* Lehman’s lawyer fees “could reach a record $1.4 billion.”[Bloomberg]
* The RNC spent more than a first-year associate’s salary on clothes for Sarah Palin. So, when you are reading mind-numbing legal documents at midnight tonight and your friends are out partying, just dream of all the snappy red jackets you can buy. [Los Angeles Times]
* Sarah Palin’s $150,000 wardrobe was bad, but it could be worse. A Philadelphia state senator spent roughly 3.5 million dollars of tax payers money to pay personal assistants who “spied on his ex-lovers, chauffeured his children, oversaw mansion renovations, and permormed a myriad of other chores.” [Associated Press]
* The IRS withdrew a $319 million tax assessment on FedEx. [Associated Press]
* Milberg has hired NYU professor Arthur Miller to run its appellate practice. [Bloomberg]
[Ed. Note: Eliza Gray is a new writer for Above the Law. She graduated from Harvard and after a six-month stint in Brussels covering European Union politics at the European Voice, she moved back to New York to pursue a journalism career. She and Kash will be alternating Morning Docket responsibilities.]
* Chief Judge ‘Naughty’ Nottingham has been a frequent guest on ATL. Sadly, loyal readers, it is time to say good-bye. Judge Nottingho, woops, we mean Nottingham, officially resigned yesterday. [Rocky Mountain News]
* If only Nottingham was from San Francisco. Voters will decide next month whether to legalize prostitution. [Associated Press]
* Remember that astronaut who drove across country to confront her ex-boyfriend, wearing diapers so that she wouldn’t have to make any pit stops? Lisa Nowak returned to court yesterday. [The New York Times]
* She got lucky, probably because she’s a star. Britney Spears’s hit-and-run case ended in a mistrial yesterday. After 8 hours of deliberation, the jury was “deadlocked.” The Deputy City Attorney Michael Amerian agreed to drop the case. [Times Online, UK]
* Prosecutors are investigating a German bank for paying Lehman brothers 319 million euro ($411 million) on the day that Lehman went bankrupt. [Bloomberg.com]
* Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin will be extradited from the UK after yesterday’s guilty verdict. [Financial Times]
* Closing arguments yesterday in Senator Stevens’s trial. [Reuters]
A quick recap of “Naughty” Nottingham’s misadventures: being too drunk to remember how he spent $3,000 at strip clubs over two days, calling 911 on a paralyzed lawyer in a wheelchair after she confronted him for parking in a handicapped space, and having his name show up on a list of clients of a Denver prostitution business.
Well, he’s back in the news, folks, and though we’ve retired him from Judge of the Day, we’ve decided to give him a nod at the request of many tipsters. The Department of Justice has launched an investigation of “Naughty” for asking a prostitute to lie on his behalf. He wanted her to say they met at a restaurant in Denver and went out a few times and that they were only “good friends.”
The woman claims she had sex with Judge Nottingham for $250 to $300 an hour once a week from February 2003 through November 2004 at the former escort agency Bada Bing of Denver….
[T]he former prostitute says Judge Nottingham asked her to help fabricate a story to tell investigators.
“We just decided to agree that we met at a bar. I don’t remember which one. We decided to say that we just, over the years, had become friends and on occasion would go out on dates,” the woman told 9Wants to Know. “The truth is that I met him when I was an escort for an escort service and he did visit me regularly and he did pay to be with me.”
“It just seems ridiculous that someone in his position would ask someone to lie,” the former prostitute said. “He’s there to uphold the law and he’s breaking it.”
Such a sweet sentiment. Obviously, this former prostitute is not a regular reader of our Judge of the Day feature.
Several newspapers have reported that Nottingham is expected to resign any minute now. But as of Monday at noon, the Colorado District Court’s Clerk Office had not heard anything from him.
Longtime readers will recall that Chief Judge Edward Nottingham (D. Colorado) is no longer eligible for our coveted Judge of the Day prize. After he threatened to call the U.S. Marshals service on a handicapped woman whose handicapped parking spot he stole, a few short months after it was revealed he dropped more than $3,000 at a strip club in two consecutive days — but couldn’t remember doing so, ’cause he was so darn drunk — we decided it wasn’t fair to the rest of the judiciary to leave him in the competition.
That call now appears prescient. From Denver 9 (via the Rocky Mountain News):
[T]he U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit is investigating Chief U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham for the third time in the past year. He is being investigated for improper judicial conduct after his full name and personal cell phone number appeared on a list of clients from a Denver prostitution business.
The business called Denver Players or Denver Sugar was shut down in January after IRS and Denver Police investigators served search warrants at the brothel on Fillmore Street.
First the prominentgovernor of a leading state, and now the chief federal judge in a major city. Are high-class call girls a growing trend in the upper echelons of the legal profession?
More details, including the judge’s highly appropriate nickname — no, not “Paulie Walnuts” — after the jump.
Remember Chief Judge Edward Nottingham (D. Colorado)? We named him our Judge of the Day back in August, after he reportedly “was too drunk to remember how he spent more than $3,000 at a strip club in two consecutive days.” We subsequently honored him as our Paulie Walnuts Doppelgänger of the Day.
We are hereby declaring Judge Nottingham ineligible for future Judge of the Day contests. Like the Honorable Elizabeth Halverson, he has transcended the competition, joining the Judge of the Day Hall of Fame.
Read about his latest misadventures, in the ABA Journal:
A Denver lawyer has filed a complaint claiming the chief judge of the Colorado federal courts threatened to call authorities when she confronted him about parking in a handicapped space.
The lawyer, Jeanne Elliott, was paralyzed in 1986 when she was shot by an angry litigant. She told KUSA in Denver that she waited in her wheelchair behind the illegally parked SUV outside a Walgreens. Judge Edward Nottingham arrived and threatened to call the U.S. Marshals service when she didn’t move, according to her grievance (PDF) filed with the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He later called 911.
In response to our earlier post, Judge of the Day: Edward Nottingham, this “separated at birth” resemblance was pointed out by many commenters:
We think the leathery skin and hair coloration — black on top, silver on the sides — may be responsible for the bulk of the resemblance. But still, it’s pretty darn close.
Our favorite comment in the thread:
“I’m loyal to the Bada Bing. Strippers to $3,000 (in singles)!”
As many of you know, we’re guilty of federal judicial snobbery here at ATL. We frequently mock state court judges, whom we regard as “icky,” and contrast their regular misadventures — ethical lapses, brushes with the law, messy personal lives — with the generally upright lives of their counterparts on the federal bench.
But federal judges are people too — people who get themselves into highly embarrassing situations. From Colorado’s 9News.com:
Court documents obtained by 9Wants to Know show Colorado’s top federal judge was too drunk to remember how he spent more than $3,000 at a strip club in two consecutive days. He also used an Internet dating service while he was married.
Judge Edward Nottingham is the chief federal judge in Colorado and he is held to the highest standards of personal and professional conduct.
Umm, yeah, this story is all kinds of awesome. Some of Judge Nottingham’s conduct would make a drunken summer associate blush.
More after the jump.
A college graduate without student loan debt is akin to reading a kind quote about Kim Kardashian in a tabloid—it’s rare.
In the past eight years, student loan debt has nearly tripled to a whopping $1.1 trillion, and in the past 10 years, the percentage of 25-year-olds with such debt has risen from 25% to 43%
It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that New York Fed economists warned last month that the burden of student debt could stilt consumer spending by twentysomethings, as well as further hamper the recovery of the housing market and economy.
To get a better idea of what massive student loan debt (we’re talking over $100,000 massive) looks like, we talked to an attorney who graduated with a large student loan debt. We also consulted LearnVest Planning Services CFP® Katie Brewer to see just how their repayment plans stack up.
S. Fischer, 36, Attorney Graduated: 2001
How Much I Borrowed: $100,000
What I Still Owe: $45,000
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
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* Lehman’s lawyer fees “could reach a record $1.4 billion.”[Bloomberg]
