. [The Lawyer]
* Despite all the outrage over Albany Law’s faculty buyouts, some have already accepted the package offered. Looks like anything’s possible for the right price. [Albany Business Review]
* Guess which law school is cutting tuition by a whole lot? Some hints: it’s in New York and it’s been selling off real estate. We’ll have more on this later. [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]
* Perhaps this could be considered a gift of provisional accreditation: Alberto Gonzales, U.S. Attorney General in President George W. Bush’s administration, is now dean at Belmont Law. [The Tennessean]
* Take a look at this new paper by Professors Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld on race and culture in law school admissions. Actually, it’s fake, but it’s sad that it could, in theory, be very real. [Washington Post]
* Zac Efron is going to star as a Yale Law grad forced by criminals to work in the world’s largest Biglaw firm in a film adaptation of John Grisham’s book, The Associate. OMG, he’s so cute. [Hollywood Reporter]
* Our thoughts go out to the families of those wounded and killed during the Fort Hood shooting. [AP]
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Airplanes / Aviation, Biglaw, Celebrities, Disasters / Emergencies, Divorce Train Wrecks, Entertainment Law, Health Care / Medicine, John Roberts, Law Schools, Mergers and Acquisitions, Morning Docket, SCOTUS, Supreme Court
Morning Docket: 03.26.14
* After forcing Solicitor General Donald Verrilli to acknowledge that the Affordable Care Act could force for-profit corporations to pay for employees’ abortions, Chief Justice John Roberts seemed rather pleased with himself. [New York Times]
* Sidley Austin just hired a major M&A heavy hitter away from General Electric’s legal department. Congratulations to Chris Barbuto. We suppose he can make it rain as outside counsel now. [DealBook / New York Times]
* Because there’s no time too soon for an ambulance airplane chaser, the beginnings of the first lawsuit lodged against Malaysian Air after Flight 370′s probable crash was filed in court yesterday. [Bloomberg]
* UC Hastings and Iowa are the latest law schools to offer 3+3 accelerated degree programs. What a great recruiting tool for Iowa, which recently saw enrollment levels plunge by 40 percent. [National Law Journal]
* One month after the internet exploded with rumors of Gwyneth Paltrow having an affair with entertainment lawyer Kevin Yorn, the star announced her split from her husband. Coincidence? [New York Daily News]
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Disasters / Emergencies, In-House Counsel
Moonlighting: A Brief Moment That Took Me Out For A Year
Welcome back, Susan! We really missed you and are so glad you're okay! -
Animal Law, Attorney Misconduct, Baseball, Biglaw, California, Contracts, Death Penalty, Disasters / Emergencies, DUI / DWI, Kids, Lateral Moves, Law Professors, Law Schools, Non-Sequiturs, Television
Non-Sequiturs: 02.05.14
* Randy Levine, president of the New York Yankees, has left Akin Gump’s dugout. He hopes to hit it out of the park and slide into his new home at Jackson Lewis. Please, no more baseball references. :( [Am Law Daily] * Thanks to Virginia, the electric chair may be making a comeback when drugs for lethal injection aren’t available. OMG, that’s so freakin’ lame. Bring back the breaking wheel or death by disembowelment. [Gawker] * A lawyer won’t have to pay an ex-law student $1M after making a hyperbolic challenge in a TV interview. Better luck reading the Leonard v. Pepsico case next time, pal. [Volokh Conspiracy / Washington Post] * Protip: when you’ve been suspended for your “contemptuous attitude,” bragging that one of the judges who disciplined you thinks you’re “probably the best DUI lawyer” isn’t smart. [Santa Barbara Independent] * If you watch The Walking Dead, you’ve probably wondered if all of the killing was legal — because you’re a lawyer, and you can’t enjoy anything anymore. Here’s your answer, from a UC Hastings Law prof. [GQ] * If you’d like your chickens to live a life of luxury before you eat them and their eggs, then you’re going to love this law in California. If not, you can move to Missouri. See Elie squawk about it here. [ATL Redline] * Ian Whittle, a recent George Mason Law grad, took a break from watching the saddest Super Bowl ever to save a little girl from drowning in a pond. Check out the news coverage, after the jump. [CBS 6 WTVR] -
Career Center, Career Files, Disasters / Emergencies, Lawyers
From The Career Files: A New Paradigm For Attorney Time Management
Cami McLaren, author of Coaching for Attorneys: Improving Productivity and Achieving Balance, offers helpful tips for improving attorney time management. -
Allen & Overy, Biglaw, Contract Attorneys, Disasters / Emergencies, Insurance, Intellectual Property, Jersey Shore, Job Searches, Law School Deans, Law Schools, Magic Circle, Morning Docket, Patents, United Kingdom / Great Britain, Women's Issues
Morning Docket: 11.26.13
* You’d think that when discussing major reforms to the patent system, the director of the USPTO would be there, but you’d be wrong. You’d also be wrong if you thought we had a director right now. [National Law Journal]
* Welcome to the future of Biglaw: Allen & Overy has realized that it’s a waste of money to keep hiring in a weak market, so the firm is recruiting its alumni to serve as contract attorneys in times of higher legal demand. [Legal Week]
* Dean Gregory Maggs, the interim leader of George Washington University Law, is being lauded for increasing first-year enrollment by 22 percent in a time of crisis. Excellent work, sir. You flood that job market. [GW Hatchet]
* Just because you have a law degree doesn’t mean you’re “entitled to rise up and become partner.” Getting a job in the new normal involves having a good attitude and social graces. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Ladies, if you get pregnant after a fling with an Olympic medalist and move out of state, please know your “appropriation of the child while in utero [will be deemed] irresponsible, reprehensible.” [New York Times]
* GTL stands for “Gym, Tan, Laundry,” but the owner of these Jersey Shore nightclubs thinks it stands for “Gym, Tan, Lawsuit” — thanks to losses uncovered by its insurer in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. [Newark Star-Ledger]
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9th Circuit, Disasters / Emergencies, Intellectual Property, Jay Bybee, JPMorgan Chase, Jury Duty, Non-Sequiturs, Technology
Non-Sequiturs: 11.20.13
* CeeLo Green, through his attorney, tells the judge and prosecutors in his criminal case to, um, Forget themselves. He’s miffed that the judge and prosecutors set up cameras during his arraignment and left themselves out of the shot creating a false impression of guilt. This marks the first time this guy didn’t want a camera fixated solely on him. [TMZ] * Samsung wants a mistrial in its case with Apple because Apple’s attorney, Harold McElhinny, implied in his closing argument that American-made jobs building TV sets moved overseas because companies failed to protect intellectual property. Samsung is arguing that this is racist. [Bloomberg] * Remember the matter of the attorney supposedly stalking a jury? Well, the judge has overturned the verdict over it. [Courthouse News Service] * A week in the life of a Biglaw litigation associate. It’s a decent list, but where were the Thursday Night Football and Netflix? You’ll see what I mean in the next story. [Big Law Rebel] * JPMorgan is awfully sorry for making the conscious decision to sell toxic securities that helped destroy the economy. “Our bad, y’all!” [Gawker] * The justices who penned Bush v. Gore shamelessly admitted how terrible the decision was by trying to claim it had no precedential value. Unfortunately, no one listened to them. [Mother Jones] * In addition to the many law firms that are contributing to Typhoon Haiyan relief efforts, several Asian-American lawyer groups are organizing a fundraising event this coming Monday. If you’re in New York, please consider attending! [Facebook; AABANY] * In sad news, the son of Ninth Circuit Judge Jay Bybee shot and killed himself in the courtyard of the LDS Temple in Henderson, NV. Our thoughts are with Judge Bybee and his family. [Las Vegas Review-Journal (gavel bang: Las Vegas Law Blog)]