Duke University 2L Andrew Blumberg is a “Simpsons Superfan,” a designation that got him an appearance on the “Food Network Challenge” this past weekend. The challenge was to create a cake inspired by the Simpsons episode, “Last Tap Dance in Springfield”. Four “superfans” were paired with professional cake designers to ensure character fidelity in the final creations.

Blumberg was paired with a professional cake designer to craft a Bart Simpson cake. Almost anyone between the ages of 20 and 55 would likely claim the mantle of Simpson fan. How do you qualify as a “superfan”? From Duke Law News:

Qualifying as one of the show’s four “superfans” took more than just logging hours in front of the television, though. “One of the things I said that I think resonated with them was that I incorporate the Simpsons into the rest of my life,” Blumberg says.

Take, for example, the project he has been working on with Duke Law Professor Barak Richman to create a DVD that explains contracts using clips from Simpsons episodes. “That was one of the things that made me stand out from the crowd,” he says.

Mad points for any ATL reader who remembers the name of the stripper character that appeared in just one Simpsons episode (no Googling).

So how did Blumberg do on the show?

What’s your Halloween costume this year? A slutty nurse? A creepy Notre Dame 1L? Or something far more scary — maybe Bob from Human Resources, the Grim Reaper who takes your Biglaw job away?

This year we decided to dress up as Judge Denny Chin (S.D.N.Y.), recently nominated by President Obama to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. If you’re a criminal, Judge Chin can be quite frightening — he sentenced Bernie Madoff to a whopping 150 years.

And where did we get the idea for our costume? ATL comments (see #2 and #17).

A slideshow of photos showing us in our Judge Chin costume, after the jump.

The dispute between Tremayne Durham and Rob Chambers started so innocently. Durham wanted to sell ice cream. Chambers makes ice cream trucks. Durham asked Chambers to make him an ice cream truck. Yay. Who wants a Bomb Pop?

But Durham changed his mind. He asked Chambers to refund him the $18,000 he paid to Chambers for the truck. Chambers demurred. Now Durham is suing Chambers for the money.

But suing Chambers wasn’t Durham’s first effort to recover his losses.

No, Durham’s first plan to get the $18,000 back involved kidnapping Chambers and his friend Adam Calbreath, holding Chambers hostage, and shooting Calbreath to death.

The lawsuit represents “Plan B.” KATU in Portland reports:

Durham still wants his money back, all $18,000 - even after he confessed to murdering Adam Calbreath. Calbreath was someone Chambers considered as a loyal friend. …

Durham is serving 30 years for murdering Calbreath and taking Chambers hostage while shoving a gun in his stomach.

“He had said, ‘Look at what you made me do,’” Chambers recounts. “He said, ‘I’ve been robbing and killing people to get to you.’”

Can you imagine if this guy had actually gone through with his plan to sell frozen treats to children? How would he handle a kid who stiffed him a quarter? “Look what you made me do, I had to bury your mother alive while I was looking for her purse.”

It’d be as if Mr. Softee were suddenly replaced by Pennywise.

This isn’t the first time Durham’s made news. Details after the jump.

Tuition at Columbia Law School this year is $48,004 (which doesn’t include $1,638 for health insurance and a $95 “transcript fee”). The estimated living cost for an academic year is $21,263. Putting it all together, students are looking at more than $70,000 for a year of legal education, during the worst recession in the legal industry most people can remember.

You’d think all of that would at least buy you a plastic fork at lunchtime. But you’d be wrong. Tipsters report that Columbia is now charging $.15 for plasticware in the law school cafeteria.

I’ve been doing this job for over a year now, and in that time some pretty petty cutbacks have scrawled across my inbox. But this might be the most outrageous “reverse perk” of all.

Let’s take a stroll through some other recession cutbacks.

This summer, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law 3L Dave Johnston won $50,000 on the online game show, “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” He had a little help from the TruTV (formerly Court TV) anchor, Ashleigh Banfield. When we interviewed him back in July, we asked what his plans were for his 50Gs.

He said he wanted to use them for a “good cause”: fighting back against Cardozo’s kosher policy. Since Cardozo Law is part of Torah-embracing Yeshiva University, the stated policy is that no school money can be spent on unkosher food, according to Johnston. In his words:

That meant student groups could only purchase their food from certain ultra-Orthodox kosher restaurants that had agreements with the administration. In the interest of cost, most orgs would opt for kosher pizza, made without the meat enzyme found in regular cheese but with the rich flavor of oily cardboard. It’s also more expensive than most pies. Meanwhile, one block west of Cardozo is Famous Original Ray’s (the real one) and one block east is Patsy’s Pizzeria. Where I grew up in California, my pizza options were usually Domino’s and Papa John’s. Maybe that’s why this policy boggles my mind. Here you have the world’s finest pizza in pizza-crazy New York so close, and the majority of Cardozo students do not keep kosher, so it just seems criminal to force us to pay more for less.

“Criminal” seems like a bit of a stretch. But Johnston says the kosher policy caught him by surprise when he first arrived at Cardozo:

This kosher situation caught me off guard when I came to Cardozo as a secular Jew. The kosher policy is not mentioned in Cardozo brochures. Cardozo had been described as a secular law school (see [“Cardozo Law School is secular, but as a result of its heritage many of its students are Jewish.”]). I knew Cardozo was affiliated with Yeshiva University, but they seemed separate and distinct. For example, if you refresh the Yeshiva University homepage, you’ll see yarmulkes in most of the photos. I haven’t found a single one on the Cardozo website. To me, that was telling.

Judging potential law schools based on the photos on their websites is probably not the best way to go about the selection process. But at least it tells you more about the attractiveness of the student body than the U.S. News and World Report rankings.

After Johnston won his Millionaire jackpot, he met with Cardozo Special Events about holding an unkosher feast to celebrate his winnings and thank his fellow students for their support. “I wanted to do it by giving them the mouthwatering pizza that no one else would,” said Johnston.

Find out whether pig products found their way into Cardozo conference rooms, after the jump.

When we were little, our parents let us eat Lucky Charms, Golden Grahams, and Chocolate Rice Krispies for breakfast. When we wanted to be ‘healthier’, we might eat Froot Loops. Over time, we came to realize that Toucan Sam did not offer any more nutritional value than Lucky the Leprechaun. (Now when we want morning fruit, we add bananas or blueberries to our oatmeal.)

Apparently, there are people in the world who didn’t have the same breakfast epiphany on the way to adulthood. They like to file lawsuits against breakfast companies for false advertising. The latest of these fruity lawsuit hails from San Francisco.

From San Francisco Weekly:

[Roy] Werbel recently filed a lawsuit in San Francisco federal court alleging that he bought and ate boxes of Froot Loops based on his mistaken belief the cereal contained fruit.

Kellogg’s intentionally deceived consumers into buying Froot Loops by misleadingly using the word “froot” in the title, Werbel alleges. He demands unspecified punitive and actual damages, to be paid to all consumers who have mistakenly bought Froot Loops cereal. Had Werbel known that “Froot Loops contained no fruit, he would not have purchased it,” his suit alleges.

After being misled by Froot Loops, Werbel turned to Cap’n Crunch Crunchberries. To his shock and surprise, they have no real berries. So he filed a second lawsuit against the Cap’n. Apparently, he didn’t hear the crunch of fellow Californians’ identical similar suits getting dismissed earlier this summer.

All of these easily-deceived Californians fail to get points for creativity. The original fruity suit snap-crackle-and-popped way back in 1983. See Committee on Children’s Television, Inc. v.General Foods Corp. [PDF]. That one was also filed in the golden state.

This leads us to wonder what’s in the milk in California… besides fake fruit.

‘Froot’ Is Not Fruit, San Francisco Lawsuit Alleges [San Francisco Weekly]
Froot Loops and Cap’n Crunch False Advertising Claims Rejected [Martindale]
Committee on Children’s Television, Inc. v.General Foods Corp [PDF]

Last Thursday, we posted a photo of VP Joe Biden enjoying some good ol’ blueberry pie at his alma mater, Syracuse University College of Law. It was up to you to come up with a caption for the picture, and now it’s time to choose the best one. Here’s the photo once again:

After the jump, check out the finalists.

Although the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis is having some issues — e.g., layoffs in Chicago, New York, Washington, and San Francisco — the firm still has a well-deserved reputation for excellence. When you’re involved in a must-win litigation or a major bankruptcy matter, K&E is the firm to see.

But are Kirkland & Ellis lawyers also the people to call when you need a table at a hot restaurant, or last-minute tickets to a sold-out show? Maybe so:

From: [A secretary to a senior partner in Chicago]
Sent: Tuesday, September 8, 2009 2:19 PM
To: All Chicago attorneys

Justice Ginsburg’s granddaughter is having her 19th birthday on October 3rd and wants to celebrate with 5 friends at her favorite restauraunt — Topolobampo. Unfortunately, they are booked solid on that date. Does anyone know Rick Bayless (the owner of Topolobampo and Frontera Grill) who could possibly make a table available for her.

Topolobampo — good choice! When we did our series of open threads on summer associate lunch suggestions, back in 2008 — when law firms still had summer lunch programs — Topolobampo was mentioned frequently and favorably in the Chicago thread.

So, were the K&E concierges able to come through for the Supreme Grandchild?

Time for an Eyes of the Law celebrity sighting. On Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden visited Syracuse University. From the Syracuse Post-Standard:

Vice President Joe Biden talked with Syracuse students, teachers and parents Wednesday about his mission to strengthen the middle class.

Then, he rode in a limousine to a ballroom where people had paid $250 to have lunch and $1,000 to pose for a picture with him. After that, he rode the limousine a few more blocks to mingle with more people who had paid thousands of dollars to spend private time with him.

But staff members at Syracuse Law, the VP’s alma mater, got to meet with him for free. All it took was some homemade blueberry pie.

A picture of Vice President Biden getting his pie on, plus a caption contest, after the jump.

When Justice Sonia Sotomayor needs to stock up on her beloved rice, beans and pork, where does she go? One might peg the Supreme Court’s newest member — a liberal, a lawyer, a Greenwich Village resident — as a typical Whole Foods customer.

But perhaps Justice Sotomayor, in a show of support to the president who appointed her to the Supreme Court, is participating in the Whole Foods boycott? Her Honor was spotted shopping for groceries last Thursday at Whole Foods archrival Trader Joe’s, in the Foggy Bottom section of Washington, DC.

The Sotomayor sighting was noted briefly in the Washington Post. But an ATL tipster, who actually met and chatted with Justice Sotomayor at Trader Joe’s, has more details.

As you may have noticed, we generally moderate comments relating to a certain rather vulgar meme (and sometimes we ban IP addresses too).

If you don’t know what we’re talking about, then skip this post — and consider yourself lucky. But if you miss being able to invoke the ass lobster meme, then you’re in luck.

We are offering “ass lobster amnesty” in the comments to this post. Get it all out of your system now, since we will continue to zap “ass lobster” comments on other posts.

To inspire you, we took some photos this weekend of associate editor Kashmir Hill, posing with a big-ass lobster (five pounds).

Slideshow after the jump.

Last week, we brought you the story of an intrepid New York Law School graduate who started his own business. Think cupcakes on wheels.

Today, the proprietor of Cupcake Stop, Lev Ekster, stopped by our office with his delicious wares. Yumyumyumyumyum.

[Ed. note: For the record, I really hate donuts. I don’t even particularly like sweets. I owe my girlish figure to (1) things that can be wrapped in bacon and (2) a zero tolerance policy when it comes to exercise.]

The most important part of the visit was the excellent food. Lev brought over his three best-selling creations: cookie dough, Oreo cookies ‘n cream, and red velvet. I’d never had a cookie dough cupcake, but its gustatory greatness cannot be denied. Lat preferred the cookies and cream flavor, while Kash opted to continue looking beautiful.

After we finished stuffing our faces, we sat down to talk with Mr. Ekster. Our notes from the interview, plus pictures of the cupcake-y goodness, after the jump.

When students at New York Law School can’t find work, sometimes they resort to tearing the clothes off of 1Ls. So we applaud Lev Ekster, an NYLS alumnus, for his non-violent approach to the economic crisis:

Recent law school grad Lev Ekster is going from court to cupcakes. When the New York Law School student realized he wouldn’t land a law firm job this year, he turned to entrepreneurship. Inspiration struck after a disappointing trip to Magnolia Bakery, where he waited in an excruciatingly long line for what he deemed a “dry and tasteless” cupcake. “The experience reminded me of my parents’ stories of waiting in line for bread,” says the native Ukrainian.

Yes, this story reminded us of breadlines too.

The mobile cupcake service is called Cupcake Stop, and it should be rumbling by a street corner near you. If you’re interested — not just in cupcakes, but possible employment — take note:

[A]ccording to their recent Twitter post, they’re hiring:

Now hiring, part-time and full-time employees in NYC. Food prep license is preferred, not required. Fun job! email jobs@cupcakestop.com

Why shouldn’t every NYLS student get in on the entrepreneurial act? We have additional details, after the jump.

Having your lawyering subjected to the scrutiny of Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner is a scary experience. He’s known to be a harsh critic. In a 2001 New Yorker profile, Posner compared his personality to that of his cat: “cold, furtive, callous, snobbish, selfish, and playful, but with a streak of cruelty.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Juliet Sorensen got a taste of the cruelty in a recent opinion from the Seventh Circuit which dissected her “pattern of improper argumentation… that does no credit to the Justice Department.” The court reversed a conviction for wire fraud and mislabeling food. (A Google search leads us to believe that Sorensen is daughter to legal heavyweight Ted Sorensen, adviser to JFK and a retired Paul Weiss senior partner.)

Juliet Sorensen prosecuted expiration-date entrepreneur Charles Farinella for buying 1.6 million bottles of Henri’s Salad Dressing that were a month away from their “best when purchased by” date. Farinella then slapped on a new date, pushing it back by a year, and resold the dressing to dollar stores for a Tas-tee profit.

“Best when purchased by” is certainly a confusing concept. Posner explores it thoroughly, but admits to not being too hung up on eating foods after those dates run out. In his opinion, he says Sorensen misled the jury by equating the “best by” date with the expiration date, and referring to anything past the “best by” date as “foul, rancid food.”

Posner objected mightily to describing the “shelf stable” Henri’s Dressing in such demeaning terms. Posner then switched metaphors on us in his decision [PDF], saying “the omissions are more interesting than the scanty contents of the government’s threadbare case.” Given all the dressing talk, it seems like the government’s case could have been described as runny, thin, or lacking in flavor… but we digress.

Posner gave Sorensen a thorough dressing-down in his opinion. See Posner’s painful smackdown, after the jump.

The halcyon days of summer have passed. Gone are the epic lunches and frequent happy hours with eager summer associates. By the time September rolled around though, many were relieved to get back to work and not feel obligated to while away the hours talking to law students about the merits of firm life.

But now it’s October. And law students will be entering your life again soon. It’s interview season!

Which means more talk of firm merits, and more importantly, more lunches. During a recent online chat with Washington Post food critic Tom Sietsema, one lawyer chimed in with a helpful hint for interviewers: Be sensitive to interviewees’ diet limitations.

Washington, D.C.: Tom… I’m an attorney at a huge D.C. law firm… [T]his is interview season. My colleagues and I will be taking hundreds of potential associates out for fancy lunches this fall. And I’m always shocked to hear the places my colleagues sometimes venture for these lunches, and more shocked to see their jaw drop when they realize their choice might not have been welcomed by the interviewee. I adore Rasika [Ed. note: Up-scale Indian restaurant in D.C.], but I would never take a job candidate there. That’s just unfair. Some people don’t like spice; others might be thrown off their game by an ethnic menu. As a vegetarian, I am particularly sensitive to the issue (I remember interviewing at several law firms that took me to the Capital Grille [Ed. note: D.C. Steakhouse] where the only thing on the menu I could eat was the $7 green salad - and consequently half the interview discussion awkwardly revolved around my dietary preferences). I’ve also been tipped onto celiac disease - which a shockingly large number of my colleagues have. So basically, when taking someone on an interview lunch, I pick innocuous, unoffensive “standard” food…. So, to all you attorneys doing interview season right now, think a little about where you take the candidate!!

Tom Sietsema: Good advice re: business meals. Not everyone likes meat, or something foreign, or A Fancy Experience.

We disagree with the Washington, D.C. lawyer. Our thoughts:

We know you legal folk struggle with your weight. Nearly 70 percent of respondents to Justin’s weighty April survey admitted to putting on the pounds since embarking on the legal track. Maybe it’s because you’re such deep thinkers!

Thinking makes you hungry, says Science Daily. A Canadian research team has found that intellectual work, that stuff lawyers do so much of, causes a substantial increase in caloric intake:

The research team, supervised by Dr. Angelo Tremblay, measured the spontaneous food intake of 14 students after each of three tasks: relaxing in a sitting position, reading and summarizing a text, and completing a series of memory, attention, and vigilance tests on the computer. After 45 minutes at each activity, participants were invited to eat as much as they wanted from a buffet.

The researchers had already shown that each session of intellectual work requires only three calories more than the rest period. However, despite the low energy cost of mental work, the students spontaneously consumed 203 more calories after summarizing a text and 253 more calories after the computer tests. This represents a 23.6% and 29.4 % increase, respectively, compared with the rest period.

Perhaps you can fight the bulge by thinking less hard. Another option is to get an in-work work-out with a treadmill desk — Quinn Emanuel’s Aaron Craig logs five to six miles a day at the office.

If resolved to keep the paunch, the intellectual fatties can at least take comfort in knowing that the thin lawyers are the dumb ones. [Ed. note: There was no substantial increase in caloric intake as a result of coming up with that bit of logic.]

Thinking People Eat Too Much: Intellectual Work Found To Induce Excessive Calorie Intake [Science Daily]

Stealing Swiss Miss from your law firm’s kitchen is not a good idea. If you’re a summer associate, it’s a recipe for getting no-offered.

And stealing food from the law firm refrigerator is also unwise. See here (and note the “FYI” postscript).

Does anyone care to guess — or actually know — the law firm where this sign was posted?

Reasons Not To Steal Food From the Company Fridge [Midtown Lunch]

During Kash’s brief foray into the world of corporate law at Covington & Burling, she was initially surprised by the party-hard culture at firm events. Once the majority of the partners left one Friday roof-deck happy hour, the event turned distinctly frat party-esque, with patio tables pushed together for rounds of beer pong.

A tipster sends word of a Proskauer Rose firm event turned Animal House scene. The summer associate class in the Boston office of Proskauer had no problem snagging offers this year — and some Proskauer attorneys were willing to risk their coronary health to bring them on board.

The full tale, with photographic evidence, is available after the jump. It involves lots of drinking, a lot of beef, and excessive eating — all the hallmarks of the summer associate experience.

[Ed. note: This post is by ALEX, one of the finalists in ATL Idol, the “reality blogging” competition that will determine ATL’s next editor. It is marked with Alex’s avatar (at right).]

Kevin and Marcia Hansen recently filed suit against the Texas Roadhouse restaurant chain after Kevin found a big-ole clump of pubic hair hidden in his ribeye. Yes, pubic hair.

The lawsuit came after the restaurant’s now infamous improvisational cook, Ryan Kropp (pictured below), pleaded guilty to a felony charge of placing foreign objects in edibles on June 19th.

According to the complaint, the Hansens were living the American Dream, eating steak at one of the chain’s Wisconsin locations last February. Kevin Hansen’s steak was a little overcooked, though.

When restaurant service manager Michael Liberatore stopped by the table, Hansen told him the steak was cooked medium, not medium rare.

Hansen declined an offer of a new steak, but Liberatore persisted and offered a new steak he could take home, the complaint said.

Encountering a teachable moment, the manager then took the half-eaten, overcooked steak and showed it to Kropp and another cook. Kropp, apparently inspired by the demonstration, endeavored to make Hansen’s next steak real’ special.

Kropp later told police he was angry because he believed Hansen was “just trying to get free stuff,” so he cut a slit in the center of the steak and inserted his facial hairs, according to the criminal complaint.

But Ryan Hetzel, the Hansens’ attorney, said Friday that another cook told police that Kropp was cleanshaven that day and said, “These are my pubes” before putting the hair into the steak.

Hansen discovered the pubic hair while he was choking down the big piece of meat on the following day. The complaint is silent on whether the steak was medium-rare.

Today’s Lawsuit of the Day isn’t particularly funny or salacious. It’s just… strange. From the New York Times (scroll down to final item):

Three taste testers say they were injured as they sampled an experimental sweetener while working for Cadbury, the British candy maker.

The three testers, all women, sampled the substance during a stint as $10-an-hour testers at the East Hanover, N.J., research center of the company’s United States subsidiary, Cadbury Adams, according to three lawsuits filed in Morris County, N.J. Their reactions were different, but each said the sweetener left a burning sensation that changed her ability to taste or eat certain foods, the lawsuits contend.

Katharine Beyer, spokeswoman for Cadbury Adams, said she could not comment on the litigation, but said that the substance, which she declined to name, was not on the market.

Thank God for that. Moral of the story, ready for insertion into a fortune cookie: “Do not swallow sweet-tasting mystery substances.”

(In bed.)

Taste-Test Lawsuit [New York Times (last item)]