Still shocked that yesterday our attorney lost to a pro se litigant that was immediately taken into custody after the verdict for drinking in court, being drunk while in court and blowing a .13!!!
– Facebook status update of a person who works for a tow truck company who watched something horrible happen.
Yours truly and S.D.N.Y. nominee Paul Oetken
* One of my favorite parts of the judicial nomination process is the financial voyeurism it makes possible. Check out the income and net worth numbers for two S.D.N.Y. nominees named Paul: Paul Engelmayer, recognized by ATL as a top partner to work for, and Paul Oetken, who would become the first openly gay man to serve on the S.D.N.Y. if confirmed. [The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times]
* Some happier news for Hunton & Williams: partner Kyle Sampson, a prominent figure in the U.S. Attorney firing scandal, has been awarded a D.C. law license (after a two-year battle). [Main Justice]
* Now that the DOJ will no longer defend DOMA, married gay couples, represented by prominent immigration lawyer Lavi Soloway, plan to challenge the law in immigration court. [Stop the Deportations]
* A status update in the Facebook juror case: the California Supreme Court wants some briefing. [Sacramento Bee via @KashHill]
Rep. Christopher Lee (R-NY)
* Lawyerly Lairs: Retired Law Professor Edition. Amidst all the bellyaching by state workers demanding rich, defined-benefit pensions (which are basically extinct in the private sector), isn’t it nice to read about two old people who can pay for their own retirements — and a $3.3 million condo? [New York Times]
* Wondering why Rep. Christopher Lee stepped down so quickly? Here’s a possible answer. [Gawker]
* Musical chairs: Indianapolis-based Barnes & Thornburg takes six lawyers from Akin Gump and opens a new Los Angeles office. [Indiana Lawyer]
* If you’re done with the February bar exam, congratulations! Here are some ways to celebrate (besides going to Disney World). [Lawyerist]
If you’re not booting up your laptop or iPad during voir dire, you’re not a very good lawyer. That’s my takeaway from recent WSJ and Reuters articles on jury selection in the social media age.
This week, the Wall Street Journal took a look at the evolution of jury selection in the age of social media, while Reuters took a look at this last week, quipping that “voir dire” is becoming “voir Google.”
Facebook-stalking jurors is presented as a questionable and still evolving practice. But the only thing that seems questionable to me (besides a DA considering forced-friending in exchange for Internet access) is why any trial lawyer wouldn’t have jumped on this already. Along with not Googling prospective jurors, I imagine these guys also avoid Lexis-Nexis in favor of the law library, type their memos up on an old-school typewriter, and review deposition recordings on an eight-track.
Both articles point out that potential jurors may be more candid online than they are in a courtroom, and round up some tips from trial consultants on reasons to strike potential jurors based on their Facebook likes and Google footprint. BigLaw types might be well-advised to strike anyone, for example, who lists “Erin Brokovich” as one of their favorite movies…
Read on at The Not-So Private Parts.
Facebook’s lawyers have been looking for a rumble over the company’s responsibility to turn over user account information in legal cases. Now they’ve got one, thanks to a California juror and his grandstanding defense attorney.
The case stems from a gang violence criminal trial. Members of the Killa Mobb were being tried for a 2008 attack on a San Francisco man at a gas station. One of the 12 angry apathetic men in the jury box, Arturo Ramirez, posted to Facebook during the course of the trial that it was “boring.” Now the Killa Mobb’s defense attorneys want to get a hold of those postings, and any responses from Ramirez’s friends, to prove that he may have been biased — so the Mobb members can get a new trial.
Facebook refused to turn over Ramirez’s information, citing a 1986 law that protects Americans’ electronic communications. Ramirez originally told the Sacramento Bee that he was willing to turn the status messages over, but that was before he linked up with his own defense attorney, Ken Rosenfeld, who looks like he might like a little media attention. Rosenfeld’s now planning to fight tooth and nail to keep his client’s Facebook privacy settings high…
A Facebook photo to rival David Lat's infamous mobile upload of post-operative cysts.
When you allow a photo to be taken, you should expect that it will be shown to others. That’s at the heart of a judge’s decision in the famous placenta photo case. Unless you’ve been stuck inside a womb, you must have heard by now about the placenta that almost aborted a nursing student’s career.
As previously noted, a Kansas judge decided that nursing student Doyle Byrnes shouldn’t have been kicked out of her program for posting a photo of herself posing with a human placenta to Facebook (at right). It was a move worthy only of de-friending by the weak-stomached.
The actual written decision in the case has come out, and there’s some interesting analysis in it, as noted by Eric Goldman at his Technology & Marketing Law Blog. It suggests that “photo-taking automatically means consent to widespread publication of that photo.” We imagine Brett Favre might object to that….
What kind of world are we living in where people post their 1L grades on Facebook? I guess that after years of status updates about your latest biological function, you can fool yourself into thinking that people actually care about your Civ Pro grade. The world is full of navel-gazers.
Companion question: What kind of world are we living in where people get “offended” because somebody posted his 1L grades on Facebook? I know law schools are hyper-competitive places, but at the end of the day, the only thing you can control is your own academic performance. Getting mad because somebody is boasting about his grades is a colossal waste of energy — energy better spent studying for the current semester (or at least trying to steal his girlfriend). Don’t get mad, get even.
I’m not really on either side of the current ridiculousness going down at Boston University School of Law over one guy’s Facebook page. You see, I live in a world where it’s perfectly acceptable to kind of hate everybody….
Continue reading “Posting Your 1L Grades on Facebook Makes You A …?”
* Hey baby, your placenta or mine? Four nursing students may have aborted their careers due to oversharing on Facebook — and now one of them is suing. [Wall Street Journal]
* Like sh*t through a goose: a woman claims she now has digestive problems because she got to second base with Donald Duck. [Washington Post]
* Can a school keep your kid from looking like a lesbian? These parents are fighting for their son’s right to look like Justin Bieber. [Indianapolis Star]
* No happy ending for Brett Favre. The QB tried to throw a pass to his masseuses’ tight ends, but he’s now getting sacked with a lawsuit. [New York Post]
* U.S. News wants you to know that if you go to Cooley, the only place your application will be transferred to is the paper shredder. [Get In: Law School / U.S. News]
* Rahm sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so stop writing parody songs about him, motherf**ker. [Change of Subject / Chicago Tribune]
In case you’re having a hard time reading the update in the screenshot, we transcribe it below.
In the comments earlier today, I remarked that it feels like law students are gearing up for finals. You can just tell. We’re getting more and more psuedo-substantive legal arguments that only look at one side of the issue, but are said as if the commenter is some kind of expert in whatever law he or she is talking about.
It’s cute. I really like this time of year. It’s like watching chicks frantically trying to learn how to fly before the flock has to migrate south.
[Cue David Attenborough voice] While it appears that the youngsters are having fun and games, this is a time of deadly seriousness for the students. Nerves are getting frayed; passions are inflamed. In the American South, we have an example of just what can happen when two law students collide over proper social etiquette at a time when ‘A’s are scarce. At a place called Florida State University College of Law, a missed assignment sent two dominant females into the arena called “Facebook”….
If I’m applying the First Amendment, I have to apply it to a world where there’s an Internet, and there’s Facebook, and there are movies like … ‘The Social Network,’ which I couldn’t even understand.
– Justice Stephen Breyer, in remarks made yesterday at Vanderbilt Law School (gavel bang: ABA Journal).
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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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In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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