* Lawyers are winning in the long rivalry between lawyers and bankers. Endless financial fraud cases make lawyers look ethical. There is another fraud charge in Philadelphia against money manager Joseph Forte. [The Philadelphia Inquirer]

* The SEC is investigating Apple’s disclosures about CEO Steve Jobs’ health, to make sure the company did not mislead investors. [Bloomberg]

* The point man for Madoff’s investor Frank DiPascali will now be the go-to guy for prosecutors investigating the scheme. [The Wall Street Journal]

* Former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Apeals to review his 19 convictions. [The Houston Chronicle]

* A Czech businessman settled a suit filed against him by hedge fund Omega advisors, after he alegedly bribed government officials in Azerbaijan, defrauding investors hundreds of millions. [The New York Times]

* In the aftermath of India’s Enron—the Satyam scandal, the Indian government will likely rescue Satyam’s workers from losing their jobs. [Time.com]

* SEC chairman Christopher Cox resigned in the wake of scrutiny of the SEC for failing to investigate allegations in the Madoff scandal. [The Associated Press]

* Jose Padilla gets 17 years. [New York Times; Washington Post]

* A merger between Anderson Kill and Reed Smith? Maybe not. But 55 of Anderson Kill’s 126 lawyers have decamped for Reed Smith. [WSJ Law Blog; WSJ Law Blog]

* Ted Frank on yesterday’s Enron cert denial: Extortion, interrupted? [New York Sun]

* China shuts down “real-time” porn site, as part of its crackdown on online porn. [Reuters]

* Law tie (however tenuous) to Heath Ledger story: “Nicole Vaughan, 24, a law student at New York University, was in a seminar about Jesus when someone sent her a message about Mr. Ledger. She checked the Web, then walked to the apartment ‘because of the way our generation is; we sort of feel we’re a part of each other’s lives.’” [New York Times]

* Apparently Bill Clinton enjoys the Yale Law / Harvard Law rivalry: “I kind of like to see Barack and Hillary fight.” [NYDN via Drudge]

* Fed cuts fed funds rate by 0.75%, but stocks are still lower. [AP; New York Times; Washington Post]

* Clinton and Obama get snippy with each other in debate, raising questions about each other’s legal work. [Washington Post; New York Times; WSJ Law Blog]

* SCOTUS denies review in gigantic Enron-related investors’ lawsuit. [SCOTUSblog via How Appealing]

* Statutory interpretation makes for strange bedfellows in 5-4 ruling in Ali v. Federal Bureau of Prisons. [SCOTUSblog (PDF) via How Appealing]

* New York City revisits the issue of forced disclosure of calorie counts by restaurants. [AP via Drudge]

If you’re getting tired of our stories about the DOJ’s Shanetta Cutlar and S&C’s Alexandra Korry, we have a new name to add to our rotation of delightfully high-powered, imperious females. Meet Judge Vanessa D. Gilmore (at right), of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

Whisper her name out loud: “Vanessa Gilmore.” Doesn’t it even SOUND diva-licious? If she weren’t a federal judge, couldn’t she be a character on “Dynasty”?

But we have reasons other than the sound of her name for declaring this rather attractive jurist to be a judicial diva. From a helpful tipster:

I’d like to bring another judicial diva to your attention: Judge Vanessa Gilmore of the Southern District of Texas. You probably have already read about Judge Gilmore’s ruling in the Enron broadband case vacating Howard’s conviction. I’m not sure she’s a match for Shanetta Cutlar, but she’s no slouch either when it comes to divadom.

[R]umors about her include:

* She has thrown her keys in open court at an attorney (I believe it might have been an AUSA) for calling her “ma’am”;

* She ordered an AUSA to have John Ashcroft personally write her a letter explaining the DOJ’s reasons for seeking the death penalty against one defendant but not others [the Williams case, discussed in more detail below];

* When she didn’t like the particular font counsel used, she told him that she threw his motion in the trash without reading it, and then she ruled against him;

* During trial she is happy to make findings contrary to stipulations of the parties; and

* She encourages ex parte contact with the court and attempts to prevent record-making: any discovery “motions” must be way of a one-page letter to the court. She will then have a hearing which she considers an “oral motion to compel.” She will happily rule without actually seeing any of the discovery propounded.

More about Judge Gilmore, including a discussion of how she got benchslapped by the Fifth Circuit, after the jump.

P.S. We welcome colorful anecdotes about strong personalities within the legal profession regardless of their race, gender, etc. It just so happens that lately we’ve been getting information about women. If you want to tell us about your workplace abuse at the hands of a man — e.g., Eric Krautheimer, of Brokeback Lawfirm infamy — we’re all ears.

* When you use YouTube to bootleg 24, the terrorists win. [WSJ Law Blog]

* North Carolina doctors refuse to play executioner; executions temporarily blocked. [Jurist]

* Wal-Mart agrees to cough up $33 million for overtime violations. [FindLaw]

* This wasn’t the law already?. [AP via Yahoo!]

* Seven defendants, including the estate of Kenneth Lay, dismissed from Enron shareholder derivative suit. [Jurist]

* Can someone please fix the damn clock in the Lewis Libby courtroom, before every news outlet turns it into a metaphor? [New York Times]

Last year, Jesse Oxfeld — formerly of Gawker, now of New York Magazine — delivered this fun scoop:

Bethany McLean, the Enron-busting Fortune reporter who co-wrote The Smartest Guys in the Room, is dating the man who put Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling away. The fetching, recently divorced McLean, who covered the trial, is now seeing the lead prosecutor in the case, Sean Berkowitz, an assistant U.S. attorney from Chicago. “They started dating after the trial concluded, and after Bethany’s coverage of Enron was complete,” a Time Inc. spokeswoman e-mailed in response to an inquiry to McLean.

None of her fellow Enron-trial reporters question McLean’s professionalism, but post-trial, the relationship did seem unusually chummy. One notes that McLean attended Berkowitz’s birthday party in Chicago, held ten days after the verdict, and she was considered to be notably sympathetic to the prosecution’s case.

If you question the characterization of their relationship as “unusually chummy,” then check out the photograph that appears after the jump.

We love lists: the Forbes 400, the U.S. News college and law school rankings, or Washingtonian magazine’s list of 40 top lawyers under 40. We love lawyers — which is good, since we spend all day writing about them. And we love fabulous things.

So you can imagine our delight upon seeing this feature from The American Lawyer: The Young Litigators Fab Fifty. It’s a list of 50 top litigators from around the country, all under the age of 45, whom the magazine “expect[s] to see leading the field for years to come.”

You can check out the list here. Regular readers of ATL will recognize many of these youthful luminaries. Here are some highlights:

— Latham & Watkins partner Sean Berkowitz,* the former prosecutor who rose to fame durring the Enron case;

— Paul Clement, the U.S. Solicitor General (who was very nice to us);

— Weil Gotshal partner Gregory Coleman and Texas Solicitor General R. Ted Cruz, two top Texas lawyers (and possible Fifth Circuit nominees);

— Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher, the delectable DOJ diva;

— Jeffrey Fisher, of Davis Wright & Tremaine, SCOTUS lefty litigator extraordinaire (he’s a Bleeding Reinhardt and former JPS clerk);

— Deputy Solicitor General Gregory Garre, Chief Justice Roberts’s former l’il buddy (from his Hogan & Hartson days);

— Professor Neal Katyal of Georgetown Law, the “Paris Hilton of the Legal Elite”;

— Alabama’s Solicitor General, Kevin Newsom (amusing story about him here); and

— Eugene Scalia, the Gibson Dunn partner and fabled ERISA hottie (and son of Nino).

On the whole, it’s an excellent list. We can think of a few questionable omissions (and a few dubious selections). But with something this subjective, reasonable minds will differ.

Congrats again to the Fab Fifty!

* Does anyone know if Sean Berkowitz and Bethany McLean, the Fortune reporter who covered Enron, are still an item?

The Young Litigators Fab Fifty [American Lawyer]

* Donald Trump gives on-the-record comments to a blawg (albeit an MSM-affiliated one). The man is a total media whore. But he’s the little brother of a certain fabulous Third Circuit judge, so we forgive him. [WSJ Law Blog]

(Check out the photos at right. We see a definite family resemblance. Which may or may not be a good thing.)

* Speaking of siblings, our big brother wonders: “Do we smell a Jeff Skilling comeback in the air?” And hits the nail on the head with respect to Malcolm Gladwell, too. [DealBreaker]

* The start of a new year is a perfect time for blogospheric navel-gazing reflections upon the future of law-related blogging. [Opinio Juris via Volokh Conspiracy]

* As well as New Year’s resolutions. [Nasty, Brutish & Short; Jeremy Blachman; Althouse]

* And raucous law blogger parties. Woo-hoo! [Concurring Opinions; PrawfsBlawg]

* A unanimous Supreme Court overturns a Ninth Circuit ruling in a criminal (habeas) case. In other news, this morning the sun rose from the east. [New York Times; Washington Post]

* Enron’s Jeff Skilling may get to pass “Go” on his way to jail after all. [WSJ Law Blog]

* BCS vs. the Electoral College: Is the controversy over Florida or Michigan playing Ohio State the college football version of Bush v. Gore? Or perhaps that was the LSU/USC split of 2003-04? [National Journal via MSNBC]

* “Float driver in S.C. Christmas parade charged with drunken driving.” [AP]

* Christmas trees are back up in the Sea-Tac airport. Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky has said he won’t file a lawsuit. But if somebody else does, the Seattle airport authorities will have to throw in a menorah, a Kikombe cha Umoja, and a snowman. [Seattle Times]

Depositions can be pretty boring affairs. Back when we were in private practice, we once fell asleep during one.

But the deposition of Andrew Fastow, former chief financial officer of Enron, appears to have kept people awake. The Times offers an interesting and detailed account of Fastow’s “moment in the sun.”

This was our favorite part:

Tensions were high [on the] first morning [of the eight and a half days of testimony], according to several people who witnessed the deposition. About 30 lawyers packed into the main conference room, sitting on either side of Mr. Fastow. Almost 40 more watched on video feeds in two overflow rooms.

Suddenly, four shadowy figures with ropes appeared, hanging outside the windows of the main room, which had the blinds drawn. A marshal scrambled to the windows. One lawyer for a major bank said the figures resembled ninjas. It turned out they were window washers.

Wow. If four ninjas, secretly hired by the seven non-settling banks, had executed a hit on Enron’s ex-CFO — right before the start of his deposition, in view of some six dozen lawyers — that would have made it the most exciting deposition in history. (Even more exciting than this one.)

Instead, the Fastow deposition will have to settle for being one of the most expensive ever:

The deposition drew lawyers representing 10 major banks and top Enron executives who have not been charged with crimes. It was also streamed live over the Internet so law firms in New York, London and elsewhere could listen in.

With the typical lawyer in the case billing about $450 an hour, the legal fees just to follow the testimony could cost at least $2.1 million, and the overall price tag of the litigation is expected to reach hundreds of millions of dollars.

There have to be better ways to spend two million bucks than to blow it on making a middle-aged, grey-haired numbers guy walk lawyers through internal bank documents. Any ideas?

Fastow Gets His Moment in the Sun [New York Times]

Delightful links, hand-picked with loving care by Stella Q, will appear later today. For now, here a few other quick links that caught our eye recently:

* Curious about how many Americans share your full name? Now you can find out. [TaxProf Blog]

* “Zagat’s for prisons.” Good stuff. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Professor Dimino wants to know: What’s the most frivolous lawsuit or argument you’ve encountered? (A regular diet of them is served up over here; but we’re sure that countless examples remain undiscovered.) [PrawfsBlawg]

* “Dukakis would have picked up at least 3 states if it had come out that he’d partied with Playboy bunnies.” [Instapundit]

* Wiccans don’t have standing? Give them some eye of newt and wing of bat, and they’ll conjure some up in a jiffy. [Associated Press via How Appealing]

* Camille Paglia: Love her or loathe her, she’s always interesting and fun to read. Especially when writing about the Mark Foley scandal. [Althouse]

* Fun with Enron emails: “Certainly all of you can stop shredding documents for 5 minutes to respond.” [Enron Explorer via WSJ Law Blog]

* Think Jeff Skilling got too harsh a sentence? You’re not alone. [DealBreaker]

Really, really long.* To wit, 292 months long. For the mathematically challenged among you, that’s 24 years and four months. Ouch.

But given the size and scope of the Enron fraud, the lengthy sentence may be appropriate (even if it’s higher than many Wall Streeters expected). You can compare Jeffrey Skilling’s sentence to those of other leading white-collar criminals over at the WSJ Law Blog.

* We briefly contemplated a far more crude cinematic allusion, involving this movie, but thought better of it.

Skilling Sentenced to 24 Years in Prison [Associated Press]
Skilling Gets 24 Years [DealBreaker]
Skilling’s Sentence: 24 Years, 4 months [WSJ Law Blog]

* None of this really sounds all that bad, but “Christmas bonuses” makes a good headline. [CNN]

* When this goes to court, will “Vaughnifer” be an official legal entity? [MSNBC]

* Can’t argue with a 99-page decision. Or read one. [New York Times]

* Wait, so he DIDN’T defraud investors out of millions of dollars? This would be the “deny, appeal, and decease” defense. [NYT]

* “‘The book is for those who are more right-brain than left-brain,’ says Tribe, often considered to be the brains of the legal left.” [Harvard Crimson]

Tune in for legal tidbits AND fantasy football advice tomorrow.

* Buttons — isn’t that the new song by the Pussycat Dolls? Yes; but it’s also the issue in a case argued before the Supreme Court yesterday. Question Presented: Was a murder defendant’s right to a fair trial violated when the judge allowed relatives of the victim to sit behind the prosecutor, sporting buttons with the victim’s photo on them? [New York Times; Washington Post; Slate]

* A federal judge rules that candidates for the state bench can’t be barred from personally soliciting campaign contributions. So let’s just shove C-notes down their robes. [New York Times]

* Ex-Enron CEO Jeff Skilling won’t take the Martha Stewart approach: he’d like to remain free on bail while his appeal winds its way through the courts. This makes sense: his sentence is likely to be way longer than Martha’s brief stay at Camp Cupcake. [Washington Post]

* Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was slumming it earlier this week at the Second Circuit. The Times provides a UTR-esque account of the “mind-numbing” proceedings. [New York Times]

* The Supreme Court heard oral argument yesterday in Cunningham v. California, an important case raising the constitutionality of California’s sentencing scheme — and one that will have implications for other state sentencing systems. (Readers of the tea leaves suggest that Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito may not be in complete agreement with Justices Scalia and Thomas. Who are you calling “Scalito”?) [Sentencing Law & Policy; Los Angeles Times; New York Times]

(Yeah, we know, today’s “Morning Docket” is coming in just in time for lunch. Sorry, we overslept…)

* Former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling is facing 20 to 30 years in prison when he’s sentenced next month — but he can still get himself into even more trouble. Impressive. [Houston Chronicle via WSJ Law Blog]

* Elsewhere in Enron-land, ex-CFO Andy Fastow is seeking leniency in advance of his sentencing next week. Did you know he built a picnic table at his synagogue? [Washington Post; WSJ Law Blog]

* Clarence Hill, the death row inmate who sought to challenge the constitutionality of Florida’s lethal injection procedure, was executed last night. The Supreme Court decided, by a 5-4 vote, not to grant him a new stay of execution. [New York Times]

* Something complicated happened in the House concerning the White House’s proposal for interrogating and prosecuting terror suspects. Parliamentary procedure can be so wacky! Let’s face it: Nothing is getting done on this until after the November elections. [Washington Post]

* Hey, that’s neat: “Eugene Volokh” is on ABC’s “Boston Legal.” [How Appealing]