* An analysis of Vijay Singh’s suit against the PGA. Any legal analysis that requires that much use of the phrase “deer antler spray” is worth it. [Sports Law Blog]
* The highest paid state employee by state. If you’re a lawyer, you want to live in Maine. [Deadspin]
* A visual representation of every Federalist Society event. [UChiLawGo]
* Cheez-Its are really, really good. [Legal Juice]
* “The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a bear cub with a gun. Or something.” [Bear Lawyer]
* Professor Nick Rosenkranz wonders if a 50/50 quota is appropriate to generate intellectual diversity at law schools since Harvard Law seems to think that gender diversity merits a 50/50 quota. The answer is no. Thanks for playing. [Volokh Conspiracy]
* A senior litigation associate at Paul Hastings, Ryan Nier, has decided to participate in something called the Death Race, and it has nothing to do with the drive for partnership. This Death Race is 50-mile mountain endurance/obstacle race that takes somewhere between 24 and 48 straight hours to finish. Only a handful complete the race every year, and Nier is determined to be one of them. From what we’re told, Paul Hastings has been entirely supportive of Nier, which is cool because he’s using it as an opportunity to raise money for charity. But who knows how supportive they’ll be when they realize he won’t have Blackberry access on top of the mountain for 48 hours. For more information about the Death Race, check out the website. [The Death Race]
* Law student golfing across the U.S. So, I take it summer associate gigs are still scarce? [Golf.com]
* “Guess What the Air Force’s Chief of Sexual Assault Prevention Was Just Arrested For…” Hard to top that headline. [Lowering the Bar]
* Harper Lee suing over “To Kill a Mockingbird” (affiliate link), alleging that the son-in-law of her literary agent botched the copyright. *Insert cheap Atticus Finch joke here* [Washington Post]
* Dr. Phil is suing Gawker alleging that the website posted a video of the pop psychologist’s interview with Manti Te’o, stifling ratings. So Dr. Phil thinks his audience strongly overlaps with Gawker’s. I’m incredulous. [Yahoo! Sports]
* This is why an over-aggressive cease and desist letter can get you into more trouble. Enter the world of the “miniature war-gaming community.” [Popehat]
* A guide to the questions applicants need to be able to answer at OCI. The best? “Describe a situation when you had to think on your feet to extricate yourself from a difficult situation.” This provides insight into how the applicant will deal with virtually every situation that ever comes up in Biglaw. [Ms. JD]
Over on our sister site Dealbreaker, Bess Levin describes an angry letter to the president of the Piedmont Driving Club, a prestigious Atlanta country club. The letter alleges some incredible behavior by members of the Piedmont, including (but not limited to) naked golf (who cares?), a member picking up a golf ball with his butt cheeks (did they make MacGruber a member?), and a member “open[ing] his pants, pull[ing] out his penis, and slapp[ing] the passed-out member’s head with his penis” (WTF???).
Deadspin reports that the author of the letter is one John C. Weitnauer, and if you look him up, you’ll see he’s a partner at a Biglaw firm – one who apparently learned a modicum of lawyerly discretion, at least when it comes to keeping his Bird in his trousers. It does not appear that he intended for the letter to leak, but like so many Piedmont members out on the greens, leak it did.
* A cop in Akron says he found a female judge and a female lawyer “half-naked, late at night in back of car reeking of booze.” Clearly, this is LeBron James’s fault. [Daily Mail]
* An NYU Law grad and former WilmerHale associate, Cristina Alger, has just published a new novel (affiliate link) that looks quite interesting. [New York Times]
* Proposition 8 proponents want en banc review in the Ninth Circuit. I think we should raise the stakes. They’ll get an en banc panel, but if they lose they all have to get gay-married and try the goddamn green eggs and ham already. [MetroWeekly]
* Couldn’t we simplify errant golf ball liability to: if you get hit with a golf ball while you are on a golf course, it’s your fault. If you get hit with a golf ball while not on a golf course, liability rests with the whackjob who is hitting golf-balls in the middle of the city. [Legal Blitz]
* Are women more concerned with fairness law? [Ms. JD]
Our Legal Technology Leadership Summit is around the corner. It’s taking place from September 6 – 8 on Amelia Island, Florida. Check out the full agenda here, or take a look at the latest headlines, which identify some of the conference highlights:
If you’re a golf fan, then you should seriously consider attending the 2011 Legal Technology Leadership Summit from September 6 – 8, at Amelia Island, Florida. Attendees will have the chance to go golfing with their legal colleagues shortly after noon on Tuesday, September 6.
Regardless of skill level, foursomes (comprised of 3 golfers and a cart driver/putter) will be able to hit the green and have some fun in the Florida sun. For more information on the courses that will be used for the golf outing, see the Ritz-Carlton website.
But a fun golf outing isn’t all that you’ll get when you attend the Summit. You can take a look at the full conference agenda here. Many experts in the legal technology field will be speaking at the Summit, and after working on your golf swing, you can earn some much-needed continuing legal education credits. We have been approved for CLE credits in the following states (and an accreditation request is pending in Florida):
Alabama
California
Illinois
New York
North Carolina
South Carolina
Pennsylvania
Please sign up to attend. We hope to see you there!
Kids running a lemonade stand: victims of overregulation? (Photo by Lat.)
When I was a little kid, my cousin and I set up a produce stand in front of my grandparents’ house. Splayed out on an uneven card table, we offered a variety of bruised, battered, and misshapen produce. From an oblong cantaloupe to a nicked-up watermelon, our “stand” carried the bounty of my grandfather’s patch of land, located somewhere on the Island of Misfit Fruit. My grandmother bought the cantaloupe, the watermelon ended up being thrown at my head, and we closed up shop after two hours of intense dumbf**kery.
I tell you this because my own experience suggests that (a) children are neither cute nor intelligent and (b) kids’ efforts to make money selling stuff are always doomed to failure. And so it was that a band of towheaded tykes got jacked by county officials when they attempted to sell lemonade and other beverages outside the Congressional Country Club golf course, site of this year’s U.S. Open. The kids were fined $500 by the Montgomery County Department of Permitting, for operating without a license.
Well, well, well. After a string of miserable failuresunsuccessfulmatches, I’ve finally introduced two lawyers in Washington, D.C. who both filed motions with me for a second date.
So how’d I do it? Throwing a blonde lawyer into the mix helped…
* Professor Paul Caron has taken the data gathered by Princeton Review and come up with new law school rankings. Which school comes out on top? (Stanford is #2.) [TaxProf Blog]
* Are business students better than law students at making clever musical parody videos? Check out “Those CBS Girls” (Columbia Business School girls), set to the tune of Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” (sic). [Dealbreaker]
* Hal Turner, the New Jersey right-wing blogger / shock jock who blogged “these judges must die,” has been sentenced. How much time did he get? [Huffington Post]
* Congratulations to the fabulous Judge Leslie Kobayashi, who was recently confirmed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii (along with other Obama judicial nominees confirmed to various courts around the country). [angry asian man; Associated Press]
* When non-whites play golf, bad things happen. [ESPN]
* The juicy lawsuit filed by Ariel Ayanna against Dechert got lost in the bonus news shuffle around here. But here are some thoughts from Jane Genova. [Law and More]
Yesterday we covered the divorce of golf sensation Tiger Woods and his stunningly beautiful wife, former model Elin Nordegren. We noted that Nordegren was represented by McGuireWoods. Although McGuireWoods is a top firm, especially in its home state of Virginia, it’s “not known for its matrimonial practice,” as Nathan Koppel of the WSJ Law Blog observed.
How did McGuireWoods land this plum assignment? Several of you pointed it out in comments, and Brian Baxter reported on it over at Am Law Daily. The short answer: family ties. To quote the slogan of McGuireWoods: “Relationships… drive results.”
A statement issued yesterday by the divorcing couple noted that Nordegren was represented by, among others, a McGuireWoods attorney by the name of Josefin Lonnborg. The divorce was filed in Bay County Circuit Court, Florida; Josefin Lonnborg practices in London. Why was a corporate lawyer out of the U.K. involved in a U.S. matrimonial case?
Here’s why: Josefin Lonnborg and Elin Nordegren are twin sisters. And despite her impressive legal credentials — Lonnborg speaks fluent English and Swedish, has worked at law firms in Stockholm and London, and has a Master of Laws degree from the London School of Economics — she is more than just “lawyer hot.”
Yes, we know: pictures or it didn’t happen. So, pictures.
Warning: although the images below are perfectly safe for work, gentlemen may wish to be seated at desks before viewing, to avoid unseemly displays of… enthusiasm.
A college graduate without student loan debt is akin to reading a kind quote about Kim Kardashian in a tabloid—it’s rare.
In the past eight years, student loan debt has nearly tripled to a whopping $1.1 trillion, and in the past 10 years, the percentage of 25-year-olds with such debt has risen from 25% to 43%
It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that New York Fed economists warned last month that the burden of student debt could stilt consumer spending by twentysomethings, as well as further hamper the recovery of the housing market and economy.
To get a better idea of what massive student loan debt (we’re talking over $100,000 massive) looks like, we talked to an attorney who graduated with a large student loan debt. We also consulted LearnVest Planning Services CFP® Katie Brewer to see just how their repayment plans stack up.
S. Fischer, 36, Attorney Graduated: 2001
How Much I Borrowed: $100,000
What I Still Owe: $45,000
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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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* An analysis of Vijay Singh’s suit against the PGA. Any legal analysis that requires that much use of the phrase “deer antler spray” is worth it. [Sports Law Blog]
