Gambling / Gaming

Morning Docket: 03.16.12

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* While “Dewey remains a great firm with terrific lawyers” for the time being, check back in after five percent of the firm’s attorneys have been laid off. Then tell us how great and terrific things are, we dare you. [DealBook / New York Times]

* The University of St. Thomas School of Law really “take[s] data accuracy very seriously.” That’s why the employed at graduation rate the school reported to U.S. News was off by 47.7 percentage points, right? [National Law Journal]

* John Edwards has a judge’s permission to use Rielle Hunter’s lawyers at his campaign finance trial. Mmm, there’s nothing like getting some legal sloppy seconds from your former mistress. [Bloomberg]

* After two days of deliberations, jurors in the Dharun Ravi privacy trial still haven’t reached a verdict. Just think, if he had taken the plea, he wouldn’t be worrying as much about deportation right now. [New York Post]

* If Hemy Neuman’s delusions about Olivia Newton-John were about getting physical, instead of getting murderous, maybe he wouldn’t have been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. [CNN]

* It’s the most wonderful time of the year: March Madness! Are NCAA bracket pools legal in your office? It depends. Either way, all I know is that I’ll be betting on Lehigh. Go Mountain Hawks! [Businessweek]

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Morning Docket: 03.09.12

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* With its lawsuit dismissed, Jacoby & Meyers won’t be accepting non-lawyer equity investments in New York any time soon. Not even from used Mercedes-Benz dealers. [New York Law Journal]

* Former Quarles & Brady partner Jeffrey Elverman has been sentenced to five years of probation for swindling money from a little old lady. Does that count toward PPP? [Journal Sentinel]

* K&L Gates is suing a casino in Macau to recover client funds that were allegedly gambled away by former partner Navin Kumar Aggarwal. Silly Biglaw firm. Don’t you know the house always wins? [Am Law Daily]

* “I am not a lawyer. I’m a server. Lawyers do lawyer things. Lawyers work at law firms. Lawyers do public policy work… Lawyers don’t serve pizza.” Ah, the plight of the New York Law School graduate. [CBS News]

* Cooley Law: you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. A former student’s suit over the school’s alleged attempt to keep him from transferring was dismissed this week. [National Law Journal]

Morning Docket: 11.29.11

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Cristina Fierro: not of age.

* Here’s something that’s actually worth crying over instead of your “meh” bonuses. Much like this year’s Cravath scale, Biglaw pro bono hours will likely be stagnant or cut altogether. [Fortune]

* What’s the point of fleeing if you’re just going to let yourself get extradited? Ex-Crowell & Moring counsel, Douglas Arntsen, will return to New York to face grand larceny charges. [New York Law Journal]

* Knock it off: the feds took down 150 sites selling counterfeit goods yesterday, alleging willful copyright infringement. So much for all of those too-good-to-be-true Cyber Monday deals. [Blog of Legal Times]

* It’s pretty much impossible for Gloria Allred to take a client who doesn’t have a vagina. Her latest litigant, 16-year-old Cristina Fierro, is suing Lawrence Taylor for sex trafficking. [New York Post]

* Finally, some Spider-Man drama that we can get behind, unlike that Turn Off the Dark crap. Tobey Maguire has settled his illegal poker lawsuit, and he didn’t even have to go all in. [CNN]

* Sorry, Chick-Fil-A, but no one is going to be confusing your “chikin” trademark with kale. Maybe like 3% of your customers even know what kale is. And that’s being generous. [Huffington Post]

Morning Docket: 09.21.11

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* Hey, Preet Bharara, even Lady Gaga can read your poker face when you’re going all in on an allegation of Full Tilt Ponzi. Maybe Lederer and Ferguson will finally fold. [Wall Street Journal]

* You know what this country really needs? More doctors who don’t believe in science. Another stem cell research case is going up to the D.C. Circuit. [Bloomberg]

* The last 9/11 wrongful death suit has been settled. Lessons learned: airport screeners might not know what Mace is, but they sure can lift and separate your balls. [New York Times]

* Cooley Law held a groundbreaking ceremony for its new campus. We’re good at surviving natural disasters, but a tsunami of unemployed lawyers might break this profession. [Miami Herald]

* A group of drag queens in Florida got busted for thieving the essentials — bras, boas, and butt pads. As RuPaul would say, you better work. Or steal. You know, whatever. [New York Daily News]

* Guys in my high school middle school used to have the ACLU file lawsuits over breathalyzer tests all the time. It was no big deal. [MSNBC]

Non-Sequiturs: 08.04.11

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Is this guy loving Citizens United or what?

* Is a Ropes & Gray attorney behind a shell company that gave $1 million to the Romney campaign? [The Docket / Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly]

* Working on the matter pro bono, Skadden wants greater cooperation from the NYPD in the case of a missing eight-year-old boy. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Breaking down the Alex Rodriguez poker scandal. [Legal Blitz]

* Can’t the ABA and NALP just get along? [Law School Transparency]

* How is that we have more lawyers than we can shake a stick at, but not nearly enough judges? Ian Millhiser looks at the numbers. [Think Progress]

Know who this guy is? Click on the picture to find out.

* Can’t all the people in same-sex marriages facing deportation just move to New York? [Stop the Deportations]

* Who is “the most important American you’ve never heard of”? Read a well-reviewed new book, Michael Toth’s Founding Federalist (affiliate link), to find out. [Ricochet]

* Great job Tea Party, no really. You guys sure you won’t want any social spending when you are living in the wonderful economy you’ve wrought for us? [Huffington Post]

* Don’t forget to sign up for our chess set giveaway. Or join us on Linked In. [Above the Law]

Women Are Not Sex Objects; Cocktail Waitresses, On The Other Hand….

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Does anybody really want to see grandma in this?

I have to do something I hate doing. I have to give Gloria Allred some publicity. Sure, I have to mention her only in order to say that I think she’s wrong and using the plight of women to further her own fame. But I still have to mention her, which is what she wants. It’s a great system she’s set up for herself: she wins even when people talk about how ridiculous she is.

But I can’t ignore Allred here because now she is messing with something near and dear to my heart: scantily clad cocktail waitresses in Atlantic City. That’s right, I live on the East Coast. That means I can’t easily get to Las Vegas or New Orleans. That means occasionally I have to go get my gambling fix in A.C. If you’ve never been to Atlantic City, imagine Vegas after the apocalypse: everything is broken and rundown and more desperate-looking. It’s pathetic. And you feel pathetic while you are there (until you start hitting some points and the table gets hot and you find yourself nailing a hard ten and it feels like the whole casino gives you a high five).

One casino was doing something about that depressing ambiance. It was getting rid of all of its old cocktail waitresses. Believe me when I tell you that this is an important move. Imagine sitting in A.C. down a grand at 4 a.m. and starting to think to yourself if there is any Swingers potential and then your watered-down drink comes back only it’s brought to you by a woman old enough to be your grandmother. And so instead of trying to figure out how to have sex with the waitress, you’re sitting there kind of thinking of how your mother would disapprove if she saw you in that moment. It’s enough to make you want to kill yourself.

It’s certainly enough to make you want to stop gambling. And now along comes Gloria Allred, trying to tell people that 50-year-old cocktail waitresses at casinos are still sexy, and can’t be fired….

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Quote of the Day: Sounds Like My Namesake Had A Hell of a Weekend

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Elie was arrested on Friday in Las Vegas, married a former Playboy Playmate on Saturday, and is scheduled to appear in a federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday.

– an Am Law Daily report on Chad Elie, one of the people caught up in the federal government crackdown on my massive Full Tilt bankroll they have no right to seize the online poker industry. (Gavel bang: commenters, who noticed the line in a story linked in Morning Docket.)

Poker Lessons For ATL Readers

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Long before Rounders and internet gambling and ESPN’s World Series of Poker coverage came along to ruin it all, poker was the game where if you could play (and had a sufficient bankroll) you could sit at a table with important people and make them know your name. You know, back in the day before poker became all about velvet ropes and posturing.

Luckily, despite the poker explosion, so few people play it well that snagging an invite to a quality Thursday night game is still a huge deal. In your career, you’re only going to have a few opportunities where a partner or client invites you over to his home — you cannot blow them. Being able to play a quality game of poker is a useful skill to have in your set. You need to know when to hold them, know when to fold them, and know when to walk away when your partner or client gives you that “fold boy, this is my table and you’re not allowed to win money here” look.

So we’ve got an interesting way to help you out….

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The Hacking and Slashing of Free Speech: To Protect Children of Course

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Some people thought Contra was too violent.

The Supreme Court is on record as being a grand protector of the people’s right to free speech — so long as by “speech” we mean money and by “people” we mean corporations. But when it comes to the right of artists (in this case, video game producers) to do their thing, the Court wants to take a closer look.

And so tomorrow (Tuesday) the Court will hear oral argument in the case of Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association. If you’ve been too busy riding roughshod over zombie ranchers to follow along, the key issue is the constitutionality of a California law restricting the sale of violent video games to minors. The Ninth Circuit already threw the law out, and other Circuits have dispensed with similar state laws on free speech grounds. But SCOTUS apparently wants to take a look at the restrictions…

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Yale Law Student Takes Her Turn as a Poker Star

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We’ve written previously about Vanessa Selbst, a Yale Law Student and professional poker star. She outlasted 716 competitors at the PokerStars.net North American Poker Tour event at the Mohegan Sun. Top Prize = $750K. Now that she’s won more than enough to cover her high-priced legal education, she’s taking a break from law school to concentrate on poker.

You can check out Vanessa’s victory tonight on ESPN2 at 11:00 pm. Or you can catch it online at www.pokerstars.tv. More importantly, you can vote for Vanessa to be one of 27 inaugural “poker all-stars” in a June tournament with a million dollar prize pool. Winning your education funding at the tables seems a lot more noble than asking people to pay you. Click here to vote.

As many of you know, I love poker. I know many of you do too. Vanessa also coaches poker at Deuces Cracked, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to pick Vanessa’s brain about poker and law school. Luckily for Yale Law students, she has a kind heart and won’t be rolling around campus looking to take all of your money. But she could…

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How to Run an NCAA Tournament Pool: Tips from Allen & Overy

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NCAA Bracket 2010 Allen Overy.jpgHere on Above the Law, we’re running our own NCAA Tournament style bracket about the best cities for practicing law. Please don’t forget to vote — your ATL editors have printed out the brackets and somebody is going to make a killing.
But most of you will be filling out brackets for the real NCAA tournament (you can play against the ATL community here: group name: Atlblog, password: abovethelaw). I’ve got some experience running an NCAA bracket. My firm didn’t participate in an office pool, because that would be gambling. And gambling is wrong. Very wrong.
But if my firm had run an NCAA office pool, my officemate and I would have run the thing every year. We would have negotiated the scoring rules and buy-ins with busy partners and chased down money from paralegals and secretaries for weeks. Yes, my officemate and I would have owned the office pool … if it had existed.
At Allen & Overy, one American has taken it upon himself to run the bracket for a firm full of Brits. In my professional opinion, this guy is doing all the right things. For all the people out there participating in an office pool this month, make sure to steal this guy’s outline:

ITS BACK!!!!! Every year it seems we need a distraction right about now and that beloved tradition known as the NCAA basketball tournament somehow seems to fit the bill. Want to earn an abrasive street name? Want to indoctrinate Kevin and Robert by robbing them of a few quid? Here is your chance to win some adoration and transcend the “pyramid model” for a few weeks. Participating in the pool will give you all this and more. …
Traditional legal disclaimers, adjusted slightly, below.

That’s right, there’s an entire “mini prospectus” that should bring Brits and the non-sporting up to speed. It’s info every office should know …

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Poker: What Lawyers Can Learn About Bankers at the Table

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CAC_STOCKINGS_BONDS_FINAL_4x3_300x225-260x195.jpgThanks again to the people at Caesar’s Atlantic City, Harrah’s, and the people at Stockings and Bonds for inviting me to their poker tournament over the weekend. I didn’t win, mainly because God hates me. But I didn’t embarrass myself either. I finished 20th out of 91 players.
And I learned some important lessons about playing poker with bankers that I’d like to share with the lawyers out there, if you’re interested.

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