This week we’re pretending that it’s not January by looking back at some of the biggest legal weddings of late 2011. There was a lot of muy prestigioso lawyer matrimony in the last part of the year. Before we delve into the January crop of weddings, which — let’s face it — is often subpar, here are some from the fall that we haven’t featured yet.
These are good ones, folks. Think Rhodes Scholars. Think SCOTUS clerks.
These are our finalists:
Lacey Schwartz and Antonio Delgado
Trisha Anderson and Charles Newman
Cate Edwards and Trevor Upham
Get the scoop on these couples, plus even more lawyer newlyweds, after the jump.
Continue reading “Legal Eagle Wedding Watch: The Voice”
* Merry Christmas! House Republicans will get one less lump of coal in their stockings this year after accepting a two-month extension of unemployment benefits and payroll tax cuts. [New York Times]
* Another birther lawsuit has been thrown out, but Orly Taitz won’t be stopped. She’s like the Energizer Bunny of questionable litigation. She’ll keep appealing, and appealing, and appealing… [Los Angeles Times]
* John Edwards is trying to delay his criminal trial, claiming to have a mystery medical diagnosis. What kind of disease does karma hand you for cheating on your sick wife? [New York Daily News]
* Nora Demleitner will be will be stepping in as the new dean of Washington and Lee University School of Law. Hofstra Law, you M.A.D.? [National Law Journal]
* Is the American Bar Association really driving up the cost of law school tuition, or is it the law schools themselves? Here are some graphs that might surprise you. [Am Law Daily]
Stop sexually harassing me.
* Now trending on the Election 2012 campaign trail for Republicans: attacks on the federal court system. Be prepared for SCOTUS term limits and other ridiculous propositions. [New York Times]
* After some bratty behavior from MGA Entertainment, Orrick was allowed to withdraw as counsel. Maybe they’re using the unpaid $3.85M in legal fees to buy noses for their dolls. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Paul Ceglia’s latest lawyer, Dean Boylan, is used to working with fabricated evidence. He was just ordered to pay $300K in damages for creating some fake kiddie porn. [Bloomberg]
* Cate Edwards got married this weekend. Was daddy sporting another $400 haircut when he walked her down the aisle? [Hollywood Reporter]
* Who wins the prize for being the number one deadbeat taxpayer in New York’s Upper West Side? A lawyer with $1.2M in tax liens, that’s who. [New York Post]
* “It would be better if you didn’t wear any underwear to work.” The trials and tribulations of being a female bartender in Manhattan, now brought to you in lawsuit form. [New York Daily News]
Justice John Paul Stevens
* Opponents of “three strikes” hope that the SCOTUS decision requiring California to reduce its prison population by 33,000 inmates will help them to repeal three strikes. Four balls, standing eight count, and wicked googly are among sports terms vying to take its place. [San Diego Union Tribune]
* A law firm librarian in New Jersey is suing her old firm and police for being falsely arrested and accused of pulling a fire alarm in the law firm’s building. This lawsuit is long overdue. Dewey even need to check out the complaint? Folio microfiche rare books. [New Jersey Law Journal]
* An in-depth look at the legal issues facing moral exemplar and top-shelf human being John Edwards. [Charlotte Observer]
* Utah became the first state to recognize gold as legal tender, momentarily sending the price per ounce skyrocketing to 5.7 wives. [International Business Times]
* Retired Justice John Paul Stevens, at 91, remains as spry as ever. At an age when most men are dribbling pudding onto their shirt, he is dribbling it onto his bow tie. [New York Times]
* “Again?! Egypt bizman busted at Pierre hotel.” [New York Post]
Sure, there are still a few counties where adultery is a “crime” in a real way, but it’s been a long time since somebody faced serious criminal charges because he stepped out on his wife.
Even if he stepped out on his dying wife who was stricken cancer in a publicly humiliating way while at the same time running for the presidency.
But it looks like the Department of Justice is about to really put the screws to former vice presidential candidate John Edwards. Of course, they can’t go after him for his gross affair outright. But Edwards’s alleged campaign finance shenanigans might get him in serious trouble…
Continue reading “Will John Edwards Face Criminal Charges For Being A Horndog?”
* Elizabeth Edwards has passed away, R.I.P. (Wait, John and Rielle — too soon, too soon.) [WRAL]
* During the New York Attorney General Debate, I predicted that Eric Dinallo would make a good partner at Debevoise & Plimpton. He just seemed so “nice.” Well, turns out I was spot on: Dinallo and Debevoise are a match made in nice people heaven. [Am Law Daily]
* Now that Charlie Rangel has been told he’s a naughty boy, can we get back to the whackjob known as Maxine Waters? [Dealbreaker]
* What it’s like to be addicted to M&A transactions, from the perspective of a retired Skadden partner. [Deal Journal]
* No Drama Obama gets a little bit feisty when defending his decision to extend the Bush tax cuts. In the words of Nice Guy Eddie: “You beat on this prick enough, he’ll tell you he started the Chicago fire. That don’t necessarily make it f**kin’ so.” [Business Insider]
* Back in the day, video could help the wrongly accused, just like DNA helps now. [DNAinfo]
* Lawyers fear change almost as much as Garth from Wayne’s World. [Belly of the Beast via ABA Journal]
The comely Cate has her father's smile.
No, she didn’t cheat on a cancer-stricken spouse through an affair with a trashy “videographer”; Cate Edwards, the daughter of John and Elizabeth Edwards, isn’t married. Rather, the 28-year-old Harvard Law graduate has become a plaintiffs’ lawyer, like her father before her.
As reported today in the Washington Post’s Reliable Source column, Edwards recently became an associate with Sanford Wittels & Heisler, a boutique class-action litigation firm with offices in New York, D.C., and San Francisco. Her bio on the firm website, which lists her as Catharine E. Edwards, mentions that she’s a member of the Virginia bar, with an application to the D.C. bar pending.
It also reveals that she previously served as a law clerk to a federal judge. For whom did Cate Edwards clerk?
Continue reading “Musical Chairs: Cate Edwards Follows in Her Father’s Footsteps”
No Gropius dorms for her, thank you very much. Harvard Law School student Cate Edwards, oldest daughter of prominent politician John Edwards, just purchased a million-dollar property in Washington’s tony Georgetown neighborhood.
From an item in Washingtonian:
Buyer: Harvard law student Cate Edwards.
Famous dad: Former presidential hopeful John Edwards.
Price: $1.3 million.
Amenities: Two bedrooms, five baths.
An NPR internship with Nina Totenberg doesn’t pay like a summer associate gig. Perhaps Cate was able to draw upon the fortune amassed by her father during his career as a top trial lawyer.
The property has two bedrooms and five bathrooms. A high bathroom-to-bedroom ratio is a token of a luxuriousness. But does Cate really need all those bathrooms? Does Papa Edwards — who might crash occasionally at Cate’s place, having sold his own mansion around the corner in 2006 (for $5.2 million) — really have that much ickiness to wash off?
The children of Senators Ted Kennedy and John Warner also snapped up some swank properties. Read about them over at Washingtonian.
Chips off the Old Blocks [Washingtonian]
No Conflict? NPR’s Nina Totenberg Takes on John Edwards Daughter As Summer Intern [NewsBusters.org]
Last month we named John Edwards, the legendary trial lawyer and former presidential candidate, an honorary Lawyer of the Day — “honorary,” because we didn’t view the reports of his alleged conduct to be sufficiently substantiated (even by our admittedly loose standards).
But now that Edwards has admitted to cheating on his cancer-stricken wife — he points out, in his defense, that her cancer was in remission when he started the affair — we’re making it official. Congratulations, Mr. Edwards.
P.S. Edwards denies, however, that he is Rielle Hunter’s baby-daddy. He claims the affair ended too early for him to be the father of Hunter’s baby girl, Frances Quinn.
Edwards Admits Sexual Affair; Lied as Presidential Candidate [ABC News via Drudge (of course)]
Earlier: Lawyer of the Day: John Edwards?
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
* “T.Owes.” [ESPN]
* Rebates to $500? [CNN]
* AG Mukasey won’t label waterboarding. [MSNBC]
* Sen. McCain wins Florida, Rudy to bow out. [New York Times; Washington Post]
* Federal inquiry into stolen artifacts expands. [New York Times]
* Margaret Truman, only child of President Truman and author of mysteries set at the Supreme Court and the FBI, RIP. [AP]
Ed. notes: First, B. Clerker is unavailable this morning, so we’re doing Morning Docket ourselves. Second, by the time you read this, we’ll be attending this event. But we’ve arranged for previously written posts (like this one) to be published in our absence.
* John Edwards tries to put a noble spin on the financial desperation of his flailing campaign. Stick a fork in him; he’s done. [WP; NYT]
* Jena One released on bail. [AP]
* Fourteen “high-value” terrorism suspects will be allowed to request lawyers. KSM will use his to sue Teleflex. [WP]
* In Pakistan, the Supreme Court gets involved in elections too. From the gallery: “Go, Musharraf, go!” [AP via WP]
* Set your TiVo, judicial groupies: Justice Thomas will be on 60 Minutes this Sunday. Thankfully, his interview — in which he’s rumored to call Anita Hill “a nappy-headed ho” — doesn”t conflict with the season premiere of Desperate Housewives. [WSJ Law Blog]
As we mentioned in passing yesterday, infamous plaintiffs’ lawyer William Learch will be pleading to a federal conspiracy charge, related to his involvement in Milberg Weiss’s secret scheme to make payments to name plaintiffs in class-action cases. Under the deal that was so skillfully cut by Lerach’s lawyer, John Keker of Keker & Van Nest, Lerach will cough up $8 million in forfeiture and fines and serve one to two years in federal prison.
Is Bill Lerach getting off easy? Quite possibly. But a judge still has to sign off on the deal.
Not surprisingly, Lerach spread his cash around liberally among several Democratic candidates for president. But his favorite was fellow plaintiffs’ lawyer John Edwards. From Ben Smith over at Politico:
Edwards and Biden each gave away money from Lerach; no word yet on whether Hillary will give back the money he gave her 2006 Senate campaign.
Edwards, though, is particularly tied to him. Though he’s giving away the $4,600 from Lerach, Lerach is also listed as a bundler, and employees of the lawyer’s firm are his third-largest group of donors, mostly giving in the first quarter.
If we had to choose between disgraced Democratic fundraisers, we’d pick Norman Hsu over Bill Lerach any day. That Hsu is so cute — he looks like a Treasure Troll! And he didn’t intend to skip out on court the other day. He was “sick and confused,” you see, and “may have thought he was boarding a Bay Area Rapid Transit train when he instead caught an Amtrak train heading out of the state.”
The Lerach Case [Politico]
Fortunes Darken for Lawyer Melvyn Weiss [New York Sun]
Bill Lerach Agrees to Plead Guilty [WSJ Law Blog]
Is Bill Lerach Getting Off Easy? [WSJ Law Blog]
Hsu Didn’t Intend To Skip Court, Spokesman Says [CBS5.com]
We’re heading off for a lunch meeting. So we won’t be at our computer when former senator (and trial lawyer extraordinaire) John Edwards holds his noon press conference.
The Edwards campaign hasn’t disclosed what the announcement will be. But according to Ben Smith of The Politico, Edwards “is suspending his campaign for President, and may drop out completely, because his wife has suffered a recurrence of the cancer that sickened her in 2004, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.”
Please use this open thread to discuss anything interesting that happens while we’re gone, including the Edwards announcement. We also hope Alberto Gonzales doesn’t step down as Attorney General while we’re away.
(Actually, maybe AG Gonzales will survive the U.S. Attorney firestorm. It seems that in the past day or two, the departure buzz has quieted slightly. Should Alberto Gonzales be upgraded from critical to stable condition?)
Update: Whoops! Even the MSM gets things wrong sometimes. Ben Smith’s mea culpa appears here.
Edwards to Suspend Campaign [The Politico]
Getting It Wrong [The Politico]
* I won’t comment on trial lawyers in general, but I’ll admit to instant suspicion of boyish-looking politicians. I’d rather trust creepy-looking John Edward. [Crime & Federalism]
* Wiki is as wiki does. [TaxProfs Blog]
* I have a lot of questions… Like how could the impact of Valle’s body force the elevators door open? How did Adams go from controversial HBO show to club manager? Who goes to BED these days? And what kinds of people base their lifestyle choices on a “featured in ‘Sex and the City’” seal of approval? [Reuters via Yahoo! News]
* Apple v. Apple has settled. [E! Online]
As we recently noted, both Sen. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards are distinguished lawyers and public servants.
But it’s time for them to bow out of the 2008 presidential race, in recognition of the inevitable: Senatrix Hillary Rodham Clinton is UNSTOPPABLE!
Divas of Yale Law School, represent!!!
Update (3:48 AM): Now running at the top of the Drudge Report:
Liz Taylor backs Hillary Clinton in presidential race [Reuters via Drudge Report]
Hillary Clinton 19 Points Ahead of Barack Obama [Time]
Poll: Many Black Voters Don’t Identify With Obama [CBS News]
Earlier: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton: The Lioness Roars, “I’m In”
The big news of the weekend: the announcement by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton that she’s opening a presidential exploratory committee. This is, of course, the first step towards a (now inevitable) White House bid.
If you haven’t done so already, check out Senator Clinton’s videotaped announcement. It’s excellent.
Senator Clinton’s intelligence, work ethic, experience and toughness all lie beyond the dispute. But the video highlights her charm, conviviality, and sense of humor. Regardless of whether you’re a Hillary fan or Hillary hater, we think you’ll be impressed by the video.
It’s very well-produced. The nice touches include the lovely side table, featuring pink roses and a discreet photo of her and Bill; Senator Clinton’s deft invocation of her Midwestern roots, replete with a Midwestern accent (listen to how she says “part”); and, of course, her flawless make-up. She looks great even in extreme close-up — which can’t be said for most of us. Can you believe she’s 59 years old?
There is a legal angle to this paean to Hillary (Yale Law School class of 1973). Discussion continues after the jump.
Continue reading “Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton: The Lioness Roars, “I’m In””
