* Bank of America’s board votes to waive privilege and disclose the legal advice it received on the Merrill Lynch merger, which could spell trouble for B of A’s outside counsel at Wachtell (depending on the advice given). [New York Times]

* Meanwhile, B of A expands its team for the SEC litigation in the S.D.N.Y. by hiring Paul Weiss (which, along with Cleary Gottlieb, urged the bank to waive privilege with respect to the Merrill merger advice). [Dealbook / New York Times]

* Tort reform, in the form of limitations upon medical malpractice suits, could save up to $54 billion over the next 10 years. [CNN]

* Jon and Kate arbitrate… [People]

* Free speech goes head to head with campaign finance laws at the Supreme Court today. [Washington Independent]

* The 9th Circuit ruled that John Ashcroft can be sued by a Muslim man who suffered under the former AG’s anti-terrorism strategies. [Washington Post]

* An Ohio judge makes his scarlet letter neon yellow. [New York Daily News]

* Judges are the ones regulating Wall Street. [Bloomberg]

* An ex-partner in Florida has sued the chairman of his former firm for wrongfully firing him after a confrontation over firm funds being used to support Hillary Clinton, among other misdeeds. [Courthouse News Service]

* In Texas classrooms, Obama is shunned, but Bibles may be a requirement. [Houston Chronicle]

* More retired judges do it for free. Now in North Carolina. [Raleigh News & Observer]

* A U.S. District Judge in Virginia, Rebecca Beach Smith, will soon decide whether preserved Titanic artifacts must remain available to the public. [The San Francisco Chronicle]

* Adam Liptak gives us a lively look into the Supreme Court discussion about the highly critical Hillary documentary. [The New York Times]

* Obama’s lawyers were in lock-step with Bush policies Tuesday, arguing in favor of the decision to refuse one of Europe’s leading Muslim intellectuals entry in to the U.S. [Reuters]

* Pakistan’s supreme court chief justice returned to court Tuesday amid dancing supporters. [The Associated Press]

* Attorneys cringe as Blagojevich continues to put himself in the spotlight despite his pending federal corruption indictment. [The Associated Press]

* Dreier LLP may be able to reduce a $29 million claim from Wachovia. They need all the help they can get. [Greenwich Time]

* Barney Frank defends calling Scalia a “homophobe.” [The Boston Globe]

This is really political rather than legal news, so we will keep our commentary to a minimum. But it’s big news that we thought you’d like to know right away.

Of course, all three of the involved candidates / ex-candidates — Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama — are lawyers. And John Edwards, whose endorsement was coveted by the candidates and assiduously pursued, was a very successful practicing lawyer — one of the country’s top trial lawyers — and not just a politician with a law degree. So there is a sufficient legal nexus here.

Edwards to endorse Obama [CNN / Political Ticker]

We updated our original post from this morning about Samantha Power calling Hillary Clinton a “monster,” but it’s a big enough development to cover in a separate post. So here we go.

Professor Power, rumored love interest of Cass Sunstein, resigned from the Obama campaign because of her tawdry remarks about Hillary Clinton in an interview earlier this week. She also apologized publicly:

“With deep regret, I am resigning from my role as an adviser the Obama campaign effective today,” Ms. Power said in a statement released by the campaign. “Last Monday, I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor, and purpose of the Obama campaign. And I extend my deepest apologies to Senator Clinton, Senator Obama, and the remarkable team I have worked with over these long 14 months.”

Obama Aide Resigns for Calling Clinton a “Monster” [NYT]

That statement was made by Samantha Power, a top foreign policy aid for Obama and new-ish love interest of Professor Cass Sunstein. Sunstein recently accepted a position at Harvard Law, leaving behind in Chicago his ex, philosopher Martha Nussbaum. Bossman David Lat posted all the gossip about the academic love triangle here.

Power, pictured, let her words slip during an interview in London with The Scotsman yesterday. Other tasty bits from that interview:

“We f***** up in Ohio,” she admitted.

“You just look at her [Clinton] and think, ‘Ergh’.

Apparently, Ms. Power was under the impression that her remarks were “off the record,” and therefore couldn’t be attributed to her. The interview was actually totally on the record, and The Scotsman gives an explanation at the bottom of the link.

Update: Power has resigned from the Obama campaign, effective immediately. See here (AP article) and here (follow-up post).

‘Hillary Clinton’s a monster’: Obama Aid Blurts out Attack in Scotsman Interview [The Scotsman]

* Linda Greenhouse to $300K! [New York Observer via ABA Journal]

* Duties of a law school dean: attend parties, appear at conferences, talk to alums. And don’t forget the herding of cats — aka law professors. [TJ’s Double Play]

* Even law review editors screw up sometimes. “Constructive acceptance”? [Concurring Opinions]

* Who’d have thunk it? Sometimes blogging can help people. And stuff. [Legal Blog Watch]

* Ethan Leib dresses up as a giant chicken to teach Contracts, thereby guaranteeing ABA accreditation. [PrawfsBlawg]

* Orin Kerr points out online interviews “with eight of the nine current Supreme Court Justices (all but Souter) about legal writing, advocacy, and the process of deciding cases and writing opinions.” [Volokh Conspiracy]

* Ann Althouse on John McCain and being a “natural-born citizen.” [Althouse]

* Hillary to Russert: You can’t handle the truth! About my tax returns. [TaxProf Blog]

An article for the McClatchy newspapers, evaluating the truth of Senator Hillary Clinton’s claim of “35 years of change,” has some interesting background about her legal career at the Rose Law Firm in Arkansas.

It does suggest, for those of you interested in political careers, that you might not want to cool your heels too long in Biglaw. It just doesn’t lend itself well to rosy campaign-trail bios. If you do spend a lot of time at a firm, be sure to engage in lots of pro bono work. From the article:

Clinton spent the bulk of her career — 15 of those 35 years — at one of Arkansas’ most prestigious corporate law firms, where she represented big companies and served on corporate boards.

Neither she nor her surrogates, however, ever mention that on the campaign trail. Her campaign Web site biography devotes six paragraphs to her pro bono legal work for the poor but sums up the bulk of her experience in one sentence: “She also continued her legal career as a partner in a law firm.”

Here’s what we found most interesting:

Clinton did receive a smaller salary than most other Rose partners, topping out at about $200,000, in part because of her outside activities, according to several biographies.

So don’t count Hillary Clinton among the ranks of seven-figure law firm partners. She’s closer to an underpaid junior partner than a partner at Wachtell or Cravath.

But don’t shed tears for HRC either. If you look at her partner pay in the context of Arkansas’s legal market and low cost of living, and if you adjust it for the passage of time (Sen. Clinton practiced law many years ago), $200K looks better and better.

Clinton’s ‘35 years of change’ omits most of her career [McClatchy]

* NFL Union president prepared for strike. [ESPN]

* Microsoft offers to acquire Yahoo for $44.6 billion to compete with Google. [MSNBC]

* Times reporter subpoenaed over “State of War” source. [New York Times]

* French President and supermodel girlfriend sue over pictures. [Washington Post via WSJ Law Blog]

* HLS grad Obama and YLS grad Clinton make nice, sort of, during debate. [MSNBC]

* SCOTUS stays Alabama execution, maintaining de facto moratorium on death penalty. [CNN]

* Roy Tolles and Arthur Kramer, of Munger Tolles and Kramer Levin, respectively, RIP. [WSJ Law Blog]

The time has come, and the crowning of ATL’s Lawyer of the Year and Second Favorite Blog After ATL, both of which are sponsored by ATL and Lateral Link, is at last upon us.

In all, a whopping 4,186 votes were cast, with 2,683 of you voting for Lawyer of the Year and 1,503 weighing in on which blog you like second-most after this one. Find out how it all turned out after the jump.

Official announcements haven’t been made yet, but they’re imminent. Two prominent attorneys are about to drop out of the presidential race: former U.S. Attorney and Associate Attorney General Rudy Giuliani, and super-successful trial lawyer John Edwards.

Random factoid: Giuliani and Edwards both attended top law schools, NYU and UNC - Chapel Hill, respectively. These schools are respectively ranked #4 and #36 by U.S. News. [FN1]

But the remaining candidates who happen to be lawyers went to Harvard (Barack Obama and Mitt Romney) and Yale (Hillary Clinton). These two schools, national institutions for many years, are ranked #2 and #1, respectively.

Loyola 2L claims to be “retired” from the blogosphere. But if here were still around, he might wonder aloud: Are American voters “tier-ist”?

P.S. And who cares about these stupid rankings anyway? A number of top law schools may be overrated.

[FN1] And the law school rankings didn’t exist back when Edwards and Giuliani attended.

Update: First, it appears that some of you have misread this post. We doubt that many voters know or care about where a candidate went to law school. We just (1) pointed out a “random factoid,” and (2) suggested that people who are obsessed with law school rankings, like Loyola 2L, might try to read something into this.

Second, from an observant tipster:

“It might be worth noting that according to the exit polls the most influential lawyer yesterday was none of the ones you mentioned.”

“Rather it was T3 graduate Gov. Charlie Crist (Cumberland Law), whose endorsement seemed to boost McCain past Romney while at the same time destroying any hope Rudy had since Rudy had been courting Crist for weeks.”

McCain Wins; Giuliani Set to Drop Out [New York Times]
John Edwards to Quit Presidential Race [AP]
The Most Overrated Law Schools: A Student Perspective [TaxProf Blog]
Which top school do law students think is most overrated in US News? [Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports]

Earlier: One Fewer Lawyer in the Presidential Race

Time is running out on this month’s ATL Lawyer of the Year and Second Favorite Blog After ATL polls, both sponsored by ATL and Lateral Link.

So far, we’re up to just over 2,600 votes for Lawyer of the Year, and Wall Street Journal pick Loyola 2L is still going strong. Meanwhile, Barack Obama has a roughly 2.5 to 1 lead over Hillary Clinton, and Alberto Gonzales is stamping out civil rights stomping on music rights attorney Ray Beckerman … but pretty much nobody else.

On the blogging front, the Wall Street Journal remains the blog to beat, while Above The Law is still in second place and Volokh Conspiracy is on track for third, having opened up a hefty lead over Patently-O and SCOTUSblog. Write-in candidate Ms. JD has overpowered Overlawyered, and Likelihood of Confusion has turned the tables on Professor Bainbridge and is now closing in on Skadden Insider.

We’ll post the final results on Thursday.

But while you’re voting for the champions above, are you also voting with your feet at work? In last month’s ATL / Lateral Link job survey about 20% of you responded that you were considering leaving your current firms once you received your bonus. But that was before many of you knew what your bonuses were going to be.

So last week, we asked you whether your job searches were indeed underway. Find out if the answers changed after the jump.

* Top candidates turn to trial lawyers for support. [Washington Post]

* More recusal requests expected in WV Supreme Court. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Former NFL player’s wife files malpractice suit over surgery. [ESPN]

* Suffrage suffers in Mexico. [MSNBC]

* How to count primary delegates (and an explanation of the “superdelegates”). [New York Times; New York Times]

* “It’s just not realistic” to present major new initiatives, but the SOTU will still be on every channel tonight. White House speechwriters are not on strike. [CNN]

* Super-litigator Tom Barr of Cravath, RIP. [New York Times (death notice); WSJ Law Blog]

* Does the Bush Administration have Blackwater’s back? The U.S. pushes for specific legal protections from Iraqi law for civilian contractors. [New York Times]

* West Virginia: a little less corrupt than last week? WV Supreme Court agrees to rehear Massey Energy case (previously discussed here). [AP; WSJ Law Blog]

* D.C. Circuit Chief Judge Douglas Ginsburg steps down early, to make way for Chief Judge David Sentelle. [D.C. Circuit (PDF) via How Appealing]

* NYT endorses Hillary Clinton (but not for the reasons identified in the bumper sticker at right). [New York Times; New York Times]

* A more detailed report on the Georgetown Law event with Justice Ginsburg that we wrote about last night. [Georgetown Hoya via How Appealing]

So far, about 1,400 of you have cast your vote for ATL Lawyer Of The Year.

Loyola 2L is in the lead so far, but Obama is close behind. Whoever helps Chipmunk Lady is a not-so-distant third, showing that this year’s ATL reader wants change (and bonuses) and supports the little guy (and not-so-little bonuses).

Hillary Clinton, currently in fourth place, urges us to vote for experience. Meanwhile, Aaron Charney, Alberto Gonzales, and Ray Beckerman are in the Thompson / Kucinich / Gravel zone, respectively. On the write-in front, Bob Link and “DC Pants Judge” are beginning to get some traction.

Meanwhile, this month’s ATL / Lateral Link survey on hours and bonuses continues to get responses of its own, and we’re now up to almost 1,750 participants.

We revealed the bonus breakdowns for the Classes of 2004, 2005 and 2006 in the results to Monday’s survey on whether you’re looking for a new job. Today, we reveal the numbers for 2003 after the jump.

In last week’s ATL / Lateral Link survey, we asked you to submit your nominations for Lawyer of the Year. Today, you get to vote!

The nominees, and select comments explaining why, are below:

Aaron Charney

For both the attention focused, success of action, and for the visibility [he] brought to the secondary issue of partner/associate relations (but not those kinds of relations).

Alberto Gonzales

Exemplifies why lawyers are so mistrusted in this country.

Barack Obama

The man had the credentials to do Biglaw. He chose public service instead. Although he is obviously politically ambitious, he at least appears to be in it for the people. He’s almost as hot as Judicial Hottie Jeffrey Sutton. I mean, did you see the Obama Girl videos? We’ve all got a crush on Obama. And he just might be president next year.

Hillary Clinton

She’s fabulous.

Loyola 2L

He’s generated the most thoughtful discussion of law school. That, and perhaps the publicity will help him get a job.

Ray Beckerman

For his tireless defense and continuous commentary in countless RIAA cases.

Whoever helps Chipmunk lady.

Because.

We know that last one should really be a 2008 Lawyer of the Year, not a 2007 Lawyer of the Year, but we just don’t care. You demanded the nomination right now.

So who should win? Cast your vote below.

Update: This survey is now closed. Click here for the results.

* Jose Padilla gets 17 years. [New York Times; Washington Post]

* A merger between Anderson Kill and Reed Smith? Maybe not. But 55 of Anderson Kill’s 126 lawyers have decamped for Reed Smith. [WSJ Law Blog; WSJ Law Blog]

* Ted Frank on yesterday’s Enron cert denial: Extortion, interrupted? [New York Sun]

* China shuts down “real-time” porn site, as part of its crackdown on online porn. [Reuters]

* Law tie (however tenuous) to Heath Ledger story: “Nicole Vaughan, 24, a law student at New York University, was in a seminar about Jesus when someone sent her a message about Mr. Ledger. She checked the Web, then walked to the apartment ‘because of the way our generation is; we sort of feel we’re a part of each other’s lives.’” [New York Times]

* Apparently Bill Clinton enjoys the Yale Law / Harvard Law rivalry: “I kind of like to see Barack and Hillary fight.” [NYDN via Drudge]

* Fed cuts fed funds rate by 0.75%, but stocks are still lower. [AP; New York Times; Washington Post]

* Clinton and Obama get snippy with each other in debate, raising questions about each other’s legal work. [Washington Post; New York Times; WSJ Law Blog]

* SCOTUS denies review in gigantic Enron-related investors’ lawsuit. [SCOTUSblog via How Appealing]

* Statutory interpretation makes for strange bedfellows in 5-4 ruling in Ali v. Federal Bureau of Prisons. [SCOTUSblog (PDF) via How Appealing]

* New York City revisits the issue of forced disclosure of calorie counts by restaurants. [AP via Drudge]

* Calling all cougars — and the young studs who love them. If you’re a single female who earns more than $500,000 a year (e.g., a Biglaw partner), you should check out this event. [DealBreaker]

* Canadian lawyers are horndogs, too. [Legal Blog Watch]

* “Though I did not think Judge Kopf owed me anything, I was not about to refuse a beer from a federal judge.” [Sentencing Law & Policy]

* Hillary Clinton as Tracy Flick? [Slate TV via Althouse]

* Survivor winner Yul Kwon, with whom we went to law school, contemplates a congressional run. Go Yul! [Washington Examiner]

* Gov. Romney wins Michigan. [CNN]

* Sen. Clinton faces challenge from “uncommitted.” [CNN]

* NV Supreme Court overturns decision allowing Rep. Kucinich to debate. [MSNBC]

* Criminal prosecutions of Blackwater security guards would not be easy. [New York Times]

* Did CIA lawyers and officials implicitly sign off on the destruction of interrogation tapes? [Washington Post]

* Austrian court rules animal rights group can’t have custody of chimp; appeal will be to the European Court of Human Rights. [AP]

* DOJ to investigate Tejada? [New York Times]

* Collected news coverage about yesterday’s Stoneridge decision. [How Appealing (linkwrap)]