* 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]
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…
Continue reading “Yale Law Student Takes Her Turn as a Poker Star”
Here 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 …
Continue reading “How to Run an NCAA Tournament Pool: Tips from Allen & Overy”
* A disappointing ruling from the 3rd Circuit for sports gamblers in Delaware. [USA Today]
* L.A. City Attorney Carmen Trutanich wants to make hanging out illegal. [Los Angeles Times]
* Judge Jed Rakoff is becoming a media darling. Another article singing the BofA-bench-slapping judge’s praises. [New York Times]
* Foley & Lardner sued for allegedly revealing trade secrets. [National Law Journal]
* Connecticut prosecutor John H. Durham has been chosen to lead the Justice Department’s investigation into CIA torture of detainees. [Talking Points Memo]
* Four more years for Bernanke. [Washington Post]
You know what would be awesome, if the legal system got its claws out of my online poker “supplementary income” program.
Perhaps the first steps towards the decriminalization of poker have already started. While many states outlaw “games of chance,” the ABA Journal is reporting that some poker players are arguing that anti-gaming laws should not apply to them because poker is a game of “skill.”
A Pennsylvania judge ruled Texas Hold ‘em is a game of skill and acquitted a man who held poker games in his garage, according to CardPlayer.com. And a Colorado jury acquitted the organizer of a poker league after a University of Denver statistics professor testified poker is a game of skill, according to a press release by the Poker Players Alliance.
How is this not a slam dunk argument? Only people who don’t know how to play poker think that it is a game of chance. Luck plays a role, sure, just like in everything else in life.
“Why do you think the same five guys make it to the final table of the World Series of Poker every year? What, are they the luckiest guys in Las Vegas? ”
Is Poker a Game of Skill that is Legal? S.C. Judge Will Decide [ABA Journal]
* This, this, and this from How Appealing on the race in public schools cases argued before the Supreme Court yesterday.
* And for the second straight day, someone blames their crime on bingo. [CNN]
* A “temporary” solution for being burned out on biglaw. [WSJ Law Blog]
* I guess this is kinda like the flip-side of using someone as a human shield. [CNN]
* Always get it in writing, especially when it comes to constitutions. [Jurist]
* It’s not slander if you call him a balding pervert. Or her an opportunist (and probably a desperate one at that — this is really scratching the bottom of the barrel, honey). [Page Six]
* Quakers like to keep their lawsuits confined to townhouse meetings. If you think you knew this because you saw Witness, you are guilty of lumping together all the religious denominations of rural Pennsylvania, and that’s just wrong. [Point of Law].
* The most obscure Baldwin brother, Daniel Baldwin, steals a car — and then some. (Volokh Conspiracy]
* Mitchell Stein, Esq., is one unhappy dog owner. And if you were him, you wouldn’t want this to happen to your dog, would you? On the other hand, it might stop it from humping your leg. [New York Times]
