Well, there’s really nothing else to talk about this morning. Jezebel reports that a defense attorney has written a motion objecting to the people seated at the plaintiff’s table. Well, one person in particular — a “large breasted woman” who is seated next to plaintiff’s counsel.
Is there a law against having large-breasted women hang out with you? Of course not; this is America!
But since this motion is one of the most sexist things you are likely to come across, let’s give it a closer look…
We all wanted to give Raj the benefit of the doubt. I wanted to believe he was an honest man. How could someone so smart and rich already be involved in something so horrendous?
(According to the Wall Street Journal, Rajaratnam “is estimated to have paid as much as $40 million for his defense… about two-thirds of the amount prosecutors said [his Galleon Group hedge fund] made from the insider trading addressed in the charges.”)
Raj Rajaratnam, the billionaire leader of the Galleon Group, has been found guilty.
The jury returned a verdict of guilty on all 14 counts Rajaratnam was facing — nine counts of insider trading and five of conspiracy. Rajaratnam could get a sentence of up to 19 and a half years under the federal sentencing guidelines, according to prosecutors.
Rajaratnam’s defense lawyer, John Dowd of Akin Gump, is a renowned advocate — but he’s not a miracle worker. Raj was just too big a target.
Check out our sister site Dealbreaker for continuing coverage.
After seven days of deliberations, one juror in the insider trading trial of Raj Rajaratnam has been dismissed, for unspecified medical reasons. An alternate has been seated, but this means the jury has to begin its deliberations anew. The original jurors must be thrilled.
Let’s hope that the dismissed juror was a holdout (either way). The suspense is killing us!
Readers: Any predictions on how this will turn out? Will celebrated criminal defense lawyer John Dowd — who successfully represented the fabulous Monica Goodling, among others — pull this off? Or will the prosecutors of the legendary S.D.N.Y. get their man?
Honestly, I don’t understand why people hate jury duty so much. What’s the big deal? You don’t have to go to work. You can sit down and read stuff on your iPad or play Angry Birds. Then you go home. How is this a hardship to be avoided at all costs?
And if you are extremely lucky, you get to be a part of the justice system. What kind of fairweather citizen is too busy to participate in justice?
Well, not everybody appreciates the awesome responsibility of jury duty. Today we’ve got two stories of people trying to shirk their civic responsibilities — unsuccessfully…
If you’re not booting up your laptop or iPad during voir dire, you’re not a very good lawyer. That’s my takeaway from recent WSJ and Reuters articles on jury selection in the social media age.
This week, the Wall Street Journal took a look at the evolution of jury selection in the age of social media, while Reuters took a look at this last week, quipping that “voir dire” is becoming “voir Google.”
Facebook-stalking jurors is presented as a questionable and still evolving practice. But the only thing that seems questionable to me (besides a DA considering forced-friending in exchange for Internet access) is why any trial lawyer wouldn’t have jumped on this already. Along with not Googling prospective jurors, I imagine these guys also avoid Lexis-Nexis in favor of the law library, type their memos up on an old-school typewriter, and review deposition recordings on an eight-track.
Both articles point out that potential jurors may be more candid online than they are in a courtroom, and round up some tips from trial consultants on reasons to strike potential jurors based on their Facebook likes and Google footprint. BigLaw types might be well-advised to strike anyone, for example, who lists “Erin Brokovich” as one of their favorite movies…
Well that didn’t take long, did it? The jury in the case of Commonwealth v. Ung began deliberations at 11:32 a.m., and it just returned a verdict of “not guilty,” around 4 p.m. Eastern time. Gerald Ung, the Temple Law student who was charged with attempted murder in connection with a January 2010 shooting in the Old City section of Philadelphia, has been acquitted.
This news might not come as a huge shock. In our reader poll, over 90 percent of you said you’d vote “not guilty” if you were jurors.
Congratulations to Ung — who testified on his own behalf yesterday, arguing that he acted in self-defense — and to Ung’s very fine defense lawyer, the renowned Jack McMahon.
Does this mean that Gerald Ung, 29, gets his life back? Can things go back to normal for him and for the Ung family?
A little over half an hour ago — shortly before noon, after receiving instructions from Judge Glynnis Hill — a jury of six men and six women began its deliberations in Commonwealth v. Ung, the criminal trial of Temple Law student Gerald Ung. Ung has been charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault, and other offenses, arising out of a January 2010 shooting incident. Ung shot Eddie DiDonato, a former Villanova lacrosse captain and the son of a partner at Fox Rothschild, in what Ung claims was self-defense.
Above the Law readers seem sympathetic to Ung. At the current time, in our reader poll, over 90 percent of you would vote “not guilty” on the main charge of attempted murder. (The poll is still open; you can vote over here.)
How long will the jury deliberate? Will we end up with a hung jury, or an Ung jury, or some convictions?
Stay tuned. We’ll bring you the verdict as soon as we learn of it. (Of course, please feel free to email us or text us (646-820-8477) if you happen to get the news before we do.)
In response to our last story about Gerald Ung — the Temple Law student now on trial for attempted murder and aggravated assault (among other charges), after shooting Eddie DiDonato, a former Villanova lacrosse captain and the son of a prominent Fox Rothschildpartner — some commenters expressed the view that our coverage was too favorable to the prosecution.
Look — we have no dog in this fight. It seems that the part of the post readers found most objectionable was a blockquote from a source who attended the trial, which we reprinted simply because it was from someone actually present in the courtroom. Sadly, Above the Law doesn’t have a Philadelphia bureau. If you’ve been attending the trial and would like to share your thoughts with us, we’d love to hear from you.
Another reason why the earlier story might have seemed more pro-prosecution is that it was describing the prosecution’s side of the case and the early prosecution witnesses. Now that the trial has been going on for several days, a fuller version of events has emerged. This will culminate tomorrow, when defendant Gerald Ung is expected to take the stand. This is not typical — it happens more on TV and in the movies than in real life — but then again, this is not the typical case. Ung’s defense lawyer, Jack McMahon, may be betting on the ability of his client — a law student, presumably intelligent and articulate — to win over the jury.
Let’s learn more about what’s been going on at the trial over the past few days — and hear some juicy tidbits about defense counsel McMahon….
* Obama plans to nominate Don Verrilli as the next Solicitor General. He’s currently working a former partner at Jenner & Block, currently working at the White House. [WSJ Law Blog]
* A divorce lawyer points out that Amy Chua’s parenting techniques would likely break down if she got divorced. [Huffington Post]
* This is easily the best thing I’ve read about the situation in Tunisia. Call the country a casualty of the higher education “bubble” — and consider yourself warned. [NetNet / CNBC]
* A cyberlaw-centric Blawg Review, on the twenty-seventh anniversary of the first Apple Macintosh sales. [Cyberlaw Central via Blawg Review]
We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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Well, there’s really nothing else to talk about this morning. Jezebel reports that a defense attorney has written a motion objecting to the people seated at the plaintiff’s table. Well, one person in particular — a “large breasted woman” who is seated next to plaintiff’s counsel.
