Drugs

  • Drugs, Football, Kramer Levin, Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 11.14.13

    * So we’ve had some technical difficulties this morning. Sorry all. So let’s kick off this abbreviated morning docket with news that Robert Dell will retire from Latham & Watkins at the end of 2014 after helming the firm for 20 years. [The Am Law Daily]

    * Dwayne Bowe was arrested for alleged marijuana possession. He’s still going to start on Sunday though in case you were relying on his almost unnoticeable fantasy football impact this year. Remember when I didn’t understand the “Weeden Wayne Bowe” joke. Good times! [Kansas City Star]

    * Whitey Bulger considers his trial a sham. He’ll be sentenced this morning. [LA Times]

    * Former NBCUniversal General Counsel Lawrence Tu was named top lawyer at CBS. Congrats on “pulling a Letterman.” [Deadline]

    * Sean Coffey is joining Kramer Levin. He previously headed up a litigation financing company. So when David asked if litigation finance was the hot new trend, apparently the answer is “no.” [New York Times / Dealbook]

  • 2nd Circuit, Antitrust, Antonin Scalia, Biglaw, Department of Justice, Drugs, Federal Judges, Labor / Employment, Morning Docket, Politics, Religion, SCOTUS, Shira Scheindlin, Supreme Court, Trials

    Morning Docket: 11.07.13

    * “What about devil worshippers?” Justice Scalia may think Satan’s gotten “wilier,” but that doesn’t mean his supporters don’t deserve religious representation in their public meetings. [WSJ Law Blog]

    * Speaker of the House John Boehner says that if the Employment Non-Discrimination Act passes, tons of lawsuits will be filed — except that hasn’t happened in states with similar laws. Oopsie… [Reuters]

    * Judge Shira Scheindlin isn’t going to just sit there and allow herself to be kicked off the stop and frisk case. In a rare move, she asked the Second Circuit to reverse its ruling and reinstate her. Go girl! [Reuters]

    * Quinn Emanuel is welcoming a frequent firm-hopper (from Sidley to Clifford Chance to Cleary Gottlieb) into its ranks in D.C. to join Weil defectors Mike Lyle and Eric Lyttle. Best of luck! [Am Law Daily]

    * Gibson Dunn scooped up Scott Hammond, a longtime leaders of the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division. Query just how large the dangling carrot at the end of the firm’s stick was. [Blog of Legal Times]

    * Till death or criminal charges do we part: troubled lawyer Kent Easter claims he didn’t have the backbone to stand up to his wife. He blames the entire drug-planting scandal on her. [L.A. Now / Los Angeles Times]

  • Biglaw, Drugs, Gay, Gay Marriage, Hedge Funds / Private Equity, Morning Docket, New Jersey, Partner Issues, SCOTUS, Supreme Court, Wall Street

    Morning Docket: 11.06.13

    * “Some discrimination’s okay. It’s only certain kinds that aren’t good.” We’ve got a feeling we know which side the Supreme Court will come out on when it comes to the Mount Holly Gardens case in New Jersey, so fare thee well, Fair Housing Act. [MSNBC]

    * Hallelujah! After last month’s miraculous news of this troubled firm finding a savior in Cooley LLP, the Left-Behinders of the Dow Lohnes partnership ranks are counting their blessings as they slowly but surely find new homes elsewhere. [Am Law Daily]

    * After a political process that’s lasted for ages, now all that’s needed is the governor’s signature, and then Illinois will become the 15th state to officially have legalized same-sex marriage. Hooray! [New York Times]

    * Lawyers for accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are annoyed that access to their client has been limited by jailhouse rules. A judge will slap down their motion next week. [National Law Journal]

    * Bring it on: To keep things “simple,” prosecutors have dropped two felony charges against Kent Easter, the lawyer who allegedly planted drugs on a PTA volunteer at his son’s school. [Navelgazing / OC Weekly]

    * What does SAC Capital’s $1.2 billion settlement with the government mean for the hedge fund industry? [DealBook / New York Times]

  • 2nd Circuit, 7th Circuit, American Bar Association / ABA, Biglaw, Drugs, Federal Judges, Gay, Health Care / Medicine, Job Searches, Marijuana, Morning Docket, Richard Posner, Shira Scheindlin, Unemployment

    Morning Docket: 11.04.13

    * Judge Richard Posner is the latest judge to have admitted to making a possible error (which he later endlessly recanted), but hey, if he was wrong, at least he was wrong in a “responsible, informed, and fair-minded way.” [National Law Journal]

    * After being unceremoniously tossed off New York’s stop and frisk case by the Second Circuit for her supposed “partiality,” Judge Shira Scheindlin has been replaced by Judge Analisa Torres. Best of luck — you might need it. [New York Law Journal]

    * Will Judge Scheindlin’s removal have a chilling effect on judicial speech? Lat thinks it would cause judges to “hide underneath their robes” even more than they already do. [Room for Debate / New York Times]

    * The Biglaw gay gross-up marches on: it’s funny that the most conservative industry is outpacing others in terms of progressive benefits for LGBT employees and families. [Capital Business / Washington Post]

    * “The U.S. is facing a paradox surrounding access to justice,” says ABA President James Silkenat, who is trying to kill two birds with one stone by pairing unemployed lawyers with poor clients. [Am Law Daily]

    * Bernie Goetz (aka the New York subway vigilante) was arrested on pot charges after allegedly offering to get an undercover cop high. We’ve got a feeling his new nickname will be “Burnie.” [New York Daily News]

  • Airplanes / Aviation, Antitrust, Bankruptcy, Biglaw, Breasts, D.C. Circuit, Deaths, Department of Justice, Dewey & LeBoeuf, Drugs, Mergers and Acquisitions, Money, Morning Docket, Police, Politics, Social Media, Twittering

    Morning Docket: 10.31.13

    * Let’s get ready to rumble! Senate Democrats are threatening to go “nuclear” on existing filibuster rules if Senate Republicans decide to band together to block Patricia Millett’s nomination to the D.C. Circuit. [New York Times]

    * AMR Corp. and US Airways are reportedly trying to broker a deal with the Department of Justice that would allow the airlines’ merger to go through. And this is the room full of people who care. [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]

    * Proskauer Rose and the zombie corpse of Dewey & LeBoeuf received a Halloween treat from Judge Martin Glenn in the MF Global case. The firms will each be receiving a combined $9 million for their work. [Am Law Daily]

    * Twitter is facing a $125 million fraud suit filed by two financial firms claiming that the social media giant had them organize a private sale of shares and then canceled it. #OhShiat #LawyerUp [Businessweek]

    * Jill Bjorkholm Easter, the lawyer accused of planting drugs on a PTA volunteer at her son’s school, has pleaded guilty to false imprisonment. Her hubby’s trial is next week. [L.A. Now / Los Angeles Times]

    * She’s got the right to remain topless: Holly Van Voast, the photographer famous for roaming the streets of New York with breasts bared, settled a lawsuit against the city for $40,000. [New York Daily News]

    * “Ed,” the anonymous editor of the defunct Blawg Review site, RIP. [Trial Warrior Blog; Simple Justice]

  • Banking Law, Drugs, Environment / Environmental Law, Law Schools, Marijuana, Morning Docket, Patents, SCOTUS, Supreme Court

    Morning Docket: 10.24.13

    * Parties in the greenhouse gas cases before SCOTUS have agreed to trim the number and length of their briefs to reduce the number of times “go f@ck yourself and die” is written. [Blog of Legal Times]

    * The latest patent reform bill up for debate promises that it will put an end to the trolls by forcing them to do more work before filing suit. If only it were that easy to keep the trolls at bay. [National Law Journal]

    * Do the hustle, and blame it on Becca! A jury has found that Bank of America is liable for selling defective mortgages, and the potential penalty could be up to $848 million. [DealBook / New York Times]

    * Since the law was puff, puff, passed, lawyers in Washington State have politely asked their Supreme Court if and when they’ll allowed to smoke weed and represent clients that sell it. [Corporate Counsel]

    * Class certification in the Alaburda v. TJSL lawsuit over allegedly deceptive employment statistics has officially been denied. We guess that all good things must come to an anticlimactic end. [ABA Journal]

    * Another law school gets it: the U. of St. Thomas will its freeze tuition at the low, low price of $36,843, allowing students to pay a flat fee for all three years of education. [Campus Confidential / Star Tribune]

    * If you’d like to ace your law school interviews (which apparently are a thing these days), it helps if your personality doesn’t inspire ritualistic seppuku. [Law Admissions Lowdown / U.S. News & World Report]

    * Michael Skakel, the Kennedy cousin convicted of killing, was granted a new trial due to ineffective assistance of counsel. Getting away with murder? Aww, welcome to the family, Mike! [Washington Post]

  • Sponsored

  • 10th Circuit, Christopher Christie, Drugs, Gay Marriage, Labor / Employment, Law Reviews, New Jersey, Non-Sequiturs, SCOTUS, Sports, Technology

    Non-Sequiturs: 10.21.13

    * Law firm Halloween party advice. I disagree with some of this — my “Sexy John Marshall” costume was always a hit. [Greedy Associates / FindLaw] * The Supreme Court is expected to review a 10th Circuit decision holding that corporations are people and can exercise religious rights. Hopefully the Supreme Court stops this madness before my cable company has the right to bear arms. [Constitutional Accountability Center] * Governor Chris Christie has dropped his appeal of the New Jersey court decision authorizing same-sex marriage. He finally worked out that his own homophobia wasn’t worth being on the wrong side of 61 percent of Jersey voters. [Politico] * Let’s go get some Molly! [Law and More] * California is tightening up its Workers’ Comp rules for former professional athletes. From now on, injured ex-jocks need to prove a more significant tie to the state to collect compensation. This presents a problem for a lot of former football players who now have to admit they played for the Raiders. [The Legal Blitz] * Judge Smith of the New York Court of Appeals gets a scathing open letter. It’s fun when lawyers go “Flame On!” toward judges they might eventually be in front of. [New York Personal Injury Law Blog] * Governor Rick Snyder is asking a judge to drop her request to see unredacted copies of internal emails about the search for the Detroit emergency manager. Because nothing seemed sketchy about employing a law that had been specifically repealed by Michigan voters to overturn the democratically elected leadership of a major metropolis to install a partner from a firm that just so happens to get chosen as bankruptcy counsel, earning a ton of fees from the whole affair. Nothing at all. [Detroit News] * Guy sues Apple because he hates iOS 7. Not the dumbest suit ever brought against Apple. [BGR] * Entertainment lawyer Harry M. Brittenham moonlights as the author of graphic novels. A lawyer writing comic books may sound like a guy living in his mom’s basement, but he’s actually married to Heather Thomas from The Fall Guy. [New York Times] * Not everyone thinks law reviews are awful. [The Volokh Conspiracy]
  • Baseball, Drugs, Football, Google / Search Engines, Non-Sequiturs, Police, Technology, Twittering

    Non-Sequiturs: 10.18.13

    * A high school teacher admits to taking heroin before teaching. But it was art class, so if he wasn’t on something it would have seemed weird. [Daily Mail] * Reed Smith issued a statement on the complete meltdown one of its partners had over Twitter. They did not go ahead and tell the partner to “go f@ck himself and die,” so that’s a start. [Roll on Friday] * Man fleeing police threw a parrot at the police officer to slow him down. The parrot bit the cop. Polly wants some bacon. [The Smoking Gun] * Anyone read through the new Google Terms of Service? Well, they’re going to start using your name and profile in sharing your endorsements of music and restaurants. Here’s how you can opt out if you don’t want people to know how much you love Ace of Base. [Electronic Frontier Foundation] * A veteran news reporter is suing the L.A. Times for discrimination after he was fired for not “taking it easy” on former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt. The only person who went less easy on Frank McCourt was the former Mrs. McCourt’s lawyer. [Courthouse News Service] * A financial trader is suing his lawyer brother because he lost a bunch of money investing in real estate from 2004 through 2007. It seems like something more significant might have happened to real estate around 2007. But hey, congrats financial traders! You’re officially worse than lawyers. [Daily Business Review] * If reviews and endorsements aren’t honest, they undermine the entire process. [Associate's Mind] * 13 Signs You’re a Law Student. [Thought Catalog] * The House stenographer loses it during the shutdown debate. Have any court reporters done the same? [Chaos in the Courtroom] * Matthew Berry and Nate Ravitz of ESPN give an Illinois law student a hard time. The discussion begins at the 34:00 mark. And then they start making fun of the school’s ranking at the 39:00 mark. [ESPN]
  • Clarence Thomas, Drugs, Eric Holder, JPMorgan Chase

    Morning Docket: 09.20.13

    * A Texas court overturned Tom DeLay’s conviction on money laundering charges. DeLay immediately thanked Jesus, who played an instrumental role in the three judge panel’s deliberations. [New York Times] * Eric Holder has eliminated mandatory minimum sentences for those low-level nonviolent drug offenders whose cases are currently pending. In related news, here is a cow riding a razor scooter. [Washington Post] * This says J.P. Morgan actually did just fine in their settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. I get the hugest boner from underdog stories like this one. [WSJ Law Blog] * A woman has sued Getty Images after her photo was used in an HIV advertisement. She’s apparently holding out for the herp campaign. [New York Post] * More from Clarence Thomas in Portland: “Why was a black kid in Georgia reading Ayn Rand?” I don’t know. Because he was dumb? [ABC News]

Sponsored

  • Bankruptcy, Biglaw, California, Cozen O'Connor, Craigslist, Disability Law, Drugs, Environment / Environmental Law, Eric Holder, Gay Marriage, Howrey LLP, Kasowitz Benson, Law Schools, LSAT, Marijuana, Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 08.30.13

    * The Department of Justice won’t be harshing anyone’s mellow in Washington and Colorado just yet, because Eric Holder has more important things to do than to get involved in people’s pot. [CNN]

    * The IRS will now treat all legal gay marriages the same as straight marriages for tax purposes, no matter where the couples live. That’s absolutely fabulous! [Federal Eye / Washington Post]

    * Howrey going to deal with all of Allan Diamond’s unfinished business claims made as trustee on behalf of this failed firm? By claiming as a united front that “[c]lients are not property,” even if we secretly think they are. [Am Law Daily]

    * In this wonderful post-Windsor world, the parents of a deceased Cozen O’Connor attorney are appealing a judge’s ruling as to the dispensation of their daughter’s death benefits to her wife. [Legal Intelligencer]

    * Reduce, re-use, and recycle: environmentally friendly words used to reduce a Biglaw firm’s carbon footprint, not the number of its lawyers. Say hello to the Law Firm Sustainability Network. [Daily Report]

    * Disability rights groups are coming forward to defend California’s LSAT anti-flagging law because the amount of extra testing time you receive should be between you and your doctor. [National Law Journal]

    * If you thought Charleston School of Law was going to be sold to the InfiLaw System, then think again. The law school is up for grabs on Craigslist. Alas, the “[s]tudent body has been used.” [Red Alert Politics]

    If you’re interested in purchasing Charleston School of Law, keep reading to see the ad (click to enlarge)…

  • Biglaw, Cars, Cellphones, Continuing Legal Education / CLE, Crime, Drugs, Husch Blackwell, Law Schools, Money, Morning Docket, New Jersey, Racism, State Judges, State Judges Are Clowns

    Morning Docket: 08.28.13

    * After three years on top, Baker & McKenzie has lost its place as the top grossing firm in the Global 100. But which firm dethroned the once king? None other than… [Am Law Daily]

    * Today we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington, and yet some of the things he sought to change still remain the same in 2013. [Washington Post]

    * The house always wins: Navin Kumar Aggarwal, the ex-K&L Gates partner who stole client funds to pay gambling debts, was jailed after receiving a 12-year sentence. [Am Law Daily]

    * “This is like a triple-overtime win.” Merrill Lynch is making a huge $160 million payout in a racial bias case that’s been stuck in the courts for nearly a decade. [DealBook / New York Times]

    * As eager young law students return to school, maybe it’s time for you to consider brushing up on the basics. Now is an excellent time to take care of those pesky CLE requirements. [Corporate Counsel]

    * Husch Blackwell is teaming up with WUSTL Law to launch a training program for… partners. Take this for what is is, law students: a great opportunity to résumé bomb the hell out of them. [National Law Journal]

    * Career alternatives for attorneys: judicial drug mule. Following an investigation by the DEA, a former Utah judge pleaded guilty to the possession of enough Oxycodone to kill a small horse. [Salt Lake Tribune]

    * Don’t even think about texting anyone, ever again, in the state of New Jersey, especially if they might be driving, because the appeals court says you could be held liable for negligence. [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]

    * Joe Francis of Girls Gone Wild has been sentenced to 270 days in jail and three years’ probation after being convicted of assault and false imprisonment by a jury of “stupid, stupid idiots.” [Los Angeles Times]

  • Attorney Misconduct, Clerkships, Deaths, Drugs, Education / Schools, Gay, Gay Marriage, Legal Ethics, Martin Lipton, Money, Morning Docket, Murder, Police, Privacy, SCOTUS, Sentencing Law, Shira Scheindlin, State Judges, State Judges Are Clowns, Supreme Court, Supreme Court Clerks

    Morning Docket: 08.16.13

    * Former SCOTUS clerks earn more money for having clerked at the high court than SCOTUS justices earn for their yearly salaries. Consider how ridiculous that is. [The Economist]

    * As it turns out, the National Security Agency oversteps its legal authority thousands of times each year, but that’s only because it’s a “human-run agency.” [Washington Post]

    * Federal judges have come together to bemoan sequestration. “We do not have projects or programs to cut; we only have people.” Eep! Don’t give them any ideas. [National Law Journal]

    * Ready, set, lawgasm! The comment period for proposed amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure opened up yesterday, and yet again, e-discovery rules are on the table for debate. [Forbes]

    * NYU professors want Martin Lipton to step down from the school’s board of trustees, but the Wachtell Lipton founding partner has had a honey badger-esque response — he don’t give a s**t. [Am Law Daily]

    * As was widely expected, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s army of New York City lawyers will soon take the first step to appeal Judge Shira Scheindlin’s stop-and-frisk ruling. [New York Law Journal (sub. req.)]

    * A West Virginia judge was federally indicted for attempting to frame his secretary’s husband with drug charges. Did we mention that the secretary is the judge’s ex-lover? Quite dramatic. [Charleston Gazette]

    * Consortium: Not just for straight couples. A same-sex couple in Pennsylvania is trying to appeal the dismissal of a loss of consortium claim in light of the Supreme Court’s Windsor ruling. [Legal Intelligencer]

    * Christian Gerhartsreiter, aka poseur heir Clark Rockefeller, was just sentenced to 27 years to life in prison in a California cold-case murder. Maybe Lifetime will make a sequel to that god-awful movie. [Toronto Star]

    * Jacques Vergès, defender of notorious villains and perpetual devil’s advocate, RIP. [New York Times]