Thursday, July 2, 2009 8:45 AM - By Kashmir Hill
* Earlier this week, Leah Ward Sears stepped down as Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court. She penned this piece for CNN about her brother's suicide, the problems with no-fault divorce, and where she's going next. [CNN]
* Former Latham & Watkins partner Samuel Fishman sentenced to 15 months in prison for bilking the firm and clients out of several hundred thousands of dollars. [Dow Jones Newswires]
* J.D. Salinger wins his copyright suit. Judge rules that 'J.D. California's' spin on Catcher in the Rye is not transformative enough, and cannot be sold in the U.S. [Associated Press]
* Skadden Arps takes the top-billing throne. [ABA Journal]
* SEC lawyer Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot tried to warn superiors about Bernie Madoff back in 2004. [Washington Post]
* Time for a new edition of the Kama Sutra. Indian court makes gay sex legal. [New York Times]
Wednesday, July 1, 2009 9:00 AM - By Kashmir Hill
* Happy Canada Day to our readers from the Great White North. You can enjoy the celebration of your day of union, but you can't yet celebrate a resolution of your lawsuit against river-stealing North Dakota. [Associated Press]
* The Michael Jackson autopsy report may have been fake, but his will is real. [New York Times]
* No more driving while under the influence of a BlackBerry in Virginia. [Washington Post]
* SCOTUS puts its right foot in and shakes it all about. [Washington Post via ABA Journal]
* Another case of online dating site customers getting screwed. And not in the good way. [Courthouse News Service]
Tuesday, June 30, 2009 9:09 AM - By Elie Mystal
* Mission Accomplished? [CNN]
* Doesn't "Velvet Revolution" sound like a musical band, instead of a collection of angry lawyers administering vigilante justice? [The Blog of the Legal Times]
* Mayoral control of New York City schools could end tonight if the New York State Senate doesn't act. But hey, politicians acting like children can't very well care about children. This is a good time to learn the word "mishigas." [Huffington Post]
* Was Bernie Madoff six times more evil than the Jeff Skilling? [Bloomberg]
* Remote DVRs are okay. I suggest television advertisers seriously consider "product placement." [Interactive TV Today]
* Rhode Island lawmakers want to change the name of the state. But they don't want to drop the "Rhode," or the "Island." [New York Times]
* Queens is deadly. [Daily News]
Monday, June 29, 2009 8:49 AM - By Elie Mystal
* Bernie Madoff will be sentenced today. Mmm ... revenge justice. [Daily News]
* There's a "legacy of litigation" that will survive Michael Jackson. [National Law Journal]
* The Coup d'état in Honduras is the first Central American coup since the end of the Cold War. [New York Times]
* R.I.P., Billy Mays. [CNBC]
* Maria Belen Chapur (Mark Sanford's girlfriend) says she's pretty sure who hacked into her email account, but she can't say. [CNN]
* Is it time for New York State to have a full blown constitutional convention? Maybe downstate New York should just secede from upstate New York. Then we can rename upstate "East Dakota" and everything will make sense. [Newsday]
Friday, June 26, 2009 9:09 AM - By Elie Mystal
* Many people are still reeling from the news of the death of Michael Jackson. [Rolling Stone]
* The scandal at the University of Illinois law school is bad, it's really, really bad, you know it. Reports are now surfacing that the school admitted politically connected applicants in exchange for jobs for the law school's graduates. [Chicago Tribune]
* Mark Sanford did use state funds to see his pretty young thing in Argentina. But he's going to pay it back. Now he just needs some tender lovin' care. [New York Times]
* Allen Stanford pleaded "not guilty" yesterday. Allen are you okay? Are you okay, Allen? You've been hit by, you've been struck by, a smooth criminal? [WSJ Law Blog]
* China disbars human rights lawyers. No message could have been any clearer. [ABA Journal]
* FDA, really bang up job on the Zicam thing. The way you make me feel ... is unhealthy. [Bloomberg]
Thursday, June 25, 2009 8:59 AM - By Kashmir Hill
* New Jersey Internet radio talk show host arrested for blogging that federal judges Frank Easterbrook, Richard Posner, and William Bauer "deserved to be killed" after a recent decision on Chicago handgun ban case. [CNN]
* More Morgan Lewis Musical Chairs: Yesterday, the firm announced that it had tapped gas from Baker Botts. Good thing, because Morgan Lewis lost some energy to Pillsbury this week. [National Law Journal]
* We don't know how Aaronson, Rappaport, Feinstein and Deutsch does in the courtroom, but it's a big winner in the New York real estate market. [Observer]
* Nationwide (Law School) Layoff Watch: As predicted in May, layoffs have started at Harvard, despite HLS grads' protest. [Boston Globe]
* The Fourth Circuit supports the ban on 'partial birth' abortions in Virginia. [Washington Post]
Wednesday, June 24, 2009 8:17 AM - By Kashmir Hill
* California lawyer Ryan Kent has accused Dahn Yoga of being a cult and filed a class action suit against the Brain Wave Vibrators. [San Francisco Chronicle]
* Ross Mitchell spent just $38,000 on his online law degree and became his own first client. He won his lawsuit to be admitted to the Massachusetts Bar. [Boston Herald]
* Richard Posner is bearish on newspapers and bullish on draconian copyright protection for online news. Permission to link? [The Becker-Posner Blog]
* Is 12 years enough for Bernie? [Am Law Daily]
* Law school is great preparation for doing something other than law. [Legal Intelligencer]
* Musical chairs: Morgan Lewis taps gas from Baker Botts. [Am Law Daily]
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 9:05 AM - By Kashmir Hill
* Florida lawyer Frederick Schaffer smells money in his lawsuit against cold medicine Zicam. Or doesn't smell it rather, claiming that the medicine made him lose that sense. [Boston Herald]
* Nevada Supreme Court Justice Kris Pickering keeps order in the court, but causes chaos in a UPS parking lot. [Las Vegas Review-Journal]
* It's a buyer's market for laterals. [National Law Journal via ABA Journal]
* A guilty plea from Chris Brown. There will be no Rihanna-Brown duets in the near future. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Patricia Schnegg issued a "two-way" stay-away order. [Associated Press]
* ...Courthouse groupies are a testament to the power of music. [Popsquire]
* In a New Yorker profile in May, Jeffrey Toobin argued that John Roberts would politicize SCOTUS. Does last week's decision regarding no right to DNA evidence for criminals support that argument? [True/Slant]
* Good parting gift for a fashionable Con Law prof? [Highsnobette]
Monday, June 22, 2009 9:00 AM - By Kashmir Hill
* One bra size does not fit all. There are so many different reasons why one might get a severe rash from a Victoria's Secret bra that the 17 suits filed in various states cannot be consolidated into one. [On Point News]
* More on Law Student of the Day: Leo Wolpert. The UVA Law card shark is spending his summer writing memos for the ACLU. Money quote from the article: "With the economy as it is, it's definitely nice to have poker to fall back on." [Washington Post]
* A North Carolina company had a big day in court last week. On Thursday, MIG Inc. filed for bankruptcy and filed a big lawsuit against Paul Weiss. MIG alleges that stock offering documents drafted by the firm were unprofessional and filled with errors that cost it $140 million when it merged with another company in 2007. [American Lawyer]
* Rihanna may sing from the witness stand today in Chris Brown's assault trial. [CNN]
* Federal Judge Denny Chin of the Southern District of New York has a flair for the dramatic. [Studio 360]
Friday, June 19, 2009 8:57 AM - By Elie Mystal
* Don't cheap your Dad on Father's Day. [Bloomberg]
* Allen Stanford has been arrested and indicted. [Los Angeles Times]
* The RIAA won big in its file sharing suit. Very big. [Minneapolis Star-Tribune via WSJ Law Blog]
* Never ask questions you don't already know the answer to. Especially on T.V. Especially when a million dollars is involved. [Courthouse News Service]
* A city in Montana wants to know your Facebook status passwords before you can get a job. Anybody got a problem with that? [ABA Journal]
* Partner hiring spree for Greenberg Traurig. [Am Law Daily]
* Summer + Recession = Murder? [New York Times]
Thursday, June 18, 2009 9:00 AM - By Kashmir Hill
* Justice may be blind, but she needs to see your face in Michigan. [True/Slant]
* Lawyers for Allen Stanford, the Texas financier accused of a massive swindle, want Baker Botts off the case. [Reuters]
* Convicted terrorist Jose Padilla can sue John Yoo for the legal memos he wrote at the Justice Department defending torture. [San Francisco Chronicle]
* Renowned legal scholar Lawrence Lessig stars in a new film. Stanford Law is getting the publicity shout-out in the articles about the documentary, but Harvard recently snatched Lessig for its faculty. [DCist]
* Chapter 11 bankruptcy. So hot right now. [Wall Street Journal]
* Is this year's cutthroat BigLaw environment worse for summer associates or for the hiring partners they are stalking? [Fulton County Daily Report]
* Does Obama have big plans for Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan? [Chicago Sun-Times]
Wednesday, June 17, 2009 9:00 AM - By Kashmir Hill
* Adam Trenk is a rising 3L at Arizona State University's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law. Thanks to his drawing a king of hearts in an election tiebreaker, this law school hottie is also a newly minted Cave Creek Councilman. [New York Times]
* Greg Bachand, 60, is a first-year associate at a Connecticut firm. He managed to score a job in this economy because his daughter is a name partner at the law firm. [Connecticut Law Tribune via ABA Journal]
* A California lawyer is accused of extorting Dole food company for billions of dollars by bringing fraudulent claims against the company. How do you like them pineapples? [Associated Press]
* Catcher in the Courtroom. There's a hearing scheduled today in J.D. Salinger's copyright infringement suit against "J.D. California." [New York Times]
* You no longer have to be married -- or straight -- to get federal benefits for your significant other. [Washington Post]
* Bernie Madoff hate letters were unsealed Monday. [New York Daily News]
Tuesday, June 16, 2009 9:00 AM - By Kashmir Hill
* Cristina Warthen née Schultz, aka the Stanford Law Escort, is the 2001 Stanford law grad turned call girl turned filthy rich wife of Ask Jeeves founder David Warthen. But apparently, she's no longer filthy rich, and will not be married for much longer. Warthen was wiped out by the stock market plunge and their divorce is pending. She's not sure how she will pay the government the $313,000 she owes for tax evasion. [Mercury News]
* Facebook = gold mine for divorce lawyers. [Time]
* The Supreme Court will consider making discharging student debt through bankruptcy easier. [Associated Press]
* Nationwide Layoff Watch: California public defenders. [The Associated Press]
* Meet me in St. Louis, but don't make me pay for recycling. [Courthouse News Service]
* The retrial for the Minnesota mom taken down by the music industry for illegal file sharing started yesterday. [CBS News]
Monday, June 15, 2009 8:49 AM - By Kashmir Hill
* Like Drinker Biddle, Frost Brown Todd is instituting an apprenticeship program for its first year associates. They make less money and are billed out to clients at lower rates during their 1,000 hour apprenticeship. [Business Courier of Cincinnati]
* Stereotypes and jury selection. [Baltimore Sun]
* Jones Day's Corinne Ball showed she's the master of the quickie during the Chrysler restructuring. [New York Times]
* What can David Carradine's family do about his death photos going viral? [American Lawyer]
* Behind the scenes in the push to get Sonia Sotomayor to SCOTUS: The White House keeps her supporters on a tight leash. [Washington Post]
* The San Francisco Chronicle recounts SCOTUS Justice Anthony Kennedy's commencement speech at Stanford on Sunday, but strangely accompanies the article with a photo of Clarence Thomas. Do all the non-liberal justices look the same to you, San Francisco? [San Francisco Chronicle]
Friday, June 12, 2009 8:52 AM - By Elie Mystal
* Skadden has a new client, Dick Tracy. [Am Law Daily]
* And while we're on the topic of celebrities that are calcifying in front of our eyes, Madonna won her appeal seeking to adopt a baby from Malawi. [Entertainment Weekly]
* Don't forget, at one minute past midnight Facebook will do something colossally stupid. [National Law Journal]
* New York's mini-state of anarchy continues. Democrats are going to court seeking an injunction to stop Republicans from having more votes. [New York 1]
* More tobacco regulation. God, you'd think cigarettes were bad for you or something. [New York Times]
* Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could go down today, without a single shot fired. [CNN]
* Somebody has finally noticed Electronic Arts' total freaking monopoly over football video games. [Courthouse News Service]
Thursday, June 11, 2009 9:10 AM - By Kashmir Hill
* UCLA Law students were successful in protecting our right to curbside carne asada. [Los Angeles Times]
* Apparently, Sonnenschein is "fat and happy" and moving its New York office. [New York Observer]
* Washington, D.C. lawyer Kenneth Feinberg has been appointed compensation czar and will get to set the salaries of CEOs at beleaguered companies getting government aid. [ABA Journal]
* The impeachment proceedings against Judge Samuel Kent -- the first federal judge to be charged with a sex crime -- will move on to the House of Representatives. [Associated Press]
* Sonia Sotomayor once called herself "an affirmative action baby." [New York Times]
* San Diego lawyer Alfred Rava sued the Oakland A's for sex discrimination after a 2004 Mother's Day promotion that excluded males. Now ESPN columnist Rick Reilly is taking Rava and his men-ism suits for a round in the batting cage. [ESPN]
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 9:08 AM - By Kashmir Hill
* Does SCOTUS need some affirmative action for non-Ivy League grads? [New York Times]
* White & Case partner Tom Lauria, who got SCOTUS to issue a stay in the Chrysler-Fiat deal, is pissing people off and "enjoying the heck out of it." He may take on GM next. [Wall Street Journal]
* SCOTUS decided yesterday to lift the Chrysler-Fiat stay, so that sale can move forward. [Washington Post]
* Sonnenschein hit with a $30 million poaching suit. [American Lawyer]
* Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is threatening to sue HarperCollins if they defame him while publicizing a book on September 11. [Chicago Sun-Times]
* The Northern District of California courthouse sounds like a wild place. [Courthouse News Service]
Tuesday, June 9, 2009 9:01 AM - By Kashmir Hill
* It's a good time to be a lawyer with game. [AmLaw Daily]
* Judicial reform advocates are doing happy dances in response to the SCOTUS ruling in Caperton v. Massey. Elected judges must step aside when faced with cases involving people who donated generously to help put them on the bench. [Washington Post]
* Baker & Hostetler is on the rise thanks to Bernie Madoff, or rather the hiring of the trustee for Madoff's investment firm. [Wall Street Journal]
* Tony La Russa's attorney learns a valuable lesson: You don't have a deal until you have a deal in writing. News reports of a settlement in the St. Louis Cardinals coach's suit against Twitter over a made-up profile may have been a bit premature. [The Recorder]
* A stripper's pole is not like a chair in a hair salon. When it comes to wage-and-hour laws, a stripper is more like a waitress or a pizza delivery man than a hair stylist. Minnesota strippers are suing to be recognized as employees rather than independent contractors. [National Law Journal]
* Cap'n Crunch with Crunchberries have crunch, but don't have berries. A San Diego woman sued for fraud when she "discovered" this. California Judge Morrison England Jr. dismissed her suit letting her know that there is no such fruit as crunchberries "growing in the wild or occurring naturally in any part of the world." [USA Today]
Monday, June 8, 2009 8:57 AM - By Kashmir Hill & Elie Mystal
* Two U.S. journalists were sentenced to 12 years in a labor prison in North Korea. [CNN]
* Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been asked to grant an emergency stay in Fiat's acquisition of Chrysler. Will SCOTUS seize the opportunity to "decide critical, nationally significant legal issues relating to management of the economy by the United States government?" [Wall Street Journal]
* General Counsels want change they can believe in. [Law.com]
* Executive compensation oversight: now brought to you by the federal government. [New York Times]
* Will Law & Order be able to rip this one from the headlines? It's
certainly dramatic. Here's SCOTUSblog's coverage of the legal
adventures of the Chrysler rescue plan. [SCOTUSblog]
* Do you remember Alan Greenspan? [Slate]
* The EPA doesn't seem to be doing a very good job protecting the environment. [Courthouse News Service]
Friday, June 5, 2009 9:00 AM - By Elie Mystal
* The manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, Tony La Russa, is suing Twitter over a fake Twitter account bearing his name. I have the same problem (real me = ElieNYC). But unlike La Russa, I don't have a J.D. from Florida State or Albert Pujols on my side. [ESPN]
* The Senate Judiciary Committee has posted Sotomayor's responses to the standard questionnaire for SCOTUS nominees. [Committee on the Judiciary; or PDF (one document)]
* British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is reshuffling deck chairs his cabinet in an attempt to keep his job. [BBC]
* Will the Palm Pre become a serious challenger to the iPhone? I bet there's a iPhone Application that can tell you. [New York Times]
* Disney has been accused of polluting groundwater. This wouldn't be a problem if Wall-E's girlfriendbot could do something useful. [Courthouse News Service]
* It's not entirely clear if Bill killed himself. (Too soon?) [CNN]
* Sacha Baron Cohen is a lean, mean, legal fee machine. [WSJ Law Blog]
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